People of the Bible

Moses

Leaders of Israel · Around 1300 BC (traditional) · Appears in Exodus through Deuteronomy

Moses is the great leader and lawgiver of Israel, whom God called from a burning bush to bring his people out of slavery in Egypt. Through him God parted the Red Sea, fed Israel in the wilderness, and gave the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Scripture says no prophet arose in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.

And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,Deuteronomy 34:10 (KJV)

The rescued child and the forty years of waiting

Moses was born a Hebrew slave at a moment of terror, when Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew baby boy drowned in the Nile. His mother hid him three months, then set him in a basket among the reeds of the river, where Pharaoh's daughter found him, had pity on him, and raised him as her own son in the palace. So the deliverer of the slaves grew up in the house of their oppressor, learning the wisdom of Egypt, yet never forgetting his own people.

As a grown man, Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and killed him, then fled for his life into the desert of Midian when the deed became known. There he married, kept sheep for his father-in-law, and lived as a shepherd for forty years, the prince of Egypt reduced to an exile in the wilderness. It was a long, hidden apprenticeship, and by the end of it Moses was eighty years old and, to all appearances, a man whose life had passed him by. God was not finished with him; he had barely begun.

The burning bush and the plagues

One day at the far side of the desert Moses saw a bush that burned with fire and was not consumed, and when he turned aside to look, God called to him out of the bush and told him to take off his shoes, for he stood on holy ground. God had heard the groaning of his people and was sending Moses to Pharaoh to bring them out. When Moses protested that he was nobody and asked what name he should give, God answered, I AM THAT I AM, revealing himself as the eternal, self-existing LORD. Moses pleaded that he was not eloquent, and God gave him his brother Aaron to speak for him.

Back in Egypt, Moses and Aaron stood before Pharaoh and said, Thus saith the LORD, Let my people go. Pharaoh hardened his heart, and through Moses God sent ten plagues upon Egypt, from the water turned to blood to the death of the firstborn. On the night of the last plague God gave Israel the Passover, telling each family to kill a lamb and mark their doorposts with its blood, so that death would pass over them. That night Pharaoh finally let the people go, and Israel walked out of four hundred years of slavery.

The Red Sea and Mount Sinai

Pharaoh soon changed his mind and pursued them with his army, trapping Israel against the sea. The people cried out in terror, but Moses said, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD. He stretched out his hand, and the LORD drove back the sea by a strong wind, and Israel passed through on dry ground with the waters standing as walls on either side. When the Egyptians followed, the sea returned and covered them, and Israel saw that great deliverance and sang the song of Moses on the far shore.

Three months later they came to Mount Sinai, where God descended in fire, smoke, and thunder, and gave Moses the Ten Commandments and the law of the covenant. Moses went up into the cloud and stayed forty days and nights, and the LORD spoke with him face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. When he came down, his face shone so brightly from being with God that he had to veil it. There in the wilderness God gave the pattern for the tabernacle, the sacrifices, and the whole life of Israel as a people set apart to himself.

Forty years in the wilderness

For forty years Moses led a stubborn and often rebellious people through the desert, and it was the labor of his life. They murmured for water and for bread, and God gave them water from the rock and manna from heaven every morning. They made a golden calf while Moses was on the mountain, and he broke the tablets in grief, then climbed back up and pleaded with God to forgive them, even offering to be blotted out of God's book himself rather than see them destroyed. Again and again he stood in the gap between a holy God and a faithless people.

The generation that had refused to trust God and enter the land was condemned to die in the wilderness, and Moses bore their wandering with them. Near the end, in a moment of anger at the waters of Meribah, he struck the rock instead of speaking to it as God had commanded, and for that failure of faith he was told he would not lead the people into the promised land. He climbed Mount Nebo and the LORD showed him the whole land from afar, and there Moses died at a hundred and twenty, his eye not dim nor his strength gone, and God himself buried him, and no one knows his grave.

The tabernacle and the glory of God

At Sinai God gave Moses not only the law but the pattern for the tabernacle, a tent where the holy God would dwell in the midst of his people, with its ark, its altar, and its veil, every detail teaching how a sinful people could draw near. When the work was finished, the cloud of God's glory covered it, and the presence of the LORD went with Israel, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, through all their wanderings in the wilderness.

Moses' deepest desire was not power but nearness to God. After the sin of the golden calf, he pleaded that God's presence would go with them, and then he dared to ask, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. God hid him in a cleft of the rock and passed by, proclaiming his name: The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That revelation of God's character, given to Moses on the mountain, echoes through the whole Bible as the truest description of who God is.

His character and where he points to Christ

Scripture calls Moses very meek, above all the men on the face of the earth, yet he was anything but weak. He argued with Pharaoh, confronted a rebellious nation, and pleaded with God to spare the people at the cost of his own place. He began by protesting that he was slow of speech and unfit, and he ended as the friend of God, the founder of Israel as a covenant people, and the greatest of the prophets, through whom came the Exodus and the law that shaped the nation forever.

Moses himself promised, The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken, and the New Testament sees that Prophet in Jesus. Moses gave the law, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. Moses led one nation out of slavery through the blood of the Passover lamb; Jesus, the true Passover Lamb, leads all peoples out of slavery to sin. Moses could bring the people to the border of the land but not into it; Jesus, whose name means the LORD saves, brings his people all the way home. On the mount of Transfiguration Moses appeared beside Jesus in glory, and then the voice from heaven said of Jesus alone, This is my beloved Son, hear ye him.

A note on the sources: everything above is drawn from the biblical text itself. Where a detail comes from later tradition rather than Scripture, it is named as tradition. Dates for the earliest figures are traditional and approximate, and Scripture does not always give them. The aim is to tell each life honestly, and to let it do what the whole Bible does, point to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Related: Aaron · Joshua · All the people of the Bible