by Ahmed Osman
Sing to the Lord, for he has risen up in triumph,
The horse and his rider he has hurled into the sea.’
From the Red Sea, the Israelites made their way into the desert, where they journeyed for three days without finding water, and when they did eventually locate some it was so bitter that they could not drink it. They grumbled to Moses, asking: ‘What are we to drink?’ This grumbling, accompanied at times by threats to choose a new leader who would take them back to Egypt, is a recurrent theme in the rest of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.
In the third month after the Exodus, the wandering tribe reached Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai), the mountain of God, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. The Israelites became impatient, however, during his absence of forty days. Aaron collected everyone’s gold earrings, cast the metal into a mould and made it into the image of a bull-calf. The next day the Israelites rose early, made offerings at an altar in front of the golden calf and then sat down to eat and drink before giving themselves up to revelry. When he returned and discovered what had happened, Moses was so angry that he threw down the two tablets inscribed with the Lord’s teaching, shattering them, and destroyed the golden calf in the fire. Then he asked: ‘Come here to me whoever is on the Lord’s side.’ It was the Levites who rallied to him, and he said to them: ‘Each of you take his sword and go through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbour.’ The Levites followed his orders and about three thousand of the idolators died that day.
After Moses had returned to the mountain of God, where he obtained two fresh tablets listing the Lord’s teachings, he gave the Israelites instructions about the creation of a Tabernacle, the first mobile Jewish temple. The Tabernacle, the Tent of the Presence, was set up, we are told, on the first day of the first month of the second year.
In the middle of the Book of Exodus we are also given details about the family of Moses. It provides us with the name of his second son, Eleazar; the names of the sons of Levi, the grandfather of Moses (Gershon, Kohath and Merari); the names of the sons of Kohath (Amram, Izhar, Hebron and Uzziel), and details of the marriage of Amram: ‘Amram married his father’s sister, Jochebed, and she bore him Aaron and Moses.’
While the Book of Exodus is the main source, three other books of the Pentateuch – Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy – provide some additional facts about the wanderings of the Israelites between their departure from Egypt and their arrival on the frontiers of the Promised Land, with complaints about the leadership of Moses still a recurrent theme. The Book of Numbers tells us that Moses sent one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes to explore the Promised Land of Canaan. On their return they reported: ‘The land does flow with milk and honey – here is some of its fruit – but the people who inhabit it are powerful, and their cities are fortified and very large.’
Caleb, one of the twelve in the advance party, argued: ‘Let us go up and conquer the country. We are strong enough to do it.’ All but one of the others, however, protested: ‘We can’t attack those people. They are stronger than we are. We felt no bigger than grasshoppers, and that is how we looked to them.’ That night all the Israelites turned on Moses and Aaron and said to them: ‘Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?’ and among themselves suggested: ‘We should choose a new leader and go back to Egypt.’
Caleb and Joshua, the other optimist, told them: ‘The land we explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us there. Do not be afraid of the people of the land because the Lord is with us.’ The Israelites thereupon threatened to stone them, with the result that as a punishment the Lord condemned the whole generation, apart from the trusting Caleb and Joshua, to spend forty years in the desert instead of entering the Promised Land.
Again, when the Israelites arrived in the Desert of Zin and settled for a time at Kadesh – where Miriam, the prophetess sister of Aaron, died and was buried – there were more complaints about lack of water. The Israelites quarrelled with Moses again, asking: ‘Why did you bring us to this desert for us and our livestock to face death? Why did you bring us out of Egypt to this terrible place where nothing will grow – neither corn nor figs, vines nor pomegranates? There is not even any water to drink.’
It is then that Moses used his rod to smite the rock and bring forth water. It was called ‘the water of Meribah’ – a location in the north-centre of Sinai, south of Canaan – and it was for this action, we learn later, that the Lord punished Moses by not allowing him to cross into the Promised Land.
The Book of Numbers also tells us that the Tabernacle constructed by the Israelites faced to the east, and that from Kadesh they made their way ultimately to a point near the frontier of Edom, in the north-east of Sinai and to the south of the Dead Sea, where Aaron died on the top of Mount Hor. In addition, both the Book of Numbers and the Book of Leviticus contain some references to leprosy. In the Book of Numbers we learn that: ‘The Lord spoke to Moses and said: “Command the Israelites to expel from the camp everyone who suffers from a malignant skin disease or a discharge, and everyone ritually unclean from contact with a corpse …”’ We are given an account of an incident when both Aaron and Miriam were critical of Moses for having taken as a second wife a Kushite (Nubian or Ethiopian) woman. The Lord appeared and asked angrily: ‘How dare you speak against my servant Moses? He alone of all my household is to be trusted.’ Then, when the Lord left, Miriam’s skin was seen to be diseased and as white as snow. Leprosy and skin purification also form the subject of three chapters (13–15) on purification and atonement in the preceding book, Leviticus, which also indicates that it was the Israelite custom to pray twice a day, in the morning and the evening.
Moses, after all his struggles, did not reach the Promised Land himself. When the Israelites were camped on the banks of the Jordan, near Jericho and opposite Canaan, he learned, according to the Book of Deuteronomy, that he was to be denied the opportunity to cross the river, no matter how hard he pleaded:
I pray thee, let me go over, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, that goodly mountain, and Lebanon. … the Lord said … speak no more unto me of this matter … … thou shalt not go over this Jordan. (3:25–7)
Later in the Book of Deuteronomy we have an account of the actual death of Moses. The Lord said to him: ‘Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab’ – the borders between Sinai and eastern Jordan – ‘that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession … And die in the mount … Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin … thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.’ (32:49–52)
After admonishing and blessing his people, Moses left them with Joshua and climbed the mountain. There, after viewing the Promised Land, he met his death – and was buried by the Lord in an unmarked grave in the plains of Moab below.
The last mention of Moses in the Old Testament is as curious as some aspects of the story of his birth. It occurs in the second Book of Kings, which gives an account of various rulers, more than five centuries after the Exodus, some of whom tried to keep to the Lord’s teachings, some of whom did not. Among the former, we are told, was Hezekiah:
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father did.
He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves; and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it. (II Kings, 18:3–4)
The reference is particularly significant because a staff topped by a bronze serpent was the symbol of Pharaoh’s authority.
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WAS MOSES A KING?
APART from a rather muddled chronology at the start of the Book of Exodus, the story of Moses it tells is quite straightforwa
rd. However, the picture changes when we examine other holy books and the work of Manetho, the third century BC native Egyptian historian, which was subsequently transmitted by the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus.
While we know from the Old Testament that Moses was brought up in the royal palace, it does not suggest that he ever succeeded to the throne. Yet the story of Moses in the Talmud – the compilation of Hebrew laws and legends, dating from the early centuries AD and regarded as second only to the Old Testament as an authoritative source of the early history of the Jews – contains some details not to be found in the Bible and often parallels Manetho’s account of the Exodus, derived from Egyptian folklore. One of the details is that Moses was a king.
According to the Talmud, which agrees that Moses was brought up in Pharaoh’s palace, he grew into a handsome lad, dressed royally, was honoured by the people and seemed in all things of royal lineage. However, at about the age of eighteen he was forced to flee from Egypt after, on a visit to Goshen, he came across an Egyptian smiting one of his Israelite brethren and slew him.
The Talmud goes on to relate that, at about this time, there was a rebellion against the King of Ethiopia. The king appointed a magician’s son named Bi’lam – one of Pharaoh’s advisers, who was considered exceptionally wise but had fled to Ethiopia from his own country, Egypt – to be his representative in his absence and marched at the head of a large army, which vanquished the rebels. Bi’lam betrayed his trust, however, and, usurping the power he was supposed to protect, induced the Ethiopians to appoint him in place of their absent king. He strengthened the walls of the capital, built huge fortresses and dug ditches and pits between the city and the nearby river. On his return the Ethiopian king was astonished to see all these fortifications, which he thought were defences against a possible attack by an enemy. When he found that the gates of the city were actually closed against him, he embarked on a war against the usurper, Bi’lam, that lasted nine years.
One of the soldiers who fought on the side of the king, according to the Talmud story, was Moses, who, after fleeing from Egypt, had made his way not to Midian in Sinai, as the Old Testament says, but to Ethiopia. He became a great favourite with the Ethiopian ruler and his companions with the result that, when the king died, this inner circle appointed Moses as their new king and leader. Moses, who, according to the Talmud, was made king ‘in the hundred and fifty-seventh year after Israel went down into Egypt’, inspired the army with his courage and the city eventually fell to him. The account goes on: ‘… Bi’lam escaped and fled back to Egypt, becoming one of the magicians mentioned in the Scriptures. And the Ethiopians placed Moses upon their throne and set the crown of State upon his head, and they gave him the widow of their king for a wife.’
Moses reigned ‘in justice and righteousness. But the Queen of Ethiopia, Adonith [Aten-it in Egyptian], who wished her own son by the dead king to rule, said to the people: “Why should this stranger continue to rule over you?” The people, however, would not vex Moses, whom they loved, by such a proposition; but Moses resigned voluntarily the power which they had given him and departed from their land. And the people of Ethiopia made him many rich presents, and dismissed him with great honours.’1
So, according to this tradition, which has survived in the Talmud, Moses was elevated to the post of king for some time before eventually seeking the sanctuary of Sinai. Furthermore, where Akhenaten, as we shall see, looked upon himself as the high priest of his God, the Talmud tells us that ‘Moses officiated as the high priest. He was also considered the King of Israel during the sojourn in the desert.’ Where did the rabbis obtain the facts in the Talmud? They can hardly have invented them and, indeed, had no reason to do so. Like the accounts of the historian Manetho, the Talmudic stories contain many distortions and accretions arising from the fact that they were transmitted orally for a long time before finally being set down in writing. Yet one can sense that behind the myths there must have lain genuine historical events that had been suppressed from the official accounts of both Egypt and Israel, but had survived in the memories of the generations.
The Talmud description of Moses as a ruler is also supported by a verse of the Koran where Moses tells the Israelites after the Exodus that God has made of them kings:
Remember Moses said
To his people: ‘O my people!
Call in remembrance the favour
Of Allah unto you, when He
Produced prophets among you,
Made you kings, and gave
You what he had not given
To any other among the peoples …’ (Sura V, 20)
The reference here is not to two kings, but more than two, for Arabic has different plural forms for dual and multiple, and it is difficult to see in the light of later evidence how this can be anything other than a reference to the four Amarna kings.
The Koran also provides a different picture of Moses’ departure from the Ethiopian capital. Where the Talmud indicates that it was a friendly farewell, the Koran suggests that it was an escape from a threat to his life:
And there came a man,
Running, from the furthest end
Of the city. He said:
‘O Moses! the Chiefs
Are taking counsel together
About thee to slay thee:
So get thee away, for I
Do give thee sincere advice.’ (Sura XXVIII, 20)
The Talmud also provides a different reason for the attempt to kill Moses at birth. It was Moses specifically who was to be murdered because he posed a threat to the throne of Egypt. Pharaoh, according to the Talmud, had a dream in which he was sitting on the throne when he saw an old man holding a large pair of scales. The old man placed the elders and princes of Egypt on one side of the scales and a lamb on the other. The lamb proved to be heavier. The king asked his adviser Bi’lam the significance of this strange dream. Bi’lam explained that a great evil would befall the country: ‘A son will be born in Israel who will destroy Egypt.’
Reu’el the Midianite, who is described in the Old Testament as the father-in-law of Moses, enters the scene here as another of the king’s counsellors, who advised him that he should not oppress the Israelites, but allow them to leave for Canaan. This advice did not find favour with the king, who responded by banishing Reu’el to his own country and accepting an alternative course of action recommended by Bi’lam – that as a precautionary measure all boys born to the Hebrews should be cast into the river.
Prior to this, coinciding with the accounts in the Bible, we are told that Amram had married Jochebed, who bore him a daughter, Miriam, described in the Old Testament as ‘a prophetess’, followed by a son, Aaron. Now we learn of a prophesy by Miriam that a second son would be born to her parents and this son would ultimately deliver the Israelites from their Egyptian oppressors. When the baby appeared as predicted, Jochebed hid the new-born infant in her home for three months, but a strict search of the Israelites’ homes was carried out regularly and various ruses were employed to discover any male children who had been concealed. One was for Egyptian women to bring their own babies into houses in Goshen and make them cry, whereupon any Hebrew babies hidden on the premises would start to cry as well and betray their place of concealment.
The birth of a male child to Jochebed came to light in this way, but she hid the baby in the reeds of the Nile before Pharaoh’s officers arrived to take him away. There, as in the Old Testament, he was rescued by a daughter of the king, Bathia – identified in a subsequent passage as the first-born of her mother – who gave him the name of Moses, saying: ‘I have drawn him from the water.’ Moses ‘became even as a son to Bathia … as a child belonging rightly to the palace of the king’.2
When Moses was about three years of age, the story goes on, in the course of a banquet at which his family and princes of the realm were present, Pharaoh took Moses on his lap, whereupon the child stretched out his hand, removed Pharaoh’s crown from his head and placed it on his own. The king
felt this action had some possibly sinister significance. ‘How shall this Hebrew boy be punished?’ he asked.
Bi’lam confirmed the king’s suspicions. ‘Think not, because the child is young, that he did this thing thoughtlessly,’ he said. ‘Remember, o king, the dream this servant read for thee, the dream of the balances. The spirit of understanding is already implanted in this child, and to himself he takes thy kingdom.’
The judges and wise men, including Jithro (Reu’el), the priest of Midian, assembled and Pharaoh related what had happened and the interpretation Bi’lam had placed upon Moses’ action. Jithro, who was anxious to save the child’s life, suggested: ‘If it be pleasing to the king, let two plates be placed before the child, one containing fire, the other gold. If the child stretches forth his hand to grasp the gold, we shall know him to be an understanding being, and consider that he acted towards thee knowingly, deserving death. But if he grasps the fire, then let his life be spared.’ Two bowls were brought, one containing gold, the other fire, and placed before the child, who put out his hand and grasped the fire, which he put into his mouth, burning his tongue and becoming thereafter, as the Bible says, ‘heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue’. However, his life was saved.
Manetho, a native Egyptian, was a contemporary of the first two Ptolemies, rulers at the start of the Thirty-second and last Egyptian Dynasty early in the third century BC, and is said to have described himself in a letter to Ptolemy II as ‘High Priest and scribe of the sacred shrines of Egypt, born at Sebennytus and dwelling at Heliopolis’.3 He is one of the early Egyptians who wrote about his country in Greek, assembling tales that he had found in the temple library, made up in part of ancient stories that had initially been transmitted orally before being set down in writing.
