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Moses, Hebrew MOSHE (fi. c. 14th— 13th century nc), Hebrew prophet, teacher, and leader who delivered his people from Egyptian slavery and founded the religious community known as Israel, based on a Covenant relationship with God.
Abstract of text biography. According to the biblical account, in Exodus and Numbers, Moses, a Hebrew foundling adopted and reared in the Egyptian court, somehow learned that he was a Hebrew and killed an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew slave. He fled to Midian (mostly in northwest Arabia), where he became the shepherd and eventually the son-in-law of a Midianite priest, Jethro. While tending his flocks he had the experience of seeing a burning bush that remained unconsumed and of a call there from the God—thereafter to be called Yahweh—of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to deliver his people the Hebrews from Egypt. Because Moses was a stammerer, his brother Aaron was to be spokesman, but Moses would be Yahweh’s representative.
Ramses II (reigned 1304—1237 Bc) was probably the pharaoh at the time. Regarding himself as divine, he rejected the demand of this unknown God through Moses and Aaron and responded by increasing the oppression of the Hebrews. During the ensuing contest, Moses used plagues sent by Yahweh to bend Ramses’ will. Whether the Hebrews were finally permitted to leave or simply fled is not clear; but in any case, according to the biblical account, Pharaoh’s forces pursued them eastward to the Sea of Reeds, a papyrus lake (not the Red Sea), which the Hebrews crossed safely but in which the Egyptians were engulfed.
Moses then led the people to Mt. Sinai (Horeb) at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The appearance of Yahweh in a terrific storm there, in the biblical narrative, was a revelatory experience for Moses, as the burning bush had been. Out of this came the Covenant between Yahweh and the people of Israel, including the Ten Commandments; and Moses began issuing ordinances for specific situations, instituted a system of judges and hearings in civil cases, and regulated the cult. After leaving Mt. Sinai and continuing the journey toward Canaan, Moses faced increasing resistance and frustration and once got so angry at the people that, according to tradition, God accounted it a lack of faith and denied him entrance into Canaan. As his last official act, Moses renewed the Sinai Covenant with the survivors of the wanderings, then climbed Mt. Pisgah to look over the land that he would not enter. The Hebrews never saw him again, and the circumstances of his death and burial remain shrouded in mystery.
