Lesson #2

Moses, Prince of Egypt

(Exodus 1: 1 -22)
In Lesson #1 we examined ancient Egypt, in particular the Egypt that is the
setting for the Book of Exodus. Egypt from the time of Joseph until the time
of Moses was a dazzling culture, the most advanced and prosperous
civilization on the face of the earth.

Based on internal consistency with the overall biblical narrative, we set the
date of the Exodus at 1446 B.C., squarely within Egypts 18
th
Dynasty, and
we identified the dramatis personae of the story as:

Thutmose I (1526-1508)the Pharaoh who drowned the Hebrew babies;
Princess Hatshepsut (1504-1482)the Princess who saved Moses.
Thutmose III (1482-1450 B.C.)the Pharaoh of the persecution;
Amunhotep II (1450-1425 B.C.)the Pharaoh of the Exodus.









In addition, we examined the historicity of the Exodus as
it is presented in Scripture, recognizing that although the
story is set at a particular time and place in history with
real people as primary characters in the story, the
Exodus is first and foremost a work of literature, the
story of redemption writ on an grand scale, the story of
Gods interaction with humanity as viewed through the
lens of a living faith tradition.











In Lesson #2 we witness the plight of the enslaved Israelites and we
meet Moses, one of the great characters of Scripture. Born to a
Levite couple, Pharaohs daughter saves him from the infanticide
ordered by her father. Ironically, Moses is adopted by Pharaohs
daughter and brought up in the household of Pharaoh, a prince of
Egypt.

In Acts 7: 22, Stephen tells us that Moses was educated *in+ all the
wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds.
Moses had been groomed and positioned for leadership in Egypt,
perhaps as a great statesman, politician or general.












Then at 40 years old, in a moment of righteous indignation and
astoundingly poor judgment, Moses throws it all away by killing an
Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew slave. His crime discovered,
Moses flees Egypt, a wanted criminal, running all the way east to
the backside of the desert in the land of Midian. There he goes off
the grid for the next 40 years, working as a shepherd, the lowliest
of occupations.

Psalm 90 is ascribed to Moses, and in it he writes: Seventy is the
sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong (Psalm 90: 10). To any
objective reader Moses has reached the end of his life, a total
failure.











Exodus 1: 1-7
[And] these are the names of the sons of Israel who, accompanied
by their households, entered into Egypt with Jacob:
Ruben, Simeon, Levi and Judah;
Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin;
Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
The total number of Jacobs direct descendants was seventy. Joseph
was already in Egypt.
Now Joseph and all his brothers and that whole generation died.
But the Israelites where fruitful and prolific. They multiplied and
became so very numerous that the land was filled with them.












Exodus 1: 1-7, cont.
[And] these are the names of the sons of Israel who, accompanied
by their households, entered into Egypt with Jacob:
Exodus begins in the Hebrew language with, *And]

these are the names of
the sons of Israel . . ..

Two things are important about this beginning.
First, *And] these are the names . . . suggests that Exodus continues
Genesis; it is the next chapter in an on-going story; it is notfrom a literary
perspectivea separate, independent book. The first word in the Hebrew
text is And (the particle waw), suggesting a direct, unbroken continuation
of the Genesis narrative.















Exodus 1: 1-7, cont.
[And] these are the names of the sons of Israel who, accompanied
by their households, entered into Egypt with Jacob:
Second, the Hebrew phrase benay Israel means literally the sons of Israel.
Many modern translations render this phrase the Israelites, missing the
subtle distinction that the people who come out of Egypt are Gods sons
who must be taught by their father and who must grow in their relationship
with him. Throughout the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), Gods
covenant people are consistently called the sons of Israel. As Robert Alter
points out in The Five Books of Moses (p. 307), the masculine plural form of
the Hebrew ben (the word used here) also means children, but it is clear
here and in Genesis 46 that only the male offspring make up the seventy
who emigrate to Egypt; hence, the correct translation sons. Nevertheless,
the connotation of children suggests that the Israelites are in the early
stage of their relationship with God and that they have much to learn as
they grow up.










Exodus 1: 1-7, cont.
[And] these are the names of the sons of Israel who, accompanied
by their households, entered into Egypt with Jacob:
Ruben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; (4)
Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; (3)
Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. (4)
Notice how the eleven sons are listed in two sets of four, with a set of three
in the middle, giving a formal symmetry to the list. Nicely done!
The total number of Jacobs direct descendants was seventy.
Literally, And all these persons springing from the loins of Jacob were
seventy persons . . .. Springing from the loins is, as Robert Alter points
out, a euphemistic metonymy for testicles. The imagery is extremely vivid
and very earthy, ending with the symbolic number 70, a number suggesting
Jacobs prodigious fertility, resulting in fulfillment and completion.












Exodus 1: 1-7, cont.

. . . the total number of Jacobs direct descendants was seventy.
Joseph was already in Egypt.
Joseph was already in Egypt takes us back to Genesis 37: 1 50: 26, the
Jacob/Joseph story, the concluding panel of the Genesis triptych, reinforcing
the continuity of the narrative introduced with the opening [And] these
are the names of the sons of Israel . . . in verse 1.













Exodus 1: 1-7, cont.

. . . the total number of Jacobs direct descendants was seventy.
Joseph was already in Egypt.
Now Joseph and all his brothers and that whole generation died.
But the Israelites where fruitful and prolific. They multiplied and
became so very numerous that the land was filled with them.
Literally, And Joseph died, and all his brothers with him, and all that
generation. When we left Joseph at the end of Genesis, we left him alone
in a coffin in Egypt. Here, his brothers and all that generation join
him in death. Mentioning the death of Joseph here links back to the last
phrase in Genesis, an example of resumptive repetition, in which after an
interruption of narrative continuity, the narrative is resumed by repeating
the phrase where the interruption began.














Exodus 1: 1-7, cont.

. . . the total number of Jacobs direct descendants was seventy.
Joseph was already in Egypt.
Now Joseph and all his brothers and that whole generation died.
But the Israelites where fruitful and prolific. They multiplied and
became so very numerous that the land was filled with them.
We have already alluded to Jacobs prodigious fertility in verse 3. Here, we
might translate more literally: And the sons of Israel were fruitful and
swarmed and multiplied and grew very vast, and the land [same Hebrew
word as the earth in Genesis 1+ was filled with them.
Exodus 1: 7 echoes Genesis 1, the creation story: just as God created all
that is in Genesis 1, so he creates the Israelite nation in Exodus 1. As Jacob
was prodigiously fertile, so are the sons of Israel prodigiously fertile.













In one deft and carefully designed movement, Exodus 1: 1-7 reaches back
into Genesis 1, ripples all the way through Genesis 50: 26 (the last phrase in
the last verse of Genesis) and produces an extraordinarily tight narrative
continuity between the two books.
This is exquisite craftsmanship on the part of our author!












If we look back on Genesis 12-50 (the main body triptych: the
Abraham/Isaac; Isaac/Jacob; and Jacob/Joseph stories) we find that
our narrative draws uniquely human portraits of each character,
very specific in detail, tone and texture. The chapters read in many
ways like a riveting, melodramatic novel.

In Exodus these precisely drawn characters expand into a generic
people numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Once again, as
Robert Alter observes:

In keeping with this new wide-angle lens through which the
characters and the events are seen, the narrative moves from the
domestic, moral, and psychological realism of the Patriarchal Tales
to a more stylized, sometimes deliberately schematic, mode of
storytelling that in a number of respects, especially in the early
chapters of the book, has the feel of a folktale.
(The Five Books of Moses, p. 300)












Pharaoh morphs from a unique individual in the Joseph story to
the generic king of Egypt in Exodus, the archetypical evil king who
kills babies.
Two virtuous midwives tend to legions of childbearing Hebrew
women who are described as animals who quickly squat down
and give birth, even before the midwives arrive.
Moses, the future hero, is threatened with death by the evil king
and is saved by being hidden and then rescued and reared by a
virtuous woman (recall the same motif in Matthew when the evil
king Herod orders the killing of all the babies in Bethlehem. Jesus is
taken to Egypt where he is hidden, then rescued after Herods death
and raised by a virtuous woman, Mary).












Examples
We see such folkloric parallels to the Exodus story in literature as
early as 2300 B.C., in the legend about the great Sargon, king of
Akkad:

Sargon the Mighty, king of Akkad am I.
My mother was a high priestess, my father I knew not . . .
My mother, the high priestess, conceived me, in secret she bore me.
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid.
She cast me into the river which rose not [over] me.
The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water.
Akki, the drawer of water, [took me] as his son [and] reared me.
While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me [her] love.
And for [many] years I exercised kingship.
(ANET, p. 119)













Examples, cont.
In Exodus even God himself morphs from the anthropomorphic
figure in Genesis, who walks in the Garden with Adam and Eve and
has dinner and a debate with Abraham, into the mysterious figure
of I am who speaks from within a burning bush and is wreathed in
smoke and fire atop a thunderous and incandescent Mt. Sinai.

Unlike in Genesis where God walks among his people, in Exodus
God is remote, mysterious and enormously powerful, wreaking
havoc on Egypt, slaying all the firstborn of the Egyptians and
warning the Israelites not to approach his mountain or else he will
break out against them (19: 24) and they will all perish instantly.











As the main body of Genesis is built on the tripartite structure of the
Abraham/Isaac, Isaac/Jacob, Jacob/Joseph stories, so is Exodus built on
three thematically defined spaces:
1) Egypt as a place of bondage
(Its space is associated with water: the central waterway of the Nile, where
Moses is saved and the ten plagues begin; and the Red Sea, through which
the Israelites must pass and in which the Egyptian army is drowned.);
2) The Wilderness
(Its space is associated with parched dryness and fire: sand and jagged rock
formations make up its landscape, where the people desperately thirst for
water; Mt. Sinai, spewing divine fire; the pillar of fire that protects and
guides the Israelites through their wilderness wanderings); and
3) The Promised Land
(Its space is associated with milk and honey: situated beyond well-watered
Egypt and the burning, fiery desert, it is a Land that remains just over the
horizon, a Utopia that is not fully realized until Revelation 21-22, the
conclusion of our Scriptural narrative).






















The first words of Exodus*And] these are the namesis the Hebrew title of the book,
Shmot (= Names). Exodus is the title used by St. Jerome in his fifth-century A.D. Latin
translation, and it is derived from the Greek words ek, meaning out and hodos, meaning
road: out-road, or Exodus. So, let us begin our journey!








Land of Goshen
Via Maris
(Main Trade Route into Egypt)
The Hebrews came into Egypt during
the Hyksos period, the time of foreign chiefs.
They have now multiplied prodigiously
and they occupy the land of Goshen.
If Egypt is invaded again, the invaders will come
from the north, down the Via Maris, and they will
encounter the enslaved Hebrews, who will
doubtless support the invaders.
As Exodus opens, the Hebrews have
become a serious national security threat
to Egypt.










Birthing Stool, Kom Ombo Temple, Egypt.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas










William Blake. The Compassion of Pharaohs Daughter (pen, ink and
watercolor over pencil), 1805. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
She named him Moses

We read in Scripture that when Pharaohs daughter found the child
She named him Moses; for she said, I drew him out of the water
(Exodus 2: 10).

Moses is not a Hebrew name, it is Egyptian, meaning son of the
water. In Egyptian hieroglyphs a wavy line means water, and it is
pronounced moo, while the figure of a duck means son of, and it is
pronounced, sa. Put together, the two wordsmoo-sagive us
Moses, son of the water.








The three elements here are: 1) the sun disk
representing Ra the sun god; 2) the duck, which
means son of; and 3) the bowl, representing the
land. Translated, the hieroglyphs mean son of
Ra, master of the land.








.
Here is an example of hieroglyphs taken from the Philae
Temple in Aswan, Egypt using both words.
The four elements here are: 1) the snake,
meaning his majesty; 2) the triangle, give;
3) the wavy lines, water; and 4) the bowl,
the land. Translated, the hieroglyphs mean,
Give to his majesty, master of the land, the
purified waters.
Photography by Ana Maria Vargas








Sahara Desert
Sinai
Peninsula
Nile River
Red Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Midian

1. Although written as a separate, independent work,
Exodus is tightly linked to Genesis, producing a
single, continuous narrative. How is this
accomplished?
2. How does Genesis foreshadow the enslavement of
the Hebrews in Exodus?
3. What elements in Exodus characterize the work as
folktale?
4. Exodus 2 contains a wonderful example of irony.
What is it?
5. At the end of Exodus 2, how would you characterize
Moses?





Copyright 2014 by William C. Creasy
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