by
Damien F. Mackey
“Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three,
when they spoke to Pharaoh”.
Exodus 7:7
Forty years ago, back in Egypt, Moses had thought himself ready to lead his people to freedom, but had found them squabbling amongst themselves, and not interested.
Nor was Moses himself yet an apt instrument for the gargantuan task.
Was he even circumcised?
He would need to be fully de-paganised, his heart taken out of Egypt, so that he could ultimately lead his people out of the heart of Egypt.
Even so, for many of them, their hearts would remain in Egypt, so it is said: “You can take Israel out of the heart of Egypt, but you cannot take the hearts of Israel out of Egypt”.
Providence would so arrange it that Moses would now experience forty more years living amongst a culturally more compatible, Semitic people, the Midianites.
These, too, were descendants of Abraham, though not through Sarah, but Keturah. Many of their customs would have been like those of their fellow Hebrews, whilst some were different. Unlike the Israelite practice of circumcision on the eighth day after birth, as mandated by God, the Midianites may have delayed circumcision until later.
But Moses never forgot that he was something of an alien amongst this desert people.
Had not Jethro’s daughters referred to him initially as “an Egyptian” (Exodus 2:19)?
And did he not name his first born child, “Foreigner” (Exodus 2:22): “Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom [גֵּרְשֹׁ֑ם], saying, ‘I have become a foreigner in a foreign land’.” (The couple would later have another son, Eliezer).
It would not be surprising, though, if Moses, who had grown somewhat comfortable with his family in Midian, had deferred to his Midianite wife, Zipporah, regarding certain different customs - the Midianite attitude to circumcision being one of them.
This would almost cost Moses his life – or would it be his firstborn son, Gershom, who would be in mortal peril?
Moses would also undergo a profound metaphysical and spiritual conversion in Midian, especially the theophany experience at the Burning Bush near Mount Horeb.
Despite all the work that Yahweh had put into preparing Moses for the job at hand, the Lord now found his servant reluctant, making excuses. For instance (Exodus 4:10): “Moses said to the Lord, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue’.”
St. John of the Cross took this as indicating that Moses was experiencing the mystical dark night of the senses, when speech can become difficult. But Moses here claims this always to have been the case with him. That was just how he naturally was.
Moses was now playing with fire, and the Divine volcano was about to erupt.
But, for the moment (4:11-12): “The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say’.”
In one of a multitude of biblical appropriations by Islam, the Prophet Mohammed, interestingly at the age of forty (Moses had fled Egypt at forty) - who, note, was illiterate - is told (not to speak, but) to read.
And he is similarly admonished when, Moses-like, he demurs:
https://www.islamicity.org/11380/when-an-illiterate-man-was-asked-to-read/
“When Prophet Muhammad (صَلَّىٰ ٱللَّٰهُ عَلَيْهِ وَآلِهِ وَسَلَّمَ) received his first revelation in the Cave of Hira' through the angel Jibril (Gabriel), he was asked to read (iqra'). However … he was astounded, replying both with fear and astonishment: "I am not literate (I cannot read)". He was asked two more times to read, but after each time he answered that he was not literate and so, couldn't read. After that, the angel conveyed the intended first revelation: "Read in the name of your Lord Who created; created man from a clinging substance. Read, and your Lord is the most Generous Who taught by the pen; taught man that which he knew not" (al-'Alaq, 1-5)”.”
Cf. Jeremiah 1:6: “‘Alas, Sovereign Lord’, I said, ‘I do not know how to speak; I am too young’.” Also, Jeremiah refers to a “23 years” prophetic span (25:3). And Muslims believe that the Qu’rān (Koran) was verbally revealed from God to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel gradually over a period of approximately 23 years.
Moses, for his part, was now begging the Lord (Exodus 4:13): ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else’.
Vv. 14-16:
Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses and he said, ‘What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see you.
You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it’.
How did Aaron know to where Moses had fled?
Perhaps Moses had told him just before his rude departure from Egypt, or, maybe, had sent a message to Aaron later, say, via Midianite caravans. (Cf. Genesis 37:28)
Finally, Moses was ready to return to Egypt.
Or, was he? For, what about that critical matter of circumcision?
Exodus 4:18:
Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, ‘Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive’.
Jethro said, ‘Go, and I wish you well’.
Moses ‘a bridegroom of blood’
‘Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me’, she said.
So the Lord let him alone.
Moses, ever a type of Jesus Christ, was called by his wife Zipporah ‘a bridegroom of blood’.
Exodus 4:19-23:
Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead’. So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.
The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me”. But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son’.”
Will the Lord now go after Moses’s own firstborn son?
Clement Harrold has written well on this:
https://stpaulcenter.com/posts/why-does-god-try-to-kill-moses-in-exodus-4?srsltid=AfmBOooi3-yMqddlAM1l-M0jUDFlyV3vjagk8jDpN8ogb9RMMNdJ3BaM
Chapter 4 of the Book of Exodus contains one of the strangest passages in all of Sacred Scripture. Verses 18-26 describe how Moses, living in exile in the land of Midian, goes to his father-in-law Jethro to request permission to return to his own people back in Egypt. Jethro consents, and so Moses sets off together with his wife, Zipporah, and their sons.
Then comes the weird part. We are told that, "At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to kill him" (v. 24). In a bizarre display of quick thinking, Zipporah responds by hastily circumcising her son, and holding the foreskin to his feet. Stranger still is the fact that this unorthodox tactic actually works! God allows the family to continue on their way.
How are we supposed to understand this perplexing episode? We must acknowledge from the outset that the passage in question is one of the most obscure texts in the whole Bible. Modern commentators and ancient rabbis alike have wrestled with its meaning, and various different theories have been proposed over the centuries. Here we shall offer just one such theory - not with an eye to solving all of the difficulties, but simply to offer a few pointers that might render it a little more intelligible.
The emphasis on circumcision in the passage suggests that Moses was guilty of failing to circumcise his son.
The implication is that the family had lapsed into the Midianite custom of delaying circumcision until shortly before marriage. This was in direct contravention of the Abrahamic covenant, in which God commanded that all male newborns be circumcised on the eighth day after birth (see Gen 17:9-13).
Moses, it seems, had become overly acquainted with the cultural customs of his in-laws, even to the point of disobeying the edicts of the God of Israel.
This is a risky business because, as the passage reveals, the divine patience may be considerable, but it doesn't last forever.
Having appointed Moses as His chosen deputy to lead His people out of Egypt (see Ex 4:1-17), God now calls him to account for failing to keep his own house in order.
It's at this juncture that we confront the first of several major ambiguities in the text. When verse 24 recalls that "the Lord met him and sought to kill him," it actually isn't clear whether the "him" in the passage refers to Moses or, alternatively, to his son Gershom. In a number of respects, assuming that the target of the attack is Gershom makes the whole passage easier to understand, and so that is the interpretation we will adopt here. ….
[End of quote]
This particular interpretation of a difficult passage makes perfect sense, I believe.
Surely, Moses himself would have been attended to in this regard (circumcised) when, as a child, he was weaned by his Hebrew mother, Jochebed (Exodus 2:8-9; cf. 6:20). There is a tradition that she was the influential midwife, Shiphrah, whom Pharaoh had commanded to slay the male Hebrew babies (1:15-16).
(We learned that the name Shiphrah also appears in the famous Brooklyn Papyrus for this approximate era of Egyptian history: Twelfth/Thirteenth dynasties).
The likely scenario is that Zipporah had in this, what we would call a ‘mixed marriage’, influenced Moses towards Midianite custom. She would have learned from Moses that the Hebrews circumcised babies much earlier. And that would explain why it is she who acts quickly and circumcises Gershom, thereby saving the firstborn child’s life.
Egyptian (Moses) names
While Moses was safely tucked away in Midian, the oppressive Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt would fade out, and, now, a Thirteenth Dynasty ruler was seated upon the throne of Egypt.
He was NEFERHOTEP KHASEKHEMRE.
It should be noted, though, that so-called Thirteenth Dynasty high officials had already been serving the two mighty (Book of Exodus) Oppressor Pharaohs, and even that these latter two figures also emerge historically in the Thirteenth Dynasty lists.
Such are the complexities of Egyptology!
Now, not so unexpectedly, linguistic scholars have determined that some of the major Book of Exodus characters had Egyptian names:
https://academic.oup.com/book/36060/chapter-abstract/313145992?redirectedFrom=fulltext
“A surprising number of personal names of the exodus-wilderness generation bore Egyptian etymology, including Aaron (possibly), Ahira, Assir, Hur, Merari, Miriam, Moses, and Phineas”.
An important Sixth Dynasty governor, exactly contemporary with Moses, bore the name Harkhuf, which may possibly suggest, again, Hur.
The Egyptian names given to the two stand-out biblical heroes, Joseph and Moses, have proven most difficult for commentators to unravel.
Joseph was given the grand name of Zaphenath paneah by Pharaoh (Genesis 41:45), while it was a later Pharaoh’s daughter who devised the name, Moses (Exodus 2:10): “She named him Moses, saying, ‘I drew him out of the water’.”
The historical Moses, I have multi-identified across supposedly three dynasties of the Old Kingdom and one of the so-called ‘Middle’ Kingdom.
Do any of these manifestations of Moses have a Moses-like name?
Let us try to determine if such be the case.
Moses was, as we have recently found, an actual Pharaoh, though of short reign length due to his having abdicated - a fact which appears to harmonise with the Scriptures (e.g. Hebrews 11:24).
As Pharaoh
He was Djedefre (var. Djedefhor, Djedefptah) (Fourth Dynasty); and Userkare (Sixth Dynasty). As Userkare, his name/reputation was later trashed by the oppressive and jealous pharaoh Pepi, so we found, who relegated Userkare’s kingship to “the desert” (Midian?):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Userkare
“Egyptologists thus suspect a possible Damnatio memoriae on Pepi I's behalf against Userkare”.
As Vizier and Chief Judge
He was Kagemni (Fourth and Sixth dynasties); Ptahhotep (Fifth Dynasty); Weni (Uni) (Sixth Dynasty); Mentuhotep and (the semi-fictitious) Sinuhe (Twelfth Dynasty).
As an intellectual and writer
Under the famous guises of Kagemni and Ptahhotep, again, Moses was an intellectual and a sage, a writer of Maxims and Instructions.
As Weni, he produced a brilliant Autobiography.
The versatile Hebrew, Moses, was also the travelling trader and warrior (like Weni), Iny (Sixth Dynasty), and was General Nysumontu (Twelfth Dynasty).
No wonder the ancients considered this Moses to have been a genius!
Some of the above names connect, e.g. Djedefre (var. Djedefhor, Djedefptah); also Djedefptah and Ptahhotep; Mentuhotep and Nysumontu.
And so do all of the Weni-type names. For these, just remember:
Ini, Weni, Iny, Moses
(2) Ini, Weni, Iny, Moses
And I have added another recently-discovered guise for Moses, again as a Pharaoh: Niuserre Ini (Fifth Dynasty).
I consider it to be most encouraging for my rather complex revision of the Era of Moses - in Egypt’s Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Twelfth dynasties - that the Egyptian name for the historical Moses, Weni (Uni), looking like a diminutive name, or hypocoristicon, is common, in its variant forms, Ini, Iny, for my Moses through the Old Kingdom: Niuserre Ini (Fifth); Weni (Uni) (Sixth); Iny (Sixth).
Niuserre Ini (var. Iny)
Regarding pharaoh Niuserre Ini, I wrote in my recent article:
Moses in Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty
(2) Moses in Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty
This re-working of my article under the same title, “Moses in Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty”, has become necessary due to my brand new recognition of Moses as the Fifth Dynasty pharaoh, Niuserre Ini, to accompany his pharaonic alter egos of Djedefre-Djedefhor (Fourth Dynasty) and Userkare (Sixth Dynasty).
….
As we found with the pharaonic Moses in his Fourth Dynasty guise (as Djedefre-Djedefhor), and in his Sixth Dynasty guise (as Userkare), so might we expect that he, in his Fifth Dynasty guise - if as Niuserre Ini - to be compatible, should reveal himself to have been a ruler of short duration, highly competent, having a profound influence upon Egypt, and much revered down through time as a saint and a thaumaturgist.
Excitingly, as a very good start, in the name Ini, we appear to get an immediate clue. For I have already identified Moses, as a high official of Pharaoh, as Weni (Uni) of the Sixth Dynasty, and as Iny of the Sixth Dynasty – whatever that name may mean.
So, the name (Niuserre) Ini fits beautifully here alongside these names. Thus:
INI; WENI; UNI; INY
….
The king's power slowly weakened as the bureaucracy expanded … although he remained a living god in the eyes of his subjects.
My comment: He was virtually deified, “a living god in the eyes of his subjects”, like Imhotep (Joseph).
….
This cult was most active until the end of the Old Kingdom but lasted at least until the Twelfth Dynasty during the Middle Kingdom … at which point is the latest known mention of a priest serving in Nyuserre's funerary complex. ….
But, getting back to our question: Do any of these manifestations of Moses have a Moses-like name? - it appears that the majority of names listed above have no appreciable likeness to Moses.
Before investigating any further, it needs to be noted that Moses was something of a secret name. Amongst the Egyptians only Pharaoh’s daughter, Meresankh (“Merris”), knew who Moses really was. Pharaoh presumed that he was a royal child. Thus the scribes, not being cognizant of the secret, and who had difficulty with unusual and foreign names, would not have been able to form the name into properly etymological hieroglyphs. They would simply have to represent the name phonetically.
Most tentatively, I take the name Moses, Hebrew Moshe
to have been derived from the Egyptian words for water, mw (mu) 𓈖
and son s3
Thus: Mw-sa, ‘Son (Child) of the Water’ (Water Baby).
And I suspect that this name has been captured in the name of the semi-fictitious ‘Moses’, Sinuhe (or Sanehat), with the first element (si, sa) representing “son”, as according to Sir Flinders Petrie, and the second element (nu, like mu) representing “water”.
The only two possible Moses name from above, then, would be Niuserre, again perhaps intending those two elements: Nu (Niu) and sa (se) elements, and very like Sinuhe:
Si nu he
Se niu Re
and Nysumontu, structured just like Niuserre:
Ni (Ny) Se (Su) and god name (theophoric) Re (Montu).
Before Pharaoh Neferhotep
“Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three,
when they spoke to Pharaoh”.
Exodus 7:7
Joseph, by contrast, had been only thirty when he had entered the service of Pharaoh (Genesis 41:46): “Joseph was 30 years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt”. That seemingly benign ruler was Horus Netjerikhet of Egypt’s Third Dynasty, Old Kingdom, whom I have equated with Horus Netjerihedjet (Mentuhotep) of Egypt’s Eleventh Dynasty, so-called ‘Middle’ Kingdom. More recently, I have added a further dimension to this ruler, as Djet (presumably an abbreviation of Netjerihedjet) of the First Dynasty, during whose reign, wrote Manetho, ‘a great famine seized Egypt’.
Far less benign than Horus Netjerikhet of old would prove to be this Neferhotep of Egypt’s Thirteenth Dynasty.
He obviously had no particular historical grudge against Moses (cf. Exodus 4:19).
Approximately half a century would have elapsed since Moses himself had ruled Egypt.
Was Neferhotep even alive, then?
Did he know that an earlier Pharaoh has proscribed this man standing before him, who, with his brother, had already succeeded in unifying “all the elders of the Israelites” (Exodus 4:29-31).
And now this intruding pair was demanding that Pharaoh release the Israelite slaves (Exodus 5:1-2):
Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness’.
Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go’.
The Lord was about to declare war, to “bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt” (Exodus 12:12), including Pharaoh, the presumed divine Son of Ra (the Sun God).
