He was a prince in Egypt, then a killer, an outcast, a shepherd, a liberator of slaves, a receiver of God’s laws, a judge, a conqueror, and a prophet. Snatched from the Nile, he was raised by Pharaoh’s sister, attended by an Israelite woman (actually his mother). Only a slave brought up as royalty could have had the courage and know-how to lead the oppressed in such a revolt. The Jews’ flight from Egypt was, remarkably, the one successful rebellion of an enslaved people in ancient times. The Exodus, that singular event in history, transformed nomads into a power that changed earthly life forever.
The Exodus, rather than the Creation, defined the Jewish people. The laws given by God directly to Moses in the desert became known as the Sinai covenant, with the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, its core. Simple justice and respect for life were established in Sinai as the controlling forces of humanity.In the ancient Egyptian language, Moses, or Mosheh, means “born of” or “is born”; the Hebrew masheh translates as “drawn of.” Whatever the origins (which seem to combine the strongest strains of ancient Egyptian and Hebraic cultures), Moses’ life story dominates the Bible.
He was the most exemplary of the Hebrew prophets and the most influential Jew in all history. As either a model or a real man, he brought to human life a concern for the downtrodden, an idealism, a hope, a system of laws by which people can survive each other, whether lost in the wilderness for forty years or seated in the courts of great palaces of stone and marble. Through Moses, God directed mankind. Yet Moses spoke sluggishly, relying on his brother Aaron for eloquent speech.“I am what I am,” God declared to Moses. The God of Moses and the Israelites is one god; Moses, however, was a man with faults like other men, never a minor god (unlike the pharaohs of Egypt and emperors of Rome, who fancied themselves gods).
Monotheism, the belief in one god, displaced forever the primitive worship of gods in the guise of animals. Each person’s experience of God must be personal, that person’s experience. God can only be comprehended in the abstract, not through graven images. Distinct from the deathly imagery of the Egyptian gods, the God of Moses is always the God of life, affirmation, and existence, of what is and what is next. The Hebrew word for God, YHWH, means “to be.”The Lord’s prophet, Moses, the political leader, remains a vital symbol in the righteous fight against persecution. In our times, the biblical exhortation “Let my people go!” became the clarion call of the American civil rights movement, and was later sounded for Soviet refuseniks.
Moses always fought injustice. As a young Egyptian prince, he slew a brutal overseer and buried him in a shallow grave. As a noble, Moses could have ordered the overseer to halt his abuse of a slave. Instead, in a blind rage, Moses felled the overseer. It is as if Moses wished to be uncovered as an imposter. He also stopped two Hebrews from fighting, defended his soon-to-be Midian wife and her sisters from marauding shepherds, and led a rebellion against a great, oppressive, and suffocating power.
His every act has rich, symbolic meaning: After killing the overseer, he fled into the desert, began a family with Zipporah and her wise father, sheik Jethro, and purged his soul of Egyptian customs. Moses knew that his murder of the overseer was produced by an uncontrollable rage against Egyptian tyranny. Slavery and the worship of animals had made Jewish life in Egypt an abomination. All human life, whether slave or pharaoh, must be held sacred. God directed Moses to free the slaves from their bondage so that they might pray to Him.
Although Moses pleaded with his cousin to let the Israelites go, and despite fearful plagues, Pharaoh’s heart turned to stone; his silence brought repeated pestilence and sure death on Egypt. Whether the plagues and the drowning of Egyptian charioteers in the Red Sea are viewed today as magic or gospel, the events are based in history. The Egyptians did drown Hebrew babies in the Nile as a vicious method of controlling a swelling slave population, and the Red Sea was really a sea of reeds, a swamp in which chariot wheels could easily become mired.
The rabbis of later generations directed the observant not to rejoice at these miracles. Rather, the lesson of the Exodus is one of compassion: Do not hate the Egyptians, as you were once strangers in their land. At the Passover Seder, the spilling of a few drops of wine reminds observant Jews that their joy in salvation is diminished—the cup of happiness is not full—when others suffer or are despised. This remarkable conciliatory response to the pain of the defeated defines not only Judaism but also all western civilization.
The burning bush also sears a new meaning into suffering humanity. No longer are animal gods to be worshipped. The golden calf and all who bow down to it are condemned and destroyed in Old Testament fury. A burning bush that is not consumed manifests God’s omnipotent control over nature. (The burning bush has also been seen as a symbol of Jewish survival and of the visionary wisdom of Moses.)The laws given in the desert, the Sinai covenant, are known today as Mosaic law.
Although more ancient codes have been discovered in the ruins of Mesopotamia (especially the Code of Hammurabi) and while Jewish law has much the same structure and diction of other laws of antiquity, Judaism was the first system of human beliefs that respected human life. Most ancient governments valued property over people. Crimes against property were punishable by death. Murderers, on the other hand, could compensate the relatives of their victims by paying them or by sacrificing a valuable slave. Jewish law is consumed with caring for morality and social values. There has been nothing in history quite like it.
Moses, the prophet and giver of laws, is revered by Christians and Muslims, albeit in slightly different ways. After Abraham, of course, Moses is viewed as the second most important figure. Many events in the New Testament seem modeled on Moses’ life and work. Jesus’ young life parallels that of Moses. An evil king threatens to kill newborns, the prophet flees into exile in the desert, only to return to “free” his people. When the prophet is absent from his people, he is despised among men, his preaching forgotten.
The Sermon on the Mount is meant to enrich the covenant given at Sinai. Jesus is depicted as a “second Moses.” Both Moses and Jesus are referred to as “redeemer.” For Saint Paul, the faith of Moses is a religion of law, while that of the Christians rests in the grace of God in the Christ. For Christians, however, Jesus is the Son of God, while for Jews, Moses remains a man, an ambassador of God’s laws.For Islam, Moses, like Muhammad, received God’s revelation through a book. Both are recipients of God’s laws. Muhammad, too, must flee into the desert to Medina, but he returns in triumph, leading to his blessed death and ascent into Heaven. What distinguishes Islam from Judaism and Christianity is the Muslim belief that Muhammad is the final seal of all biblical prophecy, proclaiming the word of God in its purest state.
Moses, unlike Buddha or Confucius, was not an inward-looking mystic. For Moses, perfect life is not found adrift in the sea of the infinite. Judaism and the religions it gave rise to, Christianity and Islam, call their followers to interact with God through everyday behavior controlled by His laws. Moses, like Jesus and Muhammad, not only has visions of God, but also speaks directly to Him. Mankind must likewise dream of heavenly grace while living together in a community governed by ethics and morality.