_The Epoch of Moses:_ B.C. 1300(?)
Hebrew history properly begins with this era. The tribes of Israel when
first resolved by the glass of history, appear upon the Arabian border of
Egypt, as occupants of the rich pasture lands of Goshen. They were a
branch of a large Semitic family, which included Moab, Edom, Ammon and
other familiar tribes. Of the social, intellectual and religious status of
the Hebrews at this period we have little definite information. They would
seem to have been on the usual plane of races which have entered the
semi-nomadic stage, and which are gradually substituting agricultural
pursuits for a roving shepherd life. Oppressed by Egypt they revolt, and
begin a migration backward toward the north and east.
The soul of this movement was Moses; a real historic figure, worthy, as we
can see through the mists around him, of the imposing form which Michael
Angelo has given him. A great man is nearly always to be found at the core
of a great social growth, charging the latent tendencies of a race with
energy, and shaping their action upon the form of his mind. "An
institution is the lengthened shadow of a man," writes Emerson. Judaism
is the lengthened shadow of Moses. Whatever else Moses may have done, he
proved himself the architect of Israel, by laying the foundation that
determined the form and size of the later structure. He taught his simple
people to recognize Jehovah as their tribal God. What this name meant in
the conception of the people before his time is by no means clear to us
now. It appears to have stood for the personification of some one of the
forms of nature's forces, that arrest upon themselves the nomad's vague
sense of the Infinite and Divine in the world about him. Around the Power
felt in Saturn or the Sun, Moses threw the spell of an awe which is deeper
far than that awakened by the starry heavens above man--the awe aroused by
the moral law within man. He gave his rude children a noble moral code,
the original form of the Decalogue. These Ten Words were issued as the law
of Jehovah. Jehovah then was the source and authority of the laws which
the conscience owned. The moral law was his body of statutes. To keep this
law was the way to please Him. His commands reached through rites and
ordinances to conduct and character. His demands were not for sacrifices,
but for good lives. His worship was aspiration and endeavor after
goodness.
And this Power enjoining morality was none other than the Power which in
nature seemed so often unmoral and even immoral. Jehovah of the skies was
the God of the Ten Words.
This was a seminal thought, bodied in an institution. In begetting this
conception in the soul of Israel, Moses fathered the life which grew
through embryonic forms, during the slow gestation of the centuries,
shaping toward the ideal of religion. Whatever was vital and progressive
in the nation's thought and feeling sucked up its juices from the seed
deep-rooted in this basic institution. Rightly did legislators and
historians, through the after ages, look back and ascribe all their work
in the development of the national life to Moses. Even thus the rose, were
it conscious, might turn its crimson face upon the ground and whisper to
the seed at its roots--I am thy work. Even thus the son, in the pride and
power of manhood goes back to the old homestead, and looking into his
father's face confesses--All that I am you have made me.