Lives of Scripture

Moses was born under a death sentence — Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew infant son drowned — and survived because his mother hid him, then set him adrift in a basket where Pharaoh's own daughter found and raised him at court (Exodus 1:22-2:10). At forty, seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, Moses killed the Egyptian and fled into the wilderness (Exodus 2:11-15). He spent forty years as a shepherd in Midian, marrying Zipporah, before God met him at a burning bush and commissioned him to demand Pharaoh let Israel go — a task Moses resisted until God provided his brother Aaron as a spokesman (Exodus 3-4). Through Moses, God struck Egypt with ten plagues, instituted the Passover, and led Israel out through the Red Sea (Exodus 5-14). At Sinai, Moses received the Law and mediated the covenant, a role the New Testament treats as a real but incomplete forerunner of Christ's mediation (Exodus 19-24; Hebrews 3:1-6). Moses was not sinless: he pleaded successfully for Israel after the golden calf, yet later, provoked at Meribah, struck the rock in anger instead of speaking to it as commanded, taking credit alongside God for the water — serious enough that God barred him from the promised land he had led Israel toward for forty years (Numbers 20:1-13; Deuteronomy 34:1-8). Moses died on Mount Nebo, seeing the land only from a distance; Scripture records no prophet like him arose again until the greater one the Law itself anticipated (Deuteronomy 34:10-12; Acts 3:22).