Moses

Moses Patriarch and Prophet

In the Exodus, and in the Pentateuch as a whole, the central figure is that of Moses. Why has tradition given it so much importance? What does he remember, who does he represent?

From the different traditions emerge various aspects, various faces of Moses. Sometimes he is considered the servant par excellence, the true man of God, the one whom God has chosen to act and be present in the people; in other words he is the great mediator. Other times he is represented three times as a prophet, guide and shepherd of the people, intercessor in difficult moments. He almost always appears as a man of action, who knows how to intervene in events. Deuteronomy gives us perhaps the most organic and complete image: here Moses appears as the model of all the prophets. The greatest service rendered by Moses was that of giving the law to the people, and of having lived for it alone. Certainly no one has such an easy and spontaneous dialogue with God as he does; Moses is the one who speaks directly to God, but contradictory aspects and often opposite moods coexist in his personality.

For example, the passage from Exodus 3219-20 presents Moses in an excess of anger: "When he approached the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing. Then Moses' anger was kindled: he threw away the breaking boards at the foot of the mountain. Then he grabbed the calf they had made, burned it in the fire, crushed it to dust, scattered the dust in the water and made the Israelites gobble it up. " While in Numbers 12,3 we are described as the most peaceful man on this earth: "Now Moses was a very meek man, more than anyone else on earth". Everything that the texts say about Moses is obviously not his biography. We know for sure that he was a historical figure, who really existed, and that he had a decisive role in the liberation of the Jews from Egypt. We are faced with the story of a vocation, in all its complexity, with all its lights and shadows. We will stop to consider above all the aspect that all traditions underline, namely the solidarity and communion of Moses with his people, his responsibility lived in the presence of God.

By letting ourselves be guided by the second chapter of the Exodus, we can reconstruct the beginning of the journey of Moses. 2:10: "When the child was grown, he brought him to Pharaoh's daughter. He became a son to her and she called him Moses, saying: I saved him from the waters!". Moses escaped the massacre, was raised at court with an Egyptian culture and received an Egyptian name. This tale suggests certain legends, which speak of the origin of great men: all are generally saved in difficult circumstances, are brought to court and then become kings. But in the case of Moses the story ends differently; his story continues in a new way: "In those days, Moses, grown up in age, went to his brothers and noticed the heavy work they were oppressed by. He saw an Egyptian hitting a Jew, one of his brothers". (2.11)

Moses does not continue the life of the court, he does not become pharaoh. Realizing the oppression of his brothers, he leaves his career, his "privileges" as a free and cultured man and becomes a slave to the slaves, in solidarity with them. This is his exodus, his choice. 2,12-14 "Turning around and seeing that no one was there, he struck the Egyptian to death and buried him in the sand, the next day he went out again and, seeing two Jews who were fighting, he said what he was wrong: "Why do you beat your brother?" He replied: "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?". Then Moses was afraid and thought: "Of course it was known"

Moses has a plan: he wants to free his people who have always been slaves and generously compromises himself. But his attempt to free him fails, his brothers "reject" him: they are so alienated that they prefer to remain in slavery and misery. His initiative does not shake them.

2.15 "Pharaoh heard about this and tried to put Moses to death. Then Moses went away from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian and sat by a well." Moses must flee disappointed and defeated. He will know poverty and loneliness, he will be considered a stranger without a name. He will go into the desert and there, his vocation will mature and purify himself. 3,1 "Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, a priest of Midian, and he led the cattle beyond the desert and came to the mountain of God, Horeb." The burning bush is his experience of God gained in those years. He discovers that God is present and cannot be seen, just as the bush burns without being consumed. Moses is taken in by it and is himself consumed by it. First he wanted to act without God; now he has discovered it and everything will change; he will no longer be able to ignore it.

Moses represents every man who breaks with the past in the name of service for his brothers, for the world. But he realizes that in order to be an instrument of liberation he needs to be liberated. The discovery of God causes him to lose his plan to actively enter into God's plan, into his will, to be more and more available to Yahweh's plan of liberation. The God of the Exodus has a face: he is a God of liberation, who does not want pharaohs for any man and for any people. Yahweh is not indifferent to the "situation" of man, indeed he is present right where there is "the cry of slavery" (Ex. 2,23).

3,7 "The Lord said," I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt and I have heard his cry because of his overseers; in fact I know the sufferings of him "". God considers this very suffering people "his of him". He is the God of solidarity, the friend of the poor.

3.8 "I went down to free him from the hand of Egypt and to bring him out of this country towards a beautiful and spacious country, towards a country where milk and honey flows, towards the place where the Canaanite, the Hittite, the 'Amorreo, the Perizzita, the Eveo, the Jebuseum ". God is the one who descends, to let people go out towards a land: there is the idea of entering a reality, to make a "journey with", to go further, to go up, towards the promised land: God is eternal life! This forms and forges the vocation of Moses. "Now go! I am sending you to Pharaoh. Bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt!" (3.10).

The Lord manifests His plan and Moses discovers it: the experience made allows him to fully grasp God's will, not without letting him touch his fears and reservations: "Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring the Israelites out of Egypt? ". Moses feels useless, incapable, but he has learned to no longer count on his strength or on his project, heartened by the divine message: "I will be with you. Here is the sign that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of 'Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain".

"I will be with you": it is the certainty that puts in him a new dynamism, and a new way of living solidarity. Now he understands, he knows he can count on God and goes in his name. In this way he will be able to faithfully bring his people to meet his plan of salvation, without turning back.

If we try to read these things on an existential level, we discover them loaded with a message with numerous consequences: the vocation to solidarity begins and grows when we realize that no one is saved alone, but always with others, with "a people". Moses discovers and prophetically lives his choice of solidarity. Let's see the proof. Moses replied: "Behold, they will not believe me, they will not listen to my voice but they will say: The Lord has not appeared to you!"; Moses has no human support, nothing will make him credible. How to prove that the Lord is sending him? "Moses said to the Lord," My Lord, I am not a good talker; I have never been before and not even since you began to speak to your servant, but I am clumsy with my mouth and tongue ""; he feels crushed, inadequate and even insecure!

But "the Lord said to him:" Who gave man a mouth or who makes him dumb or deaf, seer or blind? Am I not the Lord? Now it goes! I will be with your mouth and I will teach you what you have to say "". Here is the call to faith: it will be the Lord who will make him a prophet, that is, the word will be given to him, Moses will only have to have faith without reservations. The Prophet is the one the Lord chooses to manifest His word and His will.

Moses said: "Forgive me, my Lord, send whoever you want to send!". If Moses had only looked at himself, he would have had no reason to continue, he would have preferred to withdraw. But he senses that the prophet is the one who speaks a living word precisely in the concrete situations of the present moment, who announces the word "incisive" and "decisive". This frightens him: "Moses left, went back to his father-in-law Jethro and said to him:" Let me go and go back to my brothers who are in Egypt, to see if they are still alive! "Jethro said to Moses:" Go even in peace! "". He scares him, but then he has the courage to leave, despite everything. His decision too is in itself prophetic, a sign of God present and powerful. Moses therefore says the first new word with his life, paying personally. He leaves without guarantees of success, trusting only in the word of the Lord.

"The scribes of the Israelites saw themselves in a bad way when they were told:" You will not decrease the daily number of bricks at all. "When, coming out of Pharaoh's presence, they met Moses and Aaron who were waiting for them, they said to them:" The Lord proceed against you and judge; because you made us hateful in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his ministers, putting the sword in their hands to kill us! "Then Moses turned to the Lord and said:" My Lord, why have you mistreated this people? Why then did you send me? Since I came to Pharaoh to speak to him in your name, he has done harm to this people and you have not at all freed your people!". Ex 5: 19-23).

Moses will often experience loneliness, but he will continue despite the little trust of his brothers. External setbacks won't stop him. Why? Because he has discovered that his task is to transmit the word of Yahweh, so that the people know what God's intentions are. His suffering will be great: let us remember the verses in Numbers 11,10-12. "Moses heard the people complaining in all the families, each at the entrance to his own tent; the anger of the Lord flared up and it displeased Moses too; Moses said to the Lord:" Why did you treat your servant so badly? Why did I not find grace in your eyes, so much so that you burdened me with the weight of all this people? Did I conceive all these people? Or perhaps I brought him into the world so that you tell me: Carry him in your womb, as the nurse carries a suckling child, to the land that you promised with an oath to his fathers?".

Specifically, when are we prophets? Whenever we know how to discern between Pharaoh and God, every time we seek the freedom that comes from God. And when we continue to carry out this discernment despite appearances they give us no guarantees to believe that the word is true.

After the episode of the golden calf, the Lord had decided to exterminate the people, and so he would have done if Moses, chosen by him, had not been in the breach in front of him, to appease his anger; and it is in this passage that all the love of Moses for his people is clearly seen: "The Lord also said to Moses: "I have observed this people and I have seen that it is a people with a hard neck. Now let my anger ignite against them and destroy them. Instead of you I will make a great nation".

Moses then pleaded with the Lord, his God, and said, "Why, Lord, will your anger flare up against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great force and with a mighty hand? Why must the Egyptians say: With malice he brought them out, to make them perish in the mountains and make them disappear from the earth? Desist from the heat of your anger and abandon the resolution to harm your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, Israel, your servants , to whom you swore by yourself, and you said: I will make your posterity as numerous as the stars of the sky and this whole land, of which I have spoken, I will give to your descendants, who will possess it forever. " The Lord gave up on his purpose to harm his people".

God proposes to Moses to destroy the existing people and to start over, with him. Moses does not accept. Firstly because he says he cannot trust a God who has not kept his first word, secondly because he feels he can no longer separate himself from this people that he loves precisely because they are poor and sinful. Basically this is the temptation of the prophet: to believe himself to be better than others, qualitatively superior, and to think that he can represent the solution. "And if not, delete me from the book you wrote": he is willing to die out of solidarity with his people; the true prophet intercedes asking for mercy and also gives himself to save the people. It is this disposition of mind that "moves" God.

A last passage briefly illustrates the experience of God lived by those who are servants and prophets: "He said to him:" Show me your glory!"."He replied: "I will make all my splendor pass before you and proclaim my name: Lord, in front of you. I will give grace to whoever I want to give grace and I will have mercy on whoever I want to have mercy ". He added, "But you won't be able to see my face, because no man can see me and stay alive." The Lord added: "Here is a place near me. You will stand on the cliff: when my glory passes, I will place you in the hollow of the cliff and cover you with my hand until I pass. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my shoulders, but my face cannot be seen".

Moses urges us to make very concrete life choices towards the poor and with the poor. It is about abandoning our little private life and starting to live for others: we can no longer belong to ourselves. It is necessary to be poor to be instruments in the hands of God. We do not prepare ourselves to serve in order to fulfill ourselves: for this reason we will need to wait, which is indispensable to discern if we are in harmony with God's will. The whole story of Moses teaches us that to be a servant one will often have to accept to live a naked faith, knowing that we will be tested by loneliness and that perseverance will be painful. Sooner or later we will all know rejection, we will often be prophets without honors and without recognition. For us too it can be said: "No prophet is welcome at home" (Lk 4:24).

Every servant, if he wants to remain "prophetic", beyond conventions and fashions, must have a personal and immediate relationship with God, as Deuteronomy teaches us when it emphasizes that Moses met God "face to face".

Moses would like to "see" more, have more certainties and more guarantees for his mission. God, on the other hand, replies that it is He who decides when he reveals himself to be known. The text uses a powerful image to say that God has already manifested himself: he has gone through all events, even the most painful ones and all had the imprint of love "I will cover you with my hand".

Moses will teach the people that it is always after certain particularly critical and difficult moments that the presence of God is recognized, even if it will always be seen from behind, because it was so for Moses and so it will be for every believer. God makes his prophets grow through an experience that is always very painful.

Moses urges us to make very concrete life choices towards the poor and with the poor. It is about abandoning our little private life and starting to live for others: we can no longer belong to ourselves. It is necessary to be poor to be instruments in the hands of God. We do not prepare ourselves to serve in order to fulfill ourselves: for this reason we will need to wait, which is indispensable to discern if we are in harmony with God's will. The whole story of Moses teaches us that to be a servant one will often have to accept to live a naked faith, knowing that we will be tested by loneliness and that perseverance will be painful. Sooner or later we will all know rejection, we will often be prophets without honors and without recognition. For us too it can be said: "No prophet is welcome at home" (Lk 4:24).

Every servant, if he wants to remain "prophetic", beyond conventions and fashions, must have a personal and immediate relationship with God, as Deuteronomy teaches us when it emphasizes that Moses met God "face to face".