Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he was mighty in his words and works.- Act_7:22.
1. In the history of the leader of the Exodus, the first noteworthy qualification for the work of his life is that he was representative of the two classes between whom he was to mediate. He was by birth of the kindred of the oppressed, while by upbringing and education he was connected with their oppressors. This gave him a breadth of view and of sympathy which he could not otherwise have had. His connexion with Israel, the law of whose life was the law of sacrifice, gave him depth of character and a native sympathy with things unseen; while his position in the palace of the Pharaohs gave him all that the highest civilization of the time could bestow. In him already the Israelites spoiled the Egyptians. The learning and wisdom, the might in words and in deeds, which Moses acquired in the royal household were infinitely more valuable for the enrichment of the emancipated nation than all the jewels of gold which they carried with them in their exodus.
The history of every human life is profitable alike for doctrine and for reproof. When we mark he steps by which a man has been led, and the manner in which he has made or marred himself, we learn much concerning Him who shapes our ends, and much also which can be turned to practical account for our guidance or our warning. The records of even the humblest life, which has had no apparent influence beyond its own immediate circle, are thus replete with instruction. In every such life we can recognize something of the Divine Hand which fashions us, and something also which may help us in fashioning ourselves.1 [Note: James Brown, Sermons, 159.]
2. But in the training of Moses He who shapes our ends was careful that the first place should be given to that which lays the deep and enduring foundations of character. Depth must be secured before breadth or height. Unless the roots are struck far into the soil the tree cannot afford to shoot up high or spread its branches wide to catch the influences of the sunlight and the rain. It was by arrangement of infinite wisdom that he who was to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and to be learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, should be first nursed by his own Hebrew mother.
No one can calculate the value and enduring influence of the training which begins even before children have attained to the years of consciousness. We do not use a mere figure when we speak, as we so often do, of men having drunk in certain principles with their mother's milk. The mind receives impressions which often prove permanent long before it is conscious that they are being made. It could not but powerfully influence his future that in his infancy Moses looked habitually into a face in which sorrow and hope were blended. For in his mother's face there must have been that depth of sorrow which is seen only in those who have come to a heritage of wrong endured from generation to generation; and there was the hope which, rooted in the ancient promise that God would surely visit His people, had, at the birth of this goodly child, been quickened into the expectation that the hour of deliverance was at hand. When in his later life Moses saw the bush that burned and was not consumed, he but saw in symbol what he had seen in reality in his mother's face, in which hope had lived and refused to be consumed by the sorrow of the long captivity. From the reflection of that face, in which the glory of the Divine Inspirer of hope was seen, Moses' face would shine while yet he wist not of it. Let us give God thanks for our godly mothers; let us cherish them if they are with us; let us reverence their memory if they are gone; and let us recognize the unspeakable power of family life to mould the future of a nation.
3. Depth of character having been thus secured for the future lawgiver, breadth of culture and wider views of men and things than would have been attainable to one of the children of the enslaved Hebrews were added. The Jewish tradition tells that he was at once instructed in all the knowledge of the time and trained to a practical acquaintance with affairs of state-learned in wisdom, and mighty in words and in deeds. According to that tradition, he was admitted to the priestly caste, served in the temple at Heliopolis, and there became versed in the mysteries of the Egyptian religion. Such a training was unspeakably important for one who was to be called to formulate the doctrine and prescribe the ritual of a purer religion.
In times of reformation those whom God raises up to lead men to juster conception of His character and purpose, and to simpler and more spiritual worship, have always been trained, and have often been peculiarly zealous, in the faith against which their later teaching was a protest. The greatest of Christian apostles, who did more than all the rest to emancipate the Church from the bondage of the letter of Judaism, had been an Hebrew of the Hebrews, and as touching the law a Pharisee; and Martin Luther, by agonizings in his cell, by pilgrimages to Rome, and by climbings of holy stairways, had sought to attain the best that the old religion could do for him, before he led a liberated Church into the simpler truth, that “the just shall live by faith.”1 [Note: James Brown.]
4. Thus was Moses trained and fitted for the high position to which God had called him: he was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians. Later in his life, and when he had finished with the schools, there came another training, which completed his fitness as leader of Israel. Stephen speaks of Moses as “mighty in words and in deeds”-that he occupied a foremost position in the land both as a statesman and as a warrior, foremost in influencing the course of events both at home and abroad. To the high spirits and courage of this young prince, when as yet peace principles had not begun to be advocated, it is easy to believe that the soldier's life would have a peculiar charm. Every Egyptian monarch led out his army in person and himself fought at its head. And it seemed a fitting place for the son of Pharaoh's daughter. The military glory of Egypt had lately been increased by the great victories in Asia; and now in the war with Ethiopia, Moses found scope for his skill and courage. Tradition has handed down to us what is merely fanciful as to his military career, but at the same time there is certainly much that confirms the words of Stephen. Moses' skill in marshalling the hosts of Israel, and in leading them through the Red Sea and the desert, in choosing the places of their encampment and in directing it-all this was doubtless largely the result of his life in the battlefield, from his twentieth to his fortieth year.
Josephus gives us a romantic story that probably has some foundation, though it may be difficult to say what. “The Ethiopians, neighbours of the Egyptians upon the south, were in the habit of making inroads into their territory, and ravaging it from time to time. After a while they provoked the Egyptians to retaliate, and the latter marched an army into the land of the Ethiopians, to punish them for their insolence. But the Ethiopians gathered their forces together, and engaging the Egyptians in the open field completely defeated them, slaughtering a vast number, and forcing the rest to make a hasty and disgraceful retreat into their own country. It was now the turn of the Ethiopians to take the offensive. Following up the flying foe they crossed the border, and, not content with ravaging, proceeded to seize and occupy large portions of southern Egypt. The inhabitants did not venture on resistance; and little by little the invaders crept on towards the north, till they reached Memphis, and even the Mediterranean coast, without a single city having held out against their attack. Reduced to the depths of despair, the Egyptians had recourse to the oracular shrines, and inquired of them what it would be best to do. The reply given by the oracles-i.e., by the priests who had the control of them-was: ‘Use the Hebrew as your helper.' No one doubted that by ‘the Hebrew' was meant Moses, or that the ‘help' to be required of him was that he should take the conduct of the war. Moses accordingly was invested with the sole command, and at the head of the Egyptian troops he marched into the enemy's country, by an importation of ibises got rid of the serpents that infested it, and defeated in a decisive battle the army that was sent against him. He then went on and took city by city, everywhere overcoming the resistance that was offered to him, and slaying large numbers of the enemy. His troops, whom their reverses had disheartened, took courage so soon as they found that their new general could lead them to victory, and showed themselves excellent soldiers, ready to endure alike toil and danger.”1 [Note: Mark Guy Pearse.]
5. But the training of Moses for the great work of his life could not be complete as long as he remained in the high places of Pharaoh's court. As “it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings,” so it was necessary that the captain who was to lead the children of Israel to the glory of freedom and of a purer faith, should attain his qualification for the work through the discipline of sacrifice. The exodus he was to lead was a part of that long procession down the ages, which, beginning when Abraham left his country and his kindred and his father's house and went out not knowing whither he went, reached its goal at last when He who alone rendered the perfect sacrifice went forth without the gate bearing the cross to Calvary. It was necessary that the leader of that exodus should have as his crowning qualification the spirit of the cross; that he should be trained and called to deny himself and should make sacrifice to follow the path of duty. He had his choice to make, and he made it.
My father often longed greatly for certain things, and when they were given, if we said that they were delightful, would immediately offer them to us. Some of his greatest sacrifices were relative to seemingly small things. He went through life both denying himself and lightly holding all things material, letting life's treasures, so thought the worldly man, slip past him. Thus he dealt with honours, praise, and the trinkets of Vanity Fair; and thus, losing all, he found all, and we knew at the end that he had plucked the secret out of life's mystery, that he had the Blue Bird caged and singing within his heart, that he had found a perfect peace.1 [Note: Love and Life: The Story of J. Denholm Brash (1913), 157.]
