I Am

Prophet, liberator, military leader, lawgiver. Who was the man that led the people of Israel out of Egypt toward the Promised Land? Undoubtedly the only man who was “face-to-face” with God. The first in a series of articles on the Old and New Testament prophets

by PAOLA RONCONI

With the figure of Moses, Traces begins a series of articles on the Old Testament prophets, up to John the Baptist. But what is a prophet? The prophet, from the Latin propheta and the Greek prophetes (from pro, “in the name of,” plus phemì, “speak”; in Hebrew it is nabi, “he who is called–man of God”), is “one who speaks for” another, one who announces before the people, who cries out.
God is the One who chooses a man and makes him an instrument of His plan; but the chosen one’s first reaction is a consciousness of his own weakness and inability. “How can I do it?” he asks himself.
Here the anticipation of God’s strength comes into play: in the weakness of His prophet, God can operate in all His power and mercy.
The prophets are not seers: they do not predict the future by looking into a crystal ball, but see God’s workings in the present.
What the prophet proclaims is a liberation, a promise of fulfillment that man often refuses, because of his original sin, his inability to keep alive his desire for happiness. And God’s reply is always a love greater than man’s ill-doing and betrayal.
God has chosen a small, frail group of men so as to teach man that He is One and Creator, and to teach man to love Him. Thus it is here, reliving the history of the people of Israel, that we can comprehend the Christian experience and the Lord’s way of working in human history, in every instant of our lives.

Man or myth? Over the centuries, many have had their say about the life of Moses, from Philo the Alexandrine to Gregory of Nyssa, from the psychoanalytic observations of Freud to the latest studies in the newspapers. So we find that, according to the Sabbah brothers–French-speaking Jewish researchers–Moses would have been Egyptian in origin, rather than Hebrew. But there’s more: Abraham would be the same person as the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton. From this, the conclusion would be that the Hebrews are Egyptian in origin. But aside from all these interpretations, let’s see what the Bible says.
Some four books tell the story of Moses: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The name of their author is not certain; Moses himself might be the compiler of this essential part of the history of Israel. Along with Genesis, these books make up the Pentateuch. They are historical books, as they narrate the events involving this people, but above all they are the source of Hebrew law, the Torah.
Historians place the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt during the time of the Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty, more or less around the thirteenth century B.C.
Whether he was a Hebrew saved by an Egyptian princess who pulled him from the waters of the Nile in a basket lined with pitch and tar and was raised by his birth mother Jochebed, or an Egyptian general, the fact remains that he grew up in Pharaoh’s court, learned and rich, in contact with Egyptian polytheism, with priests initiated into the techniques of Oriental meditation. Perhaps he was curious to find the key to the mysterious cults of the Pharaohs as well as to the tradition of his fathers. In that period, the Israelites were slaves exploited as manpower in the building of the cities of Pithom and Raamses. Moses was forced to flee after killing an Egyptian soldier who had mistreated a Hebrew worker. This was a radical change of life for him, and in the land of Midian, south-east of Palestine, he was taken in by the Midianite priest Jethro. He married one of Jethro’s daughters, Zipporah, and with her had a son, Gershom, which means “emigrant in a foreign land,” and later had another, Eliezer, that is, “the God of my father is my help.” For years he watched over his father-in-law’s flock, in the peace of that free land. Then one day the unimaginable happened: during his daily work the Lord, “the God of his father [Amran], the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” appeared to him in the form of a bush that burned without being consumed, called to him, and spoke with him. It may be that Moses, who grew up in the Egyptian court and for years was in contact with cults steeped in magic and esoteric arts, was not frightened by the form God chose to appear to him. “Yahweh then said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying for help on account of their taskmasters. Yes, I am well aware of their sufferings. And I have come down to rescue them from the clutches of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that country, to a country rich and broad, to a country flowing with milk and honey… Yes indeed, the Israelites’ cry for help has reached me, and I have also seen the cruel way in which the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now I am sending you to Pharaoh, for you to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Ex 3:7-10).
This is the calling of Moses, the only man who spoke with God “face-to-face,” without looking Him in the face, because “no human being can see me and survive” (Ex 33:20). Not even Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob was favored in this way. Moses led his people out of Egypt–the Bible speaks of 600,000 men on the march (Ex 12:37-38), and if we count the women and children as well we reach a number of about 2 million persons–an enormous number and a fairly improbable one if we consider that they had to cross the desert.
God came to his aid and defeated the Egyptians, unleashing veritable pestilences on them (the ten plagues) and drowning them in the Red Sea, near the Lake of Reeds. The Israelites spent forty years in the desert before reaching the Promised Land, and in these forty years God twice gave Moses His commandments. He fed the people with manna and quails. He defeated their enemies. In the form of a cloud, He protected them by day and led them by night. He forgave them when they rebelled.

Election
And yet, when he is singled out in this way, man feels inadequate and tries to run away from God’s call: “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Ex 3:11), Moses asks when the Lord calls him. The answer: “‘I shall be with you,’ God said, ‘and this is the sign by which you will know that I was the one who sent you. After you have led the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.”’ The Lord will be with him, this is the sign identifying his mission: the Jews will serve God on Mount Sinai. “They [the Israelites] will not believe me or listen to my words” (Ex 4:1).
I shall be with you. Over and over, to reassure him, God reminds His prophet of His physical presence: “Moses said to Yahweh, ‘Please, my Lord, I have never been eloquent, even since You have spoken to your servant, for I am slow and hesitant of speech’ [perhaps he stuttered]. ‘Who gave a person a mouth?’ Yahweh said to him. Who makes a person dumb or deaf, gives sight or makes blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? Now go, I shall help you speak and instruct you what to say. ... ‘There is your brother Aaron, the Levite, is there not? I know that he is a good speaker… You will speak to him and tell him what message to give. I shall help you speak, and him too, and instruct you what to do. He will speak to the people in your place; he will be your mouthpiece and you will be as the god inspiring him” (Ex 4:10-16).
The second time that Moses climbed Mt. Sinai to receive the Tablets of the Law, after the Israelites’ betrayal, the prophet implored the Lord with this cry, almost a challenge: “If You do not come Yourself, do not make us move on from here, for how can it be known that I and my people enjoy Your favor, if not by Your coming with us?” (Ex 33:15-16). In other words: only if You are with us will we be able to do what we have to do, and only then can I, Moses, succeed in carrying out what You asked of me.
Once again Moses: “They [the Israelites] will not believe me or listen to my words,” and the Lord gave him signs–a prophet is one who is clearly and evidently a man of God, thanks to extraordinary and unmistakable signs (at the burning bush Moses received a staff–called the staff of God–which he would never abandon). This was the instrument Moses used to act in the name of God. There were others, too, among them Moses’ hand made leprous, and the bronze serpent that healed the people from snakebite in the desert.

The Name
But the greatest sign of God’s favor is the revelation of the Name.
At the burning bush, the apparition says, “I am the God of your ancestors…,” and the word used for “God” is ‘Elohim, a generic plural word, ‘Eloha in the singular. “I am He Who is.” Then he added, “This is what you are to say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” Everyone knew the common noun ‘Elohim, which is like the simple word “god,” or “dio” in Italian, “Gott” in German. Think that when these things were happening, “the gods of the Egyptians were more numerous than the cities dedicated to them,” says the Jewish historian André Chouraqui in his book Moses. When God tells Moses that He is the God of his ancestors, it is as though He and only He has chosen that people through them, and it is He who is calling Moses. Here is where one further step becomes necessary: the reveling of the particular name of the god of the patriarchs. Moses demands to know the name of the One for whom man must act. Moses wants to know the name of the One who is sending him out, so as to have authority in the eyes of the Israelites. Without that Name, no one would follow him. Without that Name, no one will be able to acknowledge his mission. “Moses then said to God, ‘Look, if I go to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,” and they say to me, “What is His name?” what am I to tell them?’ God said to Moses, ‘I am He Who is. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’” “I am,” the translation of the Hebrew ‘Ehyeh, the first person of the verb “to be,” “hawah,” but also “I shall be,” in an atemporal sense, timeless, eternal. Men, speaking of Him, call him “He is,” “Yahweh.” The Jewish Chouraqui says, “Knowing the name of someone means to have power over him, to indicate him, to communicate with him, to give him orders,” to enter into a relationship with him. “The Oriental,” Chouraqui goes on to clarify, “lives in a universe of words and signs, whose name translates their essence.” Think, for example, of when Jesus says, “You are Peter, and on this rock [petros] I shall build my Church.” Thus the essence of the God of Moses is being, eternally.
In more recent times, the name of God was no longer uttered, as a sign of reverence. Only the consonants of the word remained, creating the ineffable name YHWH, completely unpronounceable. A name that during the reading was substituted by “Adhonai,” Lord.
All this is a prophecy of the Incarnation. The fact that God declared His name foreshadows the method He would use in sending His Son: to show Himself, to make Himself known. “Before Moses implored the Lord to let him know His name, the gods were the forces of nature represented by statues worshipped in the temples. Suddenly, He ceases being an object. He makes Himself present as a Person, as a transcendent Being, Omnipotence, He, the God of his father, He, the liberator of Israel, his Creator,” Chouraqui explains.

From Mount Nebo
Moses spoke with God daily inside a tent the Lord ordered him to build. The tent was the temple where the Ark of the Covenant was kept: two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half in width and height, made of acacia wood and overlaid inside and out with pure gold. The cover was topped by two golden statues of winged creatures. Inside were the tablets of the covenant (Ex 25:18 ff). Only Moses could go into the presence of the Lord to receive His orders, and he alone could move the tent during their crossing of the desert.
Through the law, the lawgiver of Israel turned the wandering tribes who set out on the adventure of Sinai into the core of a real nation, ready, as such, to come out of the desert to enter history.
Prophet, liberator, military leader, lawgiver, Moses did not enter the Promised Land, as he did not trust the Lord (Nn 20:12; Deut 33:50-52) but saw it from afar, atop Mount Nebo, facing the city of Jericho. Here he died at the age of 120–a rather improbable age, at most a symbolic one, as 120 was held to be the ideal number by Egyptian sages–“as Yahweh decreed; he buried him in the valley, in the country of Moab, opposite Beth-Peor; but to this day no one has ever found his grave. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, his eye undimmed, his vigor unimpaired” (Deut 34:5-7). Deuteronomy ends this way: “Since then, there has never been such a prophet in Israel as Moses, the man whom Yahweh knew face-to-face. What signs and wonders Yahweh caused him to perform in Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants, and his whole country! How mighty the hand and great the fear that Moses wielded in the eyes of all Israel!” (Deut 34:10-12).