Moses and Me

When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, He told Moses some things that Moses didn’t want to hear. A lot of that may simply have been the fact that, after many years of living in the land of Midian, he had grown comfortable with his life as it was. Granted, it was a far cry from living in Pharaoh’s palace as he had when he was known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but he had a young. loving wife and the satisfaction of being able to feed himself and his family with his own labor. On the other hand, he had left Egypt under threat of death, so that may be another reason that he didn’t want to return.

In some ways, we can see that Moses was uniquely qualified to be the man to deliver God’s judgment to Pharaoh. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what relationship Moses had with the Pharaoh that ruled Egypt at that time; This was not the Pharaoh that Moses had grown up calling grandfather. He may have been an uncle, or a cousin (Moses was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, who, although of royal blood, is not likely to have succeeded her father upon his death. More likely she would have had a brother that would have been the heir, although it’s possible that, in the absence of any brothers, her son might have become Pharaoh…So, whoever was sitting on the throne at the time of Moses’ return almost certainly was someone that he knew; someone that would have felt a familial bond with Moses—someone that would have been more reluctant to kill Moses than any other Hebrew that tried to make demands. Perhaps that bond was another barrier to Moses as well, making him reluctant to confront someone that helped raise him, or that was raised alongside him.

Moses tried to convince God that there must be someone better qualified for the job. He had, after all been raised as an Egyptian. He felt a kinship to the Israelites, knowing that they were his people (that’s what got him in trouble the first time), but there’s nothing to indicate that he had ever lived among them. It probably would have been very easy for Moses to sacrifice the freedom of Israel for his comfortable little life with his Midianite wife and their son. I almost have to wonder if God wasn’t preparing a whale for Moses as they spoke.
Moses tried to tell God that nobody would believe that God had sent Moses if Moses couldn’t tell them God’s name. In a way, that make sense, after all, what would you think if somebody brought you a message, and when you asked who the message was from, the messenger replied, “I didn’t catch his name…”? How much attention would you pay to that message? Even if Moses had gone to Pharaoh and explained that God had sent him, Pharaoh might very well have wanted to know what god had sent Moses: Ra? Horus? The Egyptians had many gods, and sometimes felt that they could ignore the wishes of one, if they were in the good graces of a more powerful god. Now the God of the Old Testament seemed to be at least somewhat secretive about his name—he had never told Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob his name, after all—but he told Moses to tell Pharaoh that “I Am” had sent him.

Then Moses told God that he had a slow tongue. I’m not entirely sure what that means: The prevailing logic seems to be that Moses stuttered. I suppose that’s possible, but I don’t think so, but maybe I’m biased. I have a problem in that, sometimes I will see something or hear something, and I want to respond to it, but by the time I have processed the information, formed a coherent thought, formulated a response and opened my mouth to actually give voice to that response, either someone else has already said what I was going to say (or, worse, made an even wittier or more appropriate comment), or they have changed the subject. That, to me, is having a slow tongue. I must admit, I don’t know for sure that is what Moses meant, but it makes sense to me.

In any case, examining the Scriptures in regard to what they say about Moses, and trying to understand the man himself; not just what he did, but why he did it. To be honest, it makes me feel better about myself to think that he and I may share some faults (I just wish I had his strengths); in addition to being slow-tongued, I am also really good at making excuses, and, it occurs to me that if I were carrying some stone tablets down off of a mountain, they would probably start to feel pretty heavy well before I reached the bottom, so it wouldn’t take much to set me off and get me to throw those things down…