We shall study the history of Moses without the key if we overlook the point made by the writer to the Hebrews (11: 23): “By faith Moses when he was born was hid three months because they saw that he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.” Faith in God made them fearless of Egypt’s cruel king. It would seem also that they saw in thepeculiar beauty of this child a sort of prophecy of his future, something at least which raised expectation and put them upon special ventures to save his life. Three months they secreted him within their home. When this expedient could suffice no longer, they prepared an ark of bulrushes—a little box, water-tight, constructed to float—and moored it with its treasure among the flags on the river’s bank. We may suppose that his mother knew the spot where the king’s daughter was wont to take her baths, and that her faith and prayer lay back of this venture to throw her darling infant upon the compassion of a stranger woman’s heart. It need not be supposed that she foresaw his future adoption into the royal family, his training for forty years in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and his consequent qualification to become the great Hebrew Lawgiver and Deliverer. Suffice it that these results lay in the thought of God. She had faith enough to commit her darling to God’s care and to leave all the future unknown results to his adjustment.
The ways of God were mercifully kind toward this Hebrew mother. She stationed his elder sister as a sentinel to watch the issue, and then (let us presume) gave herself to prayer. When this elder sister with palpitating heart saw the daughter of Pharaoh take the beautiful child to her bosom, she felt that her time had come. Modestly advancing, she said, “Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for thee”? Pharaoh’s daughter said, Go. How joyfully did she go and call the child’s own mother! God’s finger was there. The mother’s faith has come up as sweet incense before Him and her heart is made glad, as only a praying mother’s can be. There was no occasion to tell us that she consecrated this child to Israel’s God for any service he might have for him in his after life. Such a mother, drawn by her sweet faith into such relationship to God, could do nothing less. Moreover, this was no barren consecration—was not a vow once made and soon forgotten. Nothing can be more certain than that she cared diligently for the moral training and culture of this marvelously saved son. Else how could it happen that “when he was come to years, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to sufferaffliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming reproach for Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect to the recompense of the reward” (Heb. 11: 24–26)? The seeds of this world-conquering faith must have been dropped early into his tender mind. This hired Hebrew nurse, permitted to come into the royal palace by some back-way, was indulged this privilege freely, we know not precisely how long; but let us presume that the same faith and prayer kept this door open, at least for her occasional visits in his future years. How many testimonies of God’s love to the fathers of their nation she dropped into his youthful ear; how much she told him of God as “the exceeding great reward” of his believing people; how well she put the contrast between “the treasures of Egypt” and the treasures laid up for God’s then persecuted people:—these points are rather left to our inference than definitely stated; but we may be very sure that the faith of Moses took hold of these grand truths of then extant revelation; fixed its hold early; and held fast through all his future life.
We have three co-ordinate narratives of the early years of Moses: that given in Heb. 11: 24–27, very brief, and touching only its specially religious side; while that of Stephen (Acts 7: 20–29) is full, even somewhat more full than the narrative in Ex. 2: 10–15. Particularly Stephen adds that Moses was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words and in deeds”—a man like Joseph of immense efficiency:—also that he was “full forty years old” when it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel—a statement which shows that he distinctly recognized this relationship of brethren. Seeing a brother Hebrew abused by an Egyptian he interposed, smote the Egyptian dead, and buried him in the sand. Stephen’s words suggest that this was not merely one of those quick, spontaneous impulses felt by noble souls in view of outrageous wrong, but was a first step toward a contemplated career of interposed force for the rescue of his people from their oppression. “For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them; but they understood not” (Acts 7: 25). The whole of thefact seems to be that the Lord was not yet ready and had not fully prepared Moses for this great life-work of his yet,and certainly had not inaugurated him into it.[27]——Interposing the next day in a quarrel between two of his own Hebrew brethren, he learned that his slaying of the Egyptian was known, and immediately sought safety by flight to the land of Midian. The Lord had more objects than one in turning his steps thither; not only his then present safety, but the spiritual culture of so much solitude and of long-continued, unbroken communion with God and of long tried faith, coupled with the incidental advantage of becoming perfectly familiar with that great wilderness through which he was to lead the hosts of Israel for forty years.
Scarcely had he penetrated this desert land in his flight when he made the acquaintance of a priest of Midian [Jethro], and of his seven shepherdess daughters, one of whom became his wife.Like the somewhat similar experience of Abraham, falling in with the priest of Salem, Melchizedek, the circumstance suggests the inquiry how much of the true knowledge and worship of God existed in those early ages outside the line of Abraham’s family. The historical traces of such piety are certainly very few, yet they recur so incidentally that we are justified in the hope that these cases are not exhaustive; stood not altogether alone. When we come to consider the history of Job we shall take occasion to observe, that his location is certainly in this great region of Arabia, and that his date must in all probability have somewhat preceded this residence of Moses in the land of Midian. Here Moses may have found the story in a traditional form; may perhaps have seen Job’s immediate descendants; may possibly have put the story in its present form as one of the pastimes of a literary shepherd’s life; and then, retaining it in his possession during his subsequent years, may have himself solved the problem—How came this book in the archives of the Hebrew nation, on an equal footing as to inspired authority with their historical books?
The Great Mission of Moses.
Of the second forty-year period in the life of Moses, little is reported save its first scenes and its last. Ex. 3 opens the latter. Moses is keeping the flock of his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. He has “led them to the back side of the desert”—i. e. to the west side of it, for in designating the points of compass the Hebrews always turned the face toward the east. The east is in front—before; and of course the west is behind. Horeb and Sinai lay on the western margin of the great Arabian desert.——Here “the angel of the Lord appeared to him” (v. 2), called “angel” however only as one who comes or is sent with divine manifestations;for in every subsequent mention he is called “the Lord” and “God” (vs. 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, etc.)[28]——Remarkably this visible manifestation was made by the symbol of fire in a bush—the bush all aflame yet not consumed. This strange sight attracted the attention of Moses, and he turned aside to look into it more closely, when a voice from the bush called him by name; warned him not to approach in the spirit of mere curiosity, but to take off his shoes because the place on which he stood was holy ground. The mystery before Moses’ mind is solved—the Lord is there! His purpose in this appearing is soon told. He has heard the cry of distress from his oppressed people, has come down to deliver them and to bring them forth into Canaan. He has a mission for Moses in this work. “Come” said he, “I will send thee to Pharaoh.” Moses knew the power and the pride of Pharaoh, and saw at a glance the difficulties of this enterprise. No wonder he shrank back saying—“Who am I that I should do this”? God replied: “I will certainly be with thee”—a sufficient answer to any amount of conscious weakness and faintness of heart. The Lord added—“This shall be a token to thee that I have sent thee; when thou hast brought the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve [i. e. worship] God in this mountain.” From that moment this token was God’s pledge to Moses of success in bringing the people forth fromEgypt; and when it was fulfilled in the scenes of national worship and consecration on Horeb, it became doubly a sign to all the people that the Lord their God was in this great movement.
Moses anticipates that the people will ask for the name of God, and he therefore inquires—What shall I answer them? To which the Lord replies: “I am that I am”; and then abbreviating the phrase, adds, “Thus shalt thou say to Israel, I am hath sent me to you.” What immediately follows should be carefully noted. God said moreover to Moses (still reiterating the same thought though in other and more familiar terms): “Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: The Lord—i. e. Jehovah, God of your fathers, hath sent me unto you; this is my name forever and this is my memorial through all generations.” This v. 15 is without doubt the key to the true sense of the names as previously given—“I am that I am,” and in briefer form, “I am.” Their true meaning is in the name Jehovah. This name contemplates God as evermore existing, the same unchangeable God, and therefore ever faithful to his promises. This view of God assumes that he reveals himself personally as the God of his trustful people, entering into covenant with them and never failing to remember and fulfill that covenant.
In order to see the full force and pertinence of the passage, it should be considered that by common Hebrew usage, the names of persons were significant. They were words with a meaning. This is true of all the names by which the true God is made known. And when Moses suggests that the people will ask for God’s name, it is not implied that they had never heard any name for God and did not know what to call him; but this—They would know what new or special feature of his character was to be manifested then. Their question was equivalent to asking—What does God propose to do now? What new movement does he contemplate? What new development of God may we expect?——To the question so understood, the Lord made a direct answer:—I have come to reveal my eternal faithfulness to my covenant with your fathers. I pledged myself to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that I would bring their posterity into the goodly land of Canaan: I have come down to fulfill that word and toput into your national history an enduring testimony that my name is truly, “I am that I am”—the immutable and eternal God, whose word of promise faileth not forevermore.
The same course of thought appears again Ex. 6: 1–8—a passage which should be studied in connection with this. “God said to Moses, I am the Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them”—the meaning of which is, not that the name Jehovah was never used by them, or given of God to them; but that its special significance had not been manifested to them as he was then about to make it manifest. His power God had revealed—his power to protect them in their perils, his power to fulfill to Abraham the promise of a son; but such a glorious testimony to his faithfulness in fulfilling promise as was then to be given, the patriarchs had never seen. The redemption of Israel from Egyptian bondage was destined to stand through all the ages of their history as the crowning manifestation of God’s faithfulness—the standard and unsurpassed testimony to the significance of his most honored name Jehovah. By this shall ye know that I am Jehovah your God when I bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and bring you into the land given by solemn oath to your fathers and to their posterity for a heritage (vs. 7, 8).