Tziporah

(21) Moses consented to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah as wife. (22) She bore a son whom he named Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.”

ויואל — Translate this as the Targum does: AND HE WAS WILLING. Similar are: (Judges 19:6) “Be content (הואל), I pray thee, and tarry all night”; (Joshua 7:7) “would that we had been content (הואלנו)”; (Genesis 18:31) “I am content (הואלתי) to speak”. A Midrashic explanation is that it has the sense of taking an oath (אלה), so that it should be rendered, “And Moses pledged himself by an oath to remain with the man” — he swore to him that he would not stir from Midian save by his permission (cf. Exodus 4:18) (Nedarim 65a).

לשבת את האיש, to tend his flocks, a similar construction to Lavan inviting Yaakov to stay with him in Genesis 29,19.

ויתן את צפורה בתו למשה. He gave his daughter Tziporah to Moses. The reason the Torah repeats Moses' name in this verse, when it could have simply written: "he gave her to him," is that Tziporah was the divinely appointed wife for Moses, his בת זוג.

ויתן את צפורה בתו למשה, “He gave his daughter Tzipporah to Moses (as a wife.)” What is the significance of the name “Tzipporah?” She had run towards Moses like a bird (צפור) An alternate interpretation: she was beautiful as the morning at the time of sunrise. She lit up the atmosphere in the morning. The Aramaic word צפרא means: “morning;” it is used to describe how welcome the morning is. Our author quotes Ezekiel 7,7 “the day is near,” as well as Judges 7,3: as a bird flies from Mount Gilad,” to support his point.

(22) She bore a son whom he named Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.”

ויקרא את שמו גרשום, “he called his name Gershom.” If we were to be judgmental, Moses should have given his son a name that reflected his miraculous escape from Pharaoh and his police. Moses did not mention this until his second son was born whom he called appropriately “Eliezer,” i.e. “My G-d Who is my helper.” We may explain this as Moses feeling that as long as Pharaoh was still on the throne he was still in danger regardless of where he had found temporary refuge. We see proof of this when G-d told him in Exodus 4,19 that all the people who had sought his death had died in the meantime. This meant that the Pharaoh whom he had known had died also. Immediately Moses heard this he responded when his second son was born. Compare 4,24 where Moses is punished while at the inn for having delayed circumcision of his second son, seeing that he was no longer in danger as G-d had told him. [This suggests that Eliezer may have been as much as 50 years younger than his older brother. Ed.] A different interpretation: when Gershom had been born Moses was still a newcomer in Midian, and he felt like an alien there. If he had called the first son Eliezer, he would have endangered himself by hinting that he had needed to escape from Egypt as a common criminal and had only been saved by Divine intervention. By the time Eliezer was born, he felt at home in Midian, hence the time had come to thank the Lord for his deliverance from danger.

גר הייתי, "I was (used to be) a stranger, etc." The Torah deliberately phrases this in the past tense because the Torah reports events as of the time the Torah was written (at that time Moses could speak of his being a stranger in the past tense, whereas at the time the baby was born he was still a stranger in Midian). Alternatively, the words may be understood along the lines of Psalms 119,19: גר אנכי בארץ, "I am only a stranger on earth." Righteous people in this world are merely strangers, they have no permanent abode. Moses meant that ever since he was born he had merely been a stranger in a foreign land, seeing he had not been raised in his parents' home or shared his youth with his siblings.