FullReads

The number of people in the exodus was probably two or three thousand. Renan says that one century only elapsed between the advent of Joseph into Egypt and the revolt. Very certain it was not a great number that went forth into the desert. A half-million women could not have borrowed jewelry of their neighbors–the secret could not have been kept. And in the negotiations between Moses and the King, it will be remembered that Moses asked only for the privilege of going three days’ journey into the wilderness to make sacrifices. It was a kind of picnic or religious campmeeting. A vast multitude could not have taken part in any such exercise. We also hear of their singing their gratitude on account of reaching Elim, where there were “twelve springs and seventy palm-trees.” Had there been several million people, as we have been told, the insignificant shade of seventy trees would have meant nothing to them.

The distance from Goshen in Egypt to Canaan in Palestine was about one hundred seventy-five miles. But by the circuitous route they traveled it was nearly a thousand miles. It took forty years to make the passage, for the way had to be fought through the country of foes who very naturally sought to block the way. Quick transportation was out of the question. The rate of speed was about twenty-five miles a year.

Here was a people without homes, or fixed habitation, beset on every side with the natural dangers of the desert, and compelled to face the fury of the inhabitants whose lands they overran, fearful, superstitious, haunted by hunger, danger and doubt. By night a man sent ahead with a lantern on a pole led the way; by day a cavalcade that raised a cloud of dust. One was later sung by the poets as a pillar of fire, and the other a cloud. Chance flocks of quail blown by a storm into their midst were regarded as a miracle; the white exuding wax of the manna-plant was told of as “bread”–or more literally food.

Those who had taken part in the original exodus were nearly all dead–their children and grandchildren survived, desert born and savage bred. Canaan was not the land flowing with milk and honey that had been described. Milk and honey are the results of labor applied to land. Moses knew this and tried to teach this great truth. He was true to his divine trust. Through doubt, hardship, poverty, misunderstanding, he held high the ideal–they were going to a better place.

At last, worn by his constant struggle, aged one hundred twenty, “his eye not dim nor his natural force abated”–for only those live long who live well–Moses went up into the mountain to find solace in solitude as was his custom. His people waited for him in vain–he did not return. Alone there with his God he slept and forgot to awaken. His pilgrimage was done. “And no man knoweth his grave even unto this day.”

History is very seldom recorded on the spot–certainly it was not then. Centuries followed before fact, tradition, song, legend and folklore were fused into the form we call Scripture. But out of the fog and mist of that far-off past there looms in heroic outline the form and features of a man–a man of will, untiring activity, great hope, deep love, a faith which at times faltered, but which never died. Moses was the first man in history who fought for human rights and sought to make men free, even from their own limitations. “And there arose not a prophet since Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.”