The story of Moses is in many ways closely parallel to that of
Sinuhit. Among the Midianite tribes living to the south and
southeast of Palestine he found refuge and generous hospitality.
The priest of the sub-tribe of the Kenites received him into his
home and gave him his daughter in marriage. Note the
characteristic Oriental idea of marriage. Here Moses learned the
lessons that were essential for his training as the leader and
deliverer of his people.
The Kenites figure in later Hebrew history as worshippers of
Jehovah and are frequently associated with the Israelites. After
the capture of Jericho certain of them went up with the southern
tribes to conquer southern Palestine. (Judg. 1:16.) It was Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite (Judg. 5:24), who rendered the Hebrews
a signal service by slaying Sisera, the fleeing king of the
Canaanites, after the memorable battle beside the River Kishon.
Many modern scholars draw the conclusion from the Biblical
narrative that it was from the Kenites that Moses first learned of
Yahweh (or, as the distinctive name of Israel's God was translated
by later Jewish scribes, Jehovah). Furthermore it is suggested
that gratitude to the new God, who delivered the Israelites from
their bondage, was the reason why they proved on the whole so loyal
to Jehovah. This conclusion is possible and in many ways
attractive, but it is beset with serious difficulties. We know, in
ancient history, of no other example of a people suddenly changing
their religion. When there have been such sudden and wholesale
conversions in later times they have been either under the
compulsion of the sword, as in the history of Islam, or under the
influence of a far higher religion, as when Christianity has been
carried to heathen peoples on a low stage of civilization. Do the
earliest Hebrew traditions imply that the ancestors of the
Israelites were worshippers of Jehovah? Is it not probable that
Moses fled to the nomadic Midianites not only because they were
kinsmen but because they were also worshippers of Jehovah?
In any case Moses' life in Midian tended to intensify his faith in
Jehovah. The title of his father-in-law implies that this priest
ministered at some wilderness sanctuary. In the light of the
subsequent Biblical narrative was this possibly at the sacred
spring of Kadesh or on the top of the holy mountain Horeb
(elsewhere called Sinai) where Kenites and Hebrews believed that
Jehovah dwelt, or at least manifested himself? Moses, in the home
of the Midian priest, was brought into direct and constant contact
with the Jehovah worship. The cruel fate of his people and the
painful experience in Egypt that had driven him into the wilderness
prepared his mind to receive this training. His quest was for a
just and strong God, able to deliver the oppressed. The wilderness
with its lurking foes and the ever-present dread of hunger and
thirst, deepened his sense of need and of dependence upon a power
able to guide the destinies of men. The peasants of the vast
Antolian plain in central Asia Minor still call every life-giving
spring, "God hath given." The constant necessity of meeting the
dangers of the wilderness and of defending the flocks entrusted to
Moses' care developed his courage and power of leadership and
action. What other great leaders of Israel were trained in this
same school? What was the effect of their wilderness life upon the
early New England pioneers?