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[Analisa Wisdom]

MOSES mo'-zez, mo'-ziz (mosheh; Egyptian mes, "drawn out," "born"; Septuagint Mouse(s)). The great Hebrew national hero, leader, author, law-giver and prophet. I. LIFE 1. Son of Levi 2. Foundling Prince 3. Friend of the People 4. Refuge in Midian 5. Leader of Israel II. WORK AND CHARACTER 1. The Author 2. The Lawgiver 3. The Prophet LITERATURE The traditional view of the Jewish church and of the Christian church, that Moses was a person and that the narrative with which his life-story is interwoven is real history, is in the main sustained by commentators and critics of all classes. It is needless to mention the old writers among whom these questions were hardly under discussion. Among the advocates of the current radical criticism may be mentioned Stade and Renan, who minimize the historicity of the Bible narrative at this point. Renan thinks the narrative "may be very probable." Ewald, Wellhausen, Robertson Smith, and Driver, while finding many flaws in the story, make much generally of the historicity of the narrative. The critical analysis of the Pentateuch divides this life-story of Moses into three main parts, J, E, and the Priestly Code (P), with a fourth, D, made up mainly from the others. Also some small portions here and there are given to R, especially the account of Aaron's part in the plagues of Egypt, where his presence in a J-document is very troublesome for the analytical theory. It is unnecessary to encumber this biography with constant cross-references to the strange story of Moses pieced together out of the rearranged fragments into which the critical analysis of the Pentateuch breaks up the narrative. It is recognized that there are difficulties in the story of Moses. In what ancient life-story are there not difficulties? If we can conceive of the ancients being obliged to ponder over a modern life-story, we can easily believe that they would have still more difficulty with it. But it seems to very many that the critical analysis creates more difficulties in the narrative than it relieves. It is a little thing to explain by such analysis some apparent discrepancy between two laws or two events or two similar incidents which we do not clearly understand. It is a far greater thing so to confuse, by rearranging, a beautiful, well-articulated biography that it becomes disconnected--indeed, in parts, scarcely makes sense. The biographical narrative of the Hebrew national hero, Moses, is a continuous thread of history in the Pentateuch. That story in all its simplicity and symmetry, but with acknowledgment of its difficulties as they arise, is here to be followed. I. Life. 1. Son of Levi: The recorded story of Moses' life falls naturally into five rather unequal parts: "And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi" (Exodus 2:1). The son of Levi born of that union became the greatest man among mere men in the whole history of the world. How far he was removed in genealogy from Levi it is impossible to know. The genealogical lists (Genesis 46:11; Exodus 6:16-20; Numbers 3:14-28; 26:57-59; 1 Chronicles 6:1-3) show only 4 generations from Levi to Moses, while the account given of the numbers of Israel at the exodus (Exodus 12:37; 38:26; Numbers 1:46; 11:21) imperatively demand at least 10 or 12 generations. The males alone of the sons of Kohath "from a month old and upward" numbered at Sinai 8,600 (Numbers 3:27,28). It is evident that the extract from the genealogy here, as in many other places (1 Chronicles 23:15; 26:24; Ezra 7:1-5; 8:1,2; compare 1 Chronicles 6:3-14; Matthew 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38) is not complete, but follows the common method of giving important heads of families. The statement concerning Jochebed: "And she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister" (Numbers 26:59) really creates no difficulty, as it is likewise said of Zilpah, after the mention of her grandsons, "And these she bare unto Jacob" (Genesis 46:17,18; compare 46:24,25). The names of the immediate father and mother of Moses are not certainly known. The mother "saw him that he was a goodly child" (Exodus 2:2). So they defied the commandment of the king (Exodus 1:22), and for 3 months hid him instead of throwing him into the river. 2. Foundling Prince: The time soon came when it was impossible longer to hide the child (Josephus, Ant, II, ix, 3-6). The mother resolved upon a plan which was at once a pathetic imitation of obedience to the commandment of the king, an adroit appeal to womanly sympathy, and, if it succeeded, a subtle scheme to bring the cruelty of the king home to his own attention. Her faith succeeded. She took an ark of bulrushes (Exodus 2:3,4; compare ARK OF BULRUSHES), daubed it with bitumen mixed with the sticky slime of the river, placed in this floating vessel the child of her love and faith, and put it into the river at a place among the sedge in the shallow water where the royal ladies from the palace would be likely to come down to bathe. A sister, probably Miriam, stood afar off to watch (Exodus 2:3,4). The daughter of Pharaoh came down with her great ladies to the river (Exodus 2:5-10). The princess saw the ark among the sedge and sent a maid to fetch it. The expectation of the mother was not disappointed. The womanly sympathy of the princess was touched. She resolved to save this child by adopting him. Through the intervention of the watching sister, he was given to his own mother to be nursed (Exodus 2:7-9). "And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son" (Exodus 2:10). Thus, he would receive her family name. Royal family names in Egypt then were usually compounded of some expression of reverence or faith or submission and the name of a god, e.g. "loved of," "chosen of," "born of," Thoth, Ptah, Ra or Amon. At this period of Egyptian history, "born of" (Egyptian mes, "drawn out") was joined sometimes to Ah, the name of the moon-god, making Ahmes, or Thoth, the scribe-god, so Thothmes, but usually with Ra, the sun-god, giving Rames, usually anglicized Rameses or Ramoses. It was the time of the Ramesside dynasty, and the king on the throne was Rameses II. Thus the foundling adopted by Pharaoh's daughter would have the family name Mes or Moses. That it would be joined in the Egyptian to the name of the sungod Ra is practically certain. His name at court would be Ramoses. But to the oriental mind a name must mean something. The usual meaning of this royal name was that the child was "born of" a princess through the intervention of the god Ra. But this child was not "born of" the princess, so falling back upon the primary meaning of the word, "drawn out," she said, "because I drew him out of the water" (Exodus 2:10). Thus, Moses received his name. Pharaoh's daughter may have been the eldest daughter of Rameses II, but more probably was the daughter and eldest child of Seti Merenptah I, and sister of the king on the throne. She would be lineal heir to the crown but debarred by her sex. Instead, she bore the title "Pharaoh's Daughter," and, according to Egyptian custom, retained the right to the crown for her first-born son. A not improbable tradition (Josephus, Ant, II, ix, 7) relates that she had no natural son, and Moses thus became heir to the throne, not with the right to supplant the reigning Pharaoh, but to supersede any of his sons. Very little is known of Moses' youth and early manhood at the court of Pharaoh. He would certainly be educated as a prince, whose right it probably was to be initiated into the mysteries. Thus he was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians" (Acts 7:22), included in which, according to many Egyptologists, was the doctrine of one Supreme God. Many curious things, whose value is doubtful, are told of Moses by Josephus and other ancient writers (Josephus, Ant, II, ix, 3; xi; CAp, I, 31; compare DB; for Mohammedan legends, see Palmer, The Desert of the Exodus, Appendix; for rabbinical legends, see Jewish Encyclopedia). Some of these traditions are not incredible but lack authentication. Others are absurd. Egyptologists have searched with very indifferent success for some notice of the great Hebrew at the Egyptian court. 3. Friend of the People: But the faith of which the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks (Hebrews 11:23-28) was at work. Moses "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter" (Exodus 2:11-14; Acts 7:24). Whether he did so in word, by definite renunciation, or by his espousal of the cause of the slave against the oppressive policy of Pharaoh is of little importance. In either case he became practically a traitor, and greatly imperiled his throne rights and probably his civil rights as well. During some intervention to ameliorate the condition of the state slaves, an altercation arose and he slew an Egyptian (Exodus 2:11,12). Thus, his constructive treason became an overt act. Discovering through the ungrateful reproaches of his own kinsmen (Acts 7:25) that his act was known, he quickly made decision, "choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of God," casting in his lot with slaves of the empire, rather than "to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season," amid the riotous living of the young princes at the Egyptian court; "accounting the reproach of Christ" his humiliation, being accounted a nobody ("Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?") as "greater riches than the treasures of Egypt" (Hebrews 11:25,26; Acts 7:25-28). He thought to be a nobody and do right better than to be a tyrant and rule Egypt. 4. Refuge in Midian: Moses fled, "not fearing the wrath of the king" (Hebrews 11:27), not cringing before it or submitting to it, but defying it and braving all that it could bring upon him, degradation from his high position, deprivation of the privileges and comforts of the Egyptian court. He went out a poor wanderer (Exodus 2:15). We are told nothing of the escape and the journey, how he eluded the vigilance of the court guards and of the frontier-line of sentinels. The friend of slaves is strangely safe while within their territory. At last he reached the Sinaitic province of the empire and hid himself away among its mountain fastnesses (Exodus 2:15). The romance of the well and the shepherdesses and the grateful father and the future wife is all quite in accord with the simplicity of desert life (Exodus 2:16-22). The "Egyptian" saw the rude, selfish herdsmen of the desert imposing upon the helpless shepherd girls, and, partly by the authority of a manly man, partly, doubtless, by the authority of his Egyptian appearance in an age when "Egypt" was a word with which to frighten men in all that part of the world, he compelled them to give way. The "Egyptian" was called, thanked, given a home and eventually a wife. There in Midian, while the anguish of Israel continued under the taskmaster's lash, and the weakening of Israel's strength by the destruction of the male children went on, with what more or less rigor we know not, Moses was left by Providence to mellow and mature, that the haughty, impetuous prince, "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," might be transformed into the wise, well-poised, masterful leader, statesman, lawgiver, poet and prophet. God usually prepares His great ones in the countryside or about some of the quiet places of earth, farthest away from the busy haunts of men and nearest to the "secret place of the Most High." David keeping his father's flocks, Elijah on the mountain slopes of Gilead, the Baptist in the wilderness of Judea, Jesus in the shop of a Galilean carpenter; so Moses a shepherd in the Bedouin country, in the "waste, howling wilderness." 5. Leader of Israel: (1) The Commission. One day Moses led the flocks to "the back of the wilderness" (Exodus 3:1-12; see BUSH, BURNING. Moses received his commission, the most appalling commission ever given to a mere man (Ex 3:10)--a commission to a solitary man, and he a refugee--to go back home and deliver his kinsmen from a dreadful slavery at the hand of the most powerful nation on earth. Let not those who halt and stumble over the little difficulties of most ordinary lives think hardly of the faltering of Moses' faith before such a task (Exodus 3:11-13; 4:1,10-13). "Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you" (Exodus 3:14), was the encouragement God gave him. He gave him also Aaron for a spokesman (Exodus 4:14-16), the return to the Mount of God as a sign (Exodus 3:12), and the rod of power for working wonders (Exodus 4:17). One of the curious necessities into which the critical analysis drives its advocates is the opinion concerning Aaron that "he scarcely seems to have been a brother and almost equal partner of Moses, perhaps not even a priest" (Bennett, HDB, III, 441). Interesting and curious speculations have been instituted concerning the way in which Israel and especially Pharaoh were to understand the message, "I AM hath sent me unto you" (Exodus 3:13,14; compare 6:3). They were evidently expected to understand this message. Were they to so do by translating or by transliterating it into Egyptian? Some day Egyptologists may be able to answer positively, but not yet. With the signs for identification (Exodus 4:1-10), Moses was ready for his mission. He went down from the "holy ground" to obey the high summons and fulfill the great commission (Exodus 4:18-23). After the perplexing controversy with his wife, a controversy of stormy ending (Exodus 4:24-26), he seems to have left his family to his father-in-law's care while he went to respond to the call of God (Exodus 18:6). He met Aaron, his brother, at the Mount of God (Exodus 4:27,28), and together they returned to Egypt to collect the elders of Israel (Exodus 4:29-31), who were easily won over to the scheme of emancipation. Was ever a slave people not ready to listen to plans for freedom? (2) The Conflict with Pharaoh. The next move was the bold request to the king to allow the people to go into the wilderness to hold a feast unto Yahweh (Exodus 5:1). How did Moses gain admittance past the jealous guards of an Egyptian court to the presence of the Pharaoh himself? And why was not the former traitorous refugee at once arrested? Egyptology affords a not too distinct answer. Rameses II was dead (Exodus 4:19); Merenptah II was on the throne with an insecure tenure, for the times were troubled. Did some remember the "son of Pharaoh's daughter" who, had he remained loyal, would have been the Pharaoh? Probably so. Thus he would gain admittance, and thus, too, in the precarious condition of the throne, it might well not be safe to molest him. The original form of the request made to the king, with some slight modification, was continued throughout (Exodus 8:27; 10:9), though God promised that the Egyptians should thrust them out altogether when the end should come, and it was so (Exodus 11:1; 12:31,33,39). Yet Pharaoh remembered the form of their request and bestirred himself when it was reported that they had indeed gone "from serving" them (Exodus 14:5). The request for temporary departure upon which the contest was made put Pharaoh's call to duty in the easiest form and thus, also, his obstinacy appears as the greater heinousness. Then came the challenge of Pharaoh in his contemptuous demand, "Who is Yahweh?" (Exodus 5:2), and Moses' prompt acceptance of the challenge, in the beginning of the long series of plagues (see PLAGUE) (Exodus 8:1; 12:29-36; 14:31; compare Lamb, Miracle of Science). Pharaoh, having made the issue, was justly required to afford full presentation of it. So Pharaoh's heart was "hardened" (Exodus 4:21; 7:3,13; 9:12,35; 10:1; 14:8; see PLAGUE) until the vindication of Yahweh as God of all the earth was complete. This proving of Yahweh was so conducted that the gods of Egypt were shown to be of no avail against Him, but that He is God of all the earth, and until the faith of the people of Israel was confirmed (Exodus 14:31). (3) Institution of the Passover. It was now time for the next step in revelation (Exodus 12; 13:1-16). At the burning bush God had declared His purpose to be a saviour, not a destroyer. In this contest in Egypt, His absolute sovereignty was being established; and now the method of deliverance by Him, that He might not be a destroyer, was to be revealed. Moses called together the elders (Exodus 12:21-28) and instituted the Passover feast. As God always in revelation chooses the known and the familiar--the tree, the bow, circumcision, baptism, and the Supper--by which to convey the unknown, so the Passover was a combination of the household feast with the widespread idea of safety through blood-sacrifice, which, however it may have come into the world, was not new at that time. Some think there is evidence of an old Semitic festival at that season which was utilized for the institution of the Passover. The lamb was chosen and its use was kept up (Exodus 12:3-6). On the appointed night it was killed and "roasted with fire" and eaten with bitter herbs (Exodus 12:8), while they all stood ready girded, with their shoes on their feet and their staff in hand (Exodus 12:11). They ate in safety and in hope, because the blood of the lamb was on the door (Exodus 12:23). That night the firstborn of Egypt were slain. Among the Egyptians "there was not a house where there was not one dead" (Exodus 12:30), from the house of the maid-servant, who sat with her handmill before her, to the palace of the king that "sat on the throne," and even among the cattle in the pasture. If the plague was employed as the agency of the angel of Yahweh, as some think, its peculiarity is that it takes the strongest and the best and culminates in one great stunning blow and then immediately subsides (see PLAGUE). Who can tell the horror of that night when the Israelites were thrust out of the terror-stricken land (Exodus 12:39)? As they went out, they "asked," after the fashion of departing servants in the East, and God gave them favor in the sight of the over-awed Egyptians that they lavished gifts upon them in extravagance. Thus "they despoiled the Egyptians" (Exodus 12:36). "Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people" (Exodus 11:3; 12:35,36). (4) The Exodus. "At the end of 430 years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of Yahweh went out from the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:41). The great oppressor was Rameses II, and the culmination and the revolution came, most probably, in connection with the building of Pithom and Raamses, as these are the works of Israel mentioned in the Bible narrative (Exodus 1:11). Rameses said that he built Pithom at the "mouth of the east" (Budge, History of Exodus, V, 123). All efforts to overthrow that statement have failed and for the present, at least, it must stand. Israel built Pithom, Rameses built Pithom; there is a synchronism that cannot in the present knowledge of Egyptian history even be doubted, much less separated. The troubled times which came to Egypt with the beginning of the reign of Merenptah II afforded the psychological moment for the return of the "son of Pharaoh's daughter" and his access to the royal court. The presence and power of Yahweh vindicated His claim to be the Lord of all the earth, and Merenptah let the children of Israel go. A little later when Israel turned back from the border of Khar (Palestine) into the wilderness and disappeared, and Merenptah's affairs were somewhat settled in the empire, he set up the usual boastful tablet claiming as his own many of the victories of his royal ancestors, added a few which he himself could truly boast, and inserted, near the end, an exultation over Israel's discomfiture, accounting himself as having finally won the victory: "Tehennu is devastation, Kheta peace, the Canaan the prisoner of all ills; "Asgalon led out, taken with Gezer, Yenoamam made naught; "The Peopl