Moses

The Old Testament prophet Moses (ca. 1392-ca. 1272 B.C.) was the emancipator of Israel. He created Israel's nationhood and founded its religion.

Moses was the son of Amram and Yochebed of the tribe of Levi. He was born in Egypt during the period in which the Pharaoh had ordered that all newborn male Hebrew children be cast into the Nile. Rescued by the daughter of the Pharaoh, he was brought up in the splendor of the Egyptian court as her adopted son. Grown to manhood, aware of his Hebraic origin, and with deep compassion for his enslaved brethren, he became enraged while witnessing an Egyptian taskmaster brutally beating a Hebrew slave. Impulsively he killed the Egyptian. Fearing the Pharaoh's wrath and punishment, he fled into the desert of Midian, becoming a shepherd for Jethro, a Midianite priest whose daughter Zipporah he later married. While tending the flocks on Mt. Horeb far in the wilderness, he beheld a bush burning that was not consumed. In the revelation that followed, he was informed that he had been chosen to serve as the liberator of the children of Israel. He was also told to proclaim the unity of God to his entire people, which doctrine heretofore had been known only to certain individuals.

The tremendous responsibility of his task, his innate humility, and his own feeling of unworthiness evoked a hesitancy and lack of confidence in Moses. He was assured, however, that Aaron, his more fluent brother, would serve as his spokesman both to the children of Israel and to the Pharaoh.

Moses returned to Egypt and persuaded the Hebrews to organize for a hasty departure from the land of bondage. Together with Aaron, he informed the Pharaoh that the God of the Hebrews demanded that he free His people. The Pharaoh refused to obey, bringing upon himself and his people nine terrible plagues that Moses wrought upon Egypt by using the miraculous staff he had received as a sign of his authority. The tenth plague, the killing of the firstborn sons of the Egyptians, broke the Pharaoh's resistance and compelled him to grant the Hebrews permission to depart immediately. Moses thus found himself the leader of an undisciplined collection of slaves, Hebrew as well as non-Hebrew, escaping from Egyptian territory to freedom.

Moses' immediate goal was Mt. Horeb, called Mt. Sinai, where God had first revealed Himself to him. The Hebrews came to the sacred mountain fired by the inspiration of their prophetic leader. Summoned by God, Moses ascended the mountain and received the tablets of stone while the children of Israel heard the thundering forth of the Ten Commandments. Inspired, the people agreed to the conditions of the Covenant.

Through 40 years in the wilderness of Sinai, overcoming tremendous obstacles, Moses led the horde of former slaves, shaping them into a nation. He selected and set them apart for a divine purpose and consecrated them to the highest ethical and moral laws. Only a man with tremendous will, patience, compassion, humility, and great faith could have forged the bickering and scheming factions who constantly challenged his wisdom and authority into an entity.

Moses supplemented the Ten Commandments by a code of law regulating the social and religious life of the people. This collection of instructions, read to and ratified by the people, was called the Book of the Covenant.

Under his leadership, most of the land east of the Jordan was conquered and given to the tribes of Reuben and Gad and to half of the tribe of Menashe. Moses, however, was not permitted to lead the children of Israel into Canaan, the Promised Land, because he had been disobedient to God during the period of wandering in the desert. When the people were in need of water, God told Moses to speak to a rock and water would spring from it. Instead he had struck the rock with his staff. From the heights of Nebo he surveyed the land promised to his forefathers, which would be given to their children. Moses, 120 years old, died in the land of Moab and was buried opposite Bet Peor.

Further Reading

No single work on Moses is satisfactory. One full study is Martin Buber, Moses (1946; new ed. 1958). Mordecai Roshwald and Miriam Roshwald, Moses: Leader, Prophet, Man (1969), draws from legend, fiction, drama, and poetry as well as from the Bible. The best short essays on Moses are in Rudolph Kittel, Great Men and Movements in Israel (1929), and Fleming James, Personalities of the Old Testament (1939). For archeological and historical background consult Max L. Margolis and Alexander Marx, A History of the Jewish People (1927); Robert H. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament (1941; rev. ed. 1948); William F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine (1949; rev. ed. 1956); Harry M. Orlinsky, Ancient Israel (1954); and Martin Noth, The History of Israel (1958; rev. ed. 1960). □

Moses Leader of the Israelites. In a way comparable with the legends of other ancient peoples, the story of Moses begins (Exod. 2) with his being hidden at birth to escape a massacre, and then unexpectedly rescued by Pharaoh's daughter and cared for at her request by a Hebrew nurse, who is in fact the child's mother. Thus Moses was brought up in Egyptian regal surroundings. As the narrative proceeds after the infancy stories, Moses left Egypt after an altercation with a fellow Israelite, lived in Midian, got married, and was called to be the leader of his people at the Burning Bush (Exod. 3: 1–6). He was equipped by God with powerful weapons against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who was responsible for reducing the Israelites to slaves; he had the gift of working miracles, and the cooperation of his eloquent brother Aaron to act as his spokesman (Exod. 4: 14). The first gift was exercised by sending plagues of ever-increasing ferocity upon the recalcitrant Egyptians (Exod. 7–11) culminating in the death of all the Egyptian first-born sons (Exod. 12: 13), after which Pharaoh was at last coerced into releasing his slaves. They went out into the wilderness under Moses' leadership, where Moses divided the sea (Exod. 14: 21–15: 21), purified water (Exod. 15: 22–5), and guaranteed a victory over Amalek by holding up his hands (Exod. 17: 11–12).

Moses was the people's intercessor to God, and God's prophet to the people. He gave them the Law and he himself acted as a judge and arbitrator (Exod. 18). Thus, he gave the people a national identity and was on the point of leading them to the Promised Land (Canaan) when he ascended Mount Nebo in Moab and there died.

The historicity of Moses has been much discussed by OT scholars. Generally, it is accepted that there are three sources in the narrative known by the symbols J, E, and P, of which the two first are earlier and considered to contain some reliable history; but there is no confirmation of Moses' existence from archaeology or other ancient Near Eastern documents though the name, as also Aaron, is of Egyptian origin. We are left only with the view held about the internal evidence of the Pentateuch itself, where there are inconsistencies and doubts. Though few will nowadays be willing to support the traditional view that Moses himself wrote the five books of the Pentateuch, there are certainly those who regard the leadership of Moses as too firmly based in Israel's corporate memory to be dismissed as pious fiction.

In the NT Moses is named as the giver of the Law (Mark 7: 10; Rom. 9: 15; 2 Cor. 3: 13), as one whose faith in God is an example to the Church (Heb. 3: 2; 11: 24), and as the prophet of the Messiah (Acts 3: 22).

In Matt. Jesus is portrayed as the ‘second Moses’, who proclaims the New Law (Matt. 5–7). At the Transfiguration, Moses is said to be present and so authenticates Jesus' claim as uttered by the heavenly voice (Mark 9: 7).

Moses (c.13th cent. BCE). Jewish leader and lawgiver. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in Egypt to Amram and Jochabel, who hid him in the reeds of the river Nile to escape Pharaoh's order to slaughter all Jewish male babies. He was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter: ‘From the water I drew him’ (Exodus 2. 10), meshitihu, hence the name Mosheh (Eng. Moses). While keeping his father-in-law's sheep on Mount Horeb, he encountered God in a burning bush. He was commanded to liberate the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and lead them to the Promised Land. He guided them for forty years in the wilderness, and, on Mount Sinai, he received God's revelation of Torah, including the Ten Commandments. Before his death, he appointed Joshua as his successor. In the Jewish tradition, Moses has a unique status. In Christianity, he appears with Jesus at his transfiguration (Mark 9. 2–8) and, according to the Qurʾān, where he is known as Mūsā, he prophesied the coming of Muḥammad (7. 140).

Moses (fl. c.14th–13th centuries bc), Hebrew prophet and lawgiver, brother of Aaron. According to the biblical account, he was born in Egypt, and to escape a massacre was hidden by his mother in a basket among the bulrushes; found there by Pharaoh's daughter, he was adopted and brought up by her. Grown to manhood, he led the Israelites away from servitude in Egypt, across the desert towards the Promised Land. During the journey he was inspired by God on Mount Sinai to write down the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone (Exodus 20). In allusive use, the name may be used to denote someone held to resemble Moses, especially in his character of lawgiver or leader.
Law of Moses (or Mosaic Law) the system of moral and ceremonial precepts contained in the Pentateuch; the ceremonial portion of the system considered separately.
Moses basket a carrycot or small portable cot made of wickerwork, with allusion to the biblical story of Moses, left in a basket among the bulrushes (Exodus 2:3).

See also horns of Moses.

Moses ♂ Biblical name, the English form of the name of the patriarch (Moshe in Hebrew) who led the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 4). His name is thought to be of Egyptian origin, most probably from the same root as that found in the second element of names such as Tutmosis and Rameses, where it means ‘born of (a certain god)’. Various Hebrew etymologies have been proposed, beginning with the biblical ‘saved (from the water)’ (Exodus 2:10), but none is convincing. It is now mainly a Jewish name, although until the mid-20th century it also enjoyed considerable popularity among Christians in England, especially among Puritans and Nonconformists.

moses, a very broad flat-bottomed boat, propelled by oars, which in the days of sailing ships was used in the Caribbean to bring hogsheads of sugar from the island beaches to shipping which had to lie off them because of the shallowness of the water.

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