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    The Life of Moses
    The Life of Moses
    The Life of Moses
    Ebook1,042 pages8 hours

    The Life of Moses

    By Larry Richards

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    About this ebook

    Few people have had a greater impact on our lives--and on our concept of God--than Moses.

    His unlikely start in life was guided by God, as was his mission to deliver Israel from bondage. During that mission, Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, became Israel's first and greatest prophet, and gave to them the Ten Commandments and the law that Jews still follow today.

    Features include:

    • How to be smart about the power of Moses's mission and relationship with God
    • Moses's impact on the church and current events
    • Understanding events from Genesis through Deuteronomy
    • God's calling and equipping

    The Smart Guide to the Bible series contains user-friendly guides for everyday Bible readers, designed to faithfully lead you through the Bible using an easy-to-understand approach. Every page contains handy features or learning aids like these:

    • cross-references to other Scriptures
    • brief commentaries from experts
    • points to ponder
    • the big picture of how passages fit with the entire Bible
    • practical tips for applying biblical truths to life
    • simple definitions of key words and concepts
    • interesting maps, charts, and illustrations
    • wrap-ups of each biblical passage
    • study questions

    Whether you're new to the Bible, a long-time student of Scripture, or somewhere in between, you'll appreciate the many ways The Smart Guide to the Bible: The Life of Moses goes far beyond your typical Bible study tool. The practical, relevant helps on each page lead you to get the most out of God's word.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateNov 9, 2008
    ISBN9781418587338
    The Life of Moses
    Author

    Larry Richards

    Lawrence O. Richards has written over 200 Christian books, including commentaries on every book of the Bible and Zondervan bestselling Adventure Bible and Teen Study Bible, which he did with his wife, Sue.     

    Read more from Larry Richards

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      Book preview

      The Life of Moses - Larry Richards

      The Life of Moses

      The Smart Guide to the Bible™ Series

      Larry Richards

      Thomas Nelson

      Since 1798™

      www.ThomasNelson.com

      The Life of Moses

      The Smart Guide to the Bible™ Series

      Copyright © 2008 by GRQ, Inc.

      All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles without the prior written permission of the publisher.

      Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

      Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fundraising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

      Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version® (

      NKJV

      ), copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Scripture quotations noted

      NIV

      are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

      To the best of its ability, GRQ, Inc., has strived to find the source of all material. If there has been an oversight, please contact us, and we will make any correction deemed necessary in future printings. We also declare that to the best of our knowledge all material (quoted or not) contained herein is accurate, and we shall not be held liable for the same.

      General Editor: Larry Richards

      Managing Editor: Michael Christopher

      Associate Editor: Karen Artl Moore

      Scripture Editor: Deborah Wiseman

      Assistant Editor: Amy Clark

      Design: Diane Whisner

      ISBN 10: 1-4185-1009-2

      ISBN 13: 978-1-4185-1009-1

      Printed in the United States of America

      08 09 10 119 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Chapters at a Glance

      Introduction

      Chapter 1 — The First Eighty Years

      Toughing It Out Along the Nile

      Getting Here from There

      The Wisdom of the Egyptians

      Pick a People

      Off to the Sinai

      Now, for Some Real Help

      Chapter 2 — The God Who Is with Us

      Holy Ground

      I Know Their Pain

      What’s in THE NAME?

      Moses Gets a Quick Look Ahead

      Chapter 3 — Miracles with Meaning

      The Unexpected Happens

      Don’t Discount God

      On Bible Miracles

      You’re Going Down, Pharaoh!

      Chapter 4 — Exiting Egypt

      Death Along the Nile

      Pass the Passover, Please

      Open Water

      The Blame Game

      Chapter 5 — Mosaic Law

      Thunder Mountain

      Cutting Covenants

      A Bird’s-Eye View of Mosaic Law

      But Everybody Knows That!

      Chapter 6 — The Big Ten

      Israel’s Claim to Fame

      Four for Me

      Six for You

      Fast Break!

      Chapter 7 — Moses Moments

      Calf and Consequences

      Not on Our Own, Please

      Goodness, Gracious

      Moses Unveiled

      Chapter 8 — Torah, Torah

      Torah, Book by Book

      Follow My Instructions

      The Sum of the Parts

      Chapter 9 — On the Road Again

      Get Ready

      Get Set

      Go!

      Same Old, Same Old

      Rebellion in the Ranks

      Chapter 10 — The Choice

      But We See the Giants

      No, No! We Won’t Go!

      An Offer Moses Can Refuse

      The Forty-Year Sentence

      Too Little, Too Late

      Not If, When

      Chapter 11 — The Next Forty Years

      Some Folks Never Learn

      Aaron’s the Man!

      A Blessing and a Curse

      Oops! You Too, Moses?

      Look, and Live

      War Clouds Gather

      Chapter 12 — The Anti-Moses

      Go See the Seer

      If Donkeys Can Talk

      He Tried, but He Couldn’t Do It

      Cashing In

      Moses Versus Balaam

      Chapter 13 — Look Both Ways

      We Want a Recount

      Be Prepared

      Total War

      And Now, Introducing

      Chapter 14 — The Real Great Society

      Another Look at the Law

      How Torah Deals with Poverty

      How Torah Deals with Crime

      What Happened?

      Chapter 15 — The Long Good-Bye

      Remember!

      What Lies Ahead

      Through It All

      Gone, but Not Forgotten

      Chapter 16 — Moses: A Backward Look

      The God of Moses

      The Books of Moses

      The Law of Moses

      Moses as Mentor

      Appendix A—The Answers

      Apendix B—The Experts

      Footnotes

      Glossary

      Endnotes

      Introduction

      Meet Moses

      Picture an old man striding into Egypt some fourteen hundred years before Christ. His beard and hair are white, his face weathered by the hot desert sun. Bright eyes peer out from under bushy white eyebrows, and as he walks he leans now and then on a long, hooked shepherd’s staff. You might see old men who look much as he did in the Middle East today. But this old man carries his eighty years of life well, and his pace suggests he’s a man on a mission.

      Moses has had a checkered past. He was born a slave but grew up as a prince of Egypt, one of the ancient world’s Great Powers. Later he defected from his adopted race and identified with his slave heritage. At forty, he murdered an Egyptian and fled into the desert. Moses spent the next forty years of his life as a shepherd, passing lonely days and nights caring for his father-in-law’s flocks. At eighty he had an encounter with God, and was commissioned to return to Egypt. Now he’s about to confront Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, arguably the most powerful individual in the world. Moses will demand that Egypt free its slaves—and when Pharaoh refuses, this old man will call on God to perform a series of miracles that will ruin prosperous Egypt and bring grief to every Egyptian household.

      It’s an unlikely story. Yet it’s a true story, and this solitary old man has had a greater impact on our lives—and on our concept of God—than any individual other than Jesus Christ himself.

      Moses is honored as the man who…

      delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt.

      wrote the first five books of the Old Testament.

      revealed the personal name of God.

      was Israel’s first and greatest prophet.

      transformed a slave people into a disciplined, united people.

      gave Israel the law by which many Jews still live.

      gave humankind the Ten Commandments.

      And the Winner Is…

      If we were to name one man, other than Jesus, whose influence has had the greatest continuing impact on Western civilization, we’d have to pick Moses. No one else has helped shape the conscience of the human family as much as Moses did. No one else has helped establish the Western world’s concept of who God is and what He is like to a comparable extent. And no one else—via both his own character and the messages he delivered directly from God—has so clearly defined a people that they’ve maintained their distinctive identity over the course of nearly four millennia.

      The Hebrews, the children of Israel, the Jews—all common names for the people Moses led—still remain, separate and distinct. Practically all the other distinct people groups that interacted through the centuries with the people Moses represented before God have long since been absorbed into the surrounding world.

      As we study Moses, the man and his mission, we’ll explore his impact on sacred history and on our own personal histories. And we’ll discover something else as we follow his journey through the pages of the five Bible books tradition tells us Moses wrote. We’ll find that Moses, far more than any other Old Testament figure, had an intimate relationship with God—literally, a working relationship that is unparalleled in the Bible. And as we look at encounter after encounter between Moses and the Lord, in effect we’ll be mentored by Moses in our own relationship with God.

      Through Moses we’ll come to know God better and better.

      What Others Say

      Gene Getz

      Moses was a man who literally walked and talked with God. In turn, God spoke to him face-to-face, as man speaks with his friend (Exodus 33:11). No leader in Israel ever experienced God’s presence like Moses.¹

      Benefits Galore

      What are the benefits of studying Moses the man, and learning about his mission? Here are just a few:

      • You’ll be mentored in your relationship with God by Moses, who knew God intimately. This study of Moses will enrich and deepen your personal relationship with the Lord.

      • You’ll discover the significance of Moses’s contributions to our faith, most notably:

      • in the revelation of the name Yahweh. God told Moses, This is My name forever (Exodus 3:15 NKJV). Understanding this name can give you comfort and confidence in your daily life.

      • in the performing of the Exodus miracles. Miracles help us define who God is and how we can expect Him to work in our lives today.

      • in the making of the Law Covenant given at Sinai. We need to know what the law is and what it isn’t if we’re to live godly, guilt-free lives.

      • in the presentation of Moses as the Bible’s prototype prophet. Prophets play a significant role throughout the Old Testament. You’ll come to understand the role of prophets, and what takes their place in your life today.

      • in the establishment of the Old Testament worship system. No Old Testament institution better foreshadows and helps to explain the significance of Christ’s death on the cross.

      • You’ll develop a better understanding of the first five books of the Old Testament. These five books lay the foundation of Judeo-Christian faith, a foundation every Christian needs to understand.

      • You’ll grow in your appreciation for the Lord. The clearer our understanding of God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture, the less confused we are about who He is—and the better we love Him.

      Hard, or Easy?

      If this sounds like a lot of work, take heart. Each book in The Smart Guide to the Bible™ series is designed to help you master the Bible—and make the process as easy as possible! Each author is an expert in his or her own field; each has carefully researched his or her subject matter. You get the benefit of years of research without having to do that research yourself. And, as each author highlights the most important elements in the Bible, he or she will also help you see the relevance of these elements to your own life.

      Many tools built into this book also provide significant help. These are designed to further clarify what the author is saying. No other commentary or study material available provides as many aids to understanding God’s Word.

      I (Pre) Suppose

      Actually, everyone who writes about the Bible begins with presuppositions. Indeed, we all start off with assumptions or beliefs about the nature of Scripture and the historical reliability of its accounts. All too often these presuppositions aren’t stated, even though they shape everything that is said about Bible text itself. I believe that it’s important to make such presuppositions clear, so let me explain mine.

      Is Scripture God’s Word?

      My answer to that one is a resounding Yes. More than twenty-six hundred times, Old Testament writers make assertions such as God said and the Word of the LORD came to so-and-so. The writers of the Old Testament, and the community of faith that grew up around the Old Testament, were convinced that the biblical text was indeed revealed by God Himself.

      This doesn’t mean that the men who wrote the Bible books recorded word for word what God dictated. The human authors of the Old Testament books were active participants in the process, and their writings reflect their different styles and their personalities. But somehow the finished product remained God’s Word.

      The technical name for what most Jews and Christians believe happened is inspiration. Inspiration affirms that God was also actively involved in the writing of the Bible. In fact, He was so involved that the finished product, the words actually put on paper, convey exactly what God intended. The apostle Peter in his second New Testament letter simply says that holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21 NKJV). God was moving, and the result was that what these men recorded was a reliable and relevant word from God Himself.

      That Was a Long, Long Time Ago!

      Yes, it was. In fact, the first five books of the Old Testament, the books we’ll be looking at in our study of Moses, were probably written down nearly fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ. How do we know that the Scriptures we have today are accurate copies of words first recorded nearly three and a half millennia ago?

      Part of the answer lies in the deep reverence that the Jewish people have historically held for what we call the Old Testament. Making copies of these Scriptures called for the greatest possible care. Each time a copyist wrote down a line of Scripture, he went back and counted each letter to make sure that the middle letter in that line was the same in his copy and in the text he was duplicating. When he finished a page, he went through the same process of counting every letter and verifying that the middle letter of the copy and the original text were the same. When he finished copying an Old Testament book, he again went back and counted to verify the middle letters were the same. Finally, several experts examined every single copied page upon completion; if they found even one mistake, they buried the page and the scribe started over.

      For centuries, the earliest Old Testament text in existence dated from about AD 1100. Then a cache of Bible scrolls was found in a cave near Israel’s Dead Sea. Among them was a scroll of the Old Testament book of Isaiah that dated from two hundred years before Christ. When that scroll of Isaiah was compared with the text of Isaiah recorded thirteen hundred years later, they were essentially the same!

      It’s true that we don’t have the original writings themselves. But we can be completely confident that what we do have are extremely accurate copies of the original.

      But I Don’t Read Ancient Hebrew

      What we have are English translations of copies of the original Hebrew text. So it’s fair to ask, How good are our English translations? The answer to that is, Very good.

      It’s true that there are words and expressions in the Hebrew that no one today really understands. But there are very few of these. Thousands of both Jewish and Christian scholars have dedicated their lives to studying ancient Hebrew, to comparing words and expressions to those found in similar ancient languages, and to clarifying difficult passages.

      Similarly we have a number of English translations of the Bible that are dedicated to expressing in our language what the original texts expressed in Hebrew. We can be very confident that such English versions as the Revised Standard Version (RSV), New International Version (NIV), the New American Standard Bible (NASB), and The New King James Version (NKJV) reliably reflect what was in the original Hebrew manuscripts. For this series of books we’ve chosen to use the NKJV as our basic version, although at times other versions may also be quoted.

      To sum it up, the first presupposition I make in writing this book is that the text we’ll rely on in studying the life and mission of Moses really is God’s reliable and relevant word, and that the English versions we read accurately convey what was in the original manuscripts.

      One More Biggie: When?

      There’s another presupposition that has to be stated. That’s a presupposition concerning when Moses lived. The when question isn’t an easy one to answer, and believing scholars disagree.

      In part the debate results from the fact that the first date in Hebrew history that can be fixed with certainty is the year that Solomon became king, 971 BC. In part the debate also reflects uncertainty about the exact dates of the reigns of the pharaohs of Egypt.

      Another aspect of the debate rests on disagreements concerning the dating of pieces of pottery found in a burned-out level at ancient Jericho, which the Bible tells us the Israelites took and burned when they invaded Canaan.

      The traditional view, based in large part on Scripture’s testimony to the number of years between certain events, is that Moses led the Israelite slaves out of Egypt approximately 1,447 years before Christ. This would put Moses’s birth around 1527 BC.

      More recently, a date for the Israelites leaving Egypt of approximately 1275 BC was proposed, based primarily on archaeological evidence. This would place Moses’s birth around 1305 BC.

      The proponents of both dates cite archaeological evidence, and support their views with arguments based on what was happening in Egypt at the time. Unfortunately, the evidence on either side is far from conclusive. For this reason I’ve chosen to stick with the traditional biblical dating, and references to rulers and events taking place in Egypt reflect conditions in the 1500s-1400s BC.

      What Others Say

      Bill T. Arnold, Bryan E. Beyer

      Basically there are two options, though there are many variations of these. The exodus may be dated to around 1446 B.C. or 1275 B.C.… Reevaluations of the archaeological evidence show that archaeology cannot answer this question. Archaeology can, in fact, be used to argue for the earlier date. Singling out a definitive date for the exodus is currently impossible because of a lack of more complete information.²

      In one sense, dating the Exodus has little relevance to the story of Moses’s life and mission. While the precise when might be in doubt, the what is spelled out clearly in the pages of Scripture. And it is the what that concerns us most in this book.

      Getting the Most Out of Moses

      Moses is the most prominent individual in no less than four Old Testament books: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. In the NKJV Bible I’m using as I write, those four books take up just a little less than one-sixth of the entire Old Testament (233 of 1,371 pages)! That’s a lot of Bible, and I won’t ask you to read everything on those pages. Here’s what I will do:

      I’ll often sketch the big picture with overviews of many of the events and teachings recorded in these four books. If you find any of this information fascinating, feel free to go to the Bible and read any Big Picture section(s) that interests you.

      I’ll identify shorter core Bible passages that describe events or teachings that you really should look at for yourself. I’ll summarize what’s in them, but I encourage you to read these core passages thoughtfully.

      I’ll quote some Bible passages in this book, and we’ll examine them closely together. Frequently these quoted passages will involve dialogue between Moses and God that enables Moses to mentor you in developing a closer personal relationship with the Lord. At other times these quoted passages will contain pivotal information that you need in order to understand foundational biblical truths. These are passages that you’ll want to read again and again until you feel you understand their significance.

      Of course, nothing I’ve just written should keep you from simply reading through the entire four books. But if your time is limited, the approach outlined above will help you learn what’s in each Bible book, and you’ll understand what’s most significant in each one.

      One other thing. Please don’t hurry to get through this book. It will be most helpful to you if you work through one chapter at a time, and then take a day off to think about what you’ve learned. To help you really understand what you’ve read, I’ve included questions at the end of each chapter. These aren’t really test questions—you can’t fail them. They’re simply intended to help you recall what’s most significant. And you can check your answers against mine by flipping to the back of this book, where an answer key is provided.

      So blessings, then, as we start off together on our study of Moses the man, and of his mission: a man and a mission that have shaped not only our society, but also you and me far more than we probably realize.

      About the Author and the General Editor

      Dr. Larry Richards is both the author of this book and the general editor of the series of which it is a part. Larry is a native of Michigan who now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was converted to Christianity while in the Navy in the 1950s. Larry has taught and written Sunday school curriculum for every age group, from nursery through adult. He has published more than two hundred books that have been translated into twenty-six languages. His wife, Sue, is also an author. They both enjoy teaching Bible studies as well as fishing and playing golf.

      Chapter 1

      The First Eighty Years

      Chapter Highlights:

      • Along the Nile

      • Getting Here from There

      • In Egypt’s Royal Court

      • Pick a People

      • Off to the Sinai

      Let’s Get Started

      The three-year-olds I taught when I was editor of nursery curriculum at Scripture Press loved the story of baby Moses*. They’d place Moses’s chubby figure in the basket-boat we fashioned, and wait eagerly for a princess to appear to rescue him from the river. They didn’t understand why Moses had been hidden in his floating cradle fashioned of reeds. And they didn’t realize that this babe would grow up to become one of history’s most famous individuals. But they loved the story. And they loved baby Moses.

      Later, most Sunday schoolers went beyond the stories of Moses’s infancy and learned something of the man and something of his mission. But despite his fame, few have a sense of Moses as a human being. I can’t recall ever hearing a sermon preached on Moses. Even commentaries on the biblical book of Exodus, where Moses is a central character, tend to ignore Moses the man and focus on his mission.

      Yet it’s fascinating to look at Scripture and consider the impact of the events related there on the development of this man, whom so many honor as one of Scripture’s greats. But before we can understand Moses as a person, we have to know something of his times.

      Toughing It Out Along the Nile

      Moses was born a slave in Egypt. His parents were slaves. His brother Aaron and sister Miriam were slaves. They were Hebrews, members of a slave race—Semitic peoples who had been in Egypt for centuries but who were distinctively different from the native Egyptians. As is often the case with slavery, Moses’s people were persecuted, worked to exhaustion—and feared.

      Chapter 1 of the book of Exodus provides a vivid picture of the relationship between the Egyptians and their slaves.

      Pure Paranoia?

      Exodus 1:9-14 And he [the king] said to his people, Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their ser-vice in which they made them serve was with rigor. (NKJV)

      On first reading it looks as though, when Moses was born, Pharaoh and the Egyptians were in the grip of pure paranoia. But in fact Pharaoh’s speculation that the Israelites might join a potential enemy had a solid historical basis. During what’s called the second intermediate period of Egypt’s history (1759-1539 BC), an Asiatic peoples we call the Hyksos had ruled the delta region of Egypt. The Egyptians called these rulers hegakhases, rulers of foreign lands. They had been finally driven out by Ahmose I, who founded the first of the New Kingdom dynasties in 1567 BC.

      Josephus, the first-century Jewish general-turned-historian, claims to quote from Manetho, an Egyptian whose writings have been lost, in describing the Hyksos invasion.

      What Others Say

      Josephus

      There came, after a surprising manner, men of obscure birth from the east, and had the temerity to invade our country, and easily conquered it by force, as we did not do battle against them. After they had subdued our rulers, they burnt down our cities, and destroyed the temples of the gods, and treated the inhabitants most cruelly, killing some and enslaving their wives and children.… They all along waged war against the Egyptians, and wanted to destroy them to the very root.¹

      While archaeology suggests this picture of Hyksos rule is overdrawn, we can understand why, after the Hyksos were expelled, the Egyptians were suspicious of the large Hebrew population in their land. After all, the Hebrews came from the same part of the world as the Hyksos.

      What is harder to understand is Pharaoh’s concern that the Israelites might join their enemies and "so go up out of the land" (Exodus 1:10 NKJV). If the Egyptians were uneasy about the Hebrews, why not just expel them? The most logical explanation is that the Hebrews were already being used as slave labor. Even though the Egyptians were frightened by the Hebrews’ numbers, they were addicted to the free labor the Israelites provided.

      The Tough Get Tougher

      The Egyptians were already tough on the Hebrews. But they were about to get tougher. They had put the Israelites to work on the massive building projects that were so dear to all the Egyptian pharaohs. Now they "set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens" (Exodus 1:11 NKJV). This phrase marks a ratcheting up of the pressure on the Hebrew slaves, and the phrase "lest they multiply (1:10 NKJV) suggests that Pharaoh intended to work these slaves to death. While it’s probable that thousands died working on such projects as the building of Pithom and Raamses, the strategy didn’t succeed. The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew" (1:12 NKJV).

      Pharaoh’s Oppression of the Israelites

      Step • Pharaoh’s Effort • Biblical Reference

      Step 1 • Enslave the Israelites • Exodus 1:10b (implied)

      Step 2 • Afflict them with their burdens • Exodus 1:11

      Step 3 • Make their lives bitter with hard bondage • Exodus 1:13-14

      Step 4 • Order midwives to kill male infants • Exodus 1:15-16

      Step 5 • Command the whole Hebrew population to throw their newborn sons into the Nile • Exodus 1:22

      Brutality Brings Dread

      There’s no doubt that the increasing brutality of the Egyptians had an impact on the Israelites. But that brutality had an impact on the Egyptians as well. While the Israelites must have felt both hatred and resentment, the excesses of the Egyptians filled the Egyptians themselves with… fear!

      Centuries later the prophet Habakkuk would question God when he learned the Lord intended to permit a brutal Babylonians* army to conquer Judah. Habakkuk realized that the behavior of God’s people deserved punishment. But, he asked, how could the Lord let a people like the pagan Babylonians, who were certainly worse than the people of Judah, get away with crushing God’s own people?

      In chapter 2 of the biblical book of Habakkuk the prophet records God’s surprising answer. No wicked ever get away with doing evil. It may look as though they’re on top of the world. Their successes and their riches may provoke others to envy. But we live in a moral universe. God has built into it principles of judgment that are constantly at work. One of those principles is that the successes of the wicked, however great, can never bring them satisfaction (Habakkuk 2). Another principle is that when we oppress others we create a hostility which not only will destroy us in the future, but which creates a present fear of those we harm.

      Habakkuk 2:6-7 Will not all these take up a proverb against him, And a taunting riddle against him, and say, "Woe to him who increases What is not his—how long? And to him who loads himself with many pledges"? Will not your creditors rise up suddenly? (NKJV)

      This is what happened to the Egyptians. Their oppression of the Israelites made the Egyptians afraid of their slaves. The fear made them treat their slaves even more brutally. And, as the cycle of fear leading to increased brutality leading to even greater fear spiraled out of control, the Egyptians found themselvesin dread of the children of Israel" (Exodus 1:12 NKJV).

      Good, but Not Good Enough

      It’s good for each of us to realize that those who do evil to others aren’t really getting away with it, however well-off they may seem. It’s also important for us to realize that any inner, psychological impact on those who do evil isn’t punishment enough. This is a moral universe, and God is committed to ‘render to each one according to his deeds’… to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath (Romans 2:6, 8 NKJV).

      Remember this as we move deeper into the book of Exodus and see the destructive plagues God brings on Egypt and its people. The once-fruitful land will be devastated and lie in ruin, and anguished wails will rise from those who have lost their firstborn. All these will be consequences of the systematic oppression of the Israelites by the Egyptians and their rulers. The fear with which God punished the oppressors was good—but not good enough.

      Beyond Oppression

      Exodus 1:15-16 Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah; and he said, When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth-stools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live. (NKJV)

      Dread of the slave race drove Pharaoh beyond oppression to attempt the extermination of the Hebrew people. Without the technology available to the Nazis in Germany, Pharaoh took a simpler but potentially more effective approach. He ordered that every boy born to Hebrew parents be killed at birth. If the Egyptian solution had worked, within a generation there would have been no Hebrew people.

      Like every other attempt to exterminate the Jews, from Haman’s* in the time of the Persian Empire to Hitler’s in the past century, Pharaoh’s attempt failed. God used two unlikely people to thwart the powerful ruler’s plan.

      Are Two Plenty?

      Archaeologists frequently develop lists of common names given to people in different eras. The lists are aids in dating monuments or documents where the names appear. And the names Shiphrah and Puah were in fact common Semitic names in the second millennium BC. Still, critics have challenged the reliability of the biblical text, arguing that if there really were multitudes of Israelites in Egypt, they could hardly have been served by just two midwives. In posing this argument the critics overlook the Egyptian love of bureaucracy. It seems far more likely that Shiphrah and Puah headed a guild of midwives who served both Hebrew and Egyptian mothers-to-be.

      When the two were given orders by Pharaoh they determined not to follow them. As Egyptian women would hardly stoop to do a task assigned the slave race, it must have been easy for Shiphrah and Puah to enlist the many Hebrew midwives of Egypt in their plot of passive resistance. They did not defy Pharaoh. They simply didn’t carry out his orders.

      It Was Right, but Did They Do Wrong?

      Exodus 1:17-21 But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive. So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive? And the midwives said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them. (NKJV)

      Some people seem to take great delight in finding supposed factual contradictions in God’s Word. Typically their arguments are flawed. Like those who assumed that because only two midwives were named there were only two midwives in all of Egypt, critics leap too quickly to their conclusion and shout, See! Here’s a mistake! Usually, as in the case of Shiphrah and Puah, the two midwives, there’s a logical explanation for the supposed contradiction.

      Others look for supposed moral contradictions, either to discredit Scripture or to whittle away at its moral imperatives. So it’s not surprising to find Exodus 1 charged with moral inconsistency for the report that God dealt well with the midwives for what they did. How, the critics say, can the Bible say that lying is wrong*, when God obviously rewarded those two for lying to Pharaoh?

      But did the midwives lie? What they told Pharaoh was, "The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them" (Exodus 1:19 NKJV). In all likelihood this was the exact truth! What better way to thwart the king’s orders and protect themselves at the same time than to delay when called to assist at a Hebrew birth? Shiphrah and Puah found a way to honor God and at the same time to protect Egypt’s midwives… without having to lie.

      This isn’t the place to go into a detailed discussion of ethics. But the story does remind us that most ethical dilemmas can be resolved without violating revealed standards of right and wrong. And where it is impossible to avoid painful consequences for doing the right thing, we need to be willing to follow Scripture’s exhortation to do good*. As 1 Peter 2:19 reminds us, This is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully (NKJV).

      Back to the Main Point

      For all the possible distractions in the biblical text, we need to keep the main point in view. When Moses was born, probably around 1527 BC, his people were slaves whose numbers terrified their Egyptian masters. That fear had driven Pharaoh and his people to treat the Israelites more and more brutally. Pharaoh’s command that the midwives kill all male infants had been thwarted, leading the ruler to issue a final, ultimate decree. Pharaoh commanded all his people, literally the whole population, saying, Every son who is born you [the Israelite] shall cast into the river (Exodus 1:22 NKJV).

      Now the whole community was responsible. As infants developed in their mothers’ wombs, the parents must have looked at each other and wondered: Would it be a girl, and live? Or would it be a son, condemning them to murder their own child or face possible punishment?

      This was the pressure under which the Hebrew people lived when Moses entered the world. They were brutalized, afflicted, their lives bitter—and they had been ordered to exterminate every hope of a future for their race.

      Getting Here from There

      The Big Picture

      Genesis 12-50

      The descendants of Abraham, who came to the land of Canaan some two thousand years before Christ, have lived there for three generations. Abraham’s grandson Jacob, also known as Israel, fathered a dozen sons. Eleven live with him now, and Jacob mistakenly believes that his youngest, Joseph, has been killed by wild animals.

      What actually happened, however, is that his jealous brothers have sold Joseph into slavery. Joseph has then been resold to a high Egyptian official, and after a series of disasters has come to the attention of Pharaoh as a reliable interpreter of dreams. When Joseph explains that two dreams of Pharaoh foretell a terrible famine in the Egypt and the whole Middle East, Pharaoh appoints Joseph to supervise Egypt and store up food supplies. When the predicted famine strikes, only Egypt is prepared. Back in Canaan, Jacob and the brothers of Joseph are starving.

      When

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