Parashat Shemot

Saturday 10 January 2015                  Tevet 19  5775

Parashat Shemot                                                      by Shelley Wood Gauld 

Ex 1:1 ~ 6:1, Is 27:6 ~ 28:13; 29:22 ~ 23, Acts 2 & 7:17-35, 1 Cor. 14:18 ~ 25

While tending Jethro’s sheep at a place near Mount Horeb (Sinai), ‘Malach Adonai’ (the Angel of the Lord) appeared to Moses “out of the midst of a bush” ~ mitokh ha-seneh ~ and informed him that he had been chosen as HaShem’s deliverer and ‘shaliach’, emissary, to His persecuted people in Egypt. HaShem then provided Moses with three supernatural signs that would be used to persuade both his people and Pharaoh that he had been sent by HaShem. But Moses immediately began to protest, saying that he was unable to do such a thing and insisted that He choose someone else… Why was this?

Herewith some possible explanations: Moses realised that his life was about to be turned upside down. The slow peaceful ebb and flow of his pastoral days had come to an abrupt end. He panicked...  This was far too great a task for someone who, over the course of 40 years, had settled into the role of a humble shepherd ~ ‘a nobody.’ The man who, in his youth had had the drive to be the ‘redeemer’ of his people ~ demonstrated by Moses killing the Egyptian guard in defense of two Hebrew slaves ~ no longer that the drive or the will for it… Moses lacked the confidence for so great a mission. And let us not forget that he was now over 80 years of age…. He was slowing down…

What was Moses’ most pressing excuse? That he was not a good communicator; that he was ‘kevad peh’ (heavy of mouth) and ‘kevad lashon’ (heavy of tongue or language). HaShem thus reminded Moses that He was the creator of the mouth; the one who makes an individual mute, deaf, seeing or blind. The implication was that Moses’ ‘slowness of speech’ could have been worse, but, more to the point, that HaSehm would enable Moses to say what needed to be said. Still the aged shepherd resisted. Why? Moses knew about the gods of Egypt and Midian, but did he know the God of the Hebrews?

Moses had had a chequered life. The Levite baby in the tarred basket, drawn out of the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, had been nursed by his own mother, Jochebed. How long did the nursing last? It is possible that during this time Moshe learned his first words ~ Hebrew words ~ Leshon HaKodesh (Holy Language). Then, while being raised in the Egyptian court, he would have learned the language and ways of the Egyptian aristocracy. Because he lived among them for 40 years, Moses became an Egyptian, to all intents and purposes. So we have to ask ourselves, when the two Hebrew slaves reproved Moses, what language would they have used? Surely not Hebrew, because Moses would have looked and sounded like an Egyptian….

This brings us to our next point. Jethro’s seven daughters described Moses as ‘an Egyptian’, implying that he both looked and sounded like an Egyptian. Like Joseph, Moses was a Hebrew in disguise ~ but a Hebrew who understood, more than any other Hebrew, the ways of the Egyptian court. However, the next phase of his life was about to commence and, for the ensuing forty years, Moses would be immersed in yet another foreign culture and have to learn another foreign language ~ that of the dark-skinned Midianites.

So at the time that Malach Adonai appeared to Moses ~ how long was it since he had spoken the Egyptian language? Forty years? And it seems unlikely that Moses had ever been fluent in Hebrew, the language of his own people… Without divine intervention, Moses could simply not have done the job efficiently. He could not have communicated effectively with Pharaoh, but even less so with the Israelites. It seems therefore, that Moses was not a ‘stutterer’ or 'stammerer', but a man who lacked the necessary ability to fluently speak the required languages for this task. Would his brother, Aaron, be a better communicator; having remained in Egypt his entire life ~ would he have been conversant with both the Israelite and the Egyptian languages? Probably. So although HaShem’s anger burned against Moses for his lack of faith, He allowed Aaron to be Moses’ spokesman.

For followers of Yeshua, whom many believe was the ‘Malach Adonai’ of the burning bush, there are other associations with being linguistically equipped to be Mashiach’s ‘shaliach’. Ten days after Yeshua’s ascension, over 3,000 Jewish believers were gathered together in one place in Jerusalem during the Festival of Shavu’ot ~ and they heard the Galilean talmidim speaking about Mashiach in their native languages… These 'emissaries' of Yeshua HaMashiach were supernaturally equipped to speak languages that they had never learned… This begs the question: Would Moses have been made high priest and been given this same measure of the Ruach in order to communicate, had he readily accepted HaShem’s divine commission? 

“When they bring you before the synagogues and the ruling powers and the authorities, don’t worry about how you will defend yourself or what you will say; because when the time comes, the Ruach HaKodesh will teach you what you need to say.” Luke 12:12.