The story of Moses
The story of Moses is against the script of every hero story known in the ancient world, but it is a success story.
The story is only two chapters long in the Bible and is worth reading in advance. It is first the story of keeping the Israelites small to avoid a second Hyksos and then the story of Moses.
The fight against a second Hyksos
The Pharaoh does everything to prevent the Israelites from becoming a great people, but whatever he does, he fails. It is a kind of parody.
| Pharaos view | Reality |
|---|---|
| The Pharaoh sees himself as representative of the gods. | He is not a key character in the story. He is not even mentioned by name. He is treated like a background actor, like the gods he represents — none of them are mentioned by name.But the main heroes are named and they are mostly women and all non-Egyptians (Schifra and Pua, the names of the midwives are Semitic). |
| Pharaoh make the Israelite slave work so hard that they die. | The people increase in number more and more and finally they are loaded with riches when they leave Egypt. They are finally not only free but also restored in their dignity. |
| The midwives are supposed to kill the newborn babies. | They refuse to the Pharaoh (as Asian foreigners) and are not punished but blessed by God with children. |
| Newborn babies should be thrown into the Nile. | Moses is put into the Nile in a basket, which is the same word as Noah’s Ark, he is saved. |
| Moses is the key in the story and the one who will bring down the Pharaoh. | He is raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter and his mother is paid to raise him. |
The story of Moses
The story of Moses is the complete opposite of a hero story in ancient times. I will write the normal story in bold and the Moses story below it in italics.
| Normal hero story | Moses story |
|---|---|
| The story begins when the hero is abandoned as a baby (Hercules, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, Cyros, …). | Moses was hidden by his loving mother and monitors carefully watched until he is in good hands. |
| The finder of the child is usually of low status. | Moses was raised by the Pharaoh’s daughter and nursed by his own mother. |
| The identity of the child is unknown and is not revealed until the end. | Moses’ identity is known from the very beginning by Pharaoh’s daughter. |
| The discovery of his true identity is the turning point and gives him the status he deserves. | Moses’ true identity gets him into trouble and he has to run away to survive. |
| The reason for the story is to show the hero’s claim to power. | The story does not show Moses claim, but God’s provision and control. |
The further story of Moses
The next episode for him is to go into the desert for 40 years and learn to be a shepherd. This is a key to becoming a good leader like Jesus later and not a bad leader like the leaders of Israel. Many key figures in the Bible were shepherds (Abraham, Isaac, Jakob, David, Jesus, “Ps. 23”)
Perhaps this is to learn to go from an uncontrolled temperament to being the most humble man on earth, being able to remain calm and compassionate in difficult situations.
Moses does not look much of hero material.
He should rescue the people of Israel due to the covenant that God has with his people, but he misses out that he forgot to circumcise his son (which was the only condition of the covenant on his side) and his non Israelite wife needed to rescue him.
One thing he needed to learn to trust God: One example he learns this is when he throws his staff to the ground which turns into snake and he should grab it at the tail (every child know you need to catch behind the head or the snake bites you).
At the end all works out because the real hero of the story is no Moses but God.