Lesson 16 – The Birth of Moses

o        A little review –

1.     Without opening your Bibles; how many sons of Jacob can you remember?

2.     How many creation stories are there in Genesis?

3.     How many versions of the Noah’s Ark story are there combined into the Genesis account?

4.     How did Jacob’s family come to end up in Egypt?

o        Exodus 1:7 jumps several centuries from Joseph’s time to Moses time; do you think that the family line of Jacob was kept pure or would intermarriage have created a whole new family?

o        The “Bible Background” closes with a note on the major role that women play in today’s scripture.  In today’s story, women repeatedly counteract the forces of death and work to ensure life. 
How many women are involved in this?
What do they do?
Moses uses force to counteract violence.
How do the women try to defeat it?

o        Today’s story makes an interesting contrast with a couple of stories about Sarah and her Egyptian slave Hagar (Genesis 16 and 21:8-20). Thinking that she herself is too old to have a child, Sarah asks Abraham to father a child with Hagar.  But then the Hebrew woman grows jealous and afflicts the Egyptian slave, who escapes into the wilderness and has a conversation with God at a well.  Hagar returns to Sarah, but later after Isaac is born Sarah again drives the Egyptian and her child (Ishmael) into the wilderness where God saves them.


Compare the stories.

Genesis                                            Exodus
Hebrews oppress Egyptian                     Egyptian oppresses Hebrews
Egyptian meets God in wilderness            Hebrews go to meet God in wilderness
Women become enemies over baby         Women band together to save baby

Where are Hagar and Sarah – women set against one another – in today’s world? 
Where are today’s women of Exodus – refusing to kill, cooperating to save lives? 
How are men helping them?

  • Memory verse: Hebrews 11:23
  • By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

 

Bible Background (taken from Journey through the Bible, Christian Board of Publications, 1995, p. 54)

The story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has been marked by relatively little violence. There are struggles, there is betrayal, and there are human tragedies and misdeeds, but on the whole, murder and other violent acts have little place in the story of Israel's beginnings.

Al1 that changes with the opening of the book of Exodus. The entire generation of Jacob and his sons and daughters has now died, and their descendants have prospered and grown very numerous in the land of Egypt. Then there comes a Pharaoh to the throne of Egypt who has no recollection of Joseph and what he did for the state. This Pharaoh is fearful that these Israelites will soon outnumber the Egyptians and join the enemies of Egypt in the event of war. The Israelites are pressed into slave like labor in Pharaoh's supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, in the eastern delta region. The oppression begins, but the people continue to grow in numbers despite the oppression.

Who was this Pharaoh? Although a good deal is known about Egyptian history during the period of the Late Kingdom (about. 1500 B.C.E. to shortly after 1200 B.C.E.), we still do not know with any certainty who this Pharaoh was. Egyptian records give no clues. The two most often proposed periods for the entrance of the Israelites into the land of Canaan are the last half of the fifteenth century B.C.E. and the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. The first fits best the biblical dating. In Exodus 12:40-41, we are told that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, and in 1 Kings 6:1 we learn that Solomon began to build the temple in Jerusalem 480 years after the departure from Egypt. Solomon's work on the temple belongs to about the middle of the tenth century B.C.E., which would place Joshua's entrance into Canaan at about 1400 B.C.E. and the Exodus from Egypt forty years earlier.

But archaeological evidence shows that a number of cities in Canaan were destroyed toward the end of the thirteenth century. That, of course, does not prove that it was the Israelites who destroyed the cities. However, the earliest non-biblical inscription that refers to the people of Israel also comes from around the same period, about 1220 B.C.E. This is an Egyptian reference, listing the Israelites as a distinct people in the Palestine region.

That evidence seems to be the more reliable. Authorities often conclude, therefore, that the Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites was Seti 1(1319-1301 B.C.E.), and the Pharaoh who ruled at the time the Israelites actually left Egypt was Ramses II (1301-1234 B.C.E.).

But the date is not the most important point. The story tells of Moses' entering the world at a time of horrible and senseless violence. Pharaoh even goes against his own interests by working his slaves to death and then ordering that all male children be killed at birth. The midwives to whom Pharaoh gives this instruction are God-fearing women, we are told. The midwives trick Pharaoh into believing that they cannot carry out his orders, because the Hebrew women bear their children without the need of a midwife. Actually, they simply refuse to carry out Pharaoh's orders.

Moses is born in this setting. His mother simply refuses to have him put to death. She makes a basket for him and places him in the water at the shore of the Nile river, hoping for his adoption by some Egyptian family. Moses' older sister Miriam watches at a distance. And as we know, Pharaoh's daughter comes to the river to bathe, sees the child, and adopts him, taking him to the palace and also enlisting his mother to be his wet nurse and care for the baby's needs.

The story passes in silence the years of Moses' growing up, his education, and what sort of young man he was. We meet him next when he sees an act of violence and cannot help but intervene to stop it. The Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew had to be stopped. Moses struck him down, first looking around to see if anyone was watching. When Moses saw that he had killed the cruel Egyptian, he buried him in the sand. Again, the very next day, Moses intervened to stop a violent fight between two Hebrews. As he did so, one of them indicated that Moses' killing of the Egyptian was being talked about, so he left Egypt, running for his life into the wilderness to the east and south of the delta region.

Moses arrives in the land of Midian, somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula, and stops by a well. There too he intervenes to prevent cruel shepherds from driving away the women who also wished to water their flocks. Moses even watered the flocks for the women, something quite unusual in that time. And the father of the girls he helped, who was priest of Midian, invited Moses in, gave him a place to live, and arranged for Moses to marry one of his daughters.

One remarkable fact stands out in these stories: women are at the heart of the events: the midwives, Moses' mother and sister, Pharaoh's daughter, and later on (Exodus 4:2~26), Moses' wife Zipporah. The women take risks, show great courage, and are central to the future of the people of God.

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 Scripture

(Exodus 1) These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5The total number of people born to Jacob was seventy. Joseph was already in Egypt. 6Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. 7But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

8Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." 11Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

15The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16"When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live." 17But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?" 19The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them." 20So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."

(Exodus 2) Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. 2The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. 5The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, "This must be one of the Hebrews' children," she said. 7Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" 8Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Yes." So the girl went and called the child's mother. 9Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, "because," she said, "I drew him out of the water."

11One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsfolk. 12He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13When he went out the next day, he saw two Hebrews fighting; and he said to the one who was in the wrong, "Why do you strike your fellow Hebrew?" 14He answered, "Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid and thought, "Surely the thing is known." 15When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh.

He settled in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well. 16The priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17But some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up and came to their defense and watered their flock. 18When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, "How is it that you have come back so soon today?" 19They said, "An Egyptian helped us against the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock." 20He said to his daughters, "Where is he? Why did you leave the man? Invite him to break bread." 21Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. 22She bore a son, and he named him Gershom; for he said, "I have been an alien residing in a foreign land." 23After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. 24God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 25God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.

 

 

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MIDIANITE also called Ishmaelite, in the Old Testament, member of a group of nomadic tribes related to the Israelites and most likely living east of the Gulf of Aqaba in the northwestern regions of the Arabian Desert. They engaged in pastoral pursuits, caravan trading, and banditry, and their main contacts with the Israelites were from the period of the Exodus (13th century BC) through the period of the judges (12th-11th century BC). According to the Book of Judges, the Israelite chieftain Gideon drove the Midianites into western Palestine, after which they largely disappear from the biblical narrative.

According to the Book of Genesis, the Midianites were descended from Midian, who was the son of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham by the latter's second wife, Keturah. Jethro, priest-leader of the Midianite subtribe known as the Kenites, and his daughter Zipporah (a wife of Moses), influenced early Hebrew thought: it was Yahweh, the lord of the Midianites, who was revealed to Moses as the God of the Hebrews. Circumcision was practiced by the Midianites before the Israelites.

 

 

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