Moses is tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he leads the flock to the far side of the wilderness and comes to Horeb, the mountain of God. The mountain of God — also called Sinai — is here named before the revelation that makes it holy, as if the narrator is letting the reader know that this geography has already been marked in the divine purposes. Moses has spent forty years in Midian, keeping sheep in the same wilderness where Israel will later camp and receive the law. His work is humble, unhurried, and invisible. Acts 7:30 notes that forty years passed before God appeared. The long preparation was not wasted; it was the formation of a man patient enough to lead three million people through a wilderness for another forty years. Psalm 23, which Moses may well have authored, opens with the same scene: a shepherd leading a flock beside still waters. Moses is learning from the inside out what he will one day say to a nation.

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