The story of Moses' birth and early childhood is one of the most
interesting chapters in Biblical history. It is full of human and
dramatic interest. The great crisis in Moses' early manhood came
when he woke to a realization of his kinship with the despised and
oppressed serfs and an appreciation of the cruel injustice of which
they were the helpless victims. Was Moses justified in resisting
the Egyptian taskmaster? Are numbers essential to the rightness of
a cause? What right had Ramses II to demand forced labor from the
immigrants within his border? Was he justified in his method of
exacting tribute? Is peonage always disastrous not only to its
victims but also to the government imposing it?
Did Moses show himself a coward in fleeing from the land of Egypt?
Naturally he went to the land of Midian. The wilderness to the
east of Egypt had for centuries been the place of refuge for
Egyptian fugitives. From about 2000 B.C. there comes the Egyptian
story of Sinuhit, an Egyptian prince, who, to save his life, fled
eastward past the "Wall of the Princes" which guarded the
northeastern frontier of Egypt. On the borders of the wilderness
he found certain Bedouin herdsmen who received him hospitably.
These "sand wanderers" sent him on from tribe to tribe until he
reached the land of Kedem, east of the Dead Sea, where he remained
for a year and a half. Later he found his way to the court of one
of the local kings in central Palestine where he married and became
in time a prosperous local prince.