Exodus: God to the Rescue (Six Weeks with the Bible for Catholic Teens) - Softcover

Perrotta, Mr. Kevin; Darring, Mr. Gerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0829420517 ISBN 13: 9780829420517

Publisher: Loyola Press, 2004

Synopsis

This young adult Bible study, Exodus: God to the Rescue, helps teens to see how God revealed himself as savior in the Old Testament—and how that salvation story continued and culminated in the person of Jesus.

Exodus not just about God’s actions for Israel long ago; it is also about God’s activity in our lives as followers of Christ. In reading about the rescue of the Israelite slaves, we can learn about God’s saving love for us in Christ. The way God sustained the Israelites in the wilderness reminds us of some of the sacraments of the Church. For example, our immersion into Christ’s death and life through the water of Baptism harkens back to the Israelites’ passing through the water of the Red Sea. God’s provision of manna offers us an image of the Eucharist, the heavenly bread by which we are nourished—Christ’s body and blood. Thus, as we read about God’s rescue of his people Israel, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand better our own personal salvation history. We can ask ourselves how we have experienced being rescued from the grip of sin, how we have discovered the personal presence of Jesus as he lives with us in the new covenant he has made through his death and resurrection.

Designed as a guided discovery, Six Weeks with the Bible for Catholic Teens introduces high school students to books of the Bible by integrating the biblical text with insightful questions to help youth discern what Scripture means for their lives today. The series provides students with a clear explanation of Biblical text, opportunities for prayer, and a means to enter into conversation with God.

About this title

About the Author

Gerald Darring is an adjunct instructor of theology at Spring Hill College. He has taught elementary, middle, and high school students and has been an instructor in adult ministry formation and certification programs for nearly twenty years.

Kevin Perrotta is an award-winning Catholic journalist and a former editor of God’s Word Today. In addition to the Six Weeks with the Bible series, he is the author of Invitation to Scripture and Your One-Stop Guide to the Bible. Perrotta lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan

From the Back Cover

Six Weeks with the Bible for Catholic Teens
Exploring God’s Word and Taking It to HeartTheme:

God Reveals Himself to Us

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

How to Use This Guide

You might compare this booklet to a short visit to a national park. The park is so large that you could spend months, even years, getting to know it. But a brief visit, if carefully planned, can be worthwhile. In a few hours you can drive through the park and pull over at a handful of sites. At each stop you can get out of the car, take a short trail through the woods, listen to the wind blowing in the trees, and get a feel for the place.
In this booklet we’ll travel through portions of the book of Exodus. We will take a leisurely walk through our targeted readings, thinking carefully about what we are reading and what it means for our lives today. After each discussion, we’ll get back in the car and take the highway to the next stop. The “Between Discussions” pages summarize the portions of Exodus that we will pass along the way.
This guide provides everything you need to explore these portions of Exodus in six discussions—or to do a six-part exploration on your own. The introduction will prepare you to get the most out of your reading. The weekly sections provide explanations that highlight what the words of Exodus mean for us today. Equally important, each section supplies questions that will launch you into fruitful discussion, helping you both to explore Exodus for yourself and to learn from one another. If you’re using the booklet by yourself, the questions will spur your personal reflection.
Each discussion is meant to be a guided discovery.
Guided ~ None of us is equipped to read the Bible without help. We read the Bible for ourselves but not by ourselves. Scripture was written to be understood and applied in and with the Church. So each week “A Guide to the Reading,” drawing on the work of both modern biblical scholars and Christian writers of the past, supplies background and explanations. The guide will help you grasp the message of Exodus. Think of it as a friendly park ranger who points out noteworthy details and explains what you’re looking at so you can appreciate things for yourself.
Discovery ~ The purpose is for you to interact with the book of Exodus. “Questions for a Closer Look” is a tool to help you dig into the text and examine it carefully. “Questions for Application” will help you discern what the words of Exodus mean for your life here and now. Each week concludes with an “Approach to Prayer” section that helps you respond to God’s Word. The supplementary “Living Tradition” and “Saints in the Making” sections offer the thoughts and experiences of Christians past and present in order to show you what Exodus has meant to others—so that you can consider what it might mean for you.
If you are using this booklet for individual study, pay special attention to the questions provided for each week (Warm-Up Questions, Questions for a Closer Look, Questions for Application). One advantage of individual study is that you can take all the time you need to consider each question. I also suggest that you read the entire book of Exodus; you will find that the “Between Discussions” pages will help you understand the portions of Exodus not covered in this guide. Take your time making your way through Exodus and this accompanying booklet: let your reading be an opportunity for these stories to become God’s words to you.

Israel’s Deliverance—and Ours

The book of Exodus surely ranks high on the list of most exciting pieces of literature ever written. The account has all the elements of a great drama: conflict, emotion, suspense, heroism. A ragtag group of people, under the leadership of one of their own, frees themselves from slavery to a cruel oppressor. God opens up the sea, saving them from certain destruction, while the army of their pursuers is devastated by the returning waters. They find themselves in a bleak desert, a crowd of former slaves forced to learn quickly how to survive in the wilderness. They were often disgruntled at the growing pains of their newly won freedom, but in spite of everything, they became a nation covenanted to God, challenged to obey the laws God writes for them on stone tablets.
Movies have been made about the Exodus story of the Israelites’ escape from slavery, but Hollywood was not the first to see the dramatic potential of the book of Exodus. More than a century before Christ, a Jewish playwright named Ezekiel (not the Old Testament prophet) wrote a play based on the book in the style of the Greek tragedies. The drama included an eyewitness account of the miracle at the Red Sea by a surviving member of the Egyptian army:
God was their defense, for when they reached the farther shore a mighty wave gushed forth hard by us, so that one of us in terror cried, “Flee back before the hands of the Most High. To them he offers assistance, but to us, most wretched men, he works destruction.” The sea-path flooded, all our company was lost.
A millennium later, a Christian poet recast the story in the form of an Anglo-Saxon epic:
Then Moses spoke with a loud voice before the multitude: “Look now, dearest of people, with your eyes and behold a marvel! The waves rise up; the waters form a rampart-wall. The sea is thrust aside. . . . Well I know Almighty God has shown you mercy. Most haste is best now, so that you may escape the clutch of foes, since God has reared a rampart of the red sea-streams.”
Dramatic as it is, however, Exodus is much more than entertainment. Both Jews and Christians base their faith on the events described in Exodus. References to God’s leading the Israelites from slavery to freedom occur more than 75 times throughout the Old Testament. The Exodus continues to echo in the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The Exodus was God’s greatest act of deliverance in the Old Testament. God freed the Israelites from slavery through the Exodus. He established a relationship with them, and prepared them to live together as a people. The Exodus is the major turning point in Jewish history. Jews view everything in their history from the standpoint of these saving events. The events of the Exodus, then, are not just things that happened a long time ago. They are living realities that remain ever present. Each generation hands down to the next the memory of the Exodus and the assurance that the God of the Exodus still acts today. The principal Jewish feast, Passover, commemorates Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. The Passover meal is celebrated year after year as a means of remembering and reliving these defining events.
Israel’s deliverance from Egypt holds an essential place in the history not only of Jews but of Christians as well. God’s promise in Genesis to rescue humankind from the forces of sin and alienation unfolds in the story of the Exodus. This story of salvation is one story, and the faith of Jews and Christians alike is rooted in these saving actions of God. Thus, as Christians, we share the Passover perspective of the Jews, our elder brothers and sisters in faith. But we celebrate a further deliverance, one we recognize as the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation: Christ’s freeing all men and women from sin and death through his death and resurrection. Jesus himself linked Passover to his passing over from earthly to risen life. In a radiant vision of himself that he granted to his disciples, in which he appeared with Moses and Elijah, he conversed about “his departure,” literally his exodus, “which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Saint Paul also spoke of Jesus’ death and resurrection in terms of the Exodus: “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7). Thus each Easter is a celebration of the Christian Passover.
Christians see the Exodus as a foreshadowing of what God was going to accomplish through Jesus’ death and resurrection. This fits with the Church’s approach to the Old Testament. From its earliest days, the Church has viewed the Old Testament as the record of God’s unfolding the first steps of a plan of salvation fulfilled in Christ.
Thus, the early Christians understood the Exodus story on two levels. On the first level, the events show God rescuing the Israelites so that he might draw them into a relationship with him. On the second level, the actions in Exodus point forward to God’s greatest action, accomplished through his Son, Jesus.
There is, then, a relationship between Passover in the Old Testament and Christ’s death and resurrection in the New Testament. God’s sparing the people of Israel from death on the night of the Passover is a prefigurement of God’s sparing us from eternal destruction through Jesus’ death. The lamb eaten at Passover prefigures Christ, the Lamb of God. The Passover lamb’s blood on the doorposts of the Israelites’ houses is an image of Christ’s blood shed on the cross: just as the lamb’s blood brought the Israelites’ safety, so Christ’s blood preserves us from eternal death by removing our sins.
Exodus, then, is not just about God’s actions for Israel long ago; it is also about God’s activity in our lives as followers of Christ. In reading about the rescue of the Israelite slaves, we can learn about God’s saving love for us in Christ. The way God sustained the Israelites in the wilderness reminds us of some of the sacraments of the Church. For example, our immersion into Christ’s death and life through the water of Baptism harkens back to the Israelites’ passing through the water of the Red Sea. God’s provision of manna offers us an image of the Eucharist, the heavenly bread by which we are nourished—Christ’s body and blood. Thus, as we read about God’s rescue of his people Israel, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand better our own personal salvation history. We can ask ourselves how we have experienced being rescued from the grip of sin, how we have discovered the personal presence of Jesus as he lives with us in the new covenant he has made through his death and resurrection.
From before the time of Jesus, Jewish tradition held that Moses wrote the entire Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). For centuries this was also the general view among Christians. We now know that Exodus was composed over a long period of time and may not have been put into its final form until around the fifth century b.c., some eight centuries after Moses—although Moses may have written portions of it (17:14; 24:4; 34:27; all citations in this booklet refer to Exodus unless otherwise noted). The tradition of Moses’ authorship of the Pentateuch does, however, reflect Moses’ central role in the formation of the Israelite people.
Over a period of several hundred years, the nucleus of the Exodus story—the departure from Egypt, the desert journey, the covenant and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai—was passed down by word of mouth and then gradually began to be written down. The early accounts were changed later on to express new experiences and a new understanding of God. The process of editing does not show itself in the text, and we can only guess at who actually composed it. In any case, the authors tied together different versions of events, reflecting different stages in Israel’s life as a nation. It is obvious from the different literary styles in Exodus that poets, lawyers, historians, and priests all contributed to the development of the text we have.
Once we understand the editorial process, we can see why the text of Exodus repeats and even seems to contradict itself. The editors wanted to be faithful to all the ways people remembered the story, so they kept all the different features, and in so doing, actually made the book more powerful. At the same time, the final text presents a clear story line that progresses chronologically from the death of Joseph, through Israel’s oppression and deliverance, to the people’s encounter with God at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law.
Understanding the editorial process also helps us deal with the question of what really happened. The authors did not have available to them reliable written records. Instead, they had stories that had been passed down from one generation to the next. As the stories were handed on, they were adapted so as to focus attention on God’s presence in the historical events. The authors then combined these stories with some legendary material, instructions for worship, moral teaching, and other material. The result is a book that has little in common with what we would consider a history book.
Should we expect to find accurate history in the book of Exodus? No, but that does not mean that Exodus is not true. We have to judge the authors’ work on the basis of what they were trying to communicate. The authors were not trying to write a modern history book. They wanted to tell about what God did to save the Israelites and make them into a people. They hoped to reveal what God is like and what kind of relationship he wishes to have with people. They interpreted the Exodus story in terms of God intervening on behalf of the oppressed Israelites. Was their portrait of God true? Did they accurately portray God’s intentions for his people? The answer is an emphatic yes.
We are still curious, of course, about what really happened, and scholars are debating the issue. Some think that the pharaoh who appears in the Exodus story is Rameses II, who reigned through most of the 13th century b.c. We know that Rameses II undertook vast building projects in the Nile Delta and that he used foreign slaves in these projects. However, there is no mention of Israelites in Egypt in any of the Egyptian records we have.
There is no indication outside the Bible that the Israelites spent time in the wilderness. There can be no doubt, however, about the existence of Israel as a people. Some events must have occurred to bring into existence this people who believed that God made a covenant with them and gave them a law on which to pattern their way of life. The best way to explain the existence of Israel is to use the Exodus account: slaves escaped from Egypt; they saw this as an act of God; they then experienced God revealing himself to them in the wilderness of Sinai, drawing them into a relationship with him.

Hard Times

Warm-Up Questions

1 How recently did your family come to this country?
 I’m an immigrant myself.
 My grandparents were immigrants who came here and struggled to make good.
 My family has been in this country as long as any of us can remember.
 I know little about my family’s history but would like to learn more.
2 What do you think it would be like to live in another country or move to an unfamiliar city? Would you find it hard to adapt to your new surroundings?
3 Which of these social evils in the world today most concerns you: hunger, discrimination, war, homelessness, child abuse?

Opening the Bible

The Reading
Exodus 1:1—2:10

Good Old Days

1:1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 The total number of people born to Jacob was seventy. Joseph was already in Egypt. 6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. 7 But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

Life Gets Tough

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.
 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

Hey, There’s a Baby in That Basket!

2:1 Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.2 The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
 5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Questions for a Closer Look

1 Reread these verses: 1:8–10,15–16,22. What picture of Pharaoh would you draw from these passages? What does this tell you about the seriousness of the Israelites’ situation?
2 The Egyptians’ policies against the Hebrews develop in stages. How many stages can be distinguished in this reading? As the Egyptians’ policies become harsher, do they also become more successful?
3 In 1:17 what does the word feared mean? What was the midwives’ attitude toward God? toward Pharaoh’s decree?
4 Identify all the women who play a role in this reading. What trait(s) do they have in common?
5 Why do you think Pharaoh’s daughter defied her father’s orders?
6 What indications does this reading give that God is concerned for the Israelites?

A Guide to the Reading

The Hebrew name for the book we call Exodus is “These are the names.” The same words are used towards the end of Genesis, and both times the words introduce a list of those who came to Egypt with Jacob. The two books are thus connected, highlighting the fact that God continued to work from one period to the next. God’s plan unfolds throughout the Bible, a great plan for the good of men and women that reaches its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
Genesis describes the creation of the world and tells how the first humans brought unhappiness on themselves and their descendants by refusing to obey God. Then Genesis tells how God started a plan to restore people’s relationship with him. The first phase of the plan involved a family: Abraham and Sarah, their son, Isaac, and his wife, Rebekah, followed by their son Jacob, his wives, and their twelve sons (named in 1:2–5). Genesis focused on the family circle. In Exodus this family will move out into the wider arena of world history. The great family leaders of earlier generations will now be followed by a great deliverer and lawgiver, Moses. Exodus begins with the story of his birth.
Jacob and his family originally came to Egypt to get food during a famine. God assured Jacob: “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there” (Genesis 46:3). The family prospered in Egypt under the protection of Jacob’s son Joseph, who had risen to high rank in the Egyptian government. Jacob’s descendants thrived and grew in the land to which they had come as refugees (1:7). Thus God kept the promise he made to Jacob and earlier to Abraham: “I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven” (Genesis 22:17).
God had told Abraham in advance about the slavery of Abraham’s descendants and God’s intervention. “Your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for 400 years; but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions” (Genesis 15:13–14). The prediction of distress was fulfilled, as Abraham’s descendants find themselves in a brutally degrading and life-threatening situation. We know the rest of God’s promise, of course, so we may expect that God will hear their desperate cries and provide a solution to their situation.
Pharaoh was not a personal name but simply a way of referring to the kings of Egypt; in Egyptian it means “great house” or “palace.” Exodus never speaks of the Egyptian king by his personal name, and this makes it easy to see Pharaoh as a faceless symbol of oppression. Pharaoh represents the human and spiritual forces, including Satan, that make slaves of us. Indeed, the entire story of Exodus can be read both literally and symbolically. On the literal level, it speaks about the plight of the Israelites, who lived in Egypt as slaves under a cruel tyrant. On the symbolic level, it speaks about all of us, who are slaves to sin and separated from God’s grace. We can also see in Pharaoh’s namelessness a symbol of something in ourselves, of our dark tendencies to act at times as Pharaoh did, blind to God’s will for us.
The book of Exodus describes a struggle between Israel’s God and Pharaoh, who was worshipped as a god by his subjects. Pharaoh seems far the stronger at first. He appears to exercise unlimited power: he imposes slavery and orders genocide. The Israelites’ situation seems hopeless in the face of his power. Their God seems powerless or absent. God, however, sets in motion a plan to raise up a liberator. The baby Moses is put in a basket—the same Hebrew word was used for Noah’s ark (Genesis 6:14). Moses’ basket is like Noah’s boat: God’s instrument of salvation from the waters. The meaning given to Moses’ name, “drawn from the water,” speaks of God’s saving power. As we will see, it will be through Moses that the people of Israel will gain freedom and enter into a covenant with God. Through the baby in the basket, God will demonstrate who is really Lord.

Questions for Application

1 When do people feel pressured to do wrong—for example, to cheat or to lie or to close their eyes to injustice? Have you ever been able to bring justice into an unjust situation? What prompts people to make the right choices and act courageously in such situations?
2 The midwives worked together to thwart Pharaoh’s plans to have all the male babies killed. What can an individual do to fight injustice, and, when necessary, to work with others to bring about justice?
3 Pharaoh’s daughter rescued the baby Moses. Do you know someone who has been rescued by another person? What happened?
4 When Moses’ mother and sister placed him in the basket, they could do nothing more to save him; they could only trust God to act. In what areas of our lives do we most need to trust God to act?
5 The Israelites came as strangers in need to Egypt. Who are the newcomers in your school or parish or neighborhood? How could you reach out to them and offer friendship and help?
6 Earlier you were asked to identify the social evil you care about most. What are some things you might do to bring about justice, or at least to alleviate the injustice?

Approach to Prayer

If you wish, share briefly with the group a need you or someone you knows has for God’s help. Then take a moment to pray in silence for the needs of everyone in the room. Close your time together with the Our Father.

Supplement for Individual Reading

Saints in the Making
Way Down in Egypt’s Land

Through the centuries, the Israelites’ oppression under their ruthless taskmasters in Egypt became a symbol of the many forms of bondage and injustice suffered by human beings. Many of the religious songs popular among slaves in the American South expressed their yearning for freedom as well as their longing for heaven. These Negro spirituals brought hope to men and women familiar with backbreaking work and lashings. “Go Down, Moses” was a particular favorite.

 

When Israel was in Egypt’s land, Let my people go,
Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go.

 

Chorus: Go down, Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land,
Tell old Pharaoh, To let my people go.

 

No more shall they in bondage toil, Let my people go,
Let them come out with Egypt’s spoil, Let my people go. Chorus

Some former slaves saw Harriet Tubman as the Moses of this song. Tubman made her own escape from slavery in 1849. Hiding by day and following the North Star at night, she reached the free state of Pennsylvania. “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person, now that I was free,” she recalled. “There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.”
Once she was free, Tubman determined to rescue as many other slaves as possible. “To this solemn resolution I came; I was free, and they should be free also,” she later said. “I would make a home for them in the North and, the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there.”
During the decade before the Civil War, Tubman made 19 journeys back into “Egypt’s land”—the American South. She led more than 300 slaves to freedom through the network of helpers called the Underground Railroad. By God’s grace, she declared, “I never ran my ‘train’ off the track, and I never lost a passenger.”

 

Between Discussions

The Bible does not tell us much about Moses’ early life except for a few details about his family background and education. His mother was Jochebed and his father was Amram. They belonged to the tribe of Levi and had at least two other children, Aaron and Miriam. We know nothing else about them except that Jochebed became the paid wet nurse for Moses until he was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and taken into her household. Pharaoh had ordered all the Hebrew male babies to be killed, and yet he ended up with one of them as his adopted grandson—though we might wonder whether, in such a great household, Pharaoh was even aware of the child.
Exodus gives no information about Moses the teenager, although in the New Testament Saint Stephen tells us that Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). His instruction must have included religious, civil, and military matters.
The education he gained at the Egyptian court undoubtedly helped him learn what he needed to know in order to confront the next Pharaoh.
Moses was raised apart from his Hebrew community. It was not until he was well into adulthood, then, that he began to be affected by his awareness of being a Hebrew. As Saint Stephen recounted, “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his relatives, the Israelites” (Acts 7:23). It was then that he first took action against his people’s oppression. He murdered an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew and as a result had to flee from Pharaoh’s wrath (2:11–15; Acts 7:24–29).
Moses settled down, probably in the Sinai Peninsula, married, and became a shepherd (2:15–22; 3:1). During these long years he matured in character and he probably thought a lot about his relatives back in Egypt. He named his son Gershom—which means “resident alien” in Hebrew— showing his awareness that he was “an alien residing in a foreign land” (2:22). He may have daydreamed about visiting his own people and seeing how they were doing, but he probably did not see himself coming to their rescue. After all, what could one man do against the strength of Egypt?
A long time passed. Then, one day while Moses was herding his sheep, he saw a bush burning, but not consumed by the flames. What did this strange sight mean? Moses was about to be drawn into God’s plan for delivering the Israelites (2:23–25).
The stories of Moses and Jesus were similar in many ways. Both Moses and Jesus were born into a people who were suffering under repressive rule. They both survived attempts to have all the male infants killed. Exodus tells us nothing about Moses’ youthful years, and, except for the incident among the teachers in the Temple, the Gospels tell us nothing of Jesus’ boyhood. Both Moses and Jesus were called by God for a great purpose. They both spent time in the desert preparing for their missions: Moses as a shepherd in Midian for 40 years, Jesus in his 40-day fast in the desert. They were both misunderstood by those who were closest to them: Moses by his brother and sister, Jesus by his family and his disciples. Finally, the people of Israel were freed from slavery and led to the Promised Land under the leadership of Moses, while through Jesus all of us are redeemed from sin and the way to heaven is opened.
Everything we know about Moses comes from the Bible. There are, however, many legends about Moses in Jewish lore and rabbinical literature. Such tales are purely imaginative, but they reflect how important Moses is for the Jews. He was the liberator of Israel, its leader, lawgiver, intercessor, and mediator with God. Judaism is often called the Mosaic faith. Even today Moses’ influence is felt in the religious life, moral concerns, and social ethics of Western civilization.

Edition details

• Publisher: Loyola Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0829420517
• ISBN 13: 9780829420517
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96
• Editor: Perrotta Mr. Kevin