Exodus - Lesson 4

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-04 
Introduction to Moses 
Lesson Transcript 

Okay, so now we've come to Exodus chapter 2, which is probably my favorite. They're all my favorites. Chapter 2 is the story that's most familiar from Sunday school as a kid.

Everybody's done a little craft where you make a little basket and put a little baby Moses in it and and talk about what happens. It's sometimes hard for us to turn off the parts of the story that we know so well and hear how the narrator is actually telling it. Sometimes because we know how the story ends, we miss the amount of suspense and the particular nuances of the ways that the story is being told.

So I'm going to slow down and read it and make comments along the way in chapter 2 because there's so much beauty in the way that this story is being told to us. So Exodus chapter 2. Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, or in Hebrew it says married a daughter of Levi. A man of the tribe of Levi married a daughter of Levi.

Now we know later what the names of these people are. This is Amram and Yocheved who are Moses's parents, but we're not told that here. We're told a man from the tribe of Levi and a daughter of Levi, and I think this is important because this story is an undercover story.

We are supposed to whisper it. It's a risky story. And she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, which normally would be happy, right? But we've just been told that Pharaoh told everybody to throw baby boys into the Nile.

And so this is a very ominous and scary moment because she gave birth to a son, and now his life is immediately at risk. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. There's been lots of speculation here about what is it about Moses that his mother was able to see that he was especially fine, or is this talking about his beauty? In Hebrew, the sentence is very simple.

When she saw that he was good, she hid him for three months. She looks at her son, her infant son, and she assesses him the same way God assesses creation in Genesis chapter one. He made it and saw that it was good, and that is what this mother, the daughter of Levi, is seeing.

When she looks at her son, she saw that he's good, and so she refuses to go along with Pharaoh's demands. She hides him instead. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus ark for him and coated it with tar and pitch.

The word basket is what it says in the NIV, but I changed it to ark because this is the same word as the word for the boat that Noah built in Genesis. The boat that saved him from a watery destruction is the same kind of thing that's going to save Moses from a watery destruction, and it's coated with tar and pitch just like Noah's ark. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

That will become important later. And his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him, or we could say she took her stand to see what would happen to him. Now notice that she's actually obeying Pharaoh here.

All the Hebrew boys were supposed to be thrown into the Nile. She saves her son for three months, and then when she could hide him no longer, he's getting too noisy, too hard to hide, she places him in this little boat, and she puts him in the Nile. Pharaoh didn't say not to use a boat, so she's kind of doing what Pharaoh said, and frankly she's putting her child in the one place where no one is going to think to look for a hidden child because it's the place of danger.

She's bringing him right to the river itself. And his sister, who is also unnamed at this point, stands at a distance. We know from later texts that she must be an older sister, so he has an older brother who's three at this point.

Aaron is three years old. Aaron doesn't figure into this story at all. Miriam would have been probably at six at this point.

Six-year-old sister taking her stand to see what would happen to him. Then the daughter of Pharaoh went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket or the ark among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it.

She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying. This scene unfolds so slowly.

We get each step of what will happen next. She opened it. She saw the baby.

We're holding our breath wondering, what is she going to do? This is a member of Pharaoh's own household who's been tasked with killing Hebrew boys, and she just found one, and he was crying, and she felt sorry for him. This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. Who else would set their kid afloat in the Nile? Then his sister asked the daughter of Pharaoh, shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? Yes, go, she answered.

So the girl went and got the baby's mother. This is such a significant scene. I just have to stop and mention that this is the daughter of Pharaoh and the daughter of Levi who are now both in a position to do something to save this child.

Then there's the sister of the baby. Miriam, the sister, had taken her stand by the Nile to see what would happen to him. If we fast forward several chapters, we'll see Moses, the baby all grown up, taking his stand by the Nile and confronting Pharaoh on his way to the Nile and asking him, may we go? Pharaoh will say no, and here Miriam confronts the daughter of Pharaoh by the Nile and says, may I go and get a woman to nurse the baby for you? She says go.

So we're already hearing echoes of what's going to happen. Remember in an earlier session I talked about how the story of Moses and the story of the Hebrews are like the Moses stories, like a mini Hebrew story, and so we're seeing, we're starting to see this. What the ways in which Moses' deliverance is described are going to be the same ways that the deliverance of the Hebrews is going to be described.

So she says to go and the girl went and got the baby's mother. The daughter of Pharaoh said to her, take this baby, in Hebrew it's actually an imperative, a hyphal imperative, so it's make him go, which is again just what we hope will happen later when Moses confronts Pharaoh. Take this baby or make him go and nurse him for me and I will pay you, which is a pretty great gig for a birth mother to get paid to nurse her own baby.

I can think of lots of moms, myself included, who would love to be paid for that work that is so time-consuming. The woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son and she named him Moses, saying I drew him out of the water.

This is the first time we get a proper name in the story. Everyone has been anonymous up until this point and everyone has been working at great risk to themselves to save this child in defiance of Pharaoh and it's at the moment of adoption that the first name is said as if now we can go public with this because it's official. She's adopted this child and he became her son and she named him Moses, which is a fascinating name.

I mentioned this when we were talking about Egyptianisms in an earlier session. The name Moses sounds like an Egyptian name. You can think of pharaohs like Thutmose and Achmos that have the mos in it and normally in Egyptian, Mose or Moses means son of and you would attach it to the name of a deity to say so Thutmose is son of Thut and Achmos would be son of Ach and here we have Moses whose name in Egyptian means son of and that's what we're wondering for the rest of the story is who is he the son of? Will he be reckoned as a Hebrew? Will he be reckoned as an Egyptian? Will he be reckoned as a Midianite? He has this hybrid identity but at the same time there's a bilingual word play going on because the name Moses in Hebrew means one who draws out and Pharaoh's daughter is the one who drew him out of the river and by naming him Moses she is memorializing her own audacity, her own defiance of Pharaoh.

She drew him out when they were supposed to throw him in. She did the opposite and so she names him in a way that will remind herself of that moment for the rest of his life or their life together. So many things that happen in this story that that are precursors or foreshadowing of what will happen in chapters to come.

What I find the most striking about this is that the verbs used to describe what the daughter of Pharaoh does for Moses later will be the same verbs that describe what God does for the Israelites. So she saw him and she heard his cries and she felt sorry for him and later we're told that God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. We're told that he has seen the misery of his people, he's concerned about their suffering, he's seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them and he's heard their cries and he's felt sorry for them.

There's a beautiful symmetry between what the daughter of Pharaoh does for Moses, how she responds to Moses and how Yahweh responds to the Israelites. This is also striking because none of the women, there are a number of women who defy Pharaoh here. We have the midwives, we have the boy's mother, the boy's sister, the daughter of Pharaoh, the servants of Pharaoh's daughter, and in chapter four we have another woman, Zipporah, who also participates in delivering Moses and rescuing him.

And each of these women is courageous in their defiance of Pharaoh and yet there's never a moment of commissioning. We don't hear a divine voice saying, daughter of Pharaoh, here's what I want you to do. They just see what needs to be done, they know the right thing to do and they do it because they fear God rather than fearing Pharaoh.

We already mentioned this in chapter one but Pharaoh has been putting to death the boys and saving the women but here we have all these women who are successful in defying his edict. They each courageously work within their sphere of influence to resist injustice. None of them are breaking out and doing something that's unseemly or doesn't fit who they are.

The mother of Moses nurses him, the sister of Moses watches over him, the daughter of Pharaoh is bathing and saves this child. And so they're not doing anything outlandish but what they do is courageous and they defy Pharaoh's edict. And that's how we have a deliberate story of the people of Israel.

And so I like to pause here just to think about the fact that in a few chapters we are going to see the commissioning of Moses very directly by God. God is going to call Moses to go back to Egypt and to rescue the Hebrews. He's going to have a very specific commissioning but here we have women who are participating without a specific commission and I think that this is a wonderful side-by-side model of the different ways that God interacts with us.

Sometimes there's a clear divine commission, a clear divine instruction to do something. Most of the time we just look out at the world and we see a problem that needs to be addressed and we address it, we step in and do it. And this story is empowering to me because it tells me we don't have to sit around and wait for authority to do something.

If we see a job that needs to be done we can do it and we can lean into what we know God, how God has made us to care for life, to bring life, to rescue others. Okay so picking up the story in chapter 2 verse 11, are you thinking of killing me as you kill the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought what I did must have become known. Such a fascinating scene in Moses' own life and development as a person and as a member of the Hebrew people.

We're not told, the narrator doesn't tell us whether Moses is aware that these are his own people or whether that's the narrator's voice we're hearing. So after Moses had grown up he went out to where his own people were and I'm curious why does he go out and what is he seeing when he sees them? He notices an Egyptian striking a Hebrew and he looks around and I'm curious what is he looking for? What is Moses trying to find? And I think it seems like he's wondering who's going to do something about this? There's a Hebrew being struck by an Egyptian but nobody seems to be willing to do anything about it or is he looking around to make sure nobody sees him? He wants to work in private and he kills the Egyptian, he actually strikes him. So he saw the Egyptian striking a Hebrew and he strikes the Egyptian and then the next day he sees two Hebrews striking each other.

So there's strike, strike, strike in this story and as a fast forward preview of what's to come when God brings the signs and wonders against Egypt he is striking Egypt. So he's gonna strike Egypt because Egypt struck his people. Moses is, I think, well-intentioned here.

He is seeing an injustice play out before him and he thinks something should be done about it so he strikes the Egyptian. I'm not sure what he thinks that will actually accomplish though. He kills him and hides him in the sand and hightails it back to the palace which means when the Egyptian doesn't show up to turn in his punch card at the end of the day who's going to get blamed for the death of the Egyptian? It seems like it's going to fall on the Hebrews so it's no wonder that the word gets out and that what he did became known because the next day he's not very well received by these two Hebrews.

They're not like, all hail King Moses, you're the one who saved us. No, he made their lives more miserable by killing an Egyptian and hightailing it out of there to not bear the consequences of his action and so the man says, who made you ruler and judge over us? Which is so ironic because God is the one who will make him and judge over all the Hebrews but he doesn't know that yet and Moses gets afraid when he realizes that his action became known and so he flees. Verse 15 tells us, when Pharaoh heard of this he tried to kill Moses but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian where he sat down by a well.

Moses had enjoyed a certain amount of protection of the palace. He was a Hebrew but he was under palace protection and so he didn't have to experience what the other Hebrews experienced in Egypt but when this becomes known, the security that he enjoyed under Pharaoh's household immediately flips. Moses has outed himself as someone who cares about the oppressed and is going to stand up for the oppressed and that's not going to work in Pharaoh's system and so now Moses has put his own life in danger.

So he flees from Pharaoh and goes to live in Midian and he sits down by a well and if you've read Genesis then you know what happens next because every time a patriarch shows up at a well by the end of the scene he's married and that is exactly what happens here. He comes to a well and we're told a priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock and so we we see again an impulse for justice.

He sees them being mistreated and he comes to the rescue but it's fascinating that if you compare all these stories of patriarchs who go to the well and end up married there's a certain number of things that usually happen in order. It's called a type scene and one of the things that usually happens is the man who comes to the well introduces himself but Moses doesn't do that here. He doesn't introduce himself he just comes and silently saves them and waters their flock.

So when they go home it says the girls returned to Reuel their father he asked them why have you returned so early today? An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds he even drew water for us and watered the flock. So in the absence of Moses self-identification they identify him as an Egyptian. So we've had this question mark over him starting earlier in the chapter when he's named son of son of whom and when we hear the story about his own people going out to his own people and yet his own people reject him and then Pharaoh rejects him like who is Moses? He's Hebrew by birth he was breastfed by a Hebrew mother which in that culture would have been the transmission of culture as well as as as nourished physical nourishment.

He's adopted and trained in an Egyptian context but when he shows up in Midian they identify him as an as an Egyptian. Sure enough Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage so by the end of the scene he's married. Zipporah gave birth to a son and Moses named him Gershom which in Hebrew if you split the word in half it's like a compound word it's Gershom.

Gershom means foreigner and shom means there so foreigner there and he says I have become a foreigner in a foreign land and I'm so curious what Moses means by this. Did he mean that he became a foreigner to the who no longer accepted him? That he became a foreigner to the Egyptians who no longer accepted him? Or that now he's in Midian and he doesn't belong here either? Moses is a misfit and he has this hybrid identity that doesn't really belong but against that backdrop we have a recap or a summary statement saying during that long period the king of Egypt died so the pharaoh of chapter one and two is gone. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

God heard their groaning he remembered his covenant with Abraham with Isaac and with Jacob so God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them and this is where we get that dense repetition of verbs that had described the daughter of pharaoh now describing God's disposition towards the Hebrews and so Moses comes into chapter three with a hybrid identity with a sense of not really belonging. So Moses joins this Midianite family and he and he had rescued these shepherds and he is going to become a shepherd in this Midianite context and we're not told a lot about his life, about his marriage, about life in Midian. The narrator just takes us right away to this really formative incident at Mount Sinai.

We're told Moses was tending the flock of Jethro chapter three verse one his father-in-law the priest of Midian and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb the mountain of God. This is an alternate name for Mount Sinai we'll talk more about later. There the angel of Yahweh appeared to him in the flames of fire from within a bush.

Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up so Moses thought I will go over and see this strange sight why the bush does not burn up. When Yahweh saw that he had gone over to look God called to him from within the bush Moses Moses and Moses said here I am. This this call and response shows God's attentiveness to Moses and Moses' attentiveness to God there's something about to happen.

Do not come any closer God said take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground and then he said I am the God of your father which is remarkable for two reasons first of all normally God says I'm the God of your fathers the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob that's how God normally identifies himself in cases like this but this time it's singular I am the God of your father so Moses the man with three fathers has got to be on high alert oh yeah which one which father are you the God of tell me am I a father who is my father and God follows this immediately with the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob and what I love about this is that God is not only identifying himself as Yahweh the God who made a covenant with Abraham to bless him and multiply him and bring him into the land and make him be a blessing to all nations not only is he that God but it's at the same time defining who Moses is he belongs in that covenant people and the the God of his father is that God the God Yahweh so he's grown up in an Egyptian context where there's lots of deities lots of temples lots of priests worshiping these different deities and in his first encounter with God he finds out simultaneously who God is and who he is and that settles things for him going forward his hybrid identity gets resolved and I think this is how it works actually for all of us that when we come to fully encounter the God of the Bible Yahweh who revealed himself in Jesus as we come to know Yahweh we come to know ourselves and there's no real way to know who we are outside of knowing who God is who who God has created us to be and who he's called us to be and so in the next session we're going to work our way through his commissioning at Mount Sinai there's lots of other rich lessons here for us to learn but I just wanted to focus here on Moses identity and how that identity gets resolved at Mount Sinai as Moses encounters God do you have any questions before we move on so you talked about the theme of striking how Moses struck the Egyptian and how God strikes the Egyptians to to get him out is there any connection between that and Moses striking the rock because it seems like when he strikes people he gets in trouble I think it is the same word actually yeah that's a great observation so that's in the book of Numbers and of course Moses Moses strikes a rock in the wilderness in Exodus and it's okay but when he strikes it in Numbers it's not okay and he actually loses his chance to go into the land because of that there it seems like it seems like Moses is kind of taking for himself some of the credit for the sign that God is about to do shall we bring rock water out of this rock for you he's he's like including himself with the divine identity and God's like no that's not how this works you need to give me glory if you don't give me glory then you're out of the picture but I do think it's the same word and there's so many word plays like this throughout Exodus where where the things that the Egyptians are doing are then what God does to them the punishment will fit the crime over and over again and so here we have Egyptians striking and God's going to strike them back it's really striking any other questions so Moses was raised in the household of Pharaoh but then in order for him to be prepared to lead the people of Israel and he had to go through 40 years as being a shepherd can you talk about the significance of that yeah it's so fascinating uh the way God prepares Moses for the job that he's going to do because it's if we do the math he was probably about 40 when he left Egypt and then spends 40 years in the wilderness and then goes back and then spends 40 years in the wilderness with the people so he is really imminently prepared he would have had the best training in Egypt although we're not told about it in the book of Exodus he would have learned to read and write hieroglyphics he would have he would have been familiar with pharaoh's policies we don't know exactly where he fits in the royal family and whether this daughter of pharaoh would have was she married was she not married how many daughters were there did she have any kind of political or royal role I found a fascinating thing out in let me say this again I discovered something fascinating as I was researching uh the structure of pharaoh's regime that normally succession passed from when a pharaoh died it would go to his oldest son and the oldest son would normally then be married to the oldest daughter so that they would keep the purity of the pharaonic line and so although daughter of pharaoh is not in line to become pharaoh she could very well be in line to become the wife of pharaoh even if that's her brother that's normally how they would um in some periods of Egyptian history that's how they handled it so in all that to say we don't know anything about Moses' relationship to pharaoh as he's growing up whether he was in the same palace whether they had much interaction there could have been dozens of other children in the household that pharaoh might not have had a relationship with um but he at least is in that world and so he knows the language and culture and he knows the expectations but then he also spends as you said 40 years in the wilderness figuring out where to find water and how to find food and how to how to keep sheep alive he he would have gotten to know the wilderness really well um so he does seem to be ideally qualified to lead the people through the wilderness and as we'll see in the next session it's interesting that when he expresses that he doesn't feel qualified God doesn't list all these things and say oh but look I've prepared you in all these ways he just says I will be with you which is really all that matters but Moses does have the experience needed for the for the job.