And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.- Deu_34:10.
1. To say that the history of Israel is a history of her prophets is to say that it is a history in which the moving and significant agent is Jehovah, whose mouthpiece and representative the prophets were: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets: the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amo_3:7); in other words, it is a history of revelation, for revelation implies that to certain individuals, and not immediately to the people at large, God makes Himself and His will known. The prophet is a man who, for clearness of insight, and purity of purpose, and knowledge of God, stands above the mass of his compatriots: and so, if Moses was a prophet, this is what we should expect him to be. And in the representations which we have of him, these are the qualities which we find. The writers to whom we owe his biography pictured him as a prophet, and described him accordingly. He speaks in Jehovah's name to Pharaoh; he uses the prophetic expressions, “Thus saith Jehovah,” etc.; he leads Israel out of Egypt under a sense of God's directing hand; he hears inwardly God's words, and sees on Sinai manifestations of His presence; specifically prophetic teaching is communicated through him, or put into his mouth (Exo_4:22; Exo_6:7; Exo_15:26; Exo_19:5-6; Exo_33:19; Exo_34:6-7, and elsewhere: Deut. passim); Jehovah is even represented as holding converse with him not by a vision or a dream, as with an ordinary prophet, but with some special and distinctive clearness (Num_12:6; Num_12:8), “as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exo_33:11; cf. Deu_34:10). Hosea, writing c. 740 b.c., expressly styles him a prophet (Hos_12:13).
2. In word and deed Moses showed himself an instrument of the Lord, unapproached by any other. He was the prophet without rival in respect of his intercourse with God and of what the Lord did and revealed by him. Of Moses it is said more frequently than of all other prophets together: “God talked with him,” or “God spake to him.” He is not only called “Servant of the Lord”-and, indeed, most frequently of all the men of God in the Old Testament,-“Servant of God,” a designation used of him exclusively; but he is also called the greatest among the prophets on account of the intimacy and familiarity of the intercourse he enjoyed with God, and on account of the clear directness which in consequence distinguished the revelation given to him. Moreover, his mission consisted, not merely in being a channel of the Divine word, but in a unique, creative work-it was Moses who, through the Divine word, introduced the Divine rule in Israel.
Popularly, Moses is known as the lawgiver. But, though he is called so by the Jews themselves, they never mean to imply that he was the fons et origo of the legislation to which his name is attached. There is no doubt that his Egyptian education specially prepared him for being the inspired medium of the Divine revelation. But it was not out of the resources of his own mind that the legislative code sprang. He was but a προφήτης, a spokesman for God. And it was not as a legislator like Solon or Justinian that he was said to have given the Law to Israel. Moses himself originated nothing. He was but the pen in the hand of the Almighty, communicating what he had already received.1 [Note: W. S. Bruce, The Ethics of the Old Testament, 73.]
3. Although, as already stated, it may not be possible to point to any special details of the cultus which can be certainly ascribed to Moses, there is no doubt that in two important points he laid the foundations of Israel's religious development.
(1) In the first place he grasped for himself, and taught his fellow-tribesmen, the true significance of the events connected with the departure of the tribes from Egypt. He understood the bearing of these events on the character of Jehovah: His “holiness” or separateness from nature, His power, His willingness to redeem. In the great deliverance was involved a revelation which was necessarily the starting-point of a higher religion. Accordingly the central principle of his system was devotion to Jehovah as a gracious Being who had mercifully intervened to deliver an enslaved people from bondage; who had manifested His lordship over nature and His superiority to the deities of the heathen; who had adopted Israel and brought it into a filial relation to Himself. The loosely organized tribes were in fact welded into a nation by their common relationship to their Deliverer; and it has been justly remarked that this adhesion of a group of tribes to a single deity marked a step in advance from mere “henotheism” or “monolatry” towards monotheism. But it is even more important to notice that in the Mosaic conception of Jehovah lay “the promise and potency,” not of mere monotheism, but of the ethical monotheism of the great prophets of the eighth century. For Jehovah revealed Himself in the events of the Exodus as the God, not of a particular territory, but of a people. Throughout the wanderings He walked with them in a tent and in a tabernacle. He led them onwards through the toils of their pilgrimage and brought them into the Land of Promise. He manifested in deeds His hatred of oppression and injustice, His longsuffering, His compassion, His readiness to forgive, His sustaining power and grace. Thus by kindling and keeping alive Israel's faith in its deliverer, Moses gave the tribes a rallying-point and a bond of union which could never be altogether lost to view.
(2) In the second place Moses taught the supreme importance in religion of righteous conduct. The deliverance from Egypt formed the basis of a covenant between Jehovah and the ransomed people. The Hebrews became servants of Jehovah. Redeemed by Him they were henceforth bound to His service. At the very outset they were subjected to an elementary moral code, and were reminded that a special character was the condition of covenant-fellowship with Jehovah. The Moral Law was seen to be the supreme tie between God and man; the foundation was securely laid upon which future legislation could be built up, and the great ethical principles were enunciated which the prophets afterwards developed. In this ethical basis of Mosaism lies its claim to be an important factor in the development of a universal religion. What was of permanent significance in Mosaism was the paramount place of the Moral Law. By placing the ten commandments in its forefront it made good its claim to be an everlasting covenant; it taught and laid down the moral conditions of religious character, not only for its own time, but for all time. It was a step in religious history of which we can even now but imperfectly measure the greatness.
Hebraism has its faults and dangers; still, the intense and convinced energy with which the Hebrew, both of the Old and of the New Testament, threw himself upon his ideal of righteousness, and which inspired the incomparable definition of the great Christian virtue, faith,-the substantiation of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,-this energy of devotion to its ideal has belonged to Hebraism alone. As our idea of perfection widens beyond the narrow limits to which the over-rigour of Hebraising has tended to confine it, we shall yet come again to Hebraism for that devout energy in embracing our ideal which alone can give to man the happiness of doing what he knows. “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.”-The last word for infirm humanity will always be that. For this word, reiterated with a power now sublime, now affecting, but always admirable, our race will, as long as the world lasts, return to Hebraism; and the Bible, which preaches this word, will for ever remain, as Goethe called it, not only a national book, but the Book of the Nations.1 [Note: Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy.]
4. Let us sum up the character and life of Moses in the words of another grand and ardent soul, subdued, like his own, by the marvellous dealings with him of the Highest:-“This Moses, humble in refusing so great a service; resigned in undertaking, faithful in discharging, unwearied in fulfilling it; vigilant in governing his people; resolute in correcting them, ardent in loving them, and patient in bearing with them; the intercessor for them with the God whom they provoked-this Moses-such and so great a man-we love, we admire, and, so far as may be, imitate.2 [Note: Augustine, Contra Faustum, viii. 162.]
