MOSES PART 1
“And a prophet did not arise again in Israel like Moses. Whom YHVH knew face to face, with all the signs and wonders that YHVH sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharoah and to all his servants and to all his land.” (Deuteronomy 34:10-11). These are the two penultimate verses of the 5 books of Moses. Moses is the greatest prophet, the greatest hero in our mythic retellings. Yet the question I ask that is in front of us today is whether we can say, as we said of Joseph, that he led a full life true to himself and his visions. Or was he rather a reluctant tool of YHVH who did not truly embrace his role?
Obviously, I can’t do full justice to an interpretation of Moses in just a few pages. But let me look at some of the highlights, starting with the beginning of his career starting with his killing the Egyptian overseer. I will look at this using a blend of the framework Bill Plotkin lays out in his Journey to Soul Initiation and the better known heroic journey popularized by Joseph Campbell
Young adolescents, metaphorically and/or literally, leave home seeking to find themselves. They are either called in pursuit of something (think the quest for the Holy Grail or Abraham to the Holy land that the divine will show him) or are abducted, meaning some kind of forced departure—think Persephone being abducted by Hades, Jacob forced to flee after stealing the birthright or Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt.
Moses is abducted and forced to flee after he kills the overseer. He thought he had not been observed, but when he goes to break up a fight between two Israelites (something he will do a lot of in his future career), a fellow Israelite says to him “Who made you and judge over us? Are you saying you’d kill me the way you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14) Moses is running away from Egypt, not towards Midian in particular. He does not make Midian his home, even after being married into the family of a leading priest. He names his first son Gershom, “for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.” (2:22). Even though he is married and has a son, he is still in the adolescent wandering phase.
Then he encounters the divine at the burning bush when he is pasturing the sheep near the sacred mountain Horeb. He does not receive a name the way Jacob does after wrestling with the angel or Joseph receives from the Pharoah. This is not a revelation of what Plotkin calls his “mythopoetic identity. Rather, this is still part of his journey of discovery of who he is. And he’s assigned a task, an impossible task like the tasks Hercules was assigned—only this is to be YHVH’s spokesperson in the freeing of his people.
Moses, to put it mildly, is highly resistant to doing this task that the divine has assigned him (Exodus 3:11-4:17). He offers excuse after excuse about why he can’t do it. YHVH patiently answers the objections, until he’s had enough. Who am I to do it, Moses asks, I don’t even know your name. YHVH answers Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. I am who I am (which is, fascinatingly, more like a mythopoetic identity than any kind of proper name). What if they say, Moses continues, that YHVH did not really appear to you, you’re making it all up? YHVH tells Moses to respond by putting on a magic demonstration. Throw your staff which I will magically turn into a snake or put your hand on your chest, have it turn scaly white, put it on your chest again and have it come back clean, take some water from the Nile and have it turn into blood). But YHVH, pleads Moses, I am not a man of words. YHVH says I am the one who gives people speech. Finally and most plainly, “Please YHVH, make someone else your agent.” But YHVH says enough already, your brother Aaron will speak for you, but get going. (3:11-4:17)
Running from what we’ve been called to do—that’s really typical. It’s even typical in our Bible. Jeremiah also protested “Ah, YHVH God, I don’t how to speak, for I am still a boy. And YHVH said to me, Do not say “I am still a boy” But go wherever I send you.” (1:6-7). Above all, recall the story of Jonah who did everything he could to (literally) flee his calling. Beware of those who embrace their calling too readily.
But does Moses ever embrace his calling? Or better yet, what is his calling? These are the questions we will explore in Moses part 2 that I will post before Pesach.
