Here is my 2010 commentary on Sh’mot. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah today is “Sh’mot,” a Hebrew word that means “names,” and covers Exodus chapter 1, through chapter 6, verse 1. With the ending of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, we bid farewell to Joseph and all his predecessors, and we greet Moses, the man who would become the prophet that Messiah would be compared to in Messianic prophecy. Our introduction to Moses as the greatest prophet can sometimes stir up impressive, yet in accurate, images.
Thanks to the Cecil B. DeMille classic, The Ten Commandments, there is an entire generation of believers who cannot help but envision a young Charlton Heston when they picture Moses. More recently, thanks to the DreamWorks animated musical, Prince of Egypt, a new generation is growing up thinking of Moses as an eternal teenager off on a great and grand adventure, someone similar to Aladdin.
Yet Moses as he was is not to be found in any of these false images. While he is the greatest of all the patriarchs and, as the Torah itself memorializes him, “the humblest man who ever lived,” what we find in these opening chapters of Exodus is a man who is exceptionally flawed.
First, after he is weaned, he is raised primarily in the house of a Pharaoh of Egypt, as a child of one of Pharaoh’s daughters. While this means he had access to perhaps the finest level of education available to man in that era, it also means he grew up among people who did not serve the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but among a family who served and worshipped a pantheon of false gods – gods who, as the Torah puts it, are no gods at all, gods his fathers had not known.
In spite of this upbringing, Moses does not lose himself to the pagan influences by which he was surrounded. Somehow, he is made aware that although he being raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, his true heritage lies with the Hebrew slaves that he may have even helped rule over. However, we know Moses does not forsake his Hebrew heritage because, as we read in:
EXODUS 2:11-12
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
So here’s our first hurdle; however justified one might feel he was in striking down the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew, the fact is that Moses is starting off with a pretty serious strike against him: he’s a murderer.
And his own conscience bears witness to his guilt, as we read in:
EXODUS 2:13-15
The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian,
So now, not only is Moses a murderer, but he is a fugitive from justice! A failure to take responsibility for his actions could be seen as a form of cowardice. So not only is Moses a murderer, but he’s a coward as well.
Does the list get any better?
Well, while Moses is in Midian, he marries the daughter of a priest of Midian, Tzipporah, the daughter of Reuel, also known as Jethro. So he takes a gentile bride, the daughter of a man who does not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This taking of a gentile bride will later become a point of contention with Moses’ sister, Miriam, but we’ll talk about that another time.
The next note of concern comes up when Moses meets with God at the burning bush, at the time of his calling by the L-RD. There, the L-RD lays out the entire plan for rescuing Israel from Egypt and taking them back to their own land, a land promised to them by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After detailing to Moses this marvelous plan, how does Moses respond? With hesitancy and uncertainty, as we read in:
EXODUS 3:11
But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
So the L-RD then reiterates his entire plan to Moses again, detailing even some of the challenges he will face, letting him know it will not be an easy accomplishment. Even so, Moses again expresses his uncertainty to the L-RD, as we read in:
EXODUS 4:1
Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The L-RD did not appear to you’?”
So God shows Moses all the signs and wonders he is to perform to gain the trust of the people, as well as the eventual obedience of Pharaoh. Yet even then, Moses is not satisfied and continues to offer objections to the plan of the L-RD, as we read in:
EXODUS 4:10
Moses said to the L-RD, “O L-RD, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Apparently, the L-RD is more patient than me; after this many objections, I might have just said, “Oh forget it. I’ll just do this myself.” And indeed, even the L-RD wasn’t exactly pleased with Moses’ attitude at this point. As we read in:
EXODUS 4:13-14A
But Moses said, “O L-RD, please send someone else to do it.” Then the L-RD’s anger burned against Moses.
God is infinitely more patient with Moses than I might have been. He promises Moses to have his brother Aaron help him with speaking before Pharaoh and the people. The sad part is, God offered to help Moses by curing his slowness of speech and stuttering, yet Moses didn’t trust God enough to allow that, which is why God appointed his brother Aaron as his assistant.
Are we still seeing the heroic image of Charlton Heston in our minds as we read about this Moses? Do we still see the Aladdin look-alike in our heads, the dashing and fearless young man with a quick wit?
Well, we’re still not done counting Moses’ flaws. After finally convincing Moses to do as He commanded, Moses sets out for Egypt to meet his brother Aaron when this odd episode takes place, as we read in:
EXODUS 4:24-25
At a lodging place on the way, the L-RD met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said.
So, Moses has been so caught up in his life in the household of Pharaoh, and then his life as a son-in-law of a priest of Midian, with a gentile bride, that He forgets to circumcise his own son in keeping with the traditional sign of the covenant God made with his ancestor, Abraham. Can you imagine the outcome if Tzipporah, his gentile wife, hadn’t been there and known what to do? As the eldest male, Moses was responsible to be the priest of his own household, and yet he had shirked his duties so much that his wife had to perform the circumcision, rather than Moses himself.
This is the Moses of history. Not some romanticized movie hero like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments; not some fun-loving prankster like in Prince of Egypt; but a deeply flawed man, hesitant to obey the L-RD, unsure of himself and his abilities, and lax in his observance of the commands of the L-RD. Surely not someone worthy of becoming the greatest of all the patriarchs. Surely not someone worthy of knowing the L-RD face-to-face. Surely not the greatest prophet who ever lived.
Or was he?
You see, the L-RD does not look at a person the way man does, based on the outward appearances; he judges us on our hearts, on our inmost being. He judges us on who we truly are on the inside.
So, yes, Moses was a murder, a coward, took a Gentile bride, married into a family that served a false God, was hesitant to trust the L-RD, slow to obey and so caught up in his life that he was lax in his observance of the L-RD’s commands.
Which is what makes Moses so perfect for the role the L-RD has carved out for him. For, as we read in:
II CORINTHIANS 12:9-10
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Messiah’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Messiah’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
We find a similar sentiment expressed in:
ISAIAH 40:29
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
You see, this week’s reading goes on to relate how Moses’ first appearance before Pharaoh was an absolute failure. His actions only caused Pharaoh to work the Hebrew people harder and increase their suffering. And I believe this is because God wanted to ensure that when deliverance came, one thing was clear: this deliverance came from God, not Moses.
While we look back on the life and testimony of Moses and what God accomplished through him with awe and reverence today, often what we lose sight of is just how unworthy he was for the task he was given; and yet, that is exactly how the L-RD planned it, for the L-RD was not trying to build a people up for Moses to be exalted, but who would exalt the L-RD and not man.
If Moses had been a strongly moral man all his life, handsome and a persuasive public speaker, a master of politics and confident in all he did, married to the best bride from the best bloodlines of the Levites only, then would he have been humble enough to give the glory to the L-RD?
You see, the L-RD does not measure success as we do; he does not look at the same things we do when it comes to being qualified. As we read in:
II SAMUEL 16:7
But the L-RD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The L-RD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the L-RD looks at the heart.”
When the L-RD examines our hearts, may he find in us what he found in Moses; not hearts that are eager to make a name for themselves in service to the L-RD, but hearts that are eager, in all we are given to do, to give the L-RD the credit and glory. May we all be found to be as “woefully unqualified” as Moses, for that is what our Messiah Yeshua looks for in those who would serve Him.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Sh'mot
This entry was posted
on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 10:39 am and is filed under sermons and commentaries, Torah.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
My 2010 Sh’mot Commentary
January 10th, 2010 by Craig Hansen
Here is my 2010 commentary on Sh’mot. Or listen to it!
Shabbat Shalom.
Our parashah today is “Sh’mot,” a Hebrew word that means “names,” and covers Exodus chapter 1, through chapter 6, verse 1. With the ending of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, we bid farewell to Joseph and all his predecessors, and we greet Moses, the man who would become the prophet that Messiah would be compared to in Messianic prophecy. Our introduction to Moses as the greatest prophet can sometimes stir up impressive, yet in accurate, images.
Thanks to the Cecil B. DeMille classic, The Ten Commandments, there is an entire generation of believers who cannot help but envision a young Charlton Heston when they picture Moses. More recently, thanks to the DreamWorks animated musical, Prince of Egypt, a new generation is growing up thinking of Moses as an eternal teenager off on a great and grand adventure, someone similar to Aladdin.
Yet Moses as he was is not to be found in any of these false images. While he is the greatest of all the patriarchs and, as the Torah itself memorializes him, “the humblest man who ever lived,” what we find in these opening chapters of Exodus is a man who is exceptionally flawed.
First, after he is weaned, he is raised primarily in the house of a Pharaoh of Egypt, as a child of one of Pharaoh’s daughters. While this means he had access to perhaps the finest level of education available to man in that era, it also means he grew up among people who did not serve the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but among a family who served and worshipped a pantheon of false gods – gods who, as the Torah puts it, are no gods at all, gods his fathers had not known.
In spite of this upbringing, Moses does not lose himself to the pagan influences by which he was surrounded. Somehow, he is made aware that although he being raised by Pharaoh’s daughter, his true heritage lies with the Hebrew slaves that he may have even helped rule over. However, we know Moses does not forsake his Hebrew heritage because, as we read in:
So here’s our first hurdle; however justified one might feel he was in striking down the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew, the fact is that Moses is starting off with a pretty serious strike against him: he’s a murderer.
And his own conscience bears witness to his guilt, as we read in:
So now, not only is Moses a murderer, but he is a fugitive from justice! A failure to take responsibility for his actions could be seen as a form of cowardice. So not only is Moses a murderer, but he’s a coward as well.
Does the list get any better?
Well, while Moses is in Midian, he marries the daughter of a priest of Midian, Tzipporah, the daughter of Reuel, also known as Jethro. So he takes a gentile bride, the daughter of a man who does not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This taking of a gentile bride will later become a point of contention with Moses’ sister, Miriam, but we’ll talk about that another time.
The next note of concern comes up when Moses meets with God at the burning bush, at the time of his calling by the L-RD. There, the L-RD lays out the entire plan for rescuing Israel from Egypt and taking them back to their own land, a land promised to them by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. After detailing to Moses this marvelous plan, how does Moses respond? With hesitancy and uncertainty, as we read in:
So God shows Moses all the signs and wonders he is to perform to gain the trust of the people, as well as the eventual obedience of Pharaoh. Yet even then, Moses is not satisfied and continues to offer objections to the plan of the L-RD, as we read in:
Apparently, the L-RD is more patient than me; after this many objections, I might have just said, “Oh forget it. I’ll just do this myself.” And indeed, even the L-RD wasn’t exactly pleased with Moses’ attitude at this point. As we read in:
God is infinitely more patient with Moses than I might have been. He promises Moses to have his brother Aaron help him with speaking before Pharaoh and the people. The sad part is, God offered to help Moses by curing his slowness of speech and stuttering, yet Moses didn’t trust God enough to allow that, which is why God appointed his brother Aaron as his assistant.
Are we still seeing the heroic image of Charlton Heston in our minds as we read about this Moses? Do we still see the Aladdin look-alike in our heads, the dashing and fearless young man with a quick wit?
Well, we’re still not done counting Moses’ flaws. After finally convincing Moses to do as He commanded, Moses sets out for Egypt to meet his brother Aaron when this odd episode takes place, as we read in:
So, Moses has been so caught up in his life in the household of Pharaoh, and then his life as a son-in-law of a priest of Midian, with a gentile bride, that He forgets to circumcise his own son in keeping with the traditional sign of the covenant God made with his ancestor, Abraham. Can you imagine the outcome if Tzipporah, his gentile wife, hadn’t been there and known what to do? As the eldest male, Moses was responsible to be the priest of his own household, and yet he had shirked his duties so much that his wife had to perform the circumcision, rather than Moses himself.
This is the Moses of history. Not some romanticized movie hero like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments; not some fun-loving prankster like in Prince of Egypt; but a deeply flawed man, hesitant to obey the L-RD, unsure of himself and his abilities, and lax in his observance of the commands of the L-RD. Surely not someone worthy of becoming the greatest of all the patriarchs. Surely not someone worthy of knowing the L-RD face-to-face. Surely not the greatest prophet who ever lived.
Or was he?
You see, the L-RD does not look at a person the way man does, based on the outward appearances; he judges us on our hearts, on our inmost being. He judges us on who we truly are on the inside.
So, yes, Moses was a murder, a coward, took a Gentile bride, married into a family that served a false God, was hesitant to trust the L-RD, slow to obey and so caught up in his life that he was lax in his observance of the L-RD’s commands.
Which is what makes Moses so perfect for the role the L-RD has carved out for him. For, as we read in:
We find a similar sentiment expressed in:
You see, this week’s reading goes on to relate how Moses’ first appearance before Pharaoh was an absolute failure. His actions only caused Pharaoh to work the Hebrew people harder and increase their suffering. And I believe this is because God wanted to ensure that when deliverance came, one thing was clear: this deliverance came from God, not Moses.
While we look back on the life and testimony of Moses and what God accomplished through him with awe and reverence today, often what we lose sight of is just how unworthy he was for the task he was given; and yet, that is exactly how the L-RD planned it, for the L-RD was not trying to build a people up for Moses to be exalted, but who would exalt the L-RD and not man.
If Moses had been a strongly moral man all his life, handsome and a persuasive public speaker, a master of politics and confident in all he did, married to the best bride from the best bloodlines of the Levites only, then would he have been humble enough to give the glory to the L-RD?
You see, the L-RD does not measure success as we do; he does not look at the same things we do when it comes to being qualified. As we read in:
When the L-RD examines our hearts, may he find in us what he found in Moses; not hearts that are eager to make a name for themselves in service to the L-RD, but hearts that are eager, in all we are given to do, to give the L-RD the credit and glory. May we all be found to be as “woefully unqualified” as Moses, for that is what our Messiah Yeshua looks for in those who would serve Him.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tags: Sh'mot
This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 10:39 am and is filed under sermons and commentaries, Torah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.