High above the thin line of the distant horizon there appeared a small
cloud of dust. The Babylonian peasant, working his poor farm on the
outskirts of the fertile lands, noticed it.
"Another tribe is trying to break into our land," he said to himself.
"They will not get far. The King's soldiers will drive them away."
He was right. The frontier guards welcomed the new arrivals with drawn
swords and bade them try their luck elsewhere.
They moved westward following the borders of the land of Babylon and
they wandered until they reached the shores of the Mediterranean.
There they settled down and tended their flocks and lived the simple
lives of their earliest ancestors who had dwelt in the land of Ur.
Then there came a time when the rain ceased to fall and there was not
enough to eat for man or beast and it became necessary to look for new
pastures or perish on the spot.
Once more the shepherds (who were called the Hebrews) moved their
families into a new home which they found along the banks of the Red Sea
near the land of Egypt.
But hunger and want had followed them upon their voyage and they were
forced to go to the Egyptian officials and beg for food that they might
not starve.
The Egyptians had long expected a famine. They had built large
store-houses and these were all filled with the surplus wheat of the
last seven years. This wheat was now being distributed among the people
and a food-dictator had been appointed to deal it out equally to the
rich and to the poor. His name was Joseph and he belonged to the tribe
of the Hebrews.
As a mere boy he had run away from his own family. It was said that he
had escaped to save himself from the anger of his brethren who envied
him because he was the favorite of their Father.
Whatever the truth, Joseph had gone to Egypt and he had found favor in
the eyes of the Hyksos Kings who had just conquered the country and who
used this bright young man to assist them in administering their new
possessions.
As soon as the hungry Hebrews appeared before Joseph with their request
for help, Joseph recognized his relatives.
But he was a generous man and all meanness of spirit was foreign to his
soul.
He did not revenge himself upon those who had wronged him but he gave
them wheat and allowed them to settle in the land of Egypt, they and
their children and their flocks--and be happy.
For many years the Hebrews (who are more commonly known as the Jews)
lived in the eastern part of their adopted country and all was well
with them.
Then a great change took place.
A sudden revolution deprived the Hyksos Kings of their power and forced
them to leave the country. Once more the Egyptians were masters within
their own house. They had never liked foreigners any too well. Three
hundred years of oppression by a band of Arab shepherds had greatly
increased this feeling of loathing for everything that was alien.
[Illustration: MOSES.]
The Jews on the other hand had been on friendly terms with the Hyksos
who were related to them by blood and by race. This was enough to make
them traitors in the eyes of the Egyptians.
Joseph no longer lived to protect his people.
After a short struggle they were taken away from their old homes, they
were driven into the heart of the country and they were treated
like slaves.
For many years they performed the dreary tasks of common laborers,
carrying stones for the building of pyramids, making bricks for public
buildings, constructing roads, and digging canals to carry the water of
the Nile to the distant Egyptian farms.
Their suffering was great but they never lost courage and help was near.
There lived a certain young man whose name was Moses. He was very
intelligent and he had received a good education because the Egyptians
had decided that he should enter the service of Pharaoh.
If nothing had happened to arouse his anger, Moses would have ended his
days peacefully as the governor of a small province or the collector of
taxes of an outlying district.
But the Egyptians, as I have told you before, despised those who did not
look like themselves nor dress in true Egyptian fashion and they were
apt to insult such people because they were "different."
And because the foreigners were in the minority they could not well
defend themselves. Nor did it serve any good purpose to carry their
complaints before a tribunal for the Judge did not smile upon the
grievances of a man who refused to worship the Egyptian gods and who
pleaded his case with a strong foreign accent.
Now it occurred one day that Moses was taking a walk with a few of his
Egyptian friends and one of these said something particularly
disagreeable about the Jews and even threatened to lay hands on them.
Moses, who was a hot-headed youth hit him.
The blow was a bit too severe and the Egyptian fell down dead.
To kill a native was a terrible thing and the Egyptian laws were not as
wise as those of Hammurapi, the good Babylonian King, who recognized the
difference between a premeditated murder and the killing of a man whose
insults had brought his opponent to a point of unreasoning rage.
Moses fled.
He escaped into the land of his ancestors, into the Midian desert, along
the eastern bank of the Red Sea, where his tribe had tended their sheep
several hundred years before.
A kind priest by the name of Jethro received him in his house and gave
him one of his seven daughters, Zipporah, as his wife.
There Moses lived for a long time and there he pondered upon many deep
subjects. He had left the luxury and the comfort of the palace of
Pharaoh to share the rough and simple life of a desert priest.
In the olden days, before the Jewish people had moved into Egypt, they
too had been wanderers among the endless plains of Arabia. They had
lived in tents and they had eaten plain food, but they had been honest
men and faithful women, contented with few possessions but proud of the
righteousness of their mind.
All this had been changed after they had become exposed to the
civilization of Egypt. They had taken to the ways of the comfort-loving
Egyptians. They had allowed another race to rule them and they had not
cared to fight for their independence.
Instead of the old gods of the wind-swept desert they had begun to
worship strange divinities who lived in the glimmering splendors of the
dark Egyptian temples.
Moses felt that it was his duty to go forth and save his people from
their fate and bring them back to the simple Truth of the olden days.
And so he sent messengers to his relatives and suggested that they leave
the land of slavery and join him in the desert.
But the Egyptians heard of this and guarded the Jews more carefully than
ever before.
It seemed that the plans of Moses were doomed to failure when suddenly
an epidemic broke out among the people of the Nile Valley.
The Jews who had always obeyed certain very strict laws of health (which
they had learned in the hardy days of their desert life) escaped the
disease while the weaker Egyptians died by the hundreds of thousands.
Amidst the confusion and the panic which followed this Silent Death, the
Jews packed their belongings and hastily fled from the land which had
promised them so much and which had given them so little.
As soon as the flight became known the Egyptians tried to follow them
with their armies but their soldiers met with disaster and the
Jews escaped.
They were safe and they were free and they moved eastward into the waste
spaces which are situated at the foot of Mount Sinai, the peak which has
been called after Sin, the Babylonian God of the Moon.
There Moses took command of his fellow-tribesmen and commenced upon his
great task of reform.
In those days, the Jews, like all other people, worshipped many gods.
During their stay in Egypt they had even learned to do homage to those
animals which the Egyptians held in such high honor that they built holy
shrines for their special benefit. Moses on the other hand, during his
long and lonely life amidst the sandy hills of the peninsula, had
learned to revere the strength and the power of the great God of the
Storm and the Thunder, who ruled the high heavens and upon whose
good-will the wanderer in the desert depended for life and light
and breath.
This God was called Jehovah and he was a mighty Being who was held in
trembling respect by all the Semitic people of western Asia.
Through the teaching of Moses he was to become the sole Master of the
Jewish race.
One day Moses disappeared from the camp of the Hebrews. He took with him
two tablets of rough-hewn stone. It was whispered that he had gone to
seek the solitude of Mount Sinai's highest peak.
That afternoon, the top of the mountain was lost to sight.
The darkness of a terrible storm hid it from the eye of man.
But when Moses returned, behold! ... there stood engraved upon the
tablets the words which Jehovah himself had spoken amidst the crash of
his thunder and the blinding flashes of his lightning.
From that moment on, no Jew dared to question the authority of Moses.
When he told his people that Jehovah commanded them to continue their
wanderings, they obeyed with eagerness.
For many years they lived amidst the trackless hills of the desert.
They suffered great hardships and almost perished from lack of food and
water.
But Moses kept high their hopes of a Promised Land which would offer a
lasting home to the true followers of Jehovah.
At last they reached a more fertile region.
They crossed the river Jordan and, carrying the Holy Tablets of Law,
they made ready to occupy the pastures which stretch from Dan to
Beersheba.
As for Moses, he was no longer their leader.
He had grown old and he was very tired.
He had been allowed to see the distant ridges of the Palestine Mountains
among which the Jews were to find a Fatherland.
Then he had closed his wise eyes for all time.
He had accomplished the task which he had set himself in his youth.
He had led his people out of foreign slavery into the new freedom of an
independent life.
He had united them and he had made them the first of all nations to
worship a single God.