Moses

Moses, the leader

Moses led the Hebrew people, the Israelites, out of slavery in Egypt, and he formed them (and those that joined them) into a people during the forty years that followed. As a political, military, and religious leader, he gave them religious instruction and law that would enable them to survive successfully as a coherent people in the centuries to follow. It was probably around 1240 BCE that his final confrontation with Ramses II of Egypt occurred, culminating in the escape at night taking the slaves to freedom.

The first three chapters of the book of Exodus set the stage. We see Moses as

a man of two cultures--Egyptian and Israelite
a vigorous and decisive man
activated by a sense of justice

In his introduction to Exodus in the HarperCollins Study Bible, Edward L. Greenstein points out that the exodus "provides a motive for worshiping the Lord and observing the law, especially those precepts protecting the disadvantaged, because the experience of slavery is meant to instill empathy for them. Moreover, the rescue of Israel from Egypt serves a paradigm of divine saving power, within the Torah as well as among the prophets and psalmists" (77-78).

Who led the Israelites out of Egypt? The first answer is that Moses did. Another answer, however, as emphasized in Deuteronomy, has been that God led them out. Thus we see an interesting duality of agency. Moses is an individual with free will who thinks about things, makes decisions, and formulates teachings. At the same time, his leadership is said to be the human focus for the powerful work of God.

According to Exodus chapter 3, God revealed himself to Moses as "I AM that I AM." There is complex discussion about the import of this revelation and about its relation to the name Yahweh (YHWH--the four-letter word, the "tetragrammaton," is not pronounced by religious Jews, but referred to simply as "Hashem"--the name (and often translated as "the Lord").