: It wasn’t until Moses was eighty years old when he received his commission to deliver Israel out of bondage. Through Moses, God begins the plan of answering the prayers of the Israelites. God does this through an unknown foreigner working as a shepherd. Through this understanding, Moses learned about life in the desert and the ways of the people, he would one day lead out of bondage. Moses didn’t realize that this was God’s way of preparing him to free the people of Israel from Pharaoh’s control.
To begin with, one reason I would follow Moses out of Egypt is because the Hebrews were slaves. For instance, the Hebrews were oppressed. According to Document 2, it tells us that Moses saw a Hebrew slave being mistreated. This means that the slaves were mistreated while being in Egypt. Document 2 supports my reason because it tells us that an innocent slave was being wronged.
Moses knew how to not bow to the complaints of the children of Israel (Exodus 17:3), but also knew how to hear godly counsel from a man like Jethro. Oh Moses listened to this man of God…he took advice from a friend… he did not say, don’t worry God got my back… he did not say, haven’t you heard how I lead the children on dry land….or how I did this and how I did that… oh brother and sister break it down a little more.. Moses did not brag about how many members he had, or new building were being under construction, he did not talk about the choir having a new record deal or how the church just brought a brand new bus... Moses… listened... Men that are called by God to lead are always in danger of attempting to encompass more than they are able…
Bondage can be defined as a state of subjection to a force, power, or influence or the state of being under the control of another person. Throughout the novel Middle Passage, written by Charles Johnson, bondage is a reoccurring theme. The characters in the novel are bonded physically, emotionally, or psychologically. Some characters are bonded and can not escape their bondage. Others choose to place themselves in the situations. Throughout the course of the novel, some of the characters gain their freedom and move forward with their lives. Other characters are never able to gain their freedom because their lives end in death.
One of Moses’s contributions to the development of Judaism was when he led the Hebrews out of Egypt. “When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed the firstborn of both people and animals in Egypt.” (Exodus 13:15) After God killed the pharaoh’s firstborn son, the pharaoh was devistated and let Moses’s people go; then the pharaoh decided to avenge his son by killing Moses and the Israelites with his army. “When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds and said “What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!”
Pharaoh sent the Egyptians to Canaan and the surrounding towns and stripped them of their best workers and made them their salves. Moses by God's own hand freed them from Pharaoh and was tasked to bring the children of Israel to the promise land. (Tullock & McEntire, 2012). Moses got upset when he came off the mountain and saw the Israelites worshiping false gods. He broke the Ten Commandments into 1000 pieces and this displeased God.
To escape persecution from Pharaoh, Moses flees to Midian. By leaving his familiar surroundings, Moses finds himself crossing a threshold into a foreign land. To get to Midian, Moses must cross the Desert of Sin. The crossing of the threshold is the first step into the sacred zone of the universal source (Campbell 81). In Midian, he befriends and then marries the daughter of Jethro, priest of Midian. Moses becomes a shepherd as he adjusts to his new life. There is an enormous contrast between Moses' life as an Egyptian prince and his life as a Midianite shepherd. As a prince he had everything done for him. As a shepherd he had to do everything for himself; he was holding the very job that he had been taught to despise, and he lived as an unknown foreigner. This was a humbling experience for Moses. Living the life of a shepherd and nomad, Moses learned about the ways of the people he would be leading and also about life in the desert. Campbell would say that Moses was swallowed into the belly of the whale (Campbell 90). Moses couldn't appreciate these lessons, but they were preparing him to free Israel from Pharaoh's
God has a solution for every problem Exodus is a book that has come down from God to Israelites, and the book is just like guidelines and laws that should be known, followed, and used. At the time that Exodus came down from God, Moses was the person who has been sent by God. He was sent to help the Israelites who were suffering from the Egyptian's bad attitudes. The Egyptians were forcing the Israelites to work very hard. One day, the king of Egypt had a dream.
Slavery in Exodus 21-The Old Testament deemed to be a common practice. Modern readers should gain understanding like other nation, slavery was rampant and flourished in the Israelites, but the biblical slavery is very different from the modern slavery. The old testament lacks slavery condemnation but it has a clear teaching on ethical treatment of slaves, which was part of the culture of the surrounding nations. Slavery in the bible in the time of the Jews was not an exploitation act but rather an act of enabling the poor to provide for themselves. The word slave was used in referring to various forms of servile situations, not the slave familiar to many modern bible readers. In the ancient Israel, the “slave” referred to both a person who is under the masters’ law and to any subordinate person in the social status ladder. Westbrook lists subjects of a king, heads of households, debtors volunteering to service to pay their debts and non-citizens to be examples of servile situations encompassed in Israel in the ancient times. The bible engages the reader in many passages regarding slavery and further tells one how to obtain the slaves, how they should be treated, and how to draw the moral and ethical line between a slave male and female slave.
Moses, in the book of Exodus, was obedient to God and chose to carry the burden of freeing the Jewish people. He used nature to plague the Egyptian Pharaoh in freeing the Jewish slaves. However, God did not cause harm to the Egyptians because he did not love them, in fact, he gave them the warnings of the plagues to come; unfortunately, they did not listen and underwent the suffering. Despite nature’s evil during the seven plagues, the positivity that came out of it was the release of the Jewish people for the Pharaoh. They had been enslaved for many years, but they were finally able to be free once
Starting in Exodus 6:6, God reveals to Moses that He will restore freedom to his people- the Israelites- freeing them from under the hand of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. At the time, the Israelites had been the slaves of the Egyptians. For, Pharaoh had “...appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor” (Ex.1:11, NLT). As a result, when Moses began to prophesy what the Lord revealed to him, the people of Israel refused to listen to Moses because “...they had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery”
You see, another group of people, the Egyptians, had made the Israelites their slaves. The Israelites were forced to work for the Egyptians without any pay. They had no mon- ey, no rights, nothing they could call their own. But in an amazing act of love, God sent Moses to deliver his people out of slavery.
Moses saw a fellow Hebrew being harmed by an Egyptian so he took judgement into his own hands and killed the Egyptian. Moses is set up apart from his people from the way he was born and raised, but he is the one that executes the exodus with God inevitably reconnecting with his rightful people. God’s mighty hand is the one that executes the curses in the land of Egypt to oppress the Egyptians until God’s people were let go. Pharaoh made task harder with less advanced materials just for the sake of oppression (TNOAB,
The book of Exodus is noted as a narrative though is gradually changes to the book of law as chapter 20 where God reveals to Moses the Ten Commandments. The narrative is around 400 years after Jacob's family moved to Egypt and had many descendants. These descendants were under extreme torture and slavery by the Egyptians. Moses, though raised as an Egyptians in the king's palace he was born of an Israelite and tossed away by the mother to escape the terrible times the Israelites were going through. Once Moses escapes from Israel, God uses the burning bush to tell him that he was to deliver the Israelites. Moses was handed signs, to show Pharaoh that it was God who sent him, in the form of plagues every time Pharaoh refused to let Israelites go. The last plague where first born sons died among the Egyptian households made Pharaoh to let them go hence the Passover ritual. Moses led them to Mt. Sinai where God gave him the Ten Commandments.
For this assignment I have chosen to analyze the section from Exodus where G-d approaches Moses about leading the Israelites out of Egypt. I found this interesting as it begins the tale of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt; one can argue that this was one of the most seminal and inspiring events in all of human history. In Exodus 3, 1-15 G-d chooses and recruits Moses to lead the Exodus. Moses’ leadership provided the inspiration for freedom seekers for generations; yet Moses questions his ability to carry out this task. In this paper I will explore the interactions between G-d and Moses when Moses is persuaded to assume this leadership role.
Moses was a humble man, but God sees that he is mightier than Moses sees himself. When God tells him that he must lead the Jews out of Egypt, he grows fearful and unworthy of such a task. Moses humility toward God is what makes him capable of such a tremendous mission. Although, he would have much rather not lead the Jews out of Egypt because he is afraid and does not have faith in himself, however, he is able to do it because God has told him to and God would not ask him to do so if it was impossible. Moses successfully leads the Hebrews out of Egypt. Moses was capable of freeing the Jews of slavery with a quality of humility (No Title, 1986).