MOSES, GOD'S SPOKESMAN, Who Gave Us Laws to Live By

Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

   
Back in about 1400 BCE in Egypt, there lived a Pharaoh who had become paranoid about his position.  He thought people were out to kill him and take over his royal throne as leader of his empire.  He just knew that someone who was about to be born would be this person, so he ordered that  all the Israelite boy babies were to be killed.  The Israelites had entered his land with Israel's group of 70, and within about 40 years had multiplied to at least 1,000, a frightening number to  his ancestor who took them all as slaves, setting them to work building their storage cities.
                                                                   

One Israelite infant boy was discovered in a basket on the Nile where his mother, Jochebed, wife of Amram,  had placed him in safety away from the killers of babies, to be discovered by the Pharaoh's own daughter! She might have even been Hatshepsut, a future female pharaoh.   She gave him the Egyptian name of Monios-meaning one drawn from water, which in Hebrew is Moshe or Moses.  Mirium, Moshe's older sister, was there to see the discovery, and offered her mother as a wet nurse for the princess to use.   The princess tended for him in her personal chambers with her maids and announced to her father that he was hers, and so he grew up in the royal court as a prince.
                                                                         

Different timeline with Moses born  1446 BCE
            Jewish timeline with Moses born   1391  BCE           

The Israelites worked with other slaves, though lived in quarters marked off for them, as they were distinguished from others by their Hebrew language, something many groups of people in the surrounding area also spoke.  Unknown to them at the time, the Israelites carried a J1 haplogroup of genes and had picked up people in their family unit from these other slaves of E, G, R, Q, perhaps others as well.  They worked building the 2 storage cities, Pithom and Raamses, but after that were given the hardest of jobs to do, and still they multiplied.

The day came when 80 year old Moses, after having left Egypt  50 years earlier, was united with his slave brother, Aaron at age 83, carrier of J1's haplogroup.  Moses  met with the present Pharaoh, a descendant of the one he lived under as a child, and demanded the release of all the slaves.  His argument was productive and he led them out of Egypt, all 603,550 of anxious slaves ready for freedom after their ancestor's history of  Egyptian life  for the past 400 years, most of which was spent in slavery.  As an Egyptian, Moses knew to take a census of the people before they left and when they arrived.
                                                                       

The Pharaoh realized all his labor force was gone and sent soldiers after them to bring them back.  Moses had to part the sea for them all to escape. The soldiers chasing after them drowned and the people cheered only to be chastised by Moses.  Through this, we learn that even enemies are the children of G-d and their lives are precious, too.  We are never to cheer about their deaths.
                                                                         
Shortly after they were well on their way with Canaan as their target for their new homeland, a place that Moses and Aaron's ancestor, Jacob-Israel, had come from, Moses started to share the message with his followers  he had been receiving with G-d.  It was Abraham who had realized there was only one G-d in the universe, and these slaves had been told in each generation by their fathers and mothers of this conclusion.  Moses had not been brought up with this belief by his adopted Egyptian mother, but he had been nursed by his own birth mother who had been summoned to do the job for the princess.   She must have had the opportunity to share some of his history with him in his early years after her wet nurse period.  Perhaps his adopted mother was still of the opinion of one G-d, the sun god of Pharaoh Akhenaten.
                                                                       

 For Moses had been selected to receive HIS messages in several strange situations.  In one, Moses saw a bush burning but noticed it wasn't burning down, yet the light continued, and then he heard a voice coming from it, said to have been G-d's angel.  It was like a hallucination, but was very real to him. (Exod.3:24). Then G-d had appeared to him.
                                                                             

His communications with G-d had started when he received one while in Midian where he had fled to when younger to return to Egypt and lead out his people.  He had left Egypt after witnessing a slave driver whipping a slave and his anger over it caused him to strike the slave driver down, killing him accidentally.
                                                                             

Even in Egypt in this period of time, he knew he was in the wrong and in trouble, so he had fled to Midian and there continued his life as a shepherd, marrying Zipporah, the daughter of the local priest, Jethro and fathering 2 sons, Gerson and Eliezer. As it happened, Moses (b:1391 BCE-d: 1271 BCE) was the gggggrandson of Abraham, from the tribe of Levi. His line had been Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kohath, Amram and Moses.   Jacob had had 12 sons, and Levi was his 3rd son by Leah.   Jacob's  4th son, Judah, also son of Leah,  would become the gggrandfather of King David of Israel (b: 1010 BCE-970 BCE). His line started with Judah, Boaz, Obed, Jesse and then David.  In other words, King David was the ggggggrandson of Abraham. 
                                                                   

The paranoid pharaoh who ordered all boy babies to be killed could have been Akhenaten, but was never named in the Torah.  Akhenaten lived at about this very period, 1400 -1334 BCE.  He is the one who changed Egypt's religion to believe in one G-d, which was the sun.  When he died, his son, king Tut took over and brought back their ancient beliefs.
                                                                   

                                                                 Newest theory

Or was Ramses the Pharaoh

Akhenaten's son, King Tut

The dynasty of the pharaohs was a long one, started in Egyptian records in 3150 BCE.  It was the way of royalty to practice incest.  The king and queen were siblings.
                                                                                   

Moses took 40 years to reach Canaan, which caused the older Israelites to die off and younger ones to become adults, strong with minds unclouded with the fears of slavery.  During this period Moses had ample time to share with the multitude the messages he was receiving as to how they were to live from then on. G-d had told him to go there;  the land of milk and honey, of the Canaanite, Hittite, Amorite, Perizzite, Hivvite, and Jebusite,  Joshua, son of Nun of the tribe of Ephraim, was one of Moses's spies who didn't freak out when he saw that the land was populated by  some very tall and large people!
                                                                                 

The 3,550 people became 1,820 less by the last census 40 years later and were 601,730 people to get to the land of milk and honey.  They would have been a huge problem to feed on such a trip, but were able to pick manna each day to live on from the fields, supplied by G-d, who told Moses his name near the burning bush.  It must have sounded like an exhaling breath, as we don't say it, being it was written down as Aleph  Hay  Yud  Hay (AHYH).   This would be read backwards, from right to left.  Today we say, HaShem-translated from the Hebrew as The Name.
                                                                                         

He had the experience to climb Mt. Sinai and receive the 10 Commandments that were infused in rock tablets, only to climb down the mountain and see the people practicing Egyptian religious rituals with a golden calf they had created in his absence, wildly dancing around it. Aaron was not able to stop them. 

He was so angry he threw down the tablets, feeling they were undeserving of G-d's message, only to rescind and rewrite them in another set of tablets.
                                                                     

Moses brought us 613 laws other than the 10 Commandments to live by.  Jews read them all in the Torah, which are the 5 Books of Moses, written by Moses.  They are read along with other writings and completed every year, starting all over again the next year.  Moses was an educated prince, and would have learned many languages in his Egyptian royal schooling.  All the people he was with on the Exodus were illiterate descendants of slaves, never having been taught the writing of the period.  It is a detailed account of our history from Genesis and the beginnings of the world to the end of the Exodus including a summary of what he had taught them.  The 5 books are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.  After walking or riding from age 80 for 40 years to Canaan, Moses was not allowed by G-d to enter the land, for he had once exhibited a temper in striking a rock to receive water and that wasn't allowed.  It was not showing trust in his one G-d in front of his people.  He is to be remembered as our greatest prophet.  He died in an unknown place, for he didn't want people to worship him but know he was only a man, a man with some amazing powers for a while, that is. He had chosen Joshua to take over his position.   We do not ever celebrate his birthday like we do with our nation's few special presidents.  We do, however, try to follow and practice all the laws he brought us and try to be the shining example to the world of how to treat others of this world.  One of our greatest gifts was understanding that we are to not treat others in a manner we wouldn't want to be treated.  It's called THE GOLDEN RULE.  I'm proud to be a member of people like this.
                                                                           

All was almost lost to us when the Syrian Greeks occupied Jerusalem and filled the temple with their statue of Zeus/Jupiter. Jews were forced to bow to it under penalty of death.  Antiochus IV (175-163 BCE) , their leader, proclaimed himself as G-d.   Our Judeans fought back and restored the Temple, cleaning it out from their leavings and restored the eternal light with a drop of special sacred oil left in a lone jar which our Chanukiah reminds us about.  Pictured here are the sufganiot, donuts fried in oil to remind us of the miracle of a drop lasting for the 8 days necessary to send a runner to the next town to get another jar or two of oil for the Temple.  Potato latkas, grated potato pancakes fried in oil, are the main entree during this holiday.
                                                                                   

This has been our history; with someone always trying to extinguish our light to the world.  It happened in Queen Esther's day in Persia when Haman, descendant of the Amaleks,  tried to have all the Jews in the world killed, and then again in 1939-1945 by the Nazis of Germany by Hitler.  Now it's again Persia, this time renamed as Iran, who has broadcast their intentions of killing all Jews.  Being the flashlight in a darkened world through jealousy and greed  has caused us to become the scapegoats of the world instead, though we can hope that somehow the goodness was helped to fruition through the simple messages from Moses.

Resource: Tanakh, Stone Edition
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.ancient.eu/timeline/pharaoh/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-date-1440bc.htm---Thutmoses III
edited: on distance from Abraham