The survey now passes from the age of the patriarchs to that of Moses and the Judges. It was the faith of his parents that saved Moses in his infancy; and his life, when he grew to manhood, had faith as its one motive. He turned from the pleasures of this world and shared in the hardships of his countrymen, believing that they were the people of God, and that through their apparent weakness God was working towards that end which has now been realised in Christ. He forgot mere present advantage in the thought of the great ultimate reward (Hebrews 11:24 ff.). His flight from Egypt, in defiance of the king's will, was the result of faith in the invisible King; and a like faith found expression in his keeping of the Passover, and his leading of the people through the Red Sea.
Hebrews 11:26. the reproach of Christ: something more is meant than that Moses, in his day, submitted to the world's scorn as Jesus was to do afterwards. It is indicated that Moses consciously looked forward to the coming of Christ. The Christian cause had its preliminary phase in the life of Israel, and the heroes of the past were already under Christ's banner.
Hebrews 11:27. not fearing the wrath of the king: this is not strictly correct, for it was fear of the king's wrath that impelled Moses to flee to Midian. The reference may be to the later story of the Exodus, but is due more probably to a confusion in the writer's mind between the later events and the earlier.