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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781501807909 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 05/02/2017 |
| Series: | Moses Series |
| Edition description: | Large Print |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Adam Hamilton is senior pastor of The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas, one of the fastest growing, most highly visible churches in the country. The Church Report named Hamilton’s congregation the most influential mainline church in America, and he preached at the National Prayer Service as part of the presidential inauguration festivities in 2013. Hamilton is the best-selling and award-winning author of The Walk, Simon Peter, Creed, Half Truths, The Call, The Journey, The Way, 24 Hours That Changed the World, John, Revival, Not a Silent Night, Enough, When Christians Get It Wrong, and Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, all published by Abingdon Press. Learn more about Adam Hamilton at AdamHamilton.com.
Read an Excerpt
Moses
In the Footsteps of the Reluctant Prophet
By Adam Hamilton
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 2017 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5018-0788-6
CHAPTER 1
THE BIRTH OF MOSES
We arrived at Cairo International Airport just after nightfall. Though weary from a day of flying, we were excited to finally set foot on Egyptian soil and to catch a glimpse, by night, of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It took an hour and fifteen minutes to drive from the airport, on the northeast side of Cairo, to Giza, a southern suburb of the city. Even at night the streets were congested with the swelling population of twenty million people who live in greater Cairo.
Upon checking into my hotel room, I opened the sliding door to my balcony, and stood for a moment, in awe, as I looked across at the pyramids by night. I was gazing upon the same pyramids that pharaohs, patriarchs, and emperors throughout history had stood before. It was a breathtaking sight.
The Pyramids and the Power of the Pharaohs
Some mistakenly assume that these pyramids were built by the Israelite slaves whom Moses would lead to freedom, but the pyramids were already ancient when Israel was born. They had been standing for at least a thousand years by the time Moses came on the scene.
So, if the Israelites were not involved in the building of these structures, why would we begin our journey — and this book — with the pyramids? One reason is simply that you should never visit Egypt without seeing the pyramids. More importantly, though, we begin with the pyramids because they help us understand the pharaohs and the role they played in Egyptian society. The larger-than-life, semidivine status of the pharaohs, captured in the building of the pyramids, helps us understand the villains or antagonists in Moses' story.
Sometime around 3000 B.C., when the kings or pharaohs first unified Upper and Lower Egypt, a city was built on the west bank of the Nile about thirteen miles south of modern Cairo. This city, located on the boundary of Upper and Lower Egypt, would serve as the new capital of the unified kingdom. We know the city as Memphis. Just north of this ancient capital, and stretching north for miles along the plateau that separates the desert from the Nile, the city's necropolis — its burial ground — was built.
It was there, around 2560 B.C., that a king named Khufu built an enormous burial chamber for himself, a monument to his greatness, in the shape of a pyramid. For almost four millennia this pyramid remained the tallest man-made structure on earth, at 481 feet. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. The pyramid of Khufu, known as the Great Pyramid of Giza, along with the pyramid of his son Khafre and its adjacent sphinx and the pyramid of his grandson Menkaure, together make up the most prominent of the pyramids at Giza.
Over one hundred pyramids have been unearthed in the sands of Egypt, and likely others have yet to be found. It is thought that the pyramids of Giza were built by a workforce of as many as twenty thousand people, most of whom were farmers who worked to construct the pyramids during the seasons when the Nile flooded and they were unable to farm (though some who labored may have been slaves). These massive building projects were possible during periods of economic prosperity and peace. As economic prosperity decreased, so did the size of the pyramids.
Some have described the pyramids as "resurrection machines" intended to ensure that the pharaohs or others buried in them completed their journey to the afterlife. Ultimately the pyramids served as an enduring testimony to the power and greatness of the pharaoh whose remains they held.
We traveled to the Giza pyramid complex the day after we arrived in Egypt. As I gazed up at the Great Pyramid, in awe of the massive stones that were so expertly fit together, I wondered how Abraham, Jacob, and even Moses felt as they stood before this very pyramid. We live in a time with magnificent buildings, many of which are taller than these structures, and yet the pyramids still amaze us. The pyramids were meant to inspire awe and admiration for the pharaohs who built them. To those searching for Moses in Egypt, the pyramids stand as a silent witness to the power of the ancient pharaohs, and to the Egyptian belief in the pharaohs' semidivine nature that went back a thousand years before the birth of Moses but was still believed about the pharaohs in his day.
From Giza to Luxor
Memphis was the capital of Egypt in the period known by scholars as the Old Kingdom. For most of the New Kingdom, the time in which Moses was born, it wasn't Memphis but Thebes that served as the home of the royal family. Thebes was located about 300 miles south of Memphis, a distance that today takes about an hour by plane.
As noted in the introduction, we cannot be sure when Moses lived. The two most common dating schemes have Moses living from approximately 1526 to 1406 B.C. or from approximately 1350 to 1230 B.C. The latter dating, give or take a decade or two, is more common among mainline scholars, the former among more conservative scholars, though you can find exceptions to this rule. For either of these likely dates of Moses' birth, the Egyptian capital was in Thebes.
I had always assumed that Moses was born in the Nile River Delta — the biblical "Land of Goshen," where the Israelites settled in the time of the patriarch Joseph. Moses' story in Exodus seems, at first glance, to suggest that all Hebrews or Israelites lived in the same general area, and the story seems centered there. Yet during neither of the proposed dates for Moses' birth was there likely a royal palace in the Delta region. However, it is likely that there were Israelite slaves located across Egypt, even if a majority continued to dwell in the Land of Goshen. Hence, it seems plausible or even likely that Moses was born near Thebes, was adopted there by one of the pharaoh's daughters, and lived there for much of his life to the age of forty.
Our journey to walk in the footsteps of Moses took us from Giza, in the southern suburbs of Cairo, to Luxor, the modern name for the ancient city of Thebes. Luxor is a city of roughly five hundred thousand people on the eastern bank of the Nile River. The archaeological remains of the ancient capital of Thebes are intertwined with the modern city of Luxor, lying beneath the modern city in places and yet magnificently exposed in the temples of Luxor and Karnak, which bear witness to the grandeur of this ancient capital. And three miles to the west by northwest of the city, where the Nile River Valley meets the desert plateau, is the famous Valley of the Kings — the necropolis or burial ground of Egypt's kings who reigned from the sixteenth to the eleventh centuries before Christ.
We've been considering historical questions and archaeological sites up to this point, but let's shift our focus to Moses himself and the meaning of his story. My hope is to have his story speak as Scripture — to recount the events of Moses' life, yes, but to ask: What does the story teach us about God, about humanity, and about ourselves? At each point in our account of Moses' life, we will see if we can find ourselves in the story. In this chapter we'll focus on the stories surrounding Moses' birth, as described in the first two chapters of Exodus.
The Terrible Power of Fear
Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.
(Exodus 1:6-8 NIV)
As seen in this Scripture, the backdrop for the story of Moses is the story of Joseph, the son of Israel, who was sold by his brothers into slavery and eventually became Pharaoh's second-in-command over Egypt. The story is a masterpiece of ancient literature and is known by many who have never picked up a Bible because of the wonderful way Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber retold it in the hit Broadway musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
The biblical story actually fits well a period in Egypt's history in which foreign people, known as Hyksos, settled in the Nile River Delta. These foreigners eventually gained control of Lower Egypt (the area from roughly Memphis north to the Mediterranean, including the massive Nile Delta) and ruled as pharaohs over the land for roughly a hundred years. The Israelites, like the Hyksos, were Semitic people. Both came from the Near East, and both were shepherds and farmers. It would not be surprising for a Hyksos pharaoh to make a Hebrew such as Joseph his prime minister and to allow the Israelites to settle in the land of the Delta with many other Semitic people.
Sometime after Joseph lived, Pharaoh Ahmose I of Upper Egypt (the area from roughly Memphis south), who ruled from 1550 to 1525 B.C., led an Egyptian army to defeat the Hyksos and drive them from Egypt. Ahmose united Upper and Lower Egypt once again and began what historians call the New Kingdom period of Egyptian history. Ahmose I may have been the "new king to whom Joseph meant nothing" who "came to power in Egypt." It would appear that the Israelites were not forced to leave Egypt with the Hyksos but allowed to remain. But the Egyptians had something else in mind for the Israelites.
[Pharaoh] said to his people, "The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are. Come on, let's be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land." As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work.
(Exodus 1:9-11)
Pharaoh feared that the Israelites would join Egypt's enemies, the Hyksos or other enemies from the east, and fight against Egypt in case of war, and he responded by enslaving the Israelites. Fear is a key word to remember in this part of Moses' story. It is behind the oppressive treatment of the Israelites at every turn.
Note what happens next:
But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread. So the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. They made their lives miserable with hard labor, making mortar and bricks, doing field work, and by forcing them to do all kinds of other cruel work.
(Exodus 1:12-13)
Notice that Pharaoh was the most powerful ruler on earth, king of both Upper and Lower Egypt, and yet he and his people were anxious about a minority population of foreign sheepherders in their midst. Their fear led them to despise the Israelites and to oppress them.
And this is precisely where I'd like us to consider how the story of Moses is more than just a story; it is Scripture that reveals truth about us as human beings. What does the oppression of the Israelites tell us about ourselves as a race or people?
Fear is a powerful emotion, and irrational fear can lead us to do irrational and sometimes horrible things. It doesn't take long to think of examples around the world in which fear of minority populations has led nations to oppress, dehumanize, and at times kill those viewed as strangers in their midst. The word we use for this fear is xenophobia. Taken from the Greek, it means "fear of strangers."
I think of the ideal of America captured in Emma Lazarus's famous lines, engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Yet in our history there has always been a tension between living up to this lofty vision and our fear of the other. When the Irish came to America in large numbers in the mid-1800s because of a famine in their home country, fear gave birth to a new political group at first called the American Party and later the Know-Nothing Party. This group was certain the Irish were sent by the Pope to take over America, and they sought to ensure that Catholics would not hold office in America.
Later the Chinese came to America fleeing persecution in their own country. The United States happily received them, and at first even recruited them, as a source of cheap labor to build the railroads. But later, as the number of Chinese grew, they evoked fear and were spoken of as the "Yellow Peril." As a result of that fear, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that prohibited all Chinese from entering America for the next sixty years.
By the 1920s, Americans were concerned with the Russians and anyone else from eastern Europe, including "undesirables" from Greece, Italy, Spain, and Czechoslovakia, as well as Jews. This new wave of fear led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely limited immigration of these groups while favoring "white" immigrants from Great Britain, France, and Germany. In this wave and others, two types of leaders were prone to use fear to motivate people into action: politicians and preachers.
However, our limits on immigration pale in comparison to the Nazi atrocities committed against Jews (as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, and a host of other groups). The Nazis were masters at instilling fear of the Jews and others into the hearts of the German people, a fear that led to unthinkable acts. Replaying the same siren song of fear in more recent times were the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, the Hutu of Rwanda, various leaders in the Middle East, and too many more to name.
In Egypt, as fears grew about the increasing population of Hebrews, so too did the oppressive acts ordered by Pharaoh.
The king of Egypt spoke to two Hebrew midwives named Shiphrah and Puah: "When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby being born, if it's a boy, kill him. But if it's a girl, you can let her live."
(Exodus 1:15-16)
The Hebrews had not rebelled. They had done no harm to the Egyptians. Yet fear led Pharaoh to decree this dreadful plan to kill newborn baby boys.
Christians will remember a similar story, one that points back to this account, found at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel. King Herod the Great heard that a group of magi from Persia had read in the stars that a Hebrew child had been born who would become king of the Jews. In response, Herod, motivated by fear as Pharaoh had been, decreed the death of the Hebrew boys in Bethlehem.
If we're looking for ourselves in the story of Moses' birth, we've got to consider when and where we struggle with fear of the other and how our fears lead us to act in ways that are hardly humane.
Two Courageous Midwives
The writer of Exodus goes on to tell us something profound about the midwives who were commanded by Pharaoh to put the infant boys to death at childbirth: "Now the two midwives respected God so they didn't obey the Egyptian king's order. Instead, they let the baby boys live" (Exodus 1:17). These women feared God more than they feared Pharaoh, and they refused to go along with his plan. Can you imagine the courage of these two women? This is one of the first recorded acts of civil disobedience in history. Because of their disobedience they saved the lives of countless children, perhaps even that of Moses.
I want you to notice that while the pharaoh in this story is not named, the midwives' names are still known and celebrated 3,300 years later. Exodus tells us their names were Shiphrah and Puah.
How did these two midwives get away with disobeying Pharaoh? They lied to him! They told Pharaoh the Hebrew women were so strong that they had already given birth by the time the midwives had arrived. And God blessed them for their faith, courage, and willingness to do what was right, which in this case included being dishonest in order to protect the children. Here's what the text says: "So God treated the midwives well, and the people kept on multiplying and became very strong. And because the midwives respected God, God gave them households of their own" (Exodus 1:20-21).
This points to an interesting moral question: Is it ever okay to lie? We know we're not supposed to lie. And we know we're not supposed to kill. There are moments in life when we are faced with two competing ethical or moral claims — in this case, the ethical command not to lie and the ethical command not to kill. And we have to decide which of the two takes precedence. In the case of the midwives, they decided that saving lives took precedence over telling the truth, and it was the right call. It reminds me of the people who hid Jews in their homes during the Nazi Holocaust. When asked if they were harboring Jews, the people lied and their courageous acts were recognized as righteous. The decision of the midwives doesn't give us license to lie, but it does remind us that there are situations in which our reverence and respect and awe of God might lead us to violate one ethical imperative if it means keeping an even more important one.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Moses by Adam Hamilton. Copyright © 2017 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 9
1 The Birth of Moses 21
2 Two Moments That Defined the Man 45
3 The Exodus 71
4 The Ten Commandments 103
5 Lessons from the Wilderness 129
6 Don't Forget…Pass It On 153
Notes 175
Image Credits 187
For Further Reading 189
Acknowledgments 197