patient, faithful, somewhat despondent, wrapped up in family ties
and cares, and needing at every step to lean on a superior power.
And the Father on whom he seeks to lean is never wanting to him, as
he will never be to any of us, however weak, or faulty, or blind. As
the caravan nears home, news is brought that Esau, with an army of
horsemen, is galloping to meet him. Then says the record: "Jacob was
greatly afraid and distressed: and Jacob said, O God of my father
Abraham, the God of my father Isaac, the Lord which saidst unto me,
Return unto thy country and to thy kindred, and I will deal well
with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies and of
all the truth which thou hast showed unto thy servant: for with
my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands.
Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand
of Esau; for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the
mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee
good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be
numbered for multitude." The prayer is not in vain. That night a
mysterious stranger meets Jacob in the twilight shadows of morning.
He seeks to detain him; but, as afterwards, when the disciples met
an unknown Friend on the way to Emmaus, he made as though he would
go farther. So now this stranger struggles in the embrace of the
patriarch. Who, then, is this?--is it the Divine One? The thought
thrills through the soul as Jacob strives to detain him. There is
something wildly poetic in the legend. "And he said, Let me go,
for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except
thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said,
Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but
Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and
hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him: Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.
And he said, Wherefore dost thou ask after my name? And he blessed
him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for he
said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."
God's love to man, the power of man's weakness and sorrow over the
Father-heart, were never more beautifully shown than in this sacred
idyl. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of the weak,
the sinful, the despondent, the defenceless; the helper of the
helpless,--He is the God of this sacred story; and so long as man is
erring, and consciously frail, so long as he needs an ever-present
and ever-loving Friend and Helper, so long will this story of Jacob
be dear to the human heart.
WOMEN OF THE NATIONAL PERIOD.
[Illustration: MIRIAM AND MOSES]
MIRIAM, SISTER OF MOSES.
It has been remarked by Montalembert that almost all the great
leading men in history have been intimately associated with superior
women. If we look on Moses in a merely human light, and judge him
by what he accomplished, as we do other historic characters, he
is in certain respects the greatest man of antiquity. The works
of the legislators, kings, and conquerors of ancient history were
perishable. Their cities have crumbled, their governments and
commonwealths have dissolved as waves of the sea. Moses alone
founded a nation that still lives with an imperishable vitality,--a
people whose religious literature still expresses the highest
aspirations of the most cultivated nations of the earth.
His advent, therefore, forms an era in the history of humanity, and
the very opening of his career presents us with pictures of imposing
and venerable female characters. The mother of Moses is mentioned,
in the epistle to the Hebrews, as one of those worthies of ancient
time, who triumphed over things seen by the power of a sublime
faith in the invisible God and his promises. The very name of the
mother (Exodus vi. 20), Jochebed,--"the glory of Jehovah,"--shows
that a deep spirit of religious enthusiasm and trust was the
prevailing impulse in the family. She was of that moral organization
whence, through the laws of descent, might spring the prophet and
prophetess. By _faith_ she refused to obey the cruel order of the
king, and for three months hid the beautiful child.
And here comes in the image of the first, and one of the most
revered, of the race of Hebrew prophetesses, Miriam, the elder
sister of Moses. According to the Rabbinic tradition, the gift of
prophecy descended upon her even in childhood. The story is that
Miriam's mother, Jochebed, was one of the midwives to whom Pharaoh
gave the command to destroy the children, and that when the child
Miriam heard it, being then only five years old, her face flushed
scarlet, and she said in anger: "Woe to this man! God will punish
him for his evil deeds." After this the tradition says that when the
decree went forth for the destruction of every male child, Amram
separated himself from his wife Jochebed, lest he should bring on
her the anguish of fruitless motherhood. After three years, the
spirit of prophecy came on Miriam as she sat in the house, and
she cried out suddenly: "My parents shall have another son, who
shall deliver Israel out of the hands of the Egyptians." The angel
Gabriel guided Amram back to find his wife, whom he found blooming
in all the beauty of youth, though more than a hundred years old.
When she found herself with child, she feared that it might prove a
boy, to be cruelly slain. Then the Eternal One spake in a dream to
the father, bidding him be of good cheer, for he would protect the
child, and all nations should hold him in honor.
The tradition goes on to say that the boy was born without pain, and
that when he was born the whole house was filled with a light as of
bright sunshine. The mother's anxiety was increased when she saw the
beauty of the child, who was lovely as an angel of God. The parents
called him Tobias, "God is good," to express their thankfulness,
and Amram kissed Miriam on the brow and said: "Now know I that thy
prophecy is come true."
In contrast to this ornate narrative is the grave and chaste
simplicity of the Scripture story. It is all comprised in two or
three verses of the second chapter of Exodus. "And there went a man
of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the
woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a
goodly child she hid him three months. And when she could no longer
hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with
slime and with pitch, and put the child therein and laid it in the
flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to see
what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to
wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along the river's
side: and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid
to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and
behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him and said: This
is one of the Hebrew children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's
daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said
unto her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And
Pharaoh's daughter said, Take this child away, and nurse it for me,
and I will give thee thy wages; and the woman took the child and
nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's
daughter, and she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I
drew him out of the water."
To this, we may add the account which St. Stephen gives when
standing before the Jewish council. "In which time Moses was born,
who was exceeding fair,[2] and nourished up in his father's house
three months. And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter took him
up and nourished him for her own son. And Moses was learned in all
the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds."
[2] The marginal translation reads "fair to God."
Such are the extremely brief notices of a great event and of a group
of characters whose influence on mankind every one of us feels
to-day. For, the Jewish nation, in being chosen of God to be a
sacerdotal race, was to pass through a history which should embody
struggles, oppressions, agonies, victories, and deliverances, such
as should represent to all time the sorrows and joys, the trials
and hopes, of humanity. To this day, the events of Jewish history
so well express universal experiences, that its literature in all
languages, and under all difference of climate and custom, has an
imperishable hold on the human heart. It has been well said that
nations struggling for liberty against powerful oppressors flee as
instinctively to the Old Testament as they do to mountain ranges.
The American slave universally called his bondage Egypt, and read
the history of the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea
as parts of his own experience. In the dark days of slavery, the
history of Moses was sung at night, and by stealth, on plantations,
with solemn rhythmic movements, reminding one of old Egyptian times.
It was the Marseillaise of a rude people, forbidden by the master,
and all the dearer to the slave.
We must take the full force of the anguish, the ignominy, the
oppression of slavery acting on noble and sensitive natures,
elevated by faith in a high national destiny, and looking with
earnestness and prayer for its evolution, in order to get a full
idea of the character of Miriam. Such periods produce children with
that highly exalted organization which is predisposed to receive the
prophetic impulse. The Rabbinic traditions with regard to Miriam,
which we have added, are detailed at length by Josephus in his
history, and show how strong is the impression which the personality
of this woman made on those of her time, in connection with the life
of their great lawgiver.
The Bible account of the birth and preservation of Moses has the
usual quality of Scripture narratives; it is very brief and very
stimulating to the imagination. Who of us has not seen in childhood
the old Nile with its reeds and rushes, its background of temples
and pyramids? We have shared the tremors of the mother and sister
while the little one was launched in the frail ark. Probably some
report of the kindness of the Princess had inspired a trembling
hope. The mother dares not stay to guard her treasure, lest she
draw cruel eyes upon it; but the little Miriam, as a child playing
among the tall reeds, can remain on the watch without attracting
attention. In the scene where the helpless stranger is discovered
by the Princess, we have, in the movements of the sister, all the
characteristics, in miniature, of the future leader of Israel.
Prompt, fearless, with an instantaneous instinct as to the right
thing to be done at the critical moment, we can see the little
Hebrew maid press forward amid the throng surrounding the alarmed
and crying child. The tradition is that an Egyptian woman, at the
command of the Princess, tried to quiet him at her breast, and that
the young prophet indignantly rejected the attempt,--a statement
which we who know babies, whether prophetic or otherwise, may deem
highly probable. Then spoke up the little Miriam: "Shall I go and
call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child
for thee?" This was a bold proposal, but it succeeded. Perhaps the
small speaker had some of the wonderful beauty of her infant brother
to set off her words: at all events, the Princess seems at once to
have trusted her with the commission. We may readily believe the
little feet had not far to go. The child comes back to his mother's
bosom as a royal ward.
We see here in the child Miriam great self-poise and
self-confidence. She is not afraid of royalty, and, though of an
enslaved and despised race, is ready to make suggestions to a queen.
These are the traits of a natural leader, and we shall see them
reappearing later in the history of Miriam. It was customary among
the Oriental races to prolong the period of nursing two or three
years, and Moses was thus in the care of his mother and elder sister
for a long time.
Josephus gives the tradition current among the Jews, that the child
was a wonderfully attractive one,--so beautiful, that every one who
beheld him turned to look at him. The mother and sister looked upon
him as the visible pledge of God's mercy to their suffering people,
as well as the visible answer to prayer. The God of Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in whose hand are all hearts, had made a refuge
for the young Deliverer in the very family of the destroying tyrant!
The intercourse thus established between the court of Pharaoh and
these two women must have materially advanced their position. We
see in the Princess indications of a gracious and affable nature,
and in Miriam a quick readiness to turn every favorable indication
to good account. It is, therefore, quite probable that Miriam may
have shared the liberal patronage of the Princess. Evidently she
continued to influence the mind of her brother after he had gone
into the family of Pharaoh, since we see her publicly associated
with him at the great period of the national deliverance.
In the history of Moses, and in his laws and institutes, we see
a peculiar and almost feminine tenderness and consideration for
whatever is helpless and defenceless. Perhaps the history of his own
life,--the story of the forlorn helplessness of his own cradle,
and the anguish of his mother and sister,--operating on a large
and generous nature, produced this result. For example, among the
laws of the great lawgiver, we find one which forbids the caging
of a free bird (Deut. xxii. 6, 7); thus it was allowed to take the
young who might easily be reconciled to captivity, but forbidden to
take those accustomed to freedom. Whoever has seen the miserable
struggles of a free bird brought suddenly into captivity, can
appreciate the compassionateness of the man who made such a law for
a great people. In the same spirit another law forbids the muzzling
of the ox when he treads the grain, and commands every man to stop
and help an overburdened ass that falls beneath his load; and it
particularly adds, that the ass of an enemy shall be helped, no
matter how great the unwillingness.
In fact, the strongest impulse in the character of Moses appears to
have been that of protective justice, with regard to every helpless
and down-trodden class. The laws of Moses, if carefully examined,
are a phenomenon,--an exception to the laws of either ancient or
modern nations in the care they exercised over women, widows,
orphans, paupers, foreigners, servants, and dumb animals. Of all the
so-called Christian nations there is none but could advantageously
take a lesson in legislation from them. There is a plaintive,
pathetic tone of compassion in their very language, which seems to
have been learned only of superhuman tenderness. Not the gentlest
words of Jesus are more compassionate in their spirit than many of
these laws of Moses. Some of them sound more like the pleadings of
a mother than the voice of legal statutes. For example: "If thou
lend money to any that is poor by thee, thou shalt not lay upon
him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbor's garment to pledge,
thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down, for that
is his covering, it is his raiment for his skin; wherein shall he
sleep? and it shall come to pass that when he crieth unto me I will
hear, for I am gracious." "Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant
that is poor and needy, whether he be of thine own brethren or of
strangers that are within thy gates. At his day shalt thou give him
his wages, neither shall the sun go down upon it, for he is poor
and setteth his heart upon it, lest he cry unto the Lord against
thee." "Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger nor of
the fatherless, nor take the widow's raiment as pledge; thou shalt
remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God
redeemed thee, therefore I command thee to do this thing." "When
thou cuttest down thy harvest and hast forgot a sheaf in the field,
thou shalt not go again to fetch it, it shall be for the stranger,
the fatherless, and the widow. When thou beatest thine olive-tree,
thou shalt not go over it again; when thou gatherest the grapes of
thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward, it shall be for the
stranger, the fatherless, and the widow."
In all this, we see how deep was the impression made on the mind
of Moses by the enslaved and helpless condition of his people. He
had felt for the struggles of the enslaved, and it made him tender
to the wild bird of the desert beating against its cage, to the
overloaded ass fainting under his burden, to the hungry ox toiling
to procure food which he was restricted from enjoying.
Of the period including the time that Moses left his mother and
sister to dwell in the palace of the Pharaohs, and receive the
education of an Egyptian prince, we have no record in the sacred
narrative, except the declaration of Stephen in the book of Acts,
that he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty
in word and deed.
In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible there is a brief _résumé_ of what
is said by ancient authors of this period of his life. According
to Strabo, he was educated at Heliopolis, and grew up there as a
priest, under his Egyptian name of Osariph. According to Philo,
he was taught the whole range of Greek, Chaldee, and Assyrian
literature. From the Egyptians, especially, he learned mathematics,
to train his mind for the unprejudiced reception of truth. He
invented boats, engines for building, instruments of war and of
hydraulics, and also understood hieroglyphics and mensuration of
land. He taught Orpheus, and is thence called by the Greeks Musæus,
and by the Egyptians Hermes. According to Josephus, he was sent as
general of the Egyptian army on an expedition against Ethiopia.
He got rid of the serpents, in the countries through which he was
to march, by turning basketfuls of ibises upon them. Tharbis,
the daughter of the King of Ethiopia, fell in love with him, and
induced her father to surrender to him; and he returned in triumph
with her to Egypt as his wife, and founded the city of Hermopolis
to celebrate his victory. We see here, that if Moses remained true
to the teachings of his mother and sister, and the simple faith
of Israel, it was not for want of the broadest culture the world
afforded. Egypt was the cradle of arts and letters, and the learned
men of Greece traveled there to study the mysteries which were
concealed under her hieroglyphics. Moses was a priest of Egypt in
virtue of being a prince of a royal house. According to the Egyptian
tradition, although a priest of Heliopolis, he always performed his
devotions outside the walls of the city, in the open air, turned
towards the sunrising. According to the language of St. Paul, "he
endured as seeing Him that is invisible."
In Wilkinson's "Egypt," we have some interesting suggestions as
to the life and training of the Egyptian priest, which go far to
show what manner of education must have been given to Moses. The
utmost purity of person was enjoined. Daily and nightly bathing
of the whole person, a dress of pure linen, great exactness as to
food, with strict dietetic regulations, were also a part of the
training. The Egyptians were the fountains of physiological and
medical knowledge to the nations of antiquity, and undoubtedly
these studies were a part of the "wisdom" of the priests. Moses
must also have passed through the lesser and the greater initiation
into the mysteries of Egypt; in which were taught the unity of God,
the immortality of the soul, and the retributions of a future life.
Thus he had an opportunity of comparing that portion of the Divine
teaching and traditions which had descended through Egypt, with the
pure stream which had flowed down through the patriarchal families.
It thus appears that the Divine Being, in choosing the teacher and
lawgiver to form his chosen nation, did not disdain the existing
wisdom of the world up to that time. Moses had before him the
results of all the world's experience in thought and culture. Egypt
was the best there was to know, and he knew Egypt thoroughly. While,
however, he often took suggestions from the ritual and philosophy
of the Egyptians, the general bent of his institutes in reference to
them was jealous and antagonistic.
At the end of such a training and such varied experience,--as
priest, as general, as conqueror,--Moses returns to Egypt and
meets again his sister, in whose heart the prophetic fire is still
burning; and the sight of the oppression and misery of his people
leads him to seek to interpose for their deliverance. The first
act is the simple, unadvised movement of indignation at injustice;
he sees a Hebrew slave writhing under the lash of an Egyptian; he
kills the tyrant and delivers the slave. He next tries to rouse a
national spirit of union among his people, and separates two who are
fighting, with the words, "Ye are brethren, and should not contend."
St. Stephen further interprets the heart of Moses at this crisis:
"For he supposed that his brethren would have understood how that
God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. But he
that did his neighbor wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee
a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me as thou didst the
Egyptian yesterday?" (Acts vii. 25, 27, 28.) According to Josephus,
there were at this time envious and jealous plots hatching against
Moses in the court of Pharaoh, and his life was threatened.
He fled to the land of Midian, where, with characteristic chivalry,
his first act was to interfere for the protection of some women
who were prevented by the brutality of the shepherd herdsmen from
watering their flocks.
Still we see in him the protector of the weak and defenseless. In
this case his interference procures for him the gratitude of the
priest of the shepherd tribe, and the exiled Egyptian prince becomes
a shepherd in the wilderness of Midian. He marries and settles down,
apparently content with the life of a simple herdsman. This seems
to have been one of those refluent tides to which natures of great
sensibility are liable, after a short experience of the realities
of life. At once ardent and tender, Moses had been ready to cast in
his fortunes with his oppressed and suffering people; but he found
them unwilling to listen to him, and unworthy of freedom. His
heart sinks,--the grandeur of courts, military renown, the wisdom
of Egypt, are all less in his eyes than even the reproach of a good
cause; but he feels himself powerless and alone, rejected by the
very people whom he came to serve. Like the Greater Prophet of whom
he was the type, "He came unto his own, and his own received him
not."
In sinking of heart and despair, the solitude of the wilderness, its
loneliness and stern simplicity, are a refuge and rest to him. In
the great calm of nature he draws near to Him who is invisible. What
is most peculiar in the character of Moses, with all his advantages
of beauty, rank, station, education, and military success, is a
singular absence of self-esteem and self-reliance. When the God of
his fathers appears in flaming fire and commissions him to go and
lead forth his oppressed people, Moses shrinks from the position,
and prays that it may be given to another. He is not eloquent; he
says, he is of stammering speech and a slow tongue, and he prays the
Lord to choose another. How often it happens that the work of the
world is thus put upon men who shrink from it,--not from indolence,
but from an exalted ideality, a high conception of the work to be
done! Moses was dumb and stammering with low-minded, vulgar-natured
men, as men who live high up in the radiant air of the nobler
feelings often are. How bring his great thoughts and purer feelings
down to their conceptions? He must have a spokesman, and evidently
regards his brother Aaron as better fitted to take the lead than
himself.
Aaron seems to be a specimen of that class of men--facile,
sympathetic, easily moved, and with a ready gift of words--whom
greater natures often admire for a facility and fluency which
their very greatness denies to them. And yet it is this Aaron who,
when Moses had been more than a month absent on the mount, was
carried away by the demand of the people to make them a visible
god; and who, if his brother had not cast himself down in agony of
intercession, would have been swept away by the Divine anger.