Monstrous Moses

Talk about inauspicious beginnings, the very first event related in the story of Moses' adult life is his murder of an Egyptian who he chances upon in the act of beating up on a Hebrew. Fearing punishment, Moses flees to Midian, marries a local girl, and lives in peace and plenty until the age of eighty. Then God, apparently thinking that this fugitive killer is the ideal man to help slaughter Egyptians, calls to him from a burning bush.

These days, most people think of the story of Moses and the Pharaoh in terms of epic, Technicolor® movies, especially The Ten Commandments. In this version of the story, the Hebrews were portrayed as severely oppressed slaves, ruthlessly starved, beaten, and forced to build pyramids until Moses finally managed to convince the heartless Pharaoh to set them free. But as so often happens in the entertainment world, the movie version differs widely from the original book. Of course, very few people bother to read the book. Who can blame them? Exodus is a long, poorly written, difficult-to-follow story. Therefore, I shall save you the effort of wading through the original by presenting the basic plot here. You are encouraged, however, to check these facts against the original should you have any doubts about this distillation.

 To begin with, the Hebrews were not slaves in Egypt. You might recall the story of Joseph —the one with the nice coat — who was sold by his brothers into slavery. [Gen 37] Joseph ended up in Egypt and, after some initial tough times, so impressed the Pharaoh with his dream interpretations that he was appointed ruler of the country — you just can't get any further away from slavery than that. Using his new powers, Joseph invited his father, Jacob (also known as Israel) and his eleven brothers and their families to come down to Egypt where they could better survive the famine that they were all suffering through. Joseph got the Pharaoh to give his family "the best of the land of Egypt." [Gen 45:18]

 Here, the twelve tribes of Israel—as the families of the twelve sons of Jacob became known—lived for 430 years. In that time, their number grew to something between two and three million people. (600,000 adult males plus women, children, the elderly, servants, and slaves.) [Ex 12:37] They raised their own livestock and other animals; grew their own crops on their own land (the “best in Egypt”); had their own craftsmen; and enjoyed a varied and well-seasoned diet. [Num 11:5 & 18] And, they lived in houses so similar to the average Egyptian residence that they had to mark their front doors to ensure they would survive “Passover.”

Towards the end of their stay, the Hebrews had grown "too many and too mighty" [Ex 9] and, it is said, the Egyptian leaders were afraid of them and had begun to try and oppress them. As if to justify the Hebrew’s deceit in arranging their departure, chapter 5 of Exodus tells of the Pharoah increasing the labor involved in the making of bricks. Apparently, this was written by someone who thought it possible to turn over a million well-off men and women into down-trodden laborers virtually overnight. Or perhaps the Hebrews had their slaves make the bricks.

 Anyway, when Moses said "let my people go" he wasn't pleading for the release of a few exploited slaves, he was asking the Pharaoh to relinquish a good portion of the population and wealth of the Egyptian nation.

As leader, it would undoubtedly have been one of the Pharaoh's primary jobs to keep the country safe, powerful, and in one piece; so, it was natural to resist Moses' request for succession. Think of President Lincoln’s response to the proposed “exodus” of the Southern States of America in 1860. But, even if the Pharaoh had been inclined to let his guests of four centuries depart in peace, he simply couldn't do so because the game was rigged against him from the beginning.

When God first spoke to Moses—from the burning bush on Mount Horeb [a.k.a. Mt. Sinai]—he was very clear about his intent to prevent the Pharaoh from giving-in to the Hebrews' demands: "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go." [Ex 4:21 & 7:3]

And that's what happened; each time the Pharaoh told Moses that the Hebrews could leave, God forced him to change his mind. In other words, God had planned to torment the Egyptians with all sorts of grotesque plagues, and the Pharaoh was just a puppet God used to provide an excuse for drawing out the torment. The purpose of all this is stated clearly by God: "that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your son's son how I have made sport of the Egyptians." [Ex 10:1 2]

 Remembering that most all Egyptians (millions of them) were innocent of any oppression of their Hebrew neighbors, and that the Egyptian ruler was forcibly prevented from stopping the spectacle of plagues, consider the following details: God told Moses to lie to the Pharaoh, asking only for a few days in the country to perform sacrifices, although he planned all along to leave Egypt permanently. God told Moses to have the Hebrews "borrow" gold and jewels from their Egyptian friends and neighbors, with no intention of returning it. God poisoned the country's only river and killed all the fish. God killed all of the Egyptian's cattle, along with their "horses, asses, camels, herds, and flocks." [Ex 9:3 6] God infested the land with frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts. God inflicted painful and debilitating boils on the skin of all Egyptians. God sent a hail and lightning storm that destroyed all growing crops and killed all the slaves and servants working in the fields.

And, for the grand finale, on the infamous night celebrated today as Passover, God murdered the oldest child of every non-Hebrew family in Egypt. (Note that most families would lose several members, because many of the grandparents and parents would be the oldest children of their respective parents.)

As a sort of encore, a few days later, God made the Pharaoh take what was left of the Egyptian army out to be drowned.

Thusly the god of Abraham did make sport of the Egyptians.

This is a story of deceit and thievery, of treachery and torture, of a god who murders thousands of innocent children (and fetuses) just to make a name for himself. This is the most horrifying and evil story ever imagined by man.

And, without doubt, it was imagined. Not only is it an affront to reason and common sense, it is internally inconsistent (the cattle are killed on three separate occasions, [11Ex 9:6, 9:20, 12:29] the dead horses man-age to pull chariots, [Ex 9:3, 14:9] frogs swarm from waters poisoned a week before, [Ex 7 22, 8:6] etc.), and nowhere in the vast and detailed records that the Egyptians kept of their own history is there any mention of such momentous events.

That last point begs emphasis: Nowhere in the vast and detailed records that the Egyptians kept of their own history is there any mention of an emigration of Jews.

Moses Exposed

After helping to destroy a good deal of the people and infrastructure of Egypt, Moses leads his tribe of millions, "equipped for battle," [Ex 13:18] across the lands, intending to destroy a good deal of the people and infrastructure of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, [Ex 3:8] whose misfortune it is to be the current residents of Canaan, a land supposedly promised to the Hebrews. It seems that God used to be the god of this land, but its occupants failed to follow his orders, so He has abandoned them and chosen the Hebrews to get vengeance. If the Hebrews follow God's orders precisely, they will be empowered to vanquish the larger Canaanite armies and live forever in the land of milk and honey.

As the Hebrews traveled, they acted more like an army on the prowl than a bunch of refugees seeking the promised land. They avoided the stronger nations and attacked the weaker ones. And when the Hebrews attacked, the result wasn't pretty:

  • "And the Lord God hearkened to the voice of Israel, and gave over the Canaanites [the kingdom of Arad]; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities; so the name of the place was called `Destruction.' " [Num 21:3]
  • "And Israel slew [the king of the Amorites] with the edge of the sword and took possession of his land." [Num 21:24]
  • "So they slew [the king of Bashan], and his sons, and all his people, until there was not one survivor left to him; and they possessed his land." [Num 21:35]

The most telling conquest of all was Moses' last. Forty-some years after he left Midian, Moses returns to destroy the people that had given him peaceful shelter. "They warred against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and slew every male. … took captive the women of Midian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods." [Num 31:7+] And [pay attention now, this is the highlight] when the soldiers returned to Moses, he berated them for allowing the women and children to live, ordered that all male children and all non-virgin females should be killed, and gave the virgins to the conquering soldiers for their sexual sport (after the priests had taken their share).

Other than all the killing and raping, the grandest moment in the Israelite’s trek is the stopover at Mt. Horeb to pick up some advice from God himself. Unfortunately for the peripatetic masses, all they get to see is a huge, dark cloud hovering near the mountain-top; Moses alone gets the privilege of meeting the boss in person — and he only sees a bright light. God, according to Moses, had warned the Hebrews "do not go up into the mountain or touch the border of it; who-ever touches the mountain shall be put to death." [Ex 19:12] Instead, "the people stood afar off" and only listened to God's voice, which sounded to them like thunder. Fortunately, Moses was around to interpret, otherwise the world would have missed out, not only on the ten commandments, but on about 100 other ordinances including specifying the proper stone [Ex 20:25] for building altars and the protocol for selling a daughter into slavery. [Ex 21:7]