In Abrahamic religions, Moses was the Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of slavery in the Exodus from Egypt. He is considered the most important prophet in Judaism and Samaritanism, and one of the most important prophets in Christianity, Islam, the Baháʼí Faith, and other Abrahamic religions. According to the Abrahamic scriptures, God dictated the Mosaic Law to Moses, which he wrote down and which formed part of the Torah.
According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a period when his people, the Israelites, who were an enslaved minority, were increasing in population; consequently, the Egyptian Pharaoh was worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies. When Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites, Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him in the bulrushes along the Nile river. The Pharaoh's daughter discovered the infant there and adopted him as a foundling. Thus, he grew up with the Egyptian royal family. After killing an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew, Moses fled to Midian, where he encountered the Angel of the Lord, speaking to him from within a burning bush on Mount Horeb.
God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. Moses objected that he could not speak eloquently, so God allowed Aaron, his elder brother, to speak for him. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. After 40 years of wandering in the desert, Moses died on Mount Nebo at the age of 120, within sight of the Promised Land.
Moses is a legendary figure; however, Moses or a Moses-like figure may have existed in the 13th century BCE. The authors of Seder Olam Rabbah calculated a lifespan of Moses corresponding to 1391–1271 BCE; Jerome suggested 1592 BCE,Jerome's Chronicon (4th century) gives 1592 for the birth of Moses and James Ussher suggested 1571 BCE as his birth year. Moses has often been portrayed in art, literature, music and film, and he is the subject of works at a number of U.S. government buildings.
Etymology of name
The Egyptian root ('child of') or mose has been considered as a possible etymology, arguably an abbreviation of a theophoric name with the god's name omitted. The suffix mose appears in Egyptian pharaohs' names like Thutmose ('born of Thoth') and Ramose ('born of Ra'). One of the Egyptian names of Ramesses was , meaning 'born of Ra, beloved of Amon'. Ms by itself also has multiple attestations as an Egyptian personal name in the New Kingdom. Linguist Abraham Yahuda, based on the spelling given in the Tanakh, argues that it combines "water" or "seed" and "pond, expanse of water," thus yielding the sense of "child of the Nile" ().Ulmer, Rivka. 2009. Egyptian Cultural Icons in Midrash. de Gruyter. p. 269.
The biblical account of Moses' birth provides him with a folk etymology to explain the ostensible meaning of his name.Naomi E. Pasachoff, Robert J. Littman (2005), A Concise History of the Jewish People, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 5. He is said to have received it from the Pharaoh's daughter: "he became her son. She named him Moses [, ], saying, 'I drew him out [, ] of the water'."Maciá, Lorena Miralles. 2014. "Judaizing a Gentile Biblical Character through Fictive Biographical Reports: The Case of Bityah, Pharaoh's Daughter, Moses' Mother, according to Rabbinic Interpretations". pp. 145–175 in C. Cordoni and G. Langer (eds.), Narratology, Hermeneutics, and Midrash: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Narratives from Late Antiquity through to Modern Times. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This explanation links it to the Semitic root , , meaning "to draw out". The eleventh-century Tosafist Isaac b. Asher haLevi noted that the princess names him the active participle 'drawer-out' (, ), not the passive participle 'drawn-out' (, ), in effect prophesying that Moses would draw others out (of Egypt); this has been accepted by some scholars.
The Hebrew etymology in the Biblical story may reflect an attempt to cancel out traces of Moses' Egyptian (i.e. Gentile) origins. The Egyptian character of his name was recognized as such by ancient Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus.Greifenhagen, Franz V. 2003. Egypt on the Pentateuch's Ideological Map: Constructing Biblical Israel's Identity. Bloomsbury. pp. 60ff n.65. . Philo linked Moses' name () to the Egyptian (Coptic) word for 'water' (, ), in reference to his finding in the Nile and the biblical folk etymology. Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, claims that the second element, , meant 'those who are saved'. The problem of how an Egyptian princess (who, according to the Biblical account found in the book of Exodus, gave him the name "Moses") could have known Hebrew puzzled medieval Jewish commentators like Abraham ibn Ezra and Hezekiah ben Manoah. Hezekiah suggested she either converted to the Jewish religion or took a tip from Jochebed (Moses' mother).Shurpin, Yehuda. Is Moses a Jewish or Egyptian Name?. Chabad.org.Salkin, Jeffrey K. (2008). Righteous Gentiles in the Hebrew Bible: Ancient Role Models for Sacred Relationships. Jewish Lights. pp. 47ff .Harris, Maurice D. 2012. Moses: A Stranger Among Us. Wipf and Stock. pp. 22–24. The Egyptian princess who named Moses is not named in the book of Exodus. However, she was known to Josephus as Thermutis (identified as Tharmuth), and some within Jewish tradition have tried to identify her with a "daughter of Pharaoh" in 1 Chronicles 4:17 named Bithiah,Scolnic, Benjamin Edidin. 2005. If the Egyptians Drowned in the Red Sea where are Pharaoh's Chariots?: Exploring the Historical Dimension of the Bible. University Press of America. p. 82. but others note that this is unlikely since there is no textual indication that this daughter of Pharaoh is the same one who named Moses.
Ibn Ezra gave two possibilities for the name of Moses: he believed that it was either a translation of the Egyptian name instead of a transliteration or that the Pharaoh's daughter was able to speak Hebrew.
Kenneth Kitchen argues that the Hebrew etymology is most likely correct, as the sounds in the Hebrew do not correspond to the pronunciation of Egyptian in the relevant time period.Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2003), pp. 296–297: "His name is widely held to be Egyptian, and its form is too often misinterpreted by biblical scholars. It is frequently equated with the Egyptian word 'ms' (Mose) meaning 'child', and stated to be an abbreviation of a name compounded with that of a deity whose name has been omitted. And indeed we have many Egyptians called Amen-mose, Ptah-mose, Ra-mose, Hor-mose, and so on. But this explanation is wrong. We also have very many Egyptians who were actually called just 'Mose', without omission of any particular deity. Most famous because of his family's long lawsuit in the middle-class scribe Mose (of the temple of Ptah at Memphis), under Ramesses II; but he had many homonyms. So, the omission-of-deity explanation is to be dismissed as wrong ... There is worse. The name of Moses is most likely not Egyptian in the first place! The sibilants do not match as they should, and this cannot be explained away. Overwhelmingly, Egyptian 's' appears as 's' (samekh) in Hebrew and West Semitic, while Hebrew and West Semitic 's' (samekh) appears as 'tj' in Egyptian. Conversely, Egyptian 'sh' = Hebrew 'sh', and vice versa. It is better to admit that the child was named (Exod 2:10b) by his own mother, in a form originally vocalized 'Mashu', 'one drawn out' (which became 'Moshe', 'he who draws out', i.e., his people from slavery, when he led them forth). In fourteenth/thirteenth-century Egypt, 'Mose' was actually pronounced 'Masu', and so it is perfectly possible that a young Hebrew Mashu was nicknamed Masu by his Egyptian companions; but this is a verbal pun, not a borrowing either way."
Biblical narrative Prophet and deliverer of Israel
The Israelites had settled in the Land of Goshen in the time of Joseph and Jacob, but a new Pharaoh arose who oppressed the children of Israel. At this time, Moses was born to his father Amram, son (or descendant) of Kehath the Levite, who entered Egypt with Jacob's household; his mother was Jochebed (also Yocheved), who was kin to Kehath. Moses had one older (by seven years) sister, Miriam, and one older (by three years) brother, Aaron. Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born would be drowned in the river Nile, but Moses's mother placed him in an ark and concealed the ark in the bulrushes by the riverbank. He was discovered and adopted by Pharaoh's daughter and raised as an Egyptian. One day, after Moses had reached adulthood, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew. To escape Pharaoh's death penalty, Moses fled to Midian (a desert country south of Judah), where he married Zipporah.
There, on Mount Horeb, God appeared to Moses as a burning bush, revealed his name, and commanded Moses to return to Egypt and bring his chosen people (Israel) out of bondage and into the Promised Land (Canaan). During the journey, God tried to kill Moses for failing to circumcise his son, but Zipporah saved his life. Moses returned to carry out God's command, but God enabled Pharaoh to refuse, and only after God had subjected Egypt to ten plagues did Pharaoh relent. Moses led the Israelites to the border of Egypt, but God hardened Pharaoh's heart once more so that he could destroy Pharaoh and his army at the Red Sea Crossing as a sign of his power to Israel and the nations.
After defeating the Amalekites in Rephidim, Moses led the Israelites to Mount Sinai, where he was given the Ten Commandments from God, written on stone tablets. However, since Moses remained a long time on the mountain, some of the people feared that he might be dead, so they made a statue of a golden calf and worshipped it as an idol of God, thus disobeying and angering God and Moses. Moses, out of anger, broke the tablets and later ordered the elimination of those who had worshiped the golden statue, which was melted down and fed to the idolaters. God again wrote the Ten Commandments on a new set of tablets. Later at Mount Sinai, Moses and the elders entered into a covenant by which Israel would become the people of YHWH, obeying his laws, and YHWH would be their god. Moses delivered the laws of God to Israel, instituted the priesthood under the sons of Moses's brother Aaron, and destroyed those Israelites who fell away from his worship. In his final act at Sinai, God gave Moses instructions for the Tabernacle, the mobile shrine by which he would travel with Israel to the Promised Land.
From Sinai, Moses led the Israelites to the Desert of Paran on the border of Canaan. From there, he sent twelve spies into the land (Numbers 13–14). The spies returned with samples of the land's fertility but warned that its inhabitants were giants. The people were afraid and wanted to return to Egypt, and some rebelled against Moses and against God. Moses told the Israelites they were not worthy to inherit the land and would wander the wilderness for forty years until the generation who refused to enter Canaan died so their children would possess the land. Later on, Korah was punished for leading a revolt against Moses.