Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 1-3.

The pastor where I worship preached in this chapters one and two last Sunday.  He pointed out that, technically, Moses’ mother followed the pharaoh’s decree to throw Hebrew boys into the Nile when they were born.  He also pointed out, as the translators’ note in the NIV says, that the word translated as “basket” is the same as the one translated as “ark” in the account of Noah and the Flood.  Finally before I get into the devotional portion of my blog today, I noticed a few years ago that the Hebrew spelling of Moses is the same as the Hebrew spelling of the second part of Ramses.  When I thought about this it occurred to me that Ramses means “born of Ra”, or “son of Ra”.  The Hebrews did not say the name of God, so Moses could be read as “Son of (God)”.  Now the passage says that Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses because she drew him out of the water.  The writer interpreted that to mean that she used the Hebrew word which means “draw out.”  However, she may have meant “son of …” because she had drawn him out of the water and did not know who his father was.  Which, to me seems to reflect the way God often works.  For that matter, even if Pharaoh’s daughter named Moses for the Hebrew word for “draw out,” it resembles the way in which God often works.  When, many years later, Moses returned to Egypt to lead the Israelites, the Egyptians would have heard his name as “son of the god whose name we do not speak”, putting him on the same level of the Pharaoh (most pharaohs had names which meant “son of ‘insert name of Egyptian god here'”).

Which brings me to the devotional portion of what I am writing today (I don’t always have a devotional portion, but I do today).  When God told Moses that He was sending him to pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses asked, “Who am I to go to pharaoh?” This was bit disingenuous on Moses’ part, he had been raised in the royal court of Egypt.  But God did not bring that up, instead God said, “I will be with you.”  Here’s the thing, Moses was right, the fact that he had been raised in the royal courts of Egypt were NOT what made him qualified to go to pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.  What qualified Moses to do that was the fact that God had sent him to do it.  Then Moses began to truly object to the mission which God was giving him.  “Yeah, but they’re going to ask me to tell them which of the gods you are.  What do I tell them?”  Moses know that God was not one of the gods worshiped by the Egyptians, the Canaanites, or any of the gods of peoples with whom the Israelites were familiar.  God’s answer to Moses was, “They know who I AM, just as much as you do.”

I want to take a moment to state the two important lessons.  The only qualification we need for the task God has assigned us is the fact that He assigned it to us.  And…no matter how much they want to deny it, the people God has sent us to know that He is God, and that He is good.  They may try to make excuses to not listen, just as Moses did, and that he was afraid the Israelites would do, but they know…and, if we follow God’s instructions, the Holy Spirit will reveal God to them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.