The Life
Moses is the towering figure of the Old Testament. His story takes up almost the entire second through fifth books of the Bible. He was born around 1689 B.C. to Hebrew slaves in Egypt at a moment when Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew baby boy killed. His mother put him in a waterproofed basket and set him adrift on the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter found him and raised him in the palace. He grew up Egyptian. He could have spent his life as a prince. Instead at the age of forty he killed an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew slave, fled to the desert, and spent forty years there as a shepherd. Then at age eighty he met God in a burning bush and his real life began. He led the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea, received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, governed the people for forty years in the wilderness, wrote the first five books of the Bible, and beheld the back of God’s glory passing by him. The Orthodox Church calls him the God-Seer. He is the supreme Old Testament image of the prophet and the lawgiver, and at the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor he and Elijah stood and spoke with the Lord.
When Moses was born, Pharaoh had decreed that every Hebrew baby boy should be killed. The Egyptians feared the Hebrew slaves were becoming too numerous. Moses’ mother Jochebed hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she made a small basket out of papyrus, coated it with pitch and tar to make it waterproof, placed the baby inside, and set the basket among the reeds at the edge of the Nile. Moses’ sister Miriam stood at a distance to watch what would happen. Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the river. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her maid to fetch it, opened it, and saw the baby crying. Her heart was moved. She knew it was a Hebrew child. Miriam came forward and asked if she should fetch a Hebrew nurse for the baby. Pharaoh’s daughter said yes. Miriam ran and brought back her own mother, Jochebed. Pharaoh’s daughter said: take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So Moses’ own mother nursed him in her own home, and was paid for it by the very Pharaoh who had decreed the boy’s death. When the child was old enough, Jochebed brought him to the palace, where Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him as her own son and named him Moses, which in Hebrew means “drawn out” — because, she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
After he killed the Egyptian, Moses fled to the wilderness of Midian. He stayed there for forty years. He married Zipporah, the daughter of the priest Jethro. He shepherded his father-in-law’s flocks. He learned the desert. By the time he was eighty he probably thought his life was over. Then one day, leading the flock to the far side of the wilderness, he came to Mount Horeb — the mountain of God. He saw a strange thing: a bush on fire, but the fire did not consume the bush. The bush kept burning without being burnt up. He turned aside to see this wonder. From the middle of the bush a Voice called to him: “Moses, Moses.” He answered: “Here am I.” The Voice said: “Do not come near. Take off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.” Then the Voice identified itself: “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. The Lord told him: I have seen the affliction of My people in Egypt, and I am come down to deliver them, and I am sending you to Pharaoh to lead them out. Moses asked: when they ask me Your name, what shall I say? The Lord answered: “I AM WHO I AM. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: I AM hath sent me unto you.” With those words the entire Old Testament revelation of the Name of God was given.
Moses returned to Egypt with his brother Aaron. They went before Pharaoh and said: thus says the Lord God of Israel, let My people go. Pharaoh refused. So began the contest between the Lord and the gods of Egypt. The Lord struck Egypt with ten plagues: the waters of the Nile turned to blood, then frogs, then gnats, then flies, then disease on the cattle, then boils, then hail, then locusts, then three days of darkness, and finally the death of every Egyptian firstborn while the Hebrews were spared by the blood of the Passover lamb painted on their doorposts. After that night Pharaoh let the Hebrews go. They left in haste, taking unleavened bread because there had not been time for it to rise. As they reached the Red Sea, Pharaoh changed his mind and pursued them with all his chariots. The Hebrews were trapped between the army and the water. They cried out in terror. Moses said: “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD.” He stretched out his rod over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night. The waters parted; a wall of water stood on either side. The Hebrews walked across on dry ground. The Egyptian chariots followed them in. When the last Hebrew was safely on the far shore, Moses stretched out his hand again, and the waters returned upon the Egyptians. Not one of them survived. On the far bank, Moses and Miriam led the people in the great hymn that begins: “I will sing unto the LORD, for He hath triumphed gloriously” — the first ode of the Old Testament canticles, which the Orthodox Church still sings every Sunday at Matins.
Three months after leaving Egypt the Hebrews came to Mount Sinai — the same mountain where Moses had seen the burning bush. The Lord told Moses: tell the people to consecrate themselves, for in three days I will descend on the mountain. On the third day there was thunder, lightning, a thick cloud, and the sound of a trumpet exceedingly loud. Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The whole mountain quaked greatly. Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice. The Lord called Moses up to the top of the mountain, and Moses ascended into the cloud. There the Lord gave him the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law of Israel. He spent forty days and forty nights on the mountain, eating no bread and drinking no water. At the end of that time God gave him two tablets of stone written with the finger of God. While Moses was on the mountain, the people grew impatient and made a golden calf and worshipped it. When Moses came down and saw what they had done, his anger burned, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He ground the calf to powder, scattered it on water, and made the people drink it. Then he ascended Sinai again to plead for them: “if Thou wilt not forgive them, blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book.” The Lord forgave them. He commanded Moses to cut two new tablets, and on these the Lord wrote the Law a second time. From that mountain Israel received its Law and its identity as the people of God.
Around the year 30 A.D., on a high mountain in Galilee, the Lord Jesus Christ took with him three of his disciples — Peter, James, and John. He led them up the mountain, and there he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothing became as white as the light. Two figures appeared and stood with him in the glory: Moses and Elijah. They were speaking with the Lord about the exodus that he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem — his coming Passion and Resurrection. Peter, overwhelmed, said: Lord, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a Voice came out of the cloud: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” The disciples fell on their faces in fear. When they looked up, Moses and Elijah were gone, and Jesus was standing alone. Moses had been dead for fifteen hundred years. Yet there he was, standing in the divine Light, speaking with the Lord. He had finally entered the Promised Land — not the geographical Canaan, but the true Promised Land, the eternal kingdom into which Christ leads every faithful soul. The Orthodox Church celebrates the Transfiguration on August 6 every year, and Moses is one of the two figures who appears in every icon of that feast.
There is a strange verse in the book of Numbers that has fascinated the desert fathers for centuries. Numbers 12:3 says: “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” Of all the things Scripture could have praised Moses for — the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the receiving of the Law, the writing of the Pentateuch — it praises him for being meek. Why? The desert father Evagrius noticed something. Wherever in Scripture Moses is described as meek, the context is always Moses interceding for someone who had wronged him. He stands in the breach for the people who have just sinned with the golden calf. He pleads for his sister Miriam when she is struck with leprosy after speaking against him. He refuses to defend his own honor when the people grumble. He carries the burden of the entire nation without ever once breaking under it. That is what Scripture means by meekness: not weakness, not softness, but the strength to refuse to defend yourself and to keep on loving the people who are wronging you. And that is precisely the disposition that opens the soul to direct encounter with God. The proud cannot draw near to the Lord. Only the meek can stand on holy ground.
On the far shore of the Red Sea, with the waters closing back over the Egyptian army, Moses and his sister Miriam led the people in this song. It is the oldest extant Hebrew poem. It is the foundation of all subsequent biblical hymnography. The Orthodox Church has been singing it every Sunday at Matins for two thousand years, as the First Ode of the canon of the Resurrection. Every time we sing it, we are standing on the same shore. The horse and his rider have been thrown into the sea. The Lord has triumphed gloriously. The slaves have become free. The Pascha that Moses sang in 1450 B.C. is the same Pascha we sing today: deliverance through the waters, victory over the powers of death, the song of the redeemed on the far shore.
This single verse describes Moses’s relationship with the Lord more than any other in Scripture. The Lord spoke to most of the prophets in dreams and visions. To Moses he spoke face to face, as a friend speaks with a friend. That phrase — face to face — echoes through the rest of the Bible. Jacob said it of his wrestling at Peniel: “I have seen God face to face” (Genesis 32:30). The Apostle Paul said it of the future life: “now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). The Beatitude says it: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). The whole biblical hope is summed up in those three words. We are made to see God face to face. Moses experienced in advance, dimly and partially, what every redeemed soul will eventually experience completely in the Kingdom. He saw what we hope to see. He spoke with the Lord as a friend speaks with a friend. He is the Old Testament icon of the eternal communion that God intends for every human soul.
Moses led the Hebrews for forty years through the wilderness. They came at last to the plains of Moab, on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, with the Promised Land on the far side. Moses was 120 years old. His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. The Lord told him: ascend Mount Nebo, look at the land, and there you will die. Long before, at the waters of Meribah, Moses had once disobeyed the Lord by striking the rock instead of speaking to it. For this small failure, the Lord had told him: you will see the land, but you will not enter it. Moses had borne this for forty years without complaint. Now the moment had come. He climbed Mount Nebo. The Lord showed him the entire Promised Land from Dan in the north to the Negev in the south, all of Judah unto the western sea. He saw it. Then he died, and the Lord himself buried him in a valley in the land of Moab. No man knows the place of his burial to this day. He was 120 years old. The book of Deuteronomy ends: “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.” Fifteen hundred years later, Moses would enter the true Promised Land at the Transfiguration of Christ. He had been faithful all along the way. The Lord had been waiting for him.
Moses matters to every Orthodox Christian for many reasons. He is the meek man whom God chose to lead his people out of slavery, the lawgiver who wrote the first five books of the Bible, the prophet who saw God face to face, the intercessor who pleaded for his people even after they had sinned grievously against him. He stands at the foundation of the entire biblical witness to the saving work of God. Every time we hear the Old Testament read in the Liturgy, we are hearing words that pass through Moses. Every time we sing the First Ode at Sunday Matins, we are singing the song he sang on the shore of the Red Sea. Every time we look at an icon of the Transfiguration, we are looking at Moses standing in the divine Light next to Christ. He is also the friend of every Christian who has ever felt unworthy of a great calling. When God called him from the burning bush, Moses said: I am slow of speech, send someone else. The Lord did not send someone else. He sent Moses. The same Lord, who can work through the smallest and most reluctant soul, calls each of us also into work that we feel inadequate for. Moses’s story is the assurance that the Lord himself supplies what the called soul lacks.