Moses #2

Moses is the towering figure of the Pentateuch, raised in Pharaoh’s household yet called by God from a burning bush at Horeb to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 3:1-14). After confronting Pharaoh through a series of plagues, he leads the people out of Egypt and through the parting of the Red Sea, an event remembered as Israel’s founding act of deliverance (Exodus 14:21-31).

Call and Commission

At the burning bush, when Moses asks how he should answer Israel’s question about God’s name, he is told, “I AM THAT I AM… I AM hath sent me unto you” (Exodus 3:13-14), a name later rendered “the LORD” throughout the Old Testament. Moses protests his own unfitness, telling God, “I am not eloquent… but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10); God answers by asking who made man’s mouth, promises to teach him what to say, and ultimately appoints his brother Aaron to speak alongside him (Exodus 4:11-16). Sent back to Egypt, Moses confronts Pharaoh repeatedly, and when Pharaoh refuses to release Israel, God sends ten plagues culminating in the death of Egypt’s firstborn, the event commemorated ever after by the Passover (Exodus 7-12).

Exodus and the Giving of the Law

With Pharaoh’s army closing in at the Red Sea, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind… and made the sea dry land,” so that Israel crossed safely while the pursuing Egyptians did not (Exodus 14:21-22). At Mount Sinai, Moses receives the Ten Commandments and the broader body of law that becomes the constitutional core of Israel’s covenant relationship with God (Exodus 20:1-17). He functions throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as mediator, judge, and intercessor for a frequently rebellious people; when Israel worships a golden calf while he is still on the mountain, Moses pleads for the nation, telling God, “if thou wilt forgive their sin–; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Exodus 32:31-32). Tradition credits Moses as author of these five books together with Genesis, collectively known as the Torah or Pentateuch, though the exact process of their composition and final editing is debated among scholars.

Wilderness Leadership and Death

Moses’s own most serious failure comes at Meribah, where, instructed only to speak to a rock for water, he strikes it twice in anger at the people’s complaints; God tells him that because he did not treat God as holy before the people, he will not enter the promised land he has led them toward for forty years (Numbers 20:10-12). He dies within sight of Canaan on Mount Nebo at “an hundred and twenty years old… his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” (Deuteronomy 34:5-7), and is buried by God himself in a Moab valley whose location “no man knoweth… unto this day” (Deuteronomy 34:6).

Legacy

Moses’s law and narrative shape the entire Old Testament and much of the New; Jesus is repeatedly compared and contrasted with him, and the Transfiguration places Moses alongside Elijah as representative of the Law meeting its fulfillment. Deuteronomy closes by declaring that no prophet since arose in Israel like him, “whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10-12).