NOSES (ma'zez), (Heb. rrP, mo-sheh').
1. JVame and Family. The lawgiver of Is rael. He belonged to the tribe of Levi, and was a son of Amram and Jochebed (Expd. vi :2o).
According to Exod. ii:to, the name7q°,11foshelt, means drawn out of water. Even ancient writers knew that the correctness of this interpretation could be proved by a referer.ce to the Egyptian language (comp. Joseph. Antiq. g, 6 ; contra Apionent, 31; Philo, ii, 83, etc., ed. Mang). The name contains also an allusion to the verb to be, extracted, pulled out. Hence it appears that Mo she!' is a significant memorial of the marvelous preservation of Moses when an infant, in spite of those Pharaonic edicts which were promulgated in order to lessen the number of the Israelites. It was the intention of divine Providence that the great and wonderful destiny of the child should be from the first apparent ; and what the Lord had done for Moses he intended also to ac complish for the whole nation of Israel.
This table shows the pedigree of Moses: 2. Personal History. His life falls naturally into three divisions, of forty years each, accord ing to the account preserved in Stephen's speech (Acts vii :23, 3o, 36).
(1) Birth. Moses was born in the dark hour of Hebrew story when a son was an object of the murderous search of the Egyptian spies. His father was Amram, his mother Jochebed ; his tribe was Levi, and this fact may have determined the choice of Levi for the priesthood. Moses was the youngest child of the family ; Miriam was the oldest. and Aaron came between. For three months his parents hid the babe, but at last it was no longer possible, and Jochebed, with a trem bling heart, but it may be with a dim conr.cious ness that God had great things in store for him, laid him in the little basket of papyrus she had deftly woven, pitched with bitumen within and without, and, carrying it down to the brink of one of the canals of the Nile, she hid it among the flags. The child was tenderly watched "afar off" by Miriam, who, less open to suspicion than the mother would be, stood to see what would be done to him. The daughter of the Pharaoh, the oppressor, came to the sacred river to bathe, at tended by her maidens, who, surprised to find the basket, which had providentially floated down to the princess' bathing place—or had Jochebed pur posely put it there?—call the attention of their mistress to the discovery. The basket is fetched by one of them, and when opened a little babe, evidently one of the Hebrews' children, but ex ceedingly fair, is revealed to view. The woman heart of the princess, who was a childless wife according to tradition, yearned over the little one.
Her yearning was of God. Then Miriam drew near, gathered from the conversation that the child's life was to be spared, proposed to get a nurse for him among the Hebrew women, and thus it came to pass that Jochebed again had her child at her breast, but this time as his hired nurse.
Pharaoh's daughter called him Mosheh, because she drew him out of the water. She took care to have him instructed in all the sciences then known in Egypt. In his earliest years, Jochebed and Amram, no doubt, took care to instruct him in the Hebrew language, and in the principles of the true religion, and in the knowledge of the prom ises that God had made concerning Israel.
(2) Life in Egypt. The second division of Moses' life was totally different in its character from the first. Moses, at the age of forty, is learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. The adopted grandson of the Pharaoh, initiated in the secrets of the priests, to whose order he belonged, he had a brilliant and useful worldly career be fore him. Had he remainerl in his advantageous surroundings, he would have been one of the great Egyptian sages—probably the greatest of them all. But God intended him to occupy a much more exalted position. There was needed by him a period of meditation. He must be cut off from books, and by direct contact with nature in all her moods learn what books cannot give. Being divinely instructed that he was to be the deliverer of Israel, he went to visit his brethren at their hard labor. Observing an Egyptian cru elly abusing a Hebrew, and going to murder him, he hastened to them, assisteil..the Hebrew, killed the Egyptian, and hid hif body in the sand. Next day he observed two Hebrews at variance, and begged the faulty person not to hurt his brother. The fellow insolently replied, "Who made you a ruler or judge over us? will you kill me, as you did the Egyptian yesterday?" Finding that his slaughter of the Egyptian was divulged, he fled into the country of Midian, on the Red Sea. It is probable that the murder was intended to impress upon the Hebrews his desire to help them—that he, the king's son, would be their de liverer; for it seems impossible to resist the con clusion that the pious teachings of his mother had not been forgotten, and that many prayers had been put up by him, as he determined to be his brethren's savior. But we see now that it was no wonder that this attempt at an insurrec tion proved abortive, and likewise that Moses had much to learn before he could properly lead the great Exodus.