Moses is Judaism’s foundational prophet.
The Bible portrays
his birth amidst a time of persecution. After miraculously surviving an
official Egyptian policy of massacring Israeli babies, he was equally
miraculously raised within an anonymous Pharaoh’s household. After
killing
of an Egyptian for harming an Israelite, he was forced to flee from
Egypt. He then lived in exile as part of a priestly family in Midian
where he
served as a shepherd.
Forty years later God spoke to Moses through a
burning bush and sent him back to Egypt to deliver his people, in
accord with a promise God had given several hundred years earlier.
Accompanied by his brother, Aaron, and armed with three supernatural
signs,
Moses traveled back to Egypt to order the Pharaoh to release the
Israelites. The Pharaoh’s unwillingness to release these valuable
slaves then led to further spiritual signs in the form of
catastrophic events. As these escalated, they increasingly affected
only the Egyptians but
not the Hebrews amongst them. The matter came to a head with the first
Passover and the miraculous crossing of a body of water (precisely
which is the subject of much debate).
On reaching Mount Sinai, Moses established a covenant with God,
organised the Israelites into a nomadic nation and established a legal
system for them. After a failed attempt to return to Canaan, the land
from whence they had come, Moses then led them for forty years as they
travelled through the wilderness. He died shortly before Israel
achieved their objective of a return to Canaan.