The section comprising Genesis to Deuteronomy forms one book of five volumes—called popularly The Pentateuch, but called in scripture The Torah (Law)—being divided into the five parts, each having its peculiar character, like the Psalms and other portions of the scriptures. Besides this, however, Genesis forms a kind of overture to the whole Bible, where in a vague, inchoate, dream-like way all the themes which are detailed in the following oratorio—the great oratorio of the Messiah—are found suggesting themselves, conflicting, mingling, dying away and rising again, wailing in adversity, and triumphing in victory. Then comes the next movement, the book of Exodus, having one distinct theme—redemption.
The colossal and majestic figure of Moses towers far above all the world's sages and leaders so unquestionably—whether from a spiritual or secular point of view, for every nation in all ages since has been enormously affected by his actions—that it is strange to look at the humble home and surroundings of his origin: a poor persecuted slave woman, doubtless with agonizing tears and prayers, trying to hide her child from the wolfish pursuers; her poor little girl watching and plotting for the safety of a crying babe. In such a way is the personality of Moses shaped and disclosed. As one might look upon his huge and sublime statue by Michael Angelo, and find it difficult to realize so great and god-like a figure being fashioned by such a common-looking uncomely old man; so it is difficult to realize so mighty and stupendous a nature shaped by persons and things thus humble and mean. They were however, but chisels of the divine Sculptor, and little knew what vast eternal work they were doing.
But how little any of us know what we may be doing when we are fulfilling the humblest duty that lies nearest to hand! Poor Jochebed thought she was only making a rush basket, when she was in reality making an ark that would save one nation, and carry an argosy of blessing to all others: little Miriam thought she was only “minding the baby,” when she was watching over the destinies of the world.
And little Miriam's stratagem: was it not delicious? Hasn't it made ninety generations of people smile at its acuteness, and rejoice at its success? Let us learn that we do not badly but well when we put thought, care, and strategy (so that it be honest strategy), into the work of God. “I became as a Jew to the Jew,” a Gentile to the Gentile; “being crafty I caught you with guile “: so says one of the most honorable men that ever lived.
“And the woman took the child and nursed it.” She had faith in God and courage, and the child, “when he was come to years” chose the same path of faith, “esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt;” “refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.” Who can tell us how much a man's character is formed by the mother (with perchance something derived too from that little elder sister that minds the baby like Miriam, watching over it with a patient love that is one of the most beautiful and pathetic things upon earth)? It is significant that the Holy Ghost has written so frequently thus: “Hezekiah...his mother's name also was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord.” “Manasseh his mother's name was Hephzibah; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” This is always the most important part of “woman's rights,” and “woman's work “; nor could the selfishness of man ever deprive her of it, even in the darkest ages—the right of suffering, and the work of laboring, for the future race—the sacred privilege of giving the earliest and most effective tendency to the character of the sons of men. “Thou barest me not for thyself,” said Iphigenia to Clytemnestra, “but for all the Greeks.” That, too, is not the least painful of her rights, that when the object of her care and training is come to years and beginning to show some result of her labor and anxiety, she must deliver him up, leaving him to take his choice between Pharaoh's daughter and the reproach of Christ. In either case she loses him, and knows that for him it is the beginning of sorrows. “So short a time,” says Thetis looking mournfully upon her son Achilles, “the light of heaven to view; So short a time, and filled with sorrow too!” In Aristophanes the magistrate wants to know what women have to do with war; “they contribute nothing.” “Indeed!” replies Lysistrata. “Do we not contribute our sons?” Plato was a very wise man; but his proposal of having a public nursery, and for the mothers not to be allowed to know which were their own children would hardly—humanly speaking—produce men like Moses.
Naturally, then “it came to pass that when Moses was grown, he went out unto HIS BRETHREN and looked on their BURDENS.” What a revelation in two words! He, the exalted courtier, identifies himself with the herd of crouching slaves, and “is not ashamed to call them brethren “; he looks not on their sins (though we know that, as with all enslaved races, oppression had generated amongst them all the foulest and meanest vices), but on their burdens, the grinding affliction and misery of their daily lives. As he looked, his heart swelled until it became the heart of a redeemer and his nature grew till “Deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care; And princely counsel....Sage he stood; With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies.” Ah, what a different world, and what a different church, it would be, if we looked more on one another's burdens, and less on one another's faults!
But all this was of God's designing and producing, preparing a redeemer for His poor sinful and afflicted people, who seem (except a few like Amram and Jochebed) entirely to have forgotten His existence. And “'all these things happened to them for ensamples... for our admonition.” Moses is the Savior, persecuted even in infancy; rejected at His first advent by the people for whom He had surrendered all, but received at His second advent—after an absence amongst the Gentiles where He had received the Bride—ultimately delivering His enslaved brethren from the thraldom of the spiritual Egypt, and the dominion of the usurping king, from the judgments of divine justice, as of human injustice; leading, defending, suffering, interceding for them; giving up every comfort, pleasure and ambition of life for them; and receiving in return the murmurings and suspicions of their ungrateful and rebellious natures—yet never forsaking them until the harassing dangers of the desolate wilderness are past, and they see on “The low dark verge of life, The twilight of eternal day” dawning upon the summits of “that goodly mountain and Lebanon.”