The story of Moses
The story of Moses runs against the script of every hero story known in the ancient world — and yet it is a success story.
It only takes two chapters of the Bible to tell, and both are worth reading in advance: first the story of keeping the Israelites small to avoid a second Hyksos, and then the story of Moses himself.
The fight against a second Hyksos
Pharaoh does everything he can to prevent the Israelites from becoming a great people, but whatever he tries, he fails — and the failure plays out almost like a parody, point for point.
| Pharaoh’s view | Reality |
|---|---|
| Pharaoh sees himself as representative of the gods. | He is not even a key character in the story — he isn’t mentioned by name, treated like a background actor, just like the gods he represents, none of whom are named either. The main heroes, by contrast, are named, and they are mostly women and all non-Egyptians (Schifra and Pua, the names of the midwives, are Semitic names). |
| Pharaoh works the Israelite slaves so hard that they die off. | Instead, the people keep increasing in number, and by the time they leave Egypt they are loaded with riches when they leave Egypt. They end up not only free but restored in dignity. |
| The midwives are ordered to kill the newborn babies. | They defy Pharaoh — as foreign Asian women, no less — and instead of being punished, they are blessed by God with children. |
| Newborn babies should be thrown into the Nile. | Moses is placed into the Nile in a basket, using the same word as Noah’s Ark, and he is saved. |
| Moses is the key figure in the story, the one who will bring down Pharaoh. | Instead he is raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, with his own mother paid to nurse him. |
The story of Moses
The story of Moses is the complete opposite of the typical ancient hero story. The table below sets the usual pattern against what actually happens to Moses.
| Normal hero story | Moses story |
|---|---|
| The story begins when the hero is abandoned as a baby (Hercules, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus, Cyrus, …). | Moses is hidden by his loving mother, with careful watch kept over him until he is safely in good hands. |
| The finder of the child is usually of low status. | Moses is raised by Pharaoh’s daughter and nursed by his own mother. |
| The identity of the child is unknown and is not revealed until the end. | Moses’ identity is known from the very beginning by Pharaoh’s daughter. |
| The discovery of his true identity is the turning point that gives him the status he deserves. | Moses’ true identity instead gets him into trouble, and he has to flee to survive. |
| The reason for telling the story is to show the hero’s claim to power. | The story shows not Moses’ claim to power, but God’s provision and control. |
The further story of Moses
The next episode in his life sends him into the desert for 40 years to learn to be a shepherd. This is what shapes him into a good leader — like Jesus later on — rather than a bad leader like the leaders of Israel. Many key figures in the Bible were shepherds: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Jesus, and the psalmist of “Ps. 23.”
Perhaps the point of those 40 years is the journey from an uncontrolled temperament to becoming the most humble man on earth, someone able to remain calm and compassionate in difficult situations.
By any ordinary measure, Moses does not look like hero material.
He is the one meant to rescue Israel because of the covenant God has with his people, and yet he forgets to circumcise his own son — the one condition of that covenant on his side — so that his non-Israelite wife has to rescue him instead.
Trusting God is something he has to learn. One telling example comes when he throws his staff to the ground and it turns into a snake, and he is told to grab it by the tail — when every child knows you catch a snake behind the head, or it bites you.
In the end it all works out, because the real hero of the story was never Moses, but God.