| EXODUS |
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| edict intended to destroy the Jews led to their deliverance. Adopted into the palace, Moses got the benefit of a superb classical education. His Egyptian upbringing was balanced by Jewish nurture: in another striking irony, the pharaoh's daughter paid Moses' own mother to nurse him. The son of slaves, yet brought up in the seat of power, Moses prepared for his eventual goal of forging a nation out of a ragtag band of captives. His career had to wait, though, for a period of humbling in the desert. Moses fled Egypt as a brash, self-confident man who liked to take matters into his own hands. Forty years later he reluctantly returned, with little besides a stick and a donkey. Free at Last The Jews had endured nearly four centuries of oppression - twice as long as the history of America as a nation - before liberation. So far as we know, during those years they received no direct communication from heaven. Surely God must have seemed silent. Moses faced a formidable challenge. Somehow he had to earn the trust of the slaves and inspire hope in them so that they could indeed throw off their chains. He had to prove that God had not forgotten them. When the time was right, God unleashed a spectable of might and power that brought a cruel pharaoh to his knees - and convinced the Israelites that God really did care for them. God used Moses in remarkable ways. He was the first person recorded in the Bible to work miracles. He met God in intimate ways granted no other human. He had a hand in the authorship of a good portion of the Old Testament. But in Jewish history he earned a place primarily as a liberator. He led the march from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to the |