The Holy Prophet and God-seer Moses (+1531 before the Nativity of Christ)
The holy Prophet Moses, leader and lawgiver of the Hebrews, was a descendant of the tribe of Levi. He was born in Egypt at the time when the Israelites, carried there captive, were suffering under the yoke of slavery. By Pharaoh’s order the newborn sons of the Hebrews were to be killed, so that the people would not multiply. For fear of this order Moses’s mother hid her son for three months, and then, “when she could not longer hide him,” she laid him in a pitched ark and left him among the reeds by the river’s edge. Here the child was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who had come down to bathe; she took pity on him, adopted him, and named him Moses, which means “drawn out of the water”.
In the king’s palace Moses lived in luxury and was instructed in the learning of the Egyptians, but he felt no peace: he knew that he was a Hebrew, and the affliction and misery which his kinsmen endured from the Egyptians troubled him. Once Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew; he killed the Egyptian, hid him in the sand, and then, fleeing Pharaoh’s wrath, took refuge in the land of Midian. There the Lord’s chosen one lodged with Jethro the priest and married his daughter.
Moses kept the sheep of his father-in-law. Once, as he was leading the flock near Mount Horeb, he saw a bramble bush in flames that was not consumed. He drew near to the bush and heard from it: “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob… Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, king of the Egyptians, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.” Moses was dismayed by his own weakness, but the Lord promised him: “I will be with thee,” gave him the power of working miracles, so that all might be convinced that he had been sent by God, and appointed his brother Aaron to be his helper. Moses obeyed the command received from on high and went to Egypt.
The prophet with Aaron stood before Pharaoh and made known to him the will of the Lord, but the godless ruler refused to let the Hebrews go. God brought ten plagues upon Egypt: at Moses’s word the water in the rivers, lakes and pools turned to blood; hail and locusts destroyed the crops; a three-day darkness came down upon the land… But the hardened Pharaoh still stood his ground. From the second plague on, at every calamity sent as a punishment he promised to set the Israelites free, but as soon as calm returned he took back his word again. The lawless man carried out the Lord’s command only when, by God’s will, an angel killed all the firstborn sons of the Egyptians.
About six hundred thousand men came out of Egypt, besides women and children. Under God’s protection and Moses’s leadership they set out on the road to the promised land. When they drew near to the Red Sea, the fugitives noticed their pursuers: Moses parted the sea with a stroke of his rod. The Israelites passed over on the dry bottom, and the pursuers followed them. Then Moses struck the sea with his rod again; the water came together and all the Egyptians were drowned.
The Lord worked many more miracles through His chosen one: He made bitter water fit to drink, and brought water out of a dry rock…
At Rephidim the Hebrews were attacked by the tribe of Amalek, who lived in the desert. Moses sent Joshua son of Nun with the warriors to fight the invaders, while he himself went up to the top of a hill with Aaron and Hur. When he held up his hands, the Israelites prevailed; when he let them down, Amalek gained strength. Then Aaron and Hur sat Moses on a stone “and stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side.” The prophet sat with his hands raised until sunset, and the Hebrews overcame the enemy.
On the fiftieth day after the exodus from Egypt the Israelites came to Mount Sinai. The Lord commanded Moses, who had gone up the mountain, to tell His people: “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine.” When the prophet carried out the command, the whole people thundered with one voice: “All that the Lord hath spoken we will do, and be obedient.” Again Moses went up the mountain and fasted forty days and nights, after which he received from the Lord two tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments written on them; God also gave him other laws, which are included in the first five books of the Old Testament, and commanded him to build the tabernacle, that is, the movable temple. At the Lord’s command too Moses appointed his brother Aaron high priest, his sons priests, and the rest of the descendants of Levi ministers of the movable temple.
After receiving the Law the Hebrews soon drew near to the land of Canaan, but for their murmuring and little faith God sentenced them to a forty-year journey in the desert. In the fortieth year Moses led the Lord’s chosen people to the border of Canaan, while he himself looked on the promised land from afar and died. He was then a hundred and twenty years old. The place of the Prophet Moses’s grave is unknown.
