That’s the short version. This is one of those stories where a lot of midrash has been written. There is a story from the Passover haggdah, taken from the Talmud, of many brilliant rabbis that met at Beni Brak for Passover. Their seder went on and on, while they discussed all night the Passover story, not realizing that it was already dawn until their students interrupted. Such a story is significant here. There is enough material just in Moses’ origins to keep people busy for a lifetime.
Interestingly enough, Hollywood had more then once stepped up to the plate. IN both the Epic The Ten Commandments” and the animated “The Prince of Egypt” much of the story fits in between Exodus 2:9 and 2:11.
9And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her: 'Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.' And the woman took the child, and nursed it. 10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, and said: 'Because I drew him out of the water.' 11 And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren.
Note here there is no palace intrigue, no love interests or triangles, and even no mention of even a friendship or rivalry with Rameses. The only mention of Rameses is a storage city named back in 1:11. It is assumed that since kings name cities after themselves, Rameses was one of the kings during the slavery.
It is also interesting to note a little point about Hebrew grammar. Due to the way the possessive phrase Pharaoh’s daughter is put together, it may mean a daughter of Pharaoh. Pharaoh may have had many daughters. Whether this one was important or not is again a matter to imagination or midrash.
I point this out because there is an archetypal story, which seems to be missed by both traditional midrash and Hollywood. Moses may have been nothing special growing up. He was a plain vanilla upper-class kid, isolated from the horrors of the world. It was when he went out to his brothers, when he saw what really happens, that he changed.
There are many fictional and true accounts of similar events. One I haven’t got out of my mind lately is the white truck driver who listened and started to play black music, particularly the Blues, in a time and place of intense racism. If Elvis Presley hadn’t listened and played that music, would rock and roll ever have been what it is today? There is the story of the young Indian attorney, who enjoyed privilege, but when he tried to take a first class train In South Africa, was thrown off merely for the color of his skin. I wonder what would have happened in India and Pakistan without Mahatma Ghandi getting thrown off that train. As bad as the situation there now, it probably would have been a lot worse without him.
Many of us can think of similar events in our own lives, when we realized someone wasn’t as well off as we were and wanted to do something about it. We did two things, we recognized who our brothers are, and we saw their burden. Then we wanted to act.
For me it was on a public bus from Playa Del Carmen to Merida, across the Yucatan peninsula. Sitting next to chickens, turtles, nursing babies and many different people during a blinding rainstorm, I think I understood a lot better what the third world thinks. Walking through the real mercados of Mexico, not the tourist ones, with their fly encrusted meats, I understood how everyone couldn’t just go to the local supermarket and buy vaccum-packed meats. It was also taking the metro and public transportation through Moscow and what was then Leningrad. It wasn’t the great monuments or statues or the Moscow circus that got me. It was the bullet holes in the Leningrad buildings left over from WWII nobody’s bothered to fix. It was talking to some students from a school of English. It was watching Russian television report every protest in the U.S. was another Kent State (and showing the same clip of Kent State for each of these). It my tour guide’s joy at finally getting the lyrics to a Stevie Wonder song she had only heard as a melody. I realized how little we know of each other, and how much the Soviet Union’s, now Russia’s biggest motivation is never to be invaded again, to always be safe, even if freedom is the price.
But unlike Moses, we need to act constructively, not destructively. Moses definitely has a temper. His first action when he finally realizes the horrors his brothers live, like many terrorists, is to kill someone. And it isn’t long until Pharaoh wants him dead. He flees into the desert to learn and be a normal person again. But at some point he finds the burning bush. And very reluctantly, he once again takes action- this time with a direct appeal to Pharaoh. No tricks this time, no snakes like the movies- that would come later. Just an appeal to go worship God.
Unfortunately, like most first requests, this request fails. We now set up the conflict to come between Pharaoh and Moses, and the plagues, which seem destructive themselves. And here we will pick up next week.
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