Nothing stirs a nation's blood like a liberator. The United States remembers two especially: Washington and Lincoln. George Washington led the original fight for independence. A centur later Abraham Lincoln set three million people free. For those slaves, Lincoln was a true liberator.
Other places, too, have liberators. India called a scrawny little man named Ghandi "Mahatma" (or "the great one") for leading his people to freedom. South America memorialized Simon Bolivar. For the Jews, one liberator named Moses accomplished what all these did - and more.
The Bible devotes one-eighth of its pages to the story of Moses' time (a bulk of material two-thirds the length of the entire New Testament). And when Jesus came as the great Liberator who set all humanity free, the New Testament reached back to Moses for a comparison (Hebrews 3:1-6).
Bondage in Egypt
The time was ripe for a liberator. Genesis closed with Jacob's family of 70 moving to Egypt. But in the opening scene of Exodus, 350 years later, hundreds of thousands of their ancestors were toiling on Pharaoh's huge construction projects - not as guests but as slaves.
One particularly ruthless pharaoh ordered the murder of all male Jewish babies, unwittingly setting the stage for one of the greatest ironies of history. Moses' parents hid him in a watertight basket among the grasses of a swamp. There, the tiny baby caught the eye of the pharaoh's daughter. The very |
