From 1728 B.C. to 1513 B.C. The people of Israel in Egypt, the birth of Moses

As mentioned before, Joseph died in 1657 B.C. In the 150 years or so after this event, Egypt became a true world-power which completely dominated the region. Egypt was determined to keep its dominant position and allowed no rivals in her vicinity. The successive Pharaohs hated to see how prosperous the Israelites were, how they gradually became more powerful and, particularly, how rapidly their numbers increased. To prevent a situation in which the Israelites could become a threat for them, the Egyptians began to oppress them in all sorts of ways and to make their lives miserable. For generations, they were compelled to do increasingly hard labor. In the end, the Egyptians even made a law forcing the Israelites to kill all their babies right after birth.

In this miserable period for the people of Israel, a male child was born in the tribe of Levi in the year 1593 B.C.: Moses.

His parents did not obey the law that obliged them to kill him. When the child was three months old, they put him in a little ark made of papyrus among the reeds of the river Nile. Moses was found by the daughter of Pharaoh and she adopted him. She looked for a suitable Israelite mother who would nurse the foster-child she had drawn from the reeds. Accidentally (or perhaps guided by God), she ended up with Moses' real mother who could bring up the child in accordance with the Israelite customs.

When Moses was grown up, Pharaoh's daughter wanted him to live in her house, thus, he came to live in Egypt's royal palace. One day, he saw an Egyptian maltreating an Israelite. He could not stand this and killed the Egyptian. Afraid that someone had seen this, Moses fled out of Egypt and went to live hundreds of kilometers away from Egypt in a desert that was called Midian. He was 40 years old then. He lived in the desert for forty years, got married, and had two children.

JHWH liberated His people through Moses

When he was 80 years old, around 1514 B.C., JHWH approached Moses and told him that He wanted to use him for carrying out great plans that He had made for the people of Israel. One day, when he was taking care of the herds, he saw a thorn-bush which was on fire but kept burning without being consumed. Realizing that this was a miracle caused by God, Moses approached the burning thorn-bush and from this amazing phenomenon, God spoke to him. JHWH told him that He intended to liberate the Israelites from the oppressing Egyptians. He would lead them away from the country of Egypt and guide them to a marvelous land, flowing with milk and honey. This was where they would become a great nation which would radically change world history in a positive way. God wanted to use Moses as His human tool for this great undertaking.

By nature, Moses was a very modest man. When God asked him to take upon himself the leadership of such a tremendous undertaking, he asked himself at first if he was strong enough for such a huge task. He realized that he would have to be able to convince his own people, who had been oppressed for so long, to agree with God's great plan, to move out of Egypt, and to walk right across the desert to Canaan. Moreover, the people of Israel would have to accept him as the leader that JHWH had sent to them.

Therefore, Moses asked God, who spoke to him from the thorn-bush, what would be the best way to approach his people and how he could convince them that God had sent him. God advised him to tell his people that he had been appointed their liberator and leader by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In addition, God gave Moses a further explanation of the meaning of His name JHWH. He told Moses that His name meant: I will prove to be there.

On this occasion God also informed Moses that it would be extremely hard to convince Pharaoh that he should let the people of Israel go. God foretold Moses that Pharaoh would not voluntarily part with his hundreds of thousands of Israelite slaves. He would have to be forced.

God told Moses that He would punish Pharaoh's stubbornness very severely by striking him and Egypt a series of very painful blows.

Obedient to God's command, Moses traveled to Egypt. He first contacted his brother Aaron and asked him to accompany him on his visits to Pharaoh. Moses was not a good speaker (some Bible scholars think that he stammered) so he asked his brother to do the talking for him on important occasions.

Moses and Aaron organized a meeting with the leading figures of the people of Israel. Partly through a number of miracles they could do, the people accepted Moses as the leader and liberator that God had sent them.

In the course of the following months, Moses and Aaron visited Pharaoh again and again with always the same message: "Our God JHWH has contacted us in the desert and He wants us to move out of Egypt and go to Canaan. Please let us go." The reaction of Pharaoh was always the same: "I do not know your God JHWH. I have nothing to do with Him, and I will never allow you to leave."

All this did not discourage Moses and Aaron. God had foretold them that Pharaoh would react this way. Moreover, God appeared to Moses a couple of times during these months and repeated the meaning of His name: I will prove to be there.

Every time when Pharaoh refused to let the people of Israel go, JHWH gave the Egyptians a heavy blow. In this way, the most powerful nation of those days received 10 hard blows from God. With the first blow, the water of the Nile and all the water in the country were turned into blood. The second blow was a plague caused by frogs. With the third blow, the bodies of people and animals were plagued by mosquitos. The first three blows hit both the Egyptians and the Israelites. The following seven blows only hit the Egyptians. With the fourth blow, they were tortured by stable-flies. With plague number five, a pestilence hit the Egyptian cattle. With the sixth one, horrible blisters and ulcers appeared on the bodies of all the Egyptians and their cattle. Blow number seven consisted of destructive hail storms. With the eighth blow, all vegetation on the land of the Egyptians was eaten up by locusts. And with the ninth blow, the last blow but one, an impenetrable darkness settled all over the country of Egypt.

After this ninth time that God had dealt with the world power Egypt, God had come to the end of His patience. He wanted to give Egypt one final blow. It would be so hard that Pharaoh would not only allow the people to go, but beg the people to go.

(It is very worthwhile to read the story that tells us how Israel was oppressed in Egypt and how JHWH liberated His people through Moses, in the Bible itself. You can find these stories in Exodus, the first ten chapters.)