THE remarkable experiences through which Moses passed from the time that he was discovered as a baby among the bulrushes of the Nile, up to the time that he is said to have talked with God in the burning bush at the age of eighty, are only barely touched upon in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is probably due to the fact that Moses was an extremely modest man, and if he did write the book of Exodus, it is only natural that he should have refrained from recording any but the essential features of his personal history.
In the book of Acts, however, Stephen furnishes some interesting biographical data concerning Moses, which had evidently been handed down by oral tradition. From this source we gather the fact that Moses' career was divided into three periods of approximately forty years each. The first dates from his birth until he fled from Egypt; the second covers his sojourn in the land of Midian and until he returned to lead the Israelites out of Egypt; the third includes the wanderings in the wilderness, and completes his earthly span with his mysterious disappearance, to material sense, from mount Pisgah.
As a child Moses escaped a fate similar to that which was afterward designed to destroy Jesus in the days of Herod. He then, under the patronage of Pharaoh's daughter at the Egyptian court, received a liberal education in all of the arts and sciences of the Orient. It is certain also that he was familiar with the Hebrew tongue, and that he was thoroughly versed in the ancient traditions concerning God's promises to the people of Israel. While not unmindful of the personal advantages that fortune had thrown in his way, Moses was apparently much more interested in the welfare of his Hebrew brethren than in his own advancement. He undoubtedly applied most of his time and thought to the solution of their problems, and his indignation must have many times been aroused as he witnessed the maltreatment of the children of Israel. One day when he saw an Egyptian taskmaster striking an Israelite, his anger got the better of his judgment, and he slew the Egyptian. When this act became known, Moses realized that he had made a mistake, and that by taking the law into his own hands, instead of waiting on divine justice to settle the question, he had cut off, for the present at least, all hope of redressing the wrongs of his people.
