The Bible: Commentary and Controversy

It’s the Horatio Alger story on steroids: the poor youth cast away by his parents who becomes the ruler of a vast empire, loses favoritism, is persecuted and eventually saves his flock by destroying the enemy. Wow! No wonder it’s such a memorable tale.

According to Wikipedia, “The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is legendary, and not historical, although a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure.”

Moses is, however, mentioned in many non-Judean writings. For example, Diodorus Siculus, a prominent and well-respected historian and author in the 4^th century BC, describes Moses as a wise and courageous leader who left Egypt and colonized Judaea, founded cities, established a temple and religious cult, and issued laws. Of course that reference – the earliest in non-Judean literature – was written many centuries after the events took place – if indeed they did.

Of course, whether Moses was real, or whether he did all that the bible says he did, is not the focus of this book. It’s a wonderful story that drives home the bible’s main goal, which is similar to the commandment stated in Deuteronomy and later restated by Jesus: “The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”

Similar, yes, but as far as the intent of the old testament is concerned, it might be restated as “The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt trust and obey the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, or severe consequences are sure to follow.”

Which pretty much sums up the action in the Moses story, which begins with a theme that will be reprised many centuries later, at the time of Jesus’ birth. Joseph has died, and there is a new Pharaoh. Seeing how the Israelite have prospered, and their numbers are growing, the new Pharaoh worries that “the people of the children of Israel may become more and mightier than we, and may join with our enemies to defeat us.” He therefore commands the Hebrew midwives to kill all newborn children during birth if they are male.  But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders, and let the males live, saying the Hebrew women are too healthy and too quick, not giving us enough time to get there for the birth. So the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful.

Seeing this, and fearing them, Pharaoh gives the order to “cast every son that is born into the river.”

During this time, Moses was born, and his mother hid him for three months. “When she could no longer hide him, she made for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch; and she put the child therein, and laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.”

By the way, the story of his being found in the bullrushes and adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter is very much like the story of Sargon of Akkad’s Akkadian account of his own origins, which evidently preceded the Moses story by several centuries.

My mother, the high priestess, conceived; in secret she bore me
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid
She cast me into the river which rose over me.

Hmmm. Well, a good story deserves retelling.

So the Pharaoh’s daughter finds him, adopts him, and names him Moses, or Moshe, a name which means ”I drew him out (meshitihu) of the water.” (This explanation links it to a verb mashah, meaning “to draw out”, which makes the Pharaoh’s daughter’s declaration a play on words. The princess made a grammatical mistake which is prophetic of his future role in legend, as someone who will “draw the people of Israel out of Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea.” Making it a very cool name, indeed.

One day, when he had become a grown man, Moses saw an Egyptian “smiting” a Hebrew, so Moses “smote” the Egyptian and killed him. When Pharaoh heard about it and looked for Moses to slay him, Moses ran away to the land of Midian, where he had a son for whom he chose the name Gershom, for, he said, “I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

Eventually the king of Egypt died, but the Israelites remained in bondage, crying out to the Lord for release. The Lord heard their cries, and remembering his covenant with Abraham, decided to do something about it.

So He sent an angel in a burning bush (evidently God’s preferred method of communicating with Moses), spoke to Moses from “the midst of the bush” and introduced Himself, and told Moses He was going to send him “unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.”

Moses, of course, asks “Who am I” to do that.

God explains “            I will put forth my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that (the Pharaoh) will let you go.”

But wait, there’s more. God then tells Moses “ye shall not go empty,” but will take “jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment… and ye shall despoil the Egyptians.”

Then, so Moses won’t have any trouble convincing the Israelites that he is doing God’s work, God gives him the magic staff, that turns back and forth from a rod to a serpent at Moses’ command. Moses still balks, worried that he is not eloquent enough, and God gives him Aaron to speak for him.

Finally out of excuses, Moses packs up his family, grabs Aaron, and heads for Egypt. Once there, he convinces his people of his mission and authority, and goes to see the Pharaoh, demanding that he let his people go. The Pharaoh, of course, declines. Moses then calls for a strike by the Israelites, who stop working and start praying. This irritates Pharaoh, and he comes down on them, causing Moses to ask God why his people are still being punished.

God kind of skirts the issue, telling Moses to take Aaron back to the Pharaoh, and when the Pharaoh asks him to do a wonder, to tell Aaron to cast down his magic rod. Which he does, and it becomes a snake. Which is evidently not an astonishing event in Egypt, because Pharaoh’s sorcerers and wise men then all cast down their rods and they also all become serpents. Oops. No problem, though, because Aaron’s rod/snake immediately swallows up all the others.

Pharaoh still won’t relent, so God directs Moses to take his rod to the river,  and smite it, upon which the river is turned to blood, as is all the other water in Egypt.