Moses

Long after Joseph and his brothers had died, the Israelites had become so many that they filled the land. Then a new king came to rule over Egypt, a Pharaoh who had never known Joseph.

“These Israelites are too many and too strong for us,” Pharaoh told his people. “If war comes, they may join our enemies.”

So the Egyptians set slave drivers over the Israelites and made their lives bitter with hard work in mortar and brick. They built the cities of Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. But the harder the Egyptians worked them, the more the Israelites grew.

Then Pharaoh sent for the two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah. “When a Hebrew baby is born,” he told them, “kill him if he is a boy. A girl may live.”

But the midwives feared God, and they let the boys live.

“Why have you done this?” Pharaoh asked them.

“Pharaoh, the Hebrew women are strong,” they answered. “Their babies are born before we can get there.”

God was good to the midwives, and the people went on growing. So Pharaoh gave an order to all his people. “Throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile,” he said, “but let every girl live.”

At that time a woman of the tribe of Levi had a baby boy. She saw what a fine child he was, and she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took a basket of papyrus reeds and coated it with tar and pitch. She laid the baby inside and set the basket among the reeds at the edge of the Nile. His sister stood a little way off to see what would happen to him.

Soon Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the Nile to bathe, while her maids walked along the bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent a maid to bring it. Inside was the baby, crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

Then his sister came up to her. “Your Highness, shall I go and find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for you?”

“Yes, go,” said Pharaoh’s daughter.

The girl ran and brought back the baby’s own mother.

“Take this child and nurse him for me,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her, “and I will pay you.”

So the woman took her own son home and nursed him. When he was older, she brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who took him as her own son and named him Moses. “I drew him out of the water,” she said.

When Moses had grown up, he went out one day to see his own people at their labor, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Moses looked this way and that, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid the body in the sand.

The next day he found two Hebrew men fighting. “Why are you hitting your neighbor?” he asked the one who was in the wrong.

“Who made you a prince and a judge over us?” the man said. “Are you going to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian?”

Moses was frightened. Word of what he had done had gotten out. When Pharaoh heard of it, he tried to have Moses killed, but Moses fled to the land of Midian and sat down beside a well.

The priest of Midian had seven daughters. When they came to water their father’s flock, some shepherds drove them away. Moses stood up, defended the girls, and watered the flock himself.

“Why are you home so early today?” their father, Jethro, asked.

“An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds, Father,” they said. “He even watered the flock for us.”

“Then why did you leave him out there?” said Jethro. “Invite him to eat with us.”

Moses stayed, and Jethro gave him his daughter Zipporah as his wife. When she had a son, Moses named him Gershom. “For I have become a stranger in a strange land,” he said.

Many years went by, and the king of Egypt died. The Israelites still groaned under their slavery, and their cry went up to God. God heard them, and he remembered his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

One day Moses was leading Jethro’s sheep far into the desert, and he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There he saw a bush on fire. Flames blazed from the middle of it, yet the bush did not burn up.

When Moses came closer to look, God called to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

“Here I am,” said Moses.

“Come no closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

“I have seen how my people suffer in Egypt, and I have heard them cry out,” God said. “I have come down to rescue them and bring them to a good land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.”

“Who am I to go to Pharaoh?” said Moses.

“I will be with you,” God said.

“But if I tell the Israelites that the God of their fathers has sent me,” Moses said, “they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ What should I tell them?”

“I am who I am,” God said. “Tell them, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ The king of Egypt will not let you go until I strike his land with all my wonders.”

“But they won’t believe me,” said Moses.

“What is that in your hand?” God asked.

“A staff.”

“Throw it on the ground.”

Moses threw it down, and it became a snake. He ran from it, but at God’s word he caught it by the tail, and it turned back into a staff. Then God told him to put his hand inside his cloak, and when Moses drew it out, the skin was diseased and white as snow. He put it back, and it came out healthy again.

“God, I’ve never been good with words,” Moses said. “They come slowly to me.”

“Who gave people their mouths, if not I?” God asked. “Go, and I will teach you what to say.”

“God, please send someone else.”

Then God grew angry with Moses. “Your brother Aaron speaks well, and he is already on his way to meet you. He will speak to the people for you. And take this staff in your hand, for you will do the signs with it.”

So Moses asked Jethro to let him go back to his people in Egypt, and Jethro said, “Go in peace.” God told Moses that all the men who had wanted to kill him were dead. Moses put his family on a donkey and set out for Egypt with the staff of God in his hand.

At a place where they stopped for the night, God came against Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a sharp stone and circumcised their son, and God let Moses go.

Aaron met him at the mountain of God and kissed him, and Moses told him everything. Together they gathered the elders of Israel, and Aaron spoke God’s words and did the signs. The people believed, and they bowed down and worshiped.

Then Moses and Aaron went to a new Pharaoh. Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron was eighty-three. “The God of Israel says, ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a feast for me in the wilderness,’” they told him.

“Who is this God, that I should obey him?” said Pharaoh. “I don’t know him, and I will not let Israel go.”

That same day he gave the slave drivers a new order. “Give the people no more straw. Let them gather their own, and still make as many bricks as before. They’re lazy, and that’s why they want to go and offer sacrifices.”

The Israelites scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble, and when the bricks came up short, the slave drivers beat the Israelite foremen. The foremen complained to Pharaoh, but he only said, “Lazy, that’s what you are, lazy! Get back to work.”

As they came out, they found Moses and Aaron waiting. “You’ve made Pharaoh hate us,” the foremen said, “and handed him a sword to kill us.”

Moses turned to God. “God, why have you brought trouble on these people? Why did you ever send me?”

“Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh,” God said. “My strong hand will force him to let them go.”

When Moses and Aaron went back to Pharaoh, Aaron threw down his staff, and it became a snake. Pharaoh called his wise men and magicians, and with their secret arts they did the same, but Aaron’s staff swallowed up all of theirs. Still Pharaoh’s heart was hard.

So the plagues began. Moses met Pharaoh by the river and gave him God’s message, “Let my people go,” and Pharaoh refused. Then Aaron struck the Nile with the staff, and its water turned to blood. The fish died, the river stank, and no one could drink from it. But the magicians did the same, and Pharaoh turned his back.

“Let my people go,” Moses told Pharaoh again, “or frogs will cover your whole land.”

Pharaoh would not, and frogs came up from the Nile and filled the houses, the beds, and the ovens. The magicians made frogs come too. “Pray to your God to take the frogs away,” Pharaoh begged, “and I will let the people go.” The frogs died and were piled in stinking heaps, and Pharaoh took back his word.

Then the dust of Egypt became gnats on people and animals. This time the magicians could not copy it. “This is the finger of God,” they told Pharaoh. Still he would not listen.

After the gnats, Moses stood before Pharaoh once more and said, “Let my people go.” When Pharaoh refused, swarms of flies came, but none in Goshen, where the Israelites lived. Pharaoh promised to let them go, and once the flies were gone, he broke his promise. “Let my people go,” Moses warned him again, and when Pharaoh would not, a sickness killed the Egyptians’ livestock, while not one animal of the Israelites died. Boils broke out on people and animals, even on the magicians. Each time Pharaoh’s heart stayed hard.

“Let my people go,” Moses said, “or a hailstorm will come such as Egypt has never seen.” Then he lifted his staff toward the sky. Thunder rolled, lightning ran along the ground, and hail killed everyone and everything left out in the fields. Only in Goshen did no hail fall.

“This time I have sinned,” Pharaoh said. “Stop the hail, and I will let you go.” Moses prayed, and the storm ended. But Pharaoh hardened his heart again.

“Let my people go,” Moses and Aaron told Pharaoh, “or tomorrow locusts will cover the land.”

When he refused, an east wind brought locusts, which ate every plant the hail had left until nothing green remained in Egypt. “Forgive me just this once,” Pharaoh begged. God sent a west wind that swept every locust into the Red Sea, but Pharaoh still would not let them go.

After that, a darkness so thick it could almost be felt covered Egypt for three days, yet all the homes of the Israelites had light. Pharaoh said the people could go if they left their flocks and herds behind.

“Not a single hoof will be left behind,” said Moses.

“Get out of my sight!” Pharaoh said. “The day you see my face again, you will die.”

“As you say,” Moses answered. “I will never see your face again. But hear this. At midnight every firstborn in Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh on his throne to the firstborn of the servant girl at her millstone, and the firstborn of the animals too. Yet among the Israelites, not even a dog will bark.” Then Moses, burning with anger, left Pharaoh.

God had told the Israelites what to do. Each household chose a young lamb and killed it in the evening. They dipped a bunch of hyssop in its blood and marked the doorposts and the top of the door frame.

That night they roasted the lamb and ate it with bitter herbs and flatbread made without yeast. They ate in a hurry, dressed for a journey, with their sandals on and their staffs in their hands. “It is the Passover,” God had said. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

At midnight every firstborn in Egypt died, from Pharaoh’s own son to the son of the prisoner in the dungeon, and the firstborn of the animals as well. A great cry went up across Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.

That same night Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron. “Get up and leave my people, you and the Israelites!” he said. “Take your flocks and herds and go.”

The Egyptians hurried them on, and the Israelites picked up their bread dough before it had risen, wrapped their kneading bowls in their cloaks, and carried them on their shoulders. Six hundred thousand men set out on foot, not counting the women and children.

God did not lead them by the short road through the land of the Philistines, for fear that if they faced war, they would lose heart and turn back. He led them the long way around, through the wilderness toward the Red Sea. By day he went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to show them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.

Back in Egypt, Pharaoh changed his mind. “What have we done?” he said. “We have let our slaves go!” So he took six hundred of his best chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt, and he chased the Israelites and caught up with them where they were camped beside the sea.

When the Israelites saw the Egyptians coming, they were terrified. “Were there no graves in Egypt, that you brought us out here to die in the wilderness?” they asked Moses.

“Don’t be afraid,” Moses answered. “Stand still, and see how God will save you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. God will fight for you.”

The pillar of cloud moved from in front of the Israelites and stood behind them, between the two camps. It was darkness to one side and light to the other, so neither camp came near the other all night.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and God drove the water back with a strong east wind that blew all night. The sea parted, and the Israelites walked through the middle of it on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.

The Egyptians followed them into the sea with all Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and horsemen. Just before dawn God threw their army into confusion, and the wheels came off their chariots. “Let’s get away from the Israelites!” the Egyptians shouted. “Their God is fighting for them!”

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea again, and at daybreak the waters flowed back. The sea covered the chariots, the horsemen, and the whole of Pharaoh’s army. Not one of them was left.

That day the Israelites saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. When they understood what God had done, they stood in awe of him, and they believed in God and in his servant Moses.