The Gray Monk

The Enigma of Moses

Some musings on a great character, founder of the Jewish nation and of the Jewish Faith.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the key characters in the Old Testament as a continuation of the series on reading the Bible. Essentially, this is almost a case of “take your pick” - there are any number of fascinating people in the pages of this wonderful book - so why start with Moses?

Well, there are several reasons, but I shall settle for just one. This rather enigmatic figure is regarded by the Jews as the greatest of the Prophets. Prophet, you may ask? Yes, is the simple answer, prophet, soldier, hermit, murderer, husband, and leader of the Exodus. See what I mean? Read through the books Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy and you will see what I mean. There are almost as many facets to this man as there are on a cut and polished diamond! We ought to know more about him - he is, after all the founder of the Faith that has given rise to ours! He, quite possibly more than John the Baptiser, is the “One calling in the wilderness - make straight the way of the Lord.”

So what exactly do we know about this enigmatic man? On one level it appears that we know quite a lot - but then when we look more closely we discover that we actually have very little of the man himself. We know the story of his birth and the story of his being raised within a Royal household. We also know the story of his killing the overseer and fleeing into the desert. Then, beyond his marriage to a Midianite, and the birth of his son - whom he fails to circumcise until much later in life - we know little more than that he worked as a shepherd for his father-in-law. Jewish folklore tells us that God chose Moses because, once, when a young goat had strayed from the herd, Moses went in search of it and finding it weak and unable to return, carried it to water and the flock. The Bible simply tells us that God chose to call him from out of the burning bush.

On the face of it - why would God choose this man at all? We cannot really know the mind of God, but we can discern His purpose, and this man Moses evidently had the right credentials for God’s purpose at that time.

If we start with what we do know of his life, we find an interesting tale of a child born during a period when the rulers of the Nile Delta had evidently decided that these Canaanite settlers had become a threat - possibly the expansion of their numbers had begun to worry the local populace who saw them as immigrants threatening to take over jobs and power. There is quite a lot of debate as to the interpretation of the word we have as “slavery” among scholars - it seems that the original meaning may be more accurately “bondsman”. The difference is subtle, but quite significant, for a bondsman may have considerably more freedom than a slave, and certainly, if they had become an economic force, they would have been able to wield a certain amount of power. Thus, the Egyptian Rulers saw them as a significant threat and dealt with it in a fashion typical of the period (and not unknown in the last century or this one either!) - they ordered the killing of all male infants (and possibly preteens as well) and the marriage of Israelite girls to Egyptian boys. Nothing like depriving a people of its identity, and the ability to maintain itself as a distinct group in the populace, to destroy it as a threat.

Moses is saved by the ingenuity of his mother who sets him adrift, in the story, in a reed basket to be found by the Egyptian Princess. Look carefully at the story, however, and you see that the Hand of God is in this instance assisted by a desperate mother. She has done her homework and knows her Princess! The basket is set loose at a time that the Princess is most likely to spot it, and among the retinue is a sympathizer. Consider this event carefully - the Nile was at that time (and still is - but not so much in the delta area now) the home of the Nile crocodile. These beasts thrived around the early human cities and settlements precisely because they are supreme opportunists and very good at taking unwary beasts, people, and any flotsam. Would you bathe near a crocodile habitat? More importantly, would you set a small child adrift in a basket where the crocodiles could get to him? Probably not, so this in itself speaks of some careful planning. Does this mean God wasn’t in it? Of course not, it was a part of His purpose and He will have selected the players and the instruments with care.

Now begins the enigma. We do not know if this “Princess” was a member of the Pharaoh’s Harem or one of his sisters - or whether she was perhaps the wife or daughter of a high born official, perhaps a local governor. Whatever the circumstances, it is pretty clear that Moses was raised within the confines of the palace (again we have to be careful of the interpretation of this word - it often simply means an important house or the residence of someone important), and this would also seem to have led to his acquiring certain military skills. It would seem that he also developed into having a rather fiery temper and an arrogance to match it! I find myself wondering, and others have also wondered, whether his “crime” was killing the brutal overseer (after all, if he had been raised as a member of the Royal household, this was probably regarded not so much as a crime, but as an unfortunate display of Royal temper) or that there having been a change of the balance of power in the Harem, he and his surrogate mother's protection was uncertain. Perhaps even a combination of both, the politics of the Egyptian Harem at this time could be extremely convoluted.

As an added puzzle, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the actual timing of these events. Generally it is accepted that the events of Exodus occurred in the reign of Ramses II and his successor Merneptah, but there is a strong case for an earlier date coinciding with the end of the reign of Akhenaten around 100 years earlier. This was a period of tremendous upheaval and particularly in the sphere of religious thinking, as Akhenaten had imposed a monotheist religion with the disc of the Sun as god (the Aten). Other sources raise the issue of the lack of any reference to the Exodus in the historical records of Ramses or any of the earlier Pharaohs (or for that matter the later ones), but we now know that the Pharaohs, like modern politicians, often didn’t record their defeats - they glossed over them and promoted the idea that they had actually won the battles they lost. Where they couldn’t get away with that - the answer was simple - ignore it!

A number of things suggest that the Ramses period is the most probable candidate period, among them a volcanic eruption at Santorini early in Ramses' reign which caused plagues of frogs, insects and other unpleasantries in all the lands bordering on the Mediterranean, particularly the South Eastern corner around the Nile Delta. Again, the hand of God using the events of nature to His purpose. It certainly got the Israelites moving, whatever the cause.

So, if we have a period, then what of the man? Here again, our information is very limited. Having fled into the Sinai (a tradition which we have accepted), Moses finds himself eventually falling in with a Nomadic group called the Midianites. Here he marries the daughter of Reuel (also called Jethro, later in Exodus), a local priest and evidently also a tribal chief, named Zipporah who bears him a son. In defiance of his Israelite heritage, he fails to have the boy circumcised, something he is compelled to do much later, in order to become Israel’s leader.

After the encounter with God in the burning bush, Moses takes on the task with a mixture of courage and timidity. He tells us, himself, (and God!), that he lacks the courage and is not a good speaker, asking how can he persuade Pharaoh if he isn’t able to speak effectively. God provides the answer with Aaron - who has evidently maintained the connections to get them into the court and is also a good advocate, and with the support of his sister whose role is perhaps less obvious but evidently vital. With God’s help we know that the debate was eventually won with the persuasive influence of the plagues as the ultimate threat. It is now that Moses' leadership and organizational abilities come fully into play - yet again, the book itself only gives us tantalizing glimpses and does not tell us the who and the how of the organization. Consider, however, that the group spelled out in “Numbers” is a tally of those males of “military” age. Extrapolated to include the children, women and the aged, this tallies up to a very large group - somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 people. This would require an enormous amount of organization, and so we must assume that Moses, through Aaron and the various “heads” of house from each of the twelve “tribes” (essentially the descendents of the original brothers of Joseph), mobilizes and moves a group in an order of march that looks remarkably like the order of march recorded for Ramses II’s abortive invasion of Syria in roughly the same period.

If Moses was the Leader for this he either had a remarkable ability in himself (and Jewish tradition suggests that he was the organizer) or, he was ably supported by military leaders who knew their business extremely well. This is in effect another part of the puzzle that is the picture of Moses as we have it. Whatever the case, it would have taken an extremely able leader to hold this movement together as it is very clear he did.

The image we have of him from the Bible is quite candid in its record. It does not paint him as some sort of superhero, but rather as an honest man with many flaws who was chosen by God to be His instrument in bringing to fulfillment His promise that the children of Abraham should be His chosen people and occupy the Promised Land. His courage is boundless and his temper prodigious - see only his response to the golden calf - yet, he is not afraid to confront God and to take upon himself the failings of this rebellious and difficult rabble he has liberated from Egypt.

The second part of the enigma is the setting up of the Law and of the patterns of worship and sacrifice. These are unique in their attribution to God, for other law codes exist with similar themes, but not with the same moral authority. The worship is distinctive and again moral in tone. The strictures on excess in worship make it plain that the Israelites are to exercise morality in worship as well. Bear in mind that many pagan rituals of this period were “fertility” religions with acts of excess and frequently sexual activity as well. These are strictly forbidden among the Israelites, their worship is to be focused on God, not on things material! Again, this gives us an insight into a powerful mind at work, quite definitely guided by God, but still with the ability to translate the will of God into terms and actions at a human level. This suggests a man whose breadth of knowledge, whose education and understanding of these matters is extensive - and rather questions the image of him as a humble shepherd minding sheep and goats through the period of his exile.

The dietary rules that are also attributed to him and from God, are common sense - if you understand disease transmission through the food chain. Hence the prohibition on eating the flesh of scavengers and carnivorous animals - their habit of eating rotting and diseased animals could mean the transmission of poisons to humans. Pigs, too, carry, particularly in these hot climes, parasites and a range of human diseases. It makes good sense to not eat them - or bottom feeding crustaceans and fish - all of which can transmit toxins and diseases from what they eat to whatever eats them. Here again there is a hint of something which was not commonly understood in the culture he came from or the cultures around the Sinai. Indeed, it was not well understood until the 19th and 20th Centuries, yet here is a man who has supposedly spent 40 years as a shepherd setting in place these complex dietary rules.

Another part of the enigma is one we can probably never answer completely. It is this: who were his parents, what was their role, and what part did his early preparation have to play in his eventual role. Some have suggested that he was quite possibly raised by devotees from Akhenaten’s court, or even that he was influenced by their thinking. This is a possibility, but could it also not be the case that this was the necessary preparation for the task that God had in mind for him? I think that this is quite likely.

So we have on the one hand, an image of a man raised in the household of the royal court or of a senior official, who murders another official and flees to the desert, returning some forty years later to lead a very large group of people into the wilderness and establish successfully a completely new theology. A superhuman task if ever there was one - yet this very ordinary, somewhat flawed man fulfilled his calling and died, we are told, on Mount Nebo at the very borders of the Promised Land. Yet the other image we have of this man is of a giant who strides up across the desert leading this rebellious people, ascends Mount Sinai. and returns, his face permanently aglow, from a face to face session with God, armed with the rules for the foundation of the Jewish Faith. The foundations, in fact, of the Christian Faith. A contradiction in terms on the one hand, and a confirmation of God’s enabling power on the other.

A remarkable story, a remarkable man - yet, not that markedly different from you or me. And so the final enigma is this; could we exercise some of the same gifts for God as he did and achieve the same results if we were put to it? I rather think we could, because if it was for God’s purposes, we would have God acting in us as He did though Moses.

Peace be with you always.