| “ | Fear ye not. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you today; for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them no more forever. | „ |
| ~ Exodus 14:13, Holy Bible KJ21 |
Moses is widely regarded as a prophet as well as a Hebrew teacher and leader, and is considered the most important prophet in Judaism and one of the most famous figures in Christianity, Islam, and other Abrahamic religions, serving the main protagonist of the Book of Exodus and the overarching protagonist of the Book of Joshua.
He was born in Egypt long past the time Joseph saved the country from a famine, but it was during this time that the new Pharaoh had subjected the people of Israel into brutal slavery out of fear of their overpopulation which soon turned into all murder of baby boys, he was fortunately rescued when his mother Jochebed placed him inside a basket and sent him down down the Nile river for his safety before he was taken in by the Pharaoh's daughter who adopted him in as her own son. Even though he was raised by Egyptians, Moses was still taken care of by his birth mother as his nanny with the big rule of not knowing his true lineage, which is something he would not discover until he had reached adulthood, and by accidentally killing an Egyptian guard for beating up an Israelite, upon the murder he ran away from Egypt and fled to land of Midian where he married a woman named Zipporah and spent the next 40 years as a shepherd, that was until God, speaking to him via a burning bush, came to him and told him he was chosen by him to set the Israelites free and lead them back the Canaan.
Though once the generation of Israel constantly proven disloyal to him, Moses was tasked by God to constantly wander around the desert until the current generation is ready to enter the promised land. Though afterwards at the Lord's orders, he chose one of his good friends, Joshua, to be his successor in leading the Israelites into the Promised land where he went up to Mount Nebo where his body was buried by God himself whose grave is not found to this day, where he is known worldwide for being the only man in the world to talk to God face-to-face.
Biography[]
Early life and taken into royalty[]
Moses was born the youngest child of Amram & Jochebed, who are part of the people of Israel & are descendants of Levi (Levites) in the country of Egypt, but during that time the newest Pharaoh had become fearful of the abundances of Israelites in Egypt and forced them all into slavery to keep them down. But since God has remained faithful to his people the people he helped them remain strong & skilled with their hard work, but this only fueled the Pharaoh's paranoia of them even more and decided to take a more extreme measure to keep the slaves in line: throw every baby boy into the Nile to quell down their numbers.
A young Moses being adopted by the Pharaoh's daughter
Determined to keep him safe, Moses' family did their best to keep his presence unknown to the guards, but after 3 whole months he grew to loud for them to keep down, realizing that he'll never be safe with them, Jochebed made a basket for him & hid him inside and sent it floating down the Nile with his sister Miriam keeping a close eye on it. Eventually the basket floated right next to the Pharaoh's palace just as his daughter was taking a bath, hearing the baby's cry, he ordered her servants to bring her the basket and taking pity on the child, decided to take him in as his own, naming him as 'Moses'.
Running away to Midian[]
Needing a nurse to take care of her child, Pharaoh's daughter (with a suggestion from Miriam who made herself known to her) chose Jochebed to be that nurse but knowing full-well that Moses was a Hebrew, she told her not to tell Moses who he truly is. So ever since that day, Moses grew up alongside the highest of Egyptian nobility all while not knowing who his true ancestry truly was.
Moses defending an Israel slave from an Egyptian... & accidentally killing him.
But that all changed when one day while overseeing one the construction sights, Moses oversaw one of the Egyptian guards beating up an Israelite, and when he couldn't talk him out of it he got into a fight with him, which unfortunately ended with him accidentally killing him in rage. Although he did his best to cover up the murder, the next day when he tried stopping to Israelites from fighting, he was questioned by the one who started the fight if he'll kill him as well, this made him realize that word of the murder had spread, and knowing full-well what the Pharaoh will do to him despite technically being his grandson, he fled from Egypt to escape from punishment.
After a long time of running away from the Egyptians, Moses settled into the land of Midian where he helped laid to rest near a well, later a bunch of sisters from a bunch of rude shepherds. Thankful for the support and seeing that he's got know place to go, the sisters took them back home where their father allowed him to work for him, during his time with the family he married one of his daughters named Zipporah and started a family with her, unaware that God was still watching over him & he had big plans for him in the future.
Becoming God's messenger[]
Moses speaks to God for the first time.
40 years later, while watching over his father-in-laws sheep on mount Horeb, Moses saw a bush on fire that didn't get burnt up, and when he decided to get a closer look at it, it began speaking to him, revealing himself to be the voice of God. He told Moses that the Israelites treatment in Egypt has gotten a lot worse due to the Pharaoh of his time there's successor being a lot worse to them and that he had chosen him to be his messenger to the Pharaoh to get him to let the people of Israel free and lead them all the way back to land of Canaan where they can live in peace with him.
However Moses doesn't feel like someone who can liberate an entire race of people under command of a mighty king, but God assures him he'll be by his side in his own way, Moses later sees what he means by dropping his walking stick on the ground which turns into a snake and when he placed his hands inside his cloak it was covered with leprosies & it was then healed when he did it again.
Despite this, Moses is still afraid to confront his past in Egypt and brought up the fact that he's afraid of talking, but God counters his excuse by telling he'll be sending his brother Aaron to help him. This (as well as running out of excuses to make God find someone else to be his messenger) is enough for Moses to trust in his abilities and after saying farewell to his father-in-law, he travels with his family back to Egypt & set his people go.
Feud with Pharaoh[]
Moses speaking to Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.
Making it back to Egypt, Moses reunites with his biological brother Aaron and telling him everything God had told him to do, he was able to do all of God's miracles as well and with this newfound confidence Moses and Aaron marched to the palace to meet with the Pharaoh. Upon getting the permission to have the audience they needed, however when asking him to let the Israelites go the Pharaoh (pretty obvious) refused to do just that. When Moses has Aaron perform the snake sign, Pharaoh simply took this as a simple magic trick and has his various court magicians do the same trick, but Aaron's snake fought back against this by eating the other snakes, but the prideful Pharaoh refused to let Moses have this win & remained firm on his decision.
With this decree, Moses and God now see that if they can't calmly talk the Pharaoh into setting the people free, then they'll just have to break him into doing just that. So for the next couple of weeks Moses, with God's help, began sending a bunch of plagues to Egypt in an attempt to break the Pharaoh into giving in. The following plagues included:
- The water in the Nile river turning into blood.
- The invasion of Frogs
- The attack of Lice
- The swarm of Flies
- The death of all Livestock
- The infection of boils
- The storm of Hail & Fire
- The ravenous frenzy of Locusts
- The Darkness
These plagues made life completely miserable for the Egyptians while every Israelite was spared from such disaster, but with each plague the Pharaoh still refused to let the Lord's people go. Which then made Moses deliver to Pharaoh that God will be sending a 10th & final plague to Egypt & this will be the worst one yet: at midnight he alongside the angel of death will slaughter every firstborn Egyptian son (which is an intense form of payback for what he did with the Israelite firstborns back then). But to ensure that no Israelite baby will be involved in this massacre, Moses delivered God's orders to all Israelite families that if they wanna be spared, they have to mark a lamb's blood above their doorstep in order that the Angel of Death will pass over them, AKA so they won't be touched by the death of the firstborn, which will become a holiday known to them as the "Passover" and will celebrate it forever, and the Israelites did just that.
By midnight, God & the Angel of Death traveled all across Egypt and did just that as well as keep the promise of not killing anyone who followed his instructions and all Egyptian firstborns, especially Pharaoh's son, were slaughtered that very night. When morning arrived, Moses was brought to the palace where a very broken Pharaoh finally agreed with what he told him and allowed the Israelites to go free.
Crossing the Red Sea[]
Now that the people of Israel are finally free, Moses had them all pack up for the journey back to the promised land as well as taking the remains of their ancestor Joseph as per his final request. With all the things they need for the trip, Moses along with his family led all the people of Israel as well as those from other countries out of Egypt and began their journey to the land of Canaan: the land where God had promised their ancestor Jacob would live forever.
The road Moses was told to take the Israelites was down the desert road because the shorter way to the promised land went down the territory of dangerous people and if they did that then the Israelites would become to scared to fight back and want to return to Egypt so Moses, under God's orders led them all down the desert road. To assure the people he was with them, God appeared before them and guided the way in the form of a pillar of cloud in the day and at night, a pillar of fire, as a way to show them that he was the God they could count on & planned to show them just that.
After a long time of traveling, Moses lead the Israelites to the land of Pi-Hahiroth where they set-up camp right next to the red sea, but while they were resting, the Pharaoh secretly had scouts spying on them to see what they were doing, and once he heard where they were currently resting, he immediately changed his mind again as he assumed they were just wandering around, and now furious with Moses, he got ready his army and upon setting up all the best chariots Egypt had, he lead his army to get them all back while intending to kill those he wouldn't need. When the Israelites saw the angry Pharaoh's oncoming assault they were to frightened and complained to Moses for "getting them killed" in the wilderness, but Moses assured them all that everything will be alright so long because God will take care of this mess as long as they remained calm... which they didn't do, but God was fortunately able to back him up by moving the pillar of fire right in the middle of his people and the advancing Egyptians, and with them occupied, God then gave Moses the instructions on what to do next.
Moses (with God's help) parting the Red Sea to escape.
Following God's instructions, Moses stepped onto a rock overlooking the red sea and raised is hand over it, with this signal God then sent a enormously strong wind that blew so hard that the sea split into two, which allowed all the Israelites to enter the sea down the dry path at the center. But as most of them had reached the middle of the ocean the pillar of fire immediately disappeared and while quite astonished with the sight, Pharaoh remained undeterred and lead his army into the sea, but the lord managed to intervene with their pursuit by causing the wheels on their chariots to get stuck into the muddy floor. But still not ready to give up the Pharaoh and his men then resumed the chase by running after them, but by then every Israelite, Moses & his family included, had finally made it to the other side & on God's orders, Moses once again raised his staff over the water and the sea returned to it's original state with every Egyptian soldier in it drowning in defeat, with their Egyptian oppressors now dead before their eyes, the people of Israel happily thanked the Lord for his help and afterwards Moses continued leading them to the promised land.
Battle with the Amalekites[]
Journeying beyond the Red Sea, Moses lead the Israelites into the desert for 40 days, but during that time of traveling the wilderness the Israelites soon begin to complain about this to Moses about this journey being a wild goose chase which makes them want to go back. Fortunately with God's help, Moses would slowly answer the people's needs for foods by raining manna down for them to eat and water from a rock.
Moses alongside Aaron and Kur doing their part in the battle against the Amalekites.
But after sometime traveling, a tribe of people known as the Amalekites got very paranoid with the number of Israelites that had wandered into their territory and they soon led an army to kill them all, but upon seeing this, Moses also formed a small army of Israelites and with any weapons they brought from Egypt, ordered them to fight off the raiders while he alongside Aaron and another man named Hur watched this up on a hillside and prayed to God for help. Following the latter's instructions, Moses lifted his hands to the sky which allowed God to tip the tide of battle towards his people's favor despite not having any battle experience, but this proved to be an extremely difficult task like it was back at the red sea because when evening came, Moses got tired and placed his hands down & gave the Amalekites the upper hand in the battle, fortunately Aaron and Hur had Moses sit on a rock while they lifted his hands for him, giving them enough time for the Israelites to force the Amalekites into retreating.
But after sometime traveling down the road God chose, due to being literally the only leader in Israel, Moses had a very difficult time with answering to all of the people's problems as they would make continuous stops. But following the advice of his visiting father Jethro, Moses picks a couple of people to act as judges for the people, one of the being a young soldier named Joshua, who after Aaron, would be the one other guy he would trust.
Receiving the 10 commandments[]
Many days of traveling later, Moses lead the people to the foot of Mount Sinai, where he was ordered by God to meet him on the mountain-top, and after reminding the people about what will be going down before heading to the top of the mountain with Joshua at his side. But halfway up the mountain, Moses told Joshua that he's gotta stay behind as while he's as trustful to God as he is, he specifically was told by God to meet him up top, and only him, something which the young soldier agreed with. So Joshua decided to wait where he was while Moses continued his march up the mountain.
Moses watches the 10 commandments being made.
After a longtime of traveling up the mountain, Moses finally made it to the top of Mount Sinai, but unlike how they first spoke back at mount Horeb, God decided to come down from Heaven himself and chat with him in-person. After coming down and meeting Moses face-to-face, the latter was told about all the official laws God intends to have his people as the way for them to ascend into heaven with him, these laws were, as it followed:
- You shall have no other gods before Me.
- You shall not make idols.
- You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
- Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
- You shall not covet.
These 10 laws which would God dub as commandments were all written down by Moses and carved onto two stone tablets, but while Moses was talking with God, he had know idea that he had spent 40 whole days on top of the mountain and as a result, the Israelites had all but lost their faith in him and scared of what might happen to them, had decided to make a golden cow and decide to make it their new god. Learning of this Moses is told by God that he's finally had enough of their stubbornness and plans on killing them all for it, but despite being offered the opportunity to become the progenitor of the nation in the Israelites place, Moses begs God to let them live by reminding him the promise he had made to their ancestors and that he will take care of the problem, which is enough to calm God down and let him do what he plans to do.
Moses destroying the comandments in frustration with the people.
Coming down the mountain with both of the tablets in hand, Moses reunites with Joshua before heading back to the camp and, equally furious with the people's ungratefulness to God, breaks the 2 tablets in frustration. But after being comforted by his brother and family, Moses pulls himself together and calls together all the Israelites who still believe in God (or at least wants to redeem themselves) to his side, and to his luck, thousands of them still do trust in the Lord. Immediately after this Moses has all those who betrayed their faith be killed as the Lord instructed, and as for the cow, Moses orders it to be melted down and all the idolaters to drink it as a sign of apology to God, afterwards Moses heads back up mount Sinai where God makes a 2nd pair of tablets for his rules, and he has them placed inside a special box known as the ark of the covenant and he proceeds to lead the Israelites to the promised land.
Wandering the Desert[]
Eventually Moses lead the people to a side of Canaan not far from them to rest in the meantime, but before they can enter the promised land, under God's instructions, Moses sent 12 spies, Joshua and another man named Caleb among them, to stake out on what the promised land looks like. But when they all made it back, 10 of the spies, fearful of the people there, made up a story that the Canaanites were giants and that it would be better if they went back to Egypt, and it worked, because of this, the Lord punished the people by deciding that if they don't trust him, then they won't enter the promised land & that only their children along with Joshua & Caleb will before killing the 10 spies.
With this settled, Moses was then forced to lead the Israelites in wandering the desert for 40 years, during that time a group of Israelites led by a man named Korah rebels against Moses to see who will really be the one to lead Israel, but Yahweh opens the earth and sends the ones that survived to live in Sheol. Eventually the Israelites get thirsty again and to appease them, Moses is told by God to once again to get water from a rock but this time he'll have to do it by just speaking to it instead, however, but having become fed-up with the people's constant complaints Moses instead strikes the rock with his staff in anger, which Yahweh angry with him & forbids him from entering the Promised Land, much to his distraught.
Moses letting all those bitten gaze upon the bronze serpent.
Along the way of wandering across the desert, one by one the members of Moses' family soon met death, which eventually left him alone to lead the Israelites to the promised land with Joshua at his side, but the people once again started to complain to both him & God about their new lack of bread and water. So God punishes them again by sending a plague of poisonous snakes to afflict them, and many of them were bitten badly, now wanting to repent for this, the Israelites beg to Moses to tell God that they're sorry, so Moses told God about this and he does forgive them for it, and he is told to build a bronze serpent and when those inflicted look at it, they are healed.
Final days & Death[]
After those 40 years of wandering were finally up, Moses, now at the age of 120, had everyone camp on another edge of the Jordan river right next to a mountain called Nebo, where he gathered the new generation of Israelites one last time. Moses recounted how all the times their ancestors went rebellious in the Lord's presence and how that cost them the chance to go into Canaan and advises them all to be different from them & always remain faithful to God no matter what happens.
Moses seeing Canaan before dying a peaceful death & joining his family & God in heaven.
With that, Moses also announces that he will soon depart from this world as he was only told by God to only see the promised land and not cross it, but with God's approval, he is allowed to pick anyone to take his place as the Israelite's leader, and due to his undying loyalty to both him & God, Moses appoints Joshua to be his successor. After finishing his final speech to the Israelites, Moses gives both his final blessings to the tribes & to Joshua, and after hearing God saying it's time for him to pass away, Moses says his final goodbye to his former assistant-turned-leader before climbing up his final mountain to be with God, when he reached the top, he got a first & final good look upon the whole promised land before lying down and dying a peaceful death, happily knowing that he rightfully earned it & his mission to guide the Israelites back home was finally complete.
Legacy[]
Eventually Moses met death with open arms and happily reunited with God & his family in heaven, but immediately after he left his mortal body Satan, God's former brightest angel turned greatest enemy, left his infernal realm to possess his body in an attempt to get the Israelites to turn against God. But before he could enter it Michael, the leader of the heavenly armies & his brother, stopped him from doing so, resulting in both of them battling for it for many weeks with neither side relenting, but this soon ended when Michael threatened to bring God into it which ultimately cause Satan to back down, afterwards God himself decided to bury the body of Moses somewhere only he would know.
When news of Moses' death became official to the public, the people mourned for Moses for 40 days before they began their march into the promised land, and afterwards, with Moses in his thoughts, Joshua would successfully conquer Canaan and would continue to live there for many years to come, all the while keeping his faith in God. While many other prophets of God would continue to keep being there in Israel whenever they lost their faith in God, none were ever able to be like Moses, who would forever be known as the man who was able to talk to God face-to-face.
He also made quite an impact on both Israel and the world as well, because during the stops wandering the desert, Moses had written the history of both the people that came before Israel that were touched by God to the history about his ancestors way back to Abraham himself, in which these 5 scrolls in which they were divided in a group called Pentateuch, which would soon be carried on by Joshua and every other man or woman who God himself would be by throughout their lives, and eventually, all of these stories would become part of a special collection of text that would be known as "the Bible", which would spread all across the world about how God would always be with those who kept there faith in him all over the world.
In Other Media[]
The Ten Commandments[]
- Main article: Moses (The Ten Commandments)
The Prince of Egypt[]
- Main article: Moses (The Prince of Egypt)
Quotes[]
| “ | See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life. | „ |
| ~ Moses to the people |
| “ | Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt. | „ |
| ~ Moses to God about his inability to speak to powerful leaders. |
Trivia[]
- Moses' name means "delivered from the water" in Egyptian, which symbolizes how God rescued him from being killed in the river.
- He was stated to be not a good speaker in some religions, which was why God had his brother Aaron to be with him when he talked to Pharaoh.
- The stick Moses laid the bronze serpent on resembles the cross where the God's son Jesus would sacrifice himself for humanity. This has been prophesied in John 3:14-15 during which Jesus teaches a Pharisee named Nicodemus about this.
External Links[]
- Moses on Wikipedia
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