The Liberator of Israel's Children

With the settling down of Jacob, whom Allah had named Israel, and his twelve sons and their families in Egypt began a long story of a people’s tragedy. Jacob was the founder of the Jewish nation, and his twelve sons represented the seed of the twelve branches into which this nation was initially divided. They came to live in Egypt, as we have seen, when the family’s most brilliant member, Joseph, was occupying one of the highest offices in the land, and their number was constantly increasing throughout the following centuries until they became a distinguished racial group in Egypt’s demography.

The Egyptians lived in peace with the Children of Israel for many centuries following, and traces in the Koran indicate that Joseph’s calling to worship Allah gained considerable followers among the heathen nation, initially because Joseph’s gift in exegetics had saved the nation of Egypt from a disastrous famine.

The esteem in which the Egyptians had held the Children of Israel was thus accrued from the interpretation of a vision seen by the King, and all this was changed, ironically enough, as a result of the interpretation of another vision seen some centuries later by another Egyptian monarch.

It came to pass that a certain Pharaoh saw in a dream a great fire originating in the land of Jerusalem and sweeping over all the land of Egypt, destroying it all except the areas inhabited by the Israeli people. The Pharaoh’s high priests interpreted that to be a baby son to be born among the Israeli nation, who would eventually be the cause of the collapse of the Egyptian kingdom. From that time on, the Pharaoh was not slow to take precautions to save his kingdom from the predicted menace, and every effort was made to purge the Children of Israel of any newborn male.

The Egyptians had a firm hold over the Israeli citizens, and resistance was impossible. The Children of Israeli were kept in a constant state of servility: all newborn male babies were slaughtered, while the women and girls were always taken as servants to the nobles’ families.

This unjust policy towards the male babies, however, was seen to be threatening in the long run the number of the Israeli people, who were necessary for the many humble works in the land, and so it was changed in due course to be practiced biennially: sparing their lives a year, and putting them to death in the next.

Accordingly, a certain pious Israeli woman was fortunate to give birth to a baby son, whom she named Aaron, in the year of condoning, but since she was again expecting during a killing year, she was anxious and tried to keep herself away from the eyes of Pharaoh’s spies, in case she bore a male baby.

When the faithful woman was nearing her time, and in the midst of her oppressive feeling of fear, it was revealed to her by Allah that she would give birth to a baby son, and that if she feared danger she should nurse him and then cast him into the river!

Time passed and she did give birth to a male baby, and news came that the tyrant’s spies were searching in the nearby precincts. The affectionate mother, without hesitation, began to act on the Heavenly instructions: she nursed her baby, put him in a wooden sarcophagus, and, before the baby was even given a name, she threw him into the river. “Don’t fear and don’t feel sad! We will return him to you and We will make him of the Messengers,” Allah promised.

The river was not less kind with the baby than his mother, though it moored the sarcophagus at the very shores where the Pharaoh’s palace stood. There, one of the Pharaoh’s family saw the floating wooden sarcophagus, picked it up from the water, and was astonished at finding a baby in it. The baby, whose Allah has cast over him a Love of His, was taken to the Pharaoh’s wife, who, being childless, ordered the Pharaoh not to kill him that he might benefits them or they might adopt him as a son, and named him Mu-Sa[1], which means “son of water.”

Meanwhile, being informed of the incident, the heart of Moses’ mother became empty because of fear; and she would have unconcealed her secret had not Allah fixed calmness on it. Moses’ sister, Miriam, who was one of the queen’s maidservants, secretly watched her brother, and she found a chance to recommend to the queen a certain woman to be the baby’s nurse, for Allah had forbidden for Moses all the nurses―a matter that had much worried the queen about her adopted baby.

The proposed nurse came to the court, and to the pleasure of the queen, Moses sucked her milk cordially, for the proposed nurse was not but his mother. At once the queen ordered that the nurse should immediately take the baby to her house for that purpose: and Moses’ mother became the only mother in all the history of humankind to nurse her baby through a royal warrant!

In such a way Allah returned him to his mother, to make her heart tranquil, and may not she be sad, and to let her know that the Promise of Allah is a truth.

One day at the royal court, the child Moses pulled the beard of the Pharaoh in such painful way that the reminiscence of the old nightmare of his kingdom’s collapse was awakened in his memory. He determined at once to kill the child, of whom he had become very suspicious, but the queen managed to make him reprieve the verdict by suggesting putting the boy to a test. An ember and a piece of fruit were introduced to the child Moses, in an examination of his awareness, and fortunately he tasted the ember by his tongue. Thus Moses had escaped punishment, but he grew up with a speech impediment thereafter.

After a two-year period, Moses was returned to stay with his royal foster mother, though he continued to frequent the house of his “nurse.” In his late childhood, Moses was aware of the truth of his real family, and that he belonged to the Israeli nation, but the matter remained as a secret among the Israeli people, who might have recognized through the correlative miracles that that boy would be their savior whom they had long dreamed of.

Years passed. Moses was now in his manhood. One day, Moses entered during a hot summer noon into the town, whose citizens were compelled, because of the fierce heat of the day, to retreat to their houses earlier than usual. In one of the empty roads Moses found two men―one Egyptian, the other Israeli ―quarreling. The Israeli man asked the help of Moses, who came forthwith to his rescue and, in frenzy, boxed the Egyptian. It was a mortal blow, and at once Moses repented of his wrong deed and asked Allah’s Pardon. Allah forgave him, for He is the Most-forgiving and the Most-merciful, but Moses was in danger of losing his life for the murder he committed.

On another day, Moses met the same Israeli, who was quarreling with another Egyptian, and asked the support of Moses. Just as Moses came to his fellow’s rescue, the Egyptian recognized, somehow, that it was Moses who had dispatched the Egyptian assailant the other day.

“Do you want to kill me as you had killed one aforetime?” the Egyptian anticipated Moses, “you want to be of the tyrants in the land, then; and you do not want to be of the conciliators.”

The confrontation was broken up peacefully, but the incident placed Moses in grave danger more than before. While at home, and before long, a man came from the furthest end of the town to Moses to tell him that the Egyptians were conspiring his murder, and advised him to depart the town as soon as possible to save his life.

No place in Egypt was deemed a safe refuge, and so Moses was obliged to leave the Pharaoh’s entire domain. He absconded and traveled east, with no vision to guide him as to where to go. On reaching the tip of the eastern “horn” of the Red Sea, he turned down southwardly along the coast until arriving at a settlement in the deserts of Arabia called Midian.

Almost worn out, Moses stopped for a rest at the point of Midian’s water-well, where he found a group of shepherd men watering their cattle and two girls keeping back their animals.

“What is the matter?” addressed Moses the two girls.

“We cannot water our cattle until the shepherd men have finished their undertaking,” they replied.

Thereupon Moses undertook watering the girls’ animals, and they thanked him and left for their home. Shortly afterwards, while he was seated in the shadow of a tree near the water-well, one of the two girls came to him and told him that her father wanted him to come to their house to recompense him for his good deed. Moses went with her, met the old man, and told him his story. The old man assured him that he was safe at Midian, and offered him one of his two daughters in marriage on the terms of working for him as a wage earner for ten years. Moses accepted the offer.

At the end of the ten years, homesick, he wanted to return to Egypt to visit his mother. He set out with his little family during winter days, and at a certain point on the long journey, near Mount al-Tour in Sinai, Moses thought that he had confused the right way to Egypt. Stopping for a while, he looked about and could see in the distance a burning fire. Leaving his wife there, he headed to that spot intending to obtain a blazing brand for warming, and, if possible, directions to Egypt.

As he arrived at the fire site, Moses heard: “O Moses, I am Allah, Lord of the existence!”

It was at that Sacred Valley that Allah commissioned him to the mission of Prophecy, and showed Moses two miracles that he would be possessed of during his mission to call the Pharaoh to worship Allah and to ask his permission to let the Children of Israel get out from Egypt to the Sacred Land, Jerusalem.

“What is that thing in your right hand, Moses?” Allah asked.

“That is my wooden stick; I am leaning on it, attend my sheep by it, and I have other purposes in it,” replied Moses.

Allah ordered Moses to cast off his stick, and when Moses did, the stick turned into a snake, which terrified Moses and stirred him to take to his heel and never to turn around. But Allah calmed him down, and gave him another Sign of His: “Push your hand into your pocket; when you get it out, it shall appear of pure white color; these are two proofs to the Pharaoh and his people, who are a dissipated folk.”

Moses did not accept the heavy task without debate, however. He remarked that he had killed one of the Egyptians, that he was afraid of being put to death for it; and that his speech impediment would make it difficult to argue with them. He therefore asked to be assisted by his more talkative brother, Aaron.

Allah consented, and promised that they would be given strong shoulder from Him during their prophetical mission until they were victorious. Moses, trusting and resigned, returned back to where his wife was waiting, and the journey was resumed.

Arriving in Egypt, Moses and Aaron immediately undertook their mission. It was not easy to appoint a meeting with the Pharaoh, who is said to neglect their request for no short time. At last, when the interview was held, in the presence of the Pharaoh’s viziers, Moses imparted to the monarch the purpose of that meeting:

“We are the Messengers of the Lord of existence; so you should let the Children of Israel go with us, and do not put them to torture,” said Moses.

“Have not we brought you up among us, while a child, and you stayed with us for several years?” said the monarch grimly. “And you have done your murder, proving that you are one of the ungrateful.”

“I have done it as I were of the misguided, and I fled your land when I feared you. Then Allah has bestowed upon me a Sound Verdict, and made me of the Messengers. And it is not a favor that you have enslaved the Children of Israel.”

“What is that Lord of existence?”

“He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth and what in between.”

“Hear what he says,” said the Pharaoh, turning to his viziers.

“He is the Lord of you all and your fathers of old,” went on Moses.

“The messenger sent to you is mad,” ridiculed the Pharaoh, and the courtiers laughed.

But Moses never turned a hair, and, keeping a phlegmatic mood, he continued: “He is the Lord of the East and the West and what is in between.”

“If you would consider any god but me, I will make you of the prisoners,” thundered the tyrant. 

Seeing himself confronted with a man deaf to argument, the Messenger decided to show the Pharaoh and his courtiers the Signs Allah had given him: he cast his wooden stick onto the ground, and it turned into a grand snake; and put his hand into his garment’s pocket, and drew it back to appear to the onlookers of a pure white color.

The Pharaoh was dazed by these, and he had soon the inspiration to command a consultation with his viziers, who, thinking that Moses was a magician, advised their king to sent messengers of him throughout the width and breadth of the land to call for the most skilful magicians.

Before the meeting was broken up, Moses and the Pharaoh agreed on the time for the contest with the Pharaoh’s magicians, and the chosen time was the forenoon of the day of embellishment―a day of a gorgeous public festival of ancient Egypt.

Volunteer magicians came from all over Egypt to the Pharaoh, who accommodated them in his royal palaces and promised to bestow special favors upon them if they won the day. At the predetermined time, the open court of the great temple, with the Pharaoh and his viziers at the forefront, became overcrowded with people, who came to the capital city of Egypt to see the “wizards’ battle.”

Breathless with excitement, all who came there saw with their own eyes the Egyptian magicians casting onto the ground some sticks and ropes, and, as they all, including Moses and Aaron, were bewitched, the magicians’ tools appeared to them moving as if they were living snakes.