THE SITUATION GREW WORSE AND WORSE AND THERE SEEMED LITTLE HOPE THAT THINGS WOULD IMPROVE,WHEN MOSES,A VERY WISE LEADER,DECIDED TO TAKE HIS PEOPLE AWAY FROM A LAND WHERE THEY WERE MERELY “FOREIGNERS”AND TO LEAD THEM TO A NEW HOME WHERE THEY COULD FOUND A STATE OF THEIR OWN
In the fourteenth century before the birth of Christ,when Rameses the Great ruled in the valley of the Nile,the relations between the Egyptians and the Jews had reached a point where an open conflict could no longer be avoided.
The welcome guests of a few hundred years before were now being degraded in every possible way.The kings of Egypt had always been fond of constructing large palaces and public buildings.Pyramids were no longer in fashion.The last one had been built two thousand years before.But there were roads and barracks and dykes to be made and there was a constant demand for workmen on the royal estates.This labour was not very well paid.The Egyptians therefore shunned it as much as possible.Rather than exert themselves,they forced the Jews to do the disagreeable jobs.
Even so,a good many Jews,who were engaged in trade,managed to maintain themselves in the cities.This was a cause of great envy to the Egyptian inhabitants because they could not compete with the foreigners.They went to the King and asked that all the Jews be exterminated.This could not very well be done.But Pharaoh,in his love for his subjects,tried to solve the problem in a different way.
He gave orders that all Jewish babies who happened to be boys should be killed.It was a simple remedy,but a very cruel one.
Now it happened that a man,called Amram,and his wife (whose name was Jochebed)had two children.One was a boy,by the name of Aaron,and the other was a girl,Miriam.When a third child (a boy)was born to them,they decided to save it at all cost.
For three months they hid little Moses in their house with such care that officers of the King could not find him.
But then the neighbours began to talk,and some one had heard the baby cry,and it was no longer safe to have the child in the house.
So Jochebed took her son and she went to the banks of the Nile and she wove a little basket,and she made the sides watertight with clay and she placed the boy inside this crude cradle and let him go forth into the wide world,all alone.
The improvised vessel did not go very far.There was little current.The stream was shallow,and soon the tender craft was caught by the reeds which grew along the shores in such great quantities.By great good luck,the daughter of the King had come to this exact spot to take a swim.Her ladies-in-waiting found the strange bundle and fished it out of the water.A child of four months is usually very appealing.Pharaoh's daughter decided to keep it.But as she knew very little about babies,she asked that a nurse be sent for.
Miriam,the sister,had watched this episode from nearby.She now came forward,and said that she knew just the right nurse for a boy of that age.She ran home and got her mother.
In this way,one Jewish child at least escaped the general massacre and was educated in splendour in the royal palace,under the secret guardianship of his own mother.
This indeed was a strange fate for one who had been condemned to die.While his older brother had to work in the brickyard,and was beaten by the foreman if he slackened in his labours,Moses went about in fine garments and lived like a young gentleman.
But way down deep in his heart,he felt himself a Jew.And one day,when an Egyptian was beating up a harmless old man who belonged to the tribe of Abraham,Moses interfered.He went further.He hit the Egyptian and he hit him just a trifle too hard.The Egyptian fell down dead and Moses ran the risk of immediate execution if the deed should become known.
It did not remain a secret for very long.
Shortly afterwards,when Moses went out into the streets,he found two Jews quarrelling with each other.He told them to stop.One of them jeered at the peacemaker.“Who made you our master?”he asked.“Do you want to kill us too,as you killed that Egyptian the other day?”
The news travelled fast.Orders were given by Pharaoh that Moses be taken prisoner and hanged.
Moses was warned.He was a wise young man.He fled.
Afterwards,this proved an excellent thing.If Moses had stayed in Egypt,even if he had escaped prison,he might have become completely Egyptianised.Instead,the boy who had been the adopted son of the King's daughter was now a poor exile—a fugitive from justice in a foreign land.
He wandered through the desert which surrounds the Red Sea until he came to a well.Just then the daughters of Jethro,a priest who lived nearby,were bringing their flocks to be watered.At night,all shepherds tried to give their animals to drink at the same time.As a result,they often came to blows.This particular evening,one of the shepherds tried to push himself ahead of the daughters of Jethro.Moses,with his usual courage,came to the assistance of the girls.They,in turn,invited him for supper at their father's house.
In this way,Moses met Jethro and became a shepherd,as Abraham,Isaac and Jacob had been before him.He married Zipporah,one of the daughters of Jethro,and he lived the simple life of all the other desert folk.
In the solitude of the sandy waste,he recognised his true mission in life.His people had strayed away from the true principles which had guarded their ancestors through so many dangers.They had forgotten Jehovah—their God.They were fast losing that belief in a great national future which had inspired their fathers and grandfathers.In short,they had reached a point where city life and luxury (together with ever greater poverty)were threatening to destroy them as an individual and independent race of men.
Moses decided to be the saviour of his own people.He came back to a belief in the almighty power of Jehovah.
