Exodus 1-4:17
Picture, in your mind’s eye, Moses before Pharaoh.
What do you see? My guess is that for most of us, it’s Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner. Congratulations to Cecil B. DeMille, the Hollywood machine, and decades of reruns of The Ten Commandments. Thanks to such movies we know the story — or we think we know. But let’s remind ourselves that we’re interested in the Word of God, not Hollywood fiction — or even Sunday School fiction. That is, we need to be very cognizant of where the ideas in our heads come from and sort out fact from fiction. Is this idea I have really in Scripture? Or is it from DeMille? Or is it from some forgotten Sunday School teacher, whose orthodoxy might be questionable? Feel free to watch The Ten Commandments (again) and enjoy it for what it is. But as we read through the Bible, listen to what it actually says and break free of any fictions you might be carrying around in your head.
Who made you a prince and a judge over us?
Exodus 2:14
Thus an Israelite rejects Moses as an authority figure with what sounds like a very democratic perspective, one to which we Americans might readily subscribe. Moses is, after all, a fellow Israelite whose only qualification for Egyptian privilege is having been pulled out of the water by Pharaoh’s daughter. So why pay Moses any particular heed? That has “democracy” written all over it, but that doesn’t mean it’s heading in the right direction. This may be the first time an Israelite questions Moses’ authority, but as we shall see over the coming weeks, it isn’t the last.