Looking This Way and That - Exodus 2:11-15

2:11- - As happens in many written historical accounts, decades of Moses’ life are covered in the simple sentence, “when Moses was grown.” The IM tells us some of what might have been involved in Moses’ childhood, growing up in a royal household, quoting Stephen as saying, “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.” This is an interesting characterization because we know that Moses felt that he was a poor speaker which is why he petitioned the Lord to have Aaron speak for him, but Stephen might have just been commenting on Moses when he was toward the end of his life. But clearly Moses would have been educated in the highest ways of the Egyptians because he was considered to be the Pharaoh’s daughter’s son.

TB notes, “it’s fairly easy to extrapolate from the vast amount of Egyptian records that have been discovered concerning royal life. While (Moses) would have been given all the finest in education, military training, the best food and drink, and made familiar with royal court protocol.” But importantly TB explains that all this “would have been given to him grudgingly.” This is where it’s important to separate fact from fiction, life from art. While the movies The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt portray a fully Egyptian man who’s Hebrew heritage was a secret from everyone, including him, it would have been widely known to not only the royal household including Moses himself, but also all Egyptians would have known that Moses was Hebrew and would have hated him for it. Additionally, all the Hebrews would have known that Moses was Hebrew but hated him for living an Egyptian life of luxury while they suffered under slavery.

The IM says, “Josephus said that Moses was a very handsome and educated prince and a mighty warrior in the cause of the Egyptians.” Interestingly, the IM expands, “As a prince, Moses may have had access to the royal libraries of the Egyptians as well as the scriptural record of the Israelites as taught by his mother. Quite possibly he read the prophecies of Joseph and was led by the Spirit to understand his divine appointment to deliver his brethren the Israelites. Stephen’s address implied that Moses understood his responsibility: ‘And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel… For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.’” It had never occurred to me that Moses might have known what he was to do before he fled for his life out of Egypt, that’s something I’m going to have to think about, because it’s kind of a big deal.

Unlike in the movies, where Moses and Ramses are essentially competing for the Egyptian throne and they were just waiting for Pharoah to decide who to give it to, there was never really any chance that Moses could become Pharoah and free the Hebrews on his own. Watching these movies growing up, it never made any sense to me why Moses did anything other than just wait for Pharoah to die so that he could take over Egypt and then just free the Hebrew slaves as a matter of policy. There is no way that the Egyptian people would allow Moses to be their Pharoah, especially because they just got out from under a semitic king who they had to over throw. For whatever reason, Moses clearly was aware or at least passively involved in Hebrew affairs because “he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burden: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.” TB notes that this must have been a common scene that Moses probably witnessed numerous times, but this was apparently when Moses decided to act, “and he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and his him in the sand.”

This is a pretty significant event, one that might even make followers of the Bible stop and re-evaluate their stance, like when we learn that Nephi kills Laban. The IM has lots of theories on this:

1. The Hebrew word used is nakhah, “meaning ‘to beat down’; this word is used in reference “describing the action taken by soldiers in combat against each other. It would be correct to say that Moses slew a man who was slaying another, or took a life in saving a life. His looking ‘this way and that’ before doing so, simply indicates that he was aware that the Egyptians would not condone his defense of a slave.”

2. Eusebius contends that the Egyptian killed by Moses was actually the man who was sent to assassinate Moses in a royal “court intrigue” plot.

3. Both the Koran and the Midrash Rabbah assert that the Egyptian taskmaster was killed by Moses “with his bare fists” “who was in the act of seducing a Hebrew woman.” I don’t know if the word “seducing” here is meant to mean he was raping her, but it would make more sense because Moses ending the life of a man who was having consensual sex with a woman seems weird.

With the Egyptian man dead, for whatever reason, Moses took his body and buried it in the sand, but despite him being so careful, Moses’ act was not a secret. The day after the killing, Moses saw a couple of Hebrew men fighting, and when he approached to assess the situation, the two men not only weren’t pleased with his interference, but they asked him, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?” Rough crowd. You would think, and I’m sure Moses thought this, that one of their own killing a hated taskmaster to protect them would have earned him some good will but apparently not.

The Hebrews weren’t the only ones who knew what happened, because apparently even Pharoah found out, and “he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and swelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.” Not only were the Hebrews not on Moses’ side, but surely the Pharaoh must have felt betrayed as well. I doubt this is where Moses thought that he was going to end up, sitting out in the desert, in the sun, and how did he get there? TB says that Moses fled, “across the Egyptian border frontier of Goshen, into and across the Sinai; then across the Gulf of Aqaba, and into the land of Midian? Why Midian? Probably because they had no political ties to Egypt. The Sinai was primarily Egyptian controlled territory; they had built military outposts all along the normal trade routes that crisscrossed that vast desert peninsula, and had established treaties with several nations that bordered the Sinai area. Moses’ choices of refuge were actually quite limited.” And that’s where to leave Moses, sitting at a well about 300 miles from his home, having been hated by all people in Egypt.