Lecture V: The Exodus (part 1)

by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.         

   The History, strictly speaking, of the Jewish church         
begins with the Exodus.  In one sense, indeed, "His-         
tory herself was born on that night when Moses led      
forth his countrymen from the land of Goshen."           
Traditions, genealogies, institutions, isolated incidents,     
isolated characters, may be discovered here and there,         
long before.  In Pagan records there is no continuous      
narrative of events.  In the sacred records, whatever        
history exists is the history of a man, of a family, of           
a tribe, but not of a people, a nation, a commonwealth.          
This marked beginning, visible even in the Jewish          
annals themselves, is yet more clearly brought out,        
when considered from an external point of view.  To        
the outer heathen world the earlier period of the        
Hebrew race, with the single exception of Abraham,         
was an entire blank.  Their origin in the far East,     
their first settlement in Canaan, the name of their        
first father, whether Jacob or Israel, these were all        
but unknown to the Greeks and Romans.  It is the Exodus             
that reveals the Israelite to the eyes of Europe.        
Egypt was the only land which the Gentile inquirers       
recognized as the birthplace of the Jews.  Moses was         
the character who first appears, not only as the law-       
giver, but as the representative of the nation.  In           
many wild distorted forms the rise of this great        
name, the apparition of this strange people was con-       
ceived.  Let us take brief account — the best that        
has been handed down to us — from the careful and       
truth-loving Strabo.         
   "Moses an Egyptian priest, who possessed a con-       
siderable tract of Lower Egypt, unable longer to      
bear with what existed there, departed thence to          
Syria, and with him went out many who honored         
the Divine Being (τὸ θεῖον).  For Moses maintained            
and taught that the Egyptians were not right in       
likening the nature of God to beasts and cattle, nor       
yet the Africans, nor even the Greeks, in fashioning         
their gods in the form of men.  He held that this         
only was God, — that which encompasses all of us,     
earth and sea, that which we call Heaven, and the          
Order of the world, and the Nature of things.  Of         
this who that had any sense would venture to in-           
vent an image like to anything which exists        
amongst ourselves?  Far better to abandon all stat-         
uary and sculpture, all setting apart of sacred pre-      
cincts and shrines, and to pay reverence, without          
any image whatever.  The course prescribed was,      
that those who have the gift of good divinations,        
for themselves or for others, should compose them-           
selves to sleep with the Temple; and those who         
live temperately and justly may expect to receive        
some good gift from God, — these always, and none        
besides."           
   These words, unconsciously introduced in the work       
of the Cappadocian geographer, occupying but a single       
section of a single chapter in the seventeen books of his       
voluminous treatise, awaken in us something of the same          
feeling as that with which we read the short epistle of          
Pliny, describing with equal unconsciousness, yet with           
equal truth, the first appearance of the new Christian        
society which was to change the face of mankind.  With        
but a few trifling exceptions, Strabo's account is, from        
his point of view, a faithful summary of the mission           
of Moses.  What a curiosity it would have roused in     
our minds, had this been all that remained to us con-         
cerning him!  That curiosity we are enabled to gratify         
from books which lay within Strabo's reach, though       
he cared not to read them.  Let us unfold from their           
ancient pages the leading points of the signal deliv-       
erance, when "Israel came out of Egypt, and the         
house of Jacob from among the strange people."             
   The life of Moses, in the later period of the Jew-       
ish history, was divided into three equal portions of        
forty years each.  This agrees with the natural ar-         
rangement of this history into the three parts, of his      
Egyptian education, his exile in Arabia, and his gov-        
ernment of the Israelite nation in the Wilderness and        
on the confines of Palestine.  But whilst the first two         
will be contained in the present Lecture, the last ex-      
tends itself over the rest of this portion of the his-       
tory.            
   I.  The early period of the life of Moses, as related       
in the Pentateuch, is so closely bound up with the      
later traditions concerning it, that it may be well to         
present it in the form in which it appeared to his       
nation at the time of the Christian era.  His birth        
— so ran the story — had been foretold to Pharaoh         
by the Egyptian magicians, and to his father         
Amram by a dream, as respectively the future        
destroyer and deliverer.  The pangs of his mother's       
labor were alleviated so as to enable her to evade the         
Egyptian midwives.  The beauty of the new-born babe       
— in the later version of the story amplified into a         
beauty and size almost divine — induced the mother to        
make extraordinary efforts for its preservation from the          
general destruction of the male children of Israel.  For          
three months the child, under the name of Joachim,         
was concealed in the house.  Then his mother placed        
him in a small boat or basket of papyrus (perhaps         
from a current Egyptian belief that that plant was          
a protection from crocodiles), closed against the water         
by bitumen.  This was placed among the aquatic         
vegetation by the side of one of the canals of the          
Nile.  The mother departed as if unable to bear the      
sight.  The sister lingered to watch her brother's fate.        
The basket floated down the stream.           
   The princess came down, in primitive simplicity,         
to bathe in the sacred river.  Her attendant         
slaves followed her.  She saw the basket in          
the flags, or borne down the stream, and despatched         
divers after it.  The divers, or one of the female       
slaves, brought it.  It was opened, and the cry of the        
child moved the princess to compassion.  She deter-        
mined to rear it as her own.  The sister was then at        
hand to recommend a Hebrew nurse.  The child was            
brought up as the princess's son, and the memory of         
the incident was long cherished in the name given to        
the foundling of the water's side — whether according        
to its Hebrew or Egyptian form.  Its Hebrew form is         
Mosheh, from masah, "to draw out" — "because I have           
drawn him out of the water."  But this is probably         
the Hebrew termination given to an Egyptian word        
signifying "saved from the water."  The "Child of        
the water" was adopted by the childless princess.  Its          
beauty came to be such that passers-by stood fixed         
to look at it, and laborers left their work to steal a       
glance.  Such was the narrative, as moulded by suc-      
cessive generations, and finally adopted by Josephus       
and Clement of Alexandria, from the simpler, but still     
thoroughly Egyptian, incidents of the Biblical story.       
   From this time for many years Moses must be con-         
sidered as an Egyptian.  In the Pentateuch, whether       
from absence of authentic information, or stern disdain,      
or native simplicity, this period is blank.  But the       
well-known words of Stephen's speech, which describes         
him as "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and         
"mighty in words and deeds," are in fact a brief sum-      
mary of the Jewish and Egyptian traditions which fill        
up the silence of the Hebrew annals.  He was edu-        
cated at Heliopolis, and grew up there as a priest,         
under his Egyptian name of Osarsiph or Tisithen.          
"He learned arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, medi-        
cine and music.  He invented boats and engines for         
building — instruments of war and of hydraulics —      
hieroglyphics — division of lands."  He taught Or-       
pheus, and was hence called by the Greeks Musæus,       
and by the Egyptians Hermes.  He was sent on an       
expedition against the Ethiopians.  He got rid of the       
serpents of the country to be traversed by letting        
loose baskets full of ibises upon them.  The city of        
Hermopolis was believed to have been founded to        
commemorate his victory.  He advanced to the capi-       
tal of Ethiopia, and gave it the name Meroe, from       
his adopted mother Merrhis, whom he buried there.         
Tharbis, the daughter of the king of Ethiopia, fell in      
love with him, and he returned in triumph to Egypt       
with her as his wife.          
   The original account reopens with the time when       
he was resolved to reclaim his nationality.  Here,     
again, the Epistle to the Hebrews, following in the      
same track as Stephen's speech, preserves the tradition      
in a distincter form than the narrative of the Penta-      
teuch.  "Moses, when he was come to years, refused       
to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing      
rather to suffer affliction with the people of God         
than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; es-        
teeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than       
the treasures (the ancient accumulated treasures of       
Rhampsinitus and the old kings) of Egypt."  In his       
earliest infancy he was reported to have refused the       
milk of Egyptian nurses, and, when three years old,       
to have trampled under his feet the crown which     
Pharaoh had playfully placed on his head.  According      
to the Egyptian tradition, although a priest of Heli-       
opolis, he always performed his prayers according to         
the custom of his fathers, outside the walls of the city,      
in the open air, turning towards the sunrising.  The       
king was excited to hatred by his own envy, or by      
the priests of Egypt, who foresaw their destroyer.      
Various plots of assassination were contrived against      
him, which failed.  The last was after he had       
already escaped across the Nile from Memphis, warned        
by his brother Aaron, and when pursued by the as-       
sassin he killed him.  The same general account of         
conspiracies against his life appears in Josephus.  All      
that remains of these traditions in the Sacred narra-      
tive is the single and natural incident, that seeing an     
Israelite suffering the bastinado from an Egyptian, and         
thinking that they were alone, he slew the Egyptian         
(the later tradition said, "with a word of his mouth"),    
and buried the corpse in the sand, — the sand of the     
desert, then, as now, running close up to the culti-      
vated tract.  The same fire of patriotism which thus       
roused him as a deliverer from the oppressors, turns        
him into the peace-maker of the oppressed.  It is char-       
acteristic of the faithfulness of the Sacred records       
that his flight is occasioned rather by the malignity of          
his countrymen than by the enmity of the Egyptians.           
And in Stephen's speech it is that part of the story        
which is drawn out at greater length than in the        
original, evidently with the view of showing the iden-        
tity of the narrow spirit which had thus displayed        
itself equally against their first and the last Deliverer            
   II.  Where these later traditions end, the Sacred       
history begins.  Whatever may have been the        
preparation provided by Egyptian war or wis-       
dom, it is in the unknown, unfrequented wilderness       
of Arabia, — in the same school of solitude and of        
exile, which in humbler spheres has so often trained       
great minds to the reception of new truths, — that the      
mission of Moses was revealed to him.  In that won-         
derful region of the earth, where the grandeur of       
mountains is combined, as hardly anywhere else, with        
the grandeur of the desert, — amidst the granite       
precipices and the silent valleys of Horeb, — as to his        
people afterwards, so to Moses now was the great           
truth to be made manifest, of which, as we have seen,       
he was recognized even by the heathen world to have         
been the first national interpreter.  "Now Moses kept        
the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the Priest of       
Midian: and he led the flock to the back of the          
wilderness" far from the shores of the Red Sea,         
where Jethro seems to have dwelt, "and came to the        
mountain of God, even to Horeb."  We know not       
the precise place.  Tradition, reaching back to the sixth        
century of the Christian era, fixes it in the same deep        
seclusion as that to which in all probability he after-         
wards led the Israelites.  The convent of Justinian        
is built over what was supposed to be the exact spot       
where the shepherd was bid to draw his sandals from       
off his feet.  The valley in which the convent stands       
is called by the Arabian name of Jethro.  But whether       
this, or the other great centre of the peninsula, Mount       
Serbal, be regarded as the scene of the event, the       
appropriateness would be almost equal.  Each has at       
different times been regarded as the sanctuary of the       
desert.  Each presents that singular mystery, which, as      
Josephus tells us, and as the sacred narrative implies,         
had already invested "The Mountain of God" with an        
awful reverence in the eyes of the Arabian tribes, as        
though a Divine Presence rested on its solemn heights.        
Around each, on the rocky ledges of the hill-side, or         
in the retired basins, withdrawn within the deep re-        
cesses of the adjoining mountains, or beside the springs        
which water the adjacent valleys, would be found        
pasture of herbage or of aromatic shrubs for the flocks       
of Jethro.  On each, in that early age, though         
now found only on Mount Serbal, must have       
grown the wild acacia, the shaggy thorn-bush of the       
Seneh, the most characteristic tree of the whole range.        
So natural, so thoroughly in accordance with the scene,       
were the signs, in which the call of Moses makes itself       
heard and seen.  Not in any outward form, human        
or celestial, such as the priests of Heliopolis were wont        
to figure to themselves as the representative of Deity,        
but out of the midst of the spreading thorn, the out-        
growth of the desert wastes, did "the Lord appear      
unto Moses."  A flame of fire, like that which seemed        
to consume and waste away His people in the furnace        
of affliction, shone forth amidst the dry branches of        
the thorny tree, and "behold! the bush," the massive        
thicket, "burned with fire, and the bush was not con-        
sumed."  And when the question arose, with what he      
should work the signs by which his countrymen shall     
believe and hearken to his voice, the same character re-       
curs.  No sword of war, such as was wielded by Egyp-        
tian kings, no mystic emblem, such as was borne by      
Egyptian gods, but — " 'What is that in thine hand?'     
And he said, 'A rod,' " — a staff, a shepherd's crook,       
the staff which indicated his return to the pas-       
toral habits of his fathers, the staff on which           
he leaned amidst his desert wanderings, the staff with       
which he guided his kinsmen's flocks, the staff like        
that borne by Arab chiefs, — this was to be the        
humble instrument of divine power.  "In this," as        
afterwards in the yet humbler symbol of the Cross,     
— in this, the symbol of his simplicity, of his exile,     
of his lowliness, — "the world was to be conquered."          
These were the outward signs of his call.  And,         
whatever the explanation put on their precise im-       
port, there is this undoubted instruction conveyed in        
their description, that they are marked by the pecul-     
iar appropriateness and homogeneousness to the pe-        
culiar circumstances of the Prophet, which marks all       
like manifestations, through every variety of form, to       
the Prophets, the successors of Moses, in each suc-         
ceeding age.  In grace, as in nature, God, if we may        
use the well-known expression, abhorret saltum, abhors a        
sudden, unprepared transition.  "The child is father of         
the man:" the man is the father of the prophet — the days       
of both are "bound each to each by natural piety."           
It is the first signal instance of the prophetic revela-        
tions.  Its peculiar form is the key of all that follow.                
   But, as in all these Revelations, it is the substance      
and spirit of the message, rather than its      
outward form, which carries with it  the most        
enduring lesson, and the surest mark of its heavenly      
origin.  "Behold, when I shall come to the children       
of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your       
fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say,       
'What is His name?' what shall I say unto them?       
And God said unto Moses I AM THAT I AM. . . .      
Thus you shall say unto the children of Israel, 'I AM      
hath sent me unto you.' "        
   It has been observed, that the great epochs of the      
history of the Chosen People are marked by the sev-      
eral names, by which in each the Divine Nature is        
indicated.  In the Patriarchal age we have already         
seen that the oldest Hebrew form by which the most       
general idea of Divinity is expressed is "El-Elohim,"          
The Strong One,"  "The Strong Ones,"  "The Strong."          
"Beth-El,"  "Peni-El," remained even to the latest times        
memorials of this primitive mode of address and wor-       
ship.  But now a new name, and with it a new truth,       
was introduced.  "I am JEHOVAH; I appeared unto         
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name of El-Shad-        
dai (God Almighty); but by my name JEHOVAH        
was I not known unto them."  The only certain         
use of it before the time of Moses is in the name of         
"Jochebed," borne by his own mother.  It has been         
beautifully conjectured that in the small circle of         
that family a dim conception had thus arisen of the        
Divine Truth, which was through the son of that         
family proclaimed forever to the world.  It was the       
rending asunder of the veil which overhung the       
temple of the Egyptian Sais.  "I am that which has        
been , and which is, and which is to be; and my veil        
no mortal hath yet drawn aside."  It was the decla-       
ration of the simplicity, the unity, the self-existence      
of the Divine Nature, the exact opposite to all the     
multiplied forms of idolatry, human, animal, and celes-     
tial, that prevailed, as far as we know, everywhere         
else.  "The Eternal."  This was the moving spring of        
the whole life of Moses, of the whole story of the       
Exodus.  In viewing the history, even as a mere na-       
tional record, we cannot, if we would, dispense with         
the impulse, the elevation, of which the name of      
"Jehovah" was at once the cause and the symbol.       
Slowly and with difficulty it won its way into the        
heart of the people.  We can trace it, through its        
gradual incorporation, into the proper names begin-        
ning with the transformation of Hoshea into Jehoshua.         
We can trace its deep religious significance in the      
frequent usage which separates these portions of the         
Sacred records where the name "Jehovah" occurs        
from those where the older name of "Elohim" occurs.         
The awe which it inspired went on, as it would seem,         
increasing rather than diminishing with the lapse of       
years.  A new turn was given to it under the mon-          
archy, when it becomes encompassed with the attri-          
butes of the leader of the armies of earth and heaven,       
"JEHOVAH Sabaoth,"  "The LORD of Hosts."  And in       
later times it lies concealed, enshrined, behind the            
word which the trembling reverence of the last age        
of the Jewish people substituted for it, and which ap-        
pears in the Greek and in the English version of the          
Scriptures, — "Adonai,"  "Kurios,"  "the Lord," — a sub-         
stitution which, whilst it effaced the historical meaning       
of the name, prepared the way for the still nearer         
and closer revelation of God in Him whom we now       
emphatically acknowledge as "Our Lord."        
   But we must return to the original circumstances       
under which the Revelation was first made.       
It is characteristic of the Biblical history that        
this new name, though itself penetrating into the            
most abstract metaphysical idea of God, yet in its       
effect was the very opposite of a mere abstraction.      
Moses is a Prophet, — the first of the Prophets, — but           
he is also a Deliverer.  Israel, indeed, through him      
becomes "a chosen people,"  "a holy congregation," —        
in one word, a Church.  But it also through him be-     
comes a nation:  it passes, by his means, from a pas-       
toral, subjective, servile tribe, into a civilized, free, inde-      
pendent commonwealth.  It is in this aspect that the      
more human and historical side of his appearance pre-        
sents itself.  It is true that even here we see him very       
imperfectly.  In him, as in the Apostles afterwards,     
the man is swallowed up in the cause, the messenger       
in the message and mission with which he is charged.       
Yet from time to time, and here in this opening of      
his career more than elsewhere, his outward and      
domestic relations are brought before us.  He returns       
to Egypt from his exile.  In the advice of his father-      
in law to make war upon Egypt, in his meeting with        
his brother in the desert of Sinai, may be indications     
of a mutual understanding and general rising of the       
Arabian tribes against the Egyptian monarchy.  But      
in the Sacred narrative our attention is fixed only          
on the personal relations of the two brothers, now          
first mentioned together, never henceforth to       
be parted.  From that meeting and coöpera-      
tion we have the first indications of his indi-       
vidual character and appearance.  We are accustomed       
to invest him with all the external grandeur which          
would naturally correspond to the greatness of his      
mission.  The statue of Michael Angelo rises before         
us in its commanding sternness, as the figure before        
which Pharaoh trembled.  Something, indeed, of this           
is justified by the traditions respecting him.  The           
long shaggy hair and beard, which infold in their vast       
tresses that wild form, appear in heathen repre-          
sentations of him.  The beauty of the child is, by the         
same traditions, continued into his manhood.  "He         
was," says the historian Justin (with the confusion        
so common in Gentile representations), "both as wise       
and as beautiful as his father Joseph."  But the only        
point described in the Sacred narrative is one of sin-       
gular and unlooked-for infirmity.  "O my Lord, I am         
not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast       
spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech,        
and slow of tongue; . . .  how shall Pharaoh hear          
me, which am of uncircumcised lips?" — that is, slow         
and without words, "stammering an hesitating" (so      
the Septuagint strongly expresses it), like Demos-      
thenes in his earlier youth, — slow and without words,        
like the circuitous orations of the English Cromwell,        
— "his speech contemptible," like the Apostle Paul.       
How often had this been repeated in the history of      
the world, — how truly has the answer been repeated       
also: "Who hath made man's mouth? . . .  Have not         
I the Lord? . . .  I will be thy mouth, and teach       
thee what thou shalt say."           
   And when the remonstrance went up from the true,       
disinterested heart of Moses, "O my Lord., send, I      
pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou        
wilt send"  ("Make any one thine Apostle so        
that it be not me"), the future relation of the two      
brothers is brought to light.  "Is not Aaron the     
Levite thy brother?  I know that he can speak        
well.  And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet         
thee, and when he seeth thee he will be glad in his        
heart.  And thou shalt speak unto him, and put       
ords in his mouth . . .  And he shall be thy        
spokesman unto the people, and he shall be,  even         
he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou         
shalt be to him instead of God."  In all outward ap-       
pearance, — as the Chief of the tribe of Levi, as the       
head of the family of Amram, as the spokesman and        
interpreter, as the first who "spake to the people and      
to Pharaoh all the words which the Lord had spoken         
to Moses," and did the signs in the sight of the         
people, as the permanent inheritor of the sacred staff       
or rod, the emblem of rule and power, — Aaron, not        
Moses, must have been the representative and leader         
of Israel.  But Moses was the inspiring, informing soul       
within and behind; and, as time rolled on, as the              
first outward impression passed away and the deep       
abiding recollection of the whole story remained, Aaron         
the prince and priest had almost disappeared from the          
view of history; and Moses, the dumb, backward, dis-          
interested Prophet, continues for all ages the foremost        
leader of the Chosen People, the witness that some-      
thing more is needed for the guidance of man than     
high hereditary office or the gift of fluent speech, —         
a rebuke alike to an age that puts its trust in priests      
and nobles, and an age that puts its trust in preach-      
ers and speakers.          
   As his relations with Aaron give us a glimpse into      
his personal history, so his advance towards       
Egypt gives us a glimpse into the domestic his-       
tory.  His wife, whom he had won by his chivalrous       
attack on the Bedouin shepherds by "the well" of        
Midian, and her two infant sons, are within him.  She       
is seated with them on the ass, — the usual mode of         
travelling, for Israelites at least, in those parts.  He        
walks by their side with his shepherd's staff.  On       
the journey a mysterious and almost inexplicable in-     
cident occurs in the family.  The most probable ex-      
planation seems to be, that at the caravansary either     
Moses or his eldest child was struck with what seemed     
to be a mortal illness.  In some way, not apparent to     
us, this illness was connected by Zipporah with the        
fact that her son had not been circumcised – whether       
in general neglect of that rite amongst the Israel-      
ites in Egypt, or in consequence of his birth in Midian.       
She instantly performed the rite, and threw the sharp        
instrument, stained with the fresh blood, at the feet      
of her husband, exclaiming in the agony of a mother's         
anxiety for the life of her child, "A bloody husband         
thou art to case the death of my son."  Then, when         
the recovery from the illness took place (whether of        
her son or her husband), she exclaims again: "A          
bloody husband still thou art, but not so as to cause       
the child's death, but only to bring about his cir-        
cumcision."            
   It would seem as if in consequence of this event,     
whatever it was, that the wife and her children were      
sent back to Jethro, and remained with him till       
Moses joined them at Rephidim.  Unless Zipporah is      
the Cushite wife who gave such umbrage to Miriam        
and Aaron, we hear of her no more.             
   The two sons also sink into obscurity.  Their names,     
thoug Levitical in origin, relate to their foreign birth-       
place.  Gershom, the "stranger," and Eli-ezer, "God is         
my help," commemorated their father's exile and es-       
cape.  Their posterity lingered in obscurity down to      
the time of David.       
   From the Deliverer we proceed to the Deliverance.      
We need not repeat what has been already said of       
the condition of Egypt at this time, and of the pecul-        
iar oppression of the Israelites.            

from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture V: The Exodus
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 113-129