CHAPTER XI
Moses
Exodus - Numbers
Agnes M. Lawson
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The Colorado College of Divine
Science
Denver, 1920.
Genesis, the
book of beginnings, is the history of the
origin of the Hebrew people. It deals
with the family and the dignified
patriarchal form of government. Exodus is
the organization of those various
families into one united nation; their
departure from Egypt; and the
codification of the necessary laws for
their government. The oldest code of laws
in the Bible is the Book of the Covenant,
which is from the nineteenth to the
twenty-fourth chapters of Exodus. These
are by many conceded to be of Mosaic
origin. Since Genesis was rewritten at
least a thousand years later, its
historical value is by no means as
verifiable as Exodus.
The Hyksos
kings were overthrown and the native
dynasty again came into power. The
Pharaoh of the oppression is generally
supposed to be Rameses II and the Pharaoh
of the exodus his son and successor
Menephtah, who began his reign about 1300
B.C. This coincides with the statement:
“There arose up a new king which
knew not Joseph.” Naturally those
Egyptian monarchs feared this great
nation which under the patronage of
preceding kings had grown to very
formidable proportions within their
borders, and would look with disfavor on
anything Asiatic. So all possible means
to check their growth and render them
powerless by reducing them to slavery
became the policy of the Egyptian
Pharaohs.
Great men
are the result of the needs of their age.
They embody the composite consciousness
of their race and are the supply to the
national demand. A national need was
never greater than this one; for one of
the outstanding characters of all time is
Moses.
Again the
Call. It came to Abraham to move from
Chaldea with his family. It comes to
Moses to move from Egypt with his nation.
The task confronting him is not only the
unwillingness of Pharaoh to let go of
those whom he had made into profitable
slaves, but also to stimulate to open
rebellion this nation which had lost its
initiative under the hardships of its
taskmasters. It required extraordinary
genius to meet this condition; which
Moses possessed with self-abnegation and
the courage of his own convictions.
Moses was
singularly equipped for his great work
through his birth and education. It is
too strange not to be true, for no flight
of the human imagination ever equals the
great truths that actually happen in a
world that rests under the eternal shadow
of the Almighty. The thread of the
narrative of Moses’ history is lost
within much statement of law in Exodus
and Numbers. Professor Moulton in the
“Modern Reader’s Bible”
enables us to follow the story of his
life easily, by using smaller type for
the legal enactments.
Biography is
always valuable, lives of great men are
inseparable from history, and as
Longfellow tells us, remind us that we
can make our lives sublime. Hebrew
biography and history are never mere
chronicles of events. They are
interpretations of God in His dealings
with His people. Historic accuracy of
time or events is not essentially the
purpose of these writers, but to tell how
God guided, watched over, and supplied
the every need of this nation, the primal
reason for all of their literature.
The life of
Moses is divided into three forties.
Since the Hebrew always wrote under
numerical symbols, the question is--are
those figures symbolic of perfect time,
four being the number of perfection, or
is there in the mathematical accuracy of
the universe a method which works out
perfectly to those who live closely under
its laws? Moses stands as a synonym for
law, the type of perfect manhood on the
human plane. Scientists tell us that
normal length for all animal life is five
times its maturity. Counting man’s
maturity from the early twenties, one
hundred and twenty years is the natural
span of man’s life, and we are told
that Moses reached this age with his
natural forces not abated. The soul never
matures, for it is not under what we call
natural law; it knows no time, no space,
no material walls. In the life of Jesus
we see natural law transcended, so we
have come to see that natural law is but
human belief, and the only law is the
spiritual.
Great lives
are the natural lives; the little,
contracted life has not allowed itself to
expand. In great men God has been
permitted to have the right of way and
expansion is the result. The book of
Exodus fairly sings of the Presence.
Moses was born under the conviction of
the saving Power. The oppression had
reached its harshest point, the boy
babies were all to be slain, the race to
be exterminated. His mother determined to
save her child. He can be safe only under
royal favor, and with the wisdom of the
serpenct and the harmlessness of the dove
she laid her plans. What woman could
resist her beautiful babe? The daughter
of Pharaoh must see him. The princess
proved herself to be a true woman, the
child was saved, and she bestowed on him
the Egyptian name Moses.
Nursed by
his own mother, educated in the palace of
the Pharaoh, the man reached his fortieth
year. Two roads lay before him--the royal
road to wealth, position, power. Over
against this the championship of a race
oppressed and powerless--an enslaved
people. This man nurtured at the breast
of his Hebrew mother, never hesitated,
but chose that road which forever closed
the royal palace to him.
His sympathy
for the Hebrews led to his killing one of
their taskmasters, and he must flee the
country. He found refuge with the Midian
priest, Jethro, married his daughter
Zipporah, and tended the flocks of his
father-in-law. He was taught of this
Midianite priest, and the religion which
we call Judaism emanated from Jethro, who
was always a valued friend and adviser of
Moses.
Here in the
land of Midian, near Mt. Horeb, the
Cosmic Vision came to Moses, and this
benign Presence remained throughout the
life of the man. We find Moses arguing
with it of his own unworthiness to
accomplish the tremendous task of gaining
the consent of Pharaoh to lead his people
out of the dominion of Egypt. Then we see
the gradual breaking down of his own
mental limitations, for whoever
accomplished a big work in this way had
ever failed to break through his limiting
belief of himself and rise into the
Infinite Belief in him?
“Who
has more obedience than I, masters
me,” Emerson tells us. Moses found
the One to whom he was to render
obedience. Jacob, the self seeker, could
not get the name, which was so
graciously given to Moses, the self
eliminator. I AM WHAT I AM is the
comprehensive rendering of this by modern
scholarship. I am what I am, perfect,
eternal, spiritual. To Me the temporal
and material are non-existent. Duality,
time, space, weight are not in my Mind.
Sin, sickness, sorrow and death are but
inventions of human thought: I AM WHAT I
AM.
Moses was
now eighty years of age and his work was
just commencing. A great work requires
great preparation. He presented himself
before Pharaoh, but this king is more
subtle than his predecessor; the other
would exterminate the race, this one had
made of them a source of income and he
hardened his heart and would not let them
go. It is the will of Jehovah, however,
that the people go, and who yet has
defied that Will and lived?
How ignorant
we are still about natural elements and
conditions? How far reaching is
man’s control of these elements?
Jesus, we are sure would say, Absolute.
Did he not control the winds and the
waves? All the plagues of Egypt were but
intensified conditions to which that
country which has been called “The
gift of the Nile” was subject. The
reddish color of the Nile, owing to the
debris of vegetable and animal
defilement; the locusts, the frogs, the
cattle diseases, the storm of hail, all
had been known before and have been
since. “All nature is on the side
of the one who would rise” and
right royally she rallied to the aid of
the Israelite at this time.
From this
time dates the Passover, for did not
Jehovah pass over the houses of the
Hebrews and slay only the first born of
the Egyptians? They are free now, and the
third division of the life of Moses
commences. The final culmination of the
deliverance comes to us in the Song of
Moses and Miriam, his sister: “I
will sing unto the Lord, for he hath
triumphed gloriously.”
It is not in
these great heroic movements that the
accurate measure of man’s stature
can be taken; but in the sustained
strength which does not yield when the
stimulated interest which comes with a
movement into new conditions is gone, and
the long, slow process of reconstruction
commences. A chain is only as strong as
its weakest link, but the character of
Moses yields not under any pressure. He
fills “the measure of the stature
of man.” The people whom he led
from Egypt had lost their virility and
initiative in serfdom. Not until these
have passed away, and a new generation is
born and reared in freedom and under his
tutelage, can they move forward and take
the land promised to their fathers. Moses
never fails either in heroic action or in
the long tedious years in which he must
settle their petty disputes, meet their
murmurings and ingratitude, and supply
their needs both physical and
spiritual.
Exodus and
Numbers are books of miracles because
they are books of the Presence. The water
never fails, and the herb which sweetens
the bitter water is at hand; where there
is no water the barren rock is made to
flow. The manna with its lessons
stimulating industry and rebuking
covetousness fell as needed. For his
daily bread man must work, nor is he
entitled to more recompense than that his
daily needs be supplied. When we gather
more, is it not an abomination in the
house? Storehouses may be full of the
wisdom of man, but Paul tells us,
“The wisdom of man is foolishness
unto God.” The guidance is
unmistakable; the cloud by day, the
pillar of fire by night; when to go
forward, when to stand still, always
clear.
The life of
Egypt under foreign oppression, is the
symbol of man under the hard taskmasters
of sensuality, pride and avarice. The
deliverance under Moses is the freedom
man gains from these taskmasters as he
learns the law of life; for we can never
come under Grace except we first know the
law. Law must be known in order to be
fulfilled, as we must know the law of
music before we make music. In the desert
is the discipline and education which
enable us to come into the promised land
of our own creative power. Step by step,
from bondage to freedom, can we trace the
way for every living soul. We too,
unconscious of the presence, see the
cloud and the pillar of fire. We, too, in
invoking this Power, have had the manna
fall, and the rock gush forth its living
water. We too, in using our creative
power selfishly, have had the loathsome
stench come into our nostrils because of
it.
Moses is
composite man. He is father, mother,
sister, brother, friend, judge,
sustainer, and supplier to his people.
His great mind can harbor no jealousies.
Jealousy is always the sin of the little
mind, in fact it is what constitutes
littleness; for it is the belief that
another has a better endowment than
one’s self. It chokes out the
passage of the inheritance that belongs
to all equally. Moses wants no monopoly
of God’s favors. “Enviest
thou for my sake?” he says to
Joshua. “Would God that all the
Lord’s people were prophets and the
Lord would put his Spirit upon
them.” The great soul does not want
leadership; but the companionship of
equal souls that will be a stimulus to
better endeavor.
On tablets
of stone stand the great commandments of
Moses. To break them is to break
ourselves. They are laws which are
written in the very constitution of the
universe. It is the first half of the
ladder that we must climb as we ascend
Godward. Beyond it lies spiritual law,
but there is no means under heaven
whereby we may come to that second law
save as we fulfill the first.
Moses lived
under the gracious Presence, and it
focused its rays in his heart and they
radiated from thence to the nation. The
Christian revelation could never have
been made had not this great revelation
preceded it. But he who lived under the
shadow of the Law, hid in the cleft of
the rocks, can only see the “back
parts” of God. That which is
“existent behind all law, which
made them and, lo, they are,” can
be revealed only to one greater than
Moses.
Gleaming
behind the Saviour of men will forever
loom the great figure of him who
thundered the law from Sinai. He whose
reward was Pisgah’s heights from
whence he saw the promised land afar, and
in Spirit perceived the people whom he
loved better than he loved himself pass
over into safety, laid the foundation of
true religion broad in the roots of
reality.
What matters
what happens to the individual if his
life has aided the race to go forward?
Great souls only ask the privilege of
serving, and of being conscious that
their lives have increased the leverage
which raises the race to a broader vista
and its consequent greater expression.
Across the centuries the gracious
benediction falls upon us and, loving and
appreciating the inspirer of it, we too,
may reflect in our faces that shining
which was in his when, “He wist not
that the skin of his face
shone.”
The Lord bless thee, and keep
thee;
The Lord make his face to shine
upon
thee, and be gracious unto thee;
The Lord lift up his countenance
upon
thee, and give thee peace.
* * * * *
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