We read in the book of Numbers (12: 3), "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth." Judged by Moses' achievements, the quality of meekness should be placed high among spiritual values, Christ Jesus included meekness in the framework of the Beatitudes, thus emphasizing its worth. Meekness signifies the eclipse of mortal and material selfhood and the full acknowledgment of the divine Mind, or God.
Moses subdued self and magnified God. He spoke with authority like a servant repeating his master's commands. When Moses was a young man his people were the servants of Pharaoh; before he left them they were the servants of God. This transformation would have been impossible without the subjugation of self. In infancy he was preserved from danger. At the time of his birth a decree was in force compelling the Hebrew people to cast every male child into the Nile. The mother of Moses, with maternal affection, made an ark of bulrushes and placed it on the brink of the river. Pharaoh's daughter, walking by the river, found the ark and adopted the child. Thus Moses was protected from harm by a power then unknown to him. Looking back at the experience, he could not fail to see how the hand of God had preserved him.
When young, zeal for the welfare of his people led Moses to slay an Egyptian, but his conscience rebuked him for the act, and he turned away from militancy as the means of working out the salvation of his race. His indulgence in human will had not been successful, and he was now ready to submit to the will of God, to listen for His voice and to obey Him.
