"Pharaoh, Pharaoh....let my people go, Huh!"

In our second episode of The Bible, we saw the first 40 years of Moses' life as a prince of Egypt. He was adopted as baby by the daughter of the ruling Pharaoh and given every opportunity and luxury that any offspring in the royal household would enjoy. He was well fed, well educated, pampered and protected; she even chose the name Moses "because I drew him out of the water" (Ex 2:10). He knew the social and political workings of the royal government, he may have been expected to take a place next to the Pharaoh's heir as a trusted advisor and confidant. God knew where Moses would get the finest earthly preparation for leading and governing a nation, His nation.

But in the next part of the story, we may see some creative storytelling. Moses may have known he was a Hebrew...he had probably been identified as God's at 8 days old as Hebrew boys were; circumcision wasn't a common practice among Egyptians. He may have even known his Hebrew family. When God sends him back to Egypt, He tells him "your brother Aaron, the Levite is coming out to meet you and when he sees you he will be glad in his heart" (Ex 4:14).

Neither do the scriptures say anything about a rivalry between the heir to the Egyptian throne and Moses. He did flee Egypt because he killed an Egyptian overlord, but when sending him back, the Lord reassured Moses "all the men who were seeking your life are dead" (Ex 4:19). If the Pharaoh Moses faced when he returned 40 years later had wanted him dead, he probably would not have made it past the first round of guards. Surely there was some deep connection between the two. 

God was even gracious enough to tell Moses (and Moses tells Aaron) what the end result of all the back and forth with Pharaoh would be: "he will let you go" (Ex 4:20). What our movie doesn't show us is the hardship the Israelites had to endure while Moses and Pharaoh were wrestling back and forth; the punishment for Moses' constant request to Pharaoh. Nor does the Bible tell us how long this tug of war took...it must have been months because of the plagues on several types of crop rotations, it could have been a year! Neither does it show us that at least 3 times Pharaoh asked Moses to intercede with God and stop a plague, agreeing to let the Israelites go and then reneging. Or that when the Israelites left Egypt they were a wealthy nation because they requested "from their Egyptian neighbors the articles of silver and articles of gold" (Ex 11:2)...and they gave it to them!

The Bible may skip the rich details of the delivery of the children of God but the end result is the same...the angel of death passes over only the houses that have marked their door posts and transom with the blood of a sacrificial lamb. And with the death of his own son, Amenhotep II releases the slave labor of Egypt. The first census soon after the exodus says there were "six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children" (Ex 12:37). Allowing for women, young men between the ages of 12 and 20 and children, Ryrie believes there could have been 2,000,000 Hebrews released from Egypt that night. Two million people who now had to travel as a group across the desert to Canaan (a 40 year journey...God's route is never direct) and learn to become a nation. Even the trip to the shores of the Red Sea took many weeks with that many people.

But they were guided by the Lord in a pillar of fire at night and a cloud during the day (Ex 13:21). And once they crossed the Red Sea, they had 10,000 square miles of desert...and the Promised Land...ahead of them. I imagine our next episodes will show us how this rag-tag group of slaves grew from children marked by God to a nation formed by and for Him. Like all of our faith journeys, it promises to be a serpentine route!

Alana