THE LIVES OF THE PATRIACHS #21 | THE LIFE OF MOSES #3
Pastor Christopher Choo,
Lesson 3702
THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #21
THE LIFE OF MOSES #3
He is venerated as a great leader among men in both the Old and New Testaments.
Yet when he started his maturity as a prince of Egypt, he murdered an Egyptian?
How is it that the spiritual giant who comes to lead the Jewish people out of servitude embarks on his career with an act of murder?
Was Moses justified in killing the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-15)? Is impetuous, murderous rage a mark of leadership?
Some commentators tried to justify it by pointing to the sins of Egypt in his time.
Worse some fill in this white space by imagining the moral evils of the particular Egyptian.
In previous stories about Moses -- his miraculous rescue from Pharaoh’s effort to kill Hebrew boys, his deliverance from the Nile, and adoption into Egypt’s royal household -- he was entirely passive.
Now Genesis records his maturity with an act of premeditated murder.
In his defense, Moses “championed the cause of justice” by defending the Hebrew slave.
Beholding this injustice restores Moses’ kinship with the people he’d forgotten or not known until then.
In any event, the deed is done, and Moses goes out “the next day” (Exodus 2:13), or perhaps even less specifically, the “sallied forth a second time.” He clearly fears no reprisal, as a prince of Egypt, for killing a random taskmaster -- until he intervenes in a fight between two Hebrews. “Do you plan to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14).
Moses is assailed here and betrayed by one of the very people to whose defense he had leaped the previous day.
How did the man know? Again, the commentators fill in the blank: perhaps the Hebrew for whom he intervened the previous day betrayed him.
What is our take-home lesson of the day?
Moses is clearly not without flaw, as later events will show (Numbers 20). He makes mistakes, lets his anger get the best of him, disobeys, and ultimately is punished by God for it.
But in this instance we learn two things about his formative character:
1. He will never question where his loyalties lie.
Moses “championed the cause of justice” by defending the Hebrew slave.
2. Nor will he deprecate his brethren.
Whatever the case, Moses is introduced to the nature of the people he will lead.
They will grumble; they will betray. Moses is mistreated by just those individuals for whom he is to provide freedom from Egyptian slavery.
He will even give them more aid as a deliverer of and law-giver to Israel. And he is to do so for precisely these sorts of people -- murmurers and tale-bearers.
And, interestingly enough, he will not tell tales on them in return. He will in fact advocate for them when God wishes to destroy them, sticking his neck out on their behalf repeatedly as in Exodus 32.
These are rapid wake-up lessons for Moses in his maturity as a young adult and future leader.
His best teacher has always been God. He learned perhaps the hardest lesson - not to fulfill God's call ahead of God's perfect timing.
The Egyptians tried to kill the male children of His people at birth. He now kills an Egyptian in defense of his people. Though questionable whether he sinned or not, he shows a decided sense of justice.
Yet towards his own kind who will prove to be ungrateful betrayers, he does not silence them with a sword.
In this we see the nascent hallmarks of a godly leader - one who submits to God and thus will not act according to his own wisdom, understanding, strength and timing.
Our Lord has the last word on this.
"Live by the sword, die by the sword" is a proverb in the form of a parallel phrase, derived from the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 26, 26:52): "Then said Jesus unto him ( Peter ), Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."
