Moses was the greatest prophet in the Old Testament, whom God used to deliver the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. He received God's law on Mount Sinai and led the people through the wilderness for 40 years. He is a central figure throughout the Bible and is regarded as the author of the five books of Moses.
As an infant, Moses was placed by his mother in a basket of bulrushes on the Nile to save him from Pharaoh's command to kill all Hebrew male children. Pharaoh's daughter found him and took him as her own son.
3When she could hide him no longer, she got a basket of papyrus, coated it with tar and pitch, laid the child in it, and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
5Then Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe in the Nile while her attendants walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it.
10When the child had grown older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "Because I drew him out of the water." [Footnote: The name Moses sounds like the Hebrew word meaning "to draw out."]
God revealed Himself to Moses in a burning bush on Mount Horeb and called him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. God revealed His name "I AM WHO I AM" (YHWH).
1Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock beyond the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
2There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush. Moses looked, and though the bush was burning with fire, it was not consumed.
6Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." At this Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7The LORD said, "I have surely seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their oppressors, and I know their sufferings.
8So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
12God answered, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."
13Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and tell them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' What shall I tell them?"
15God also said to Moses, "Say this to the Israelites: 'The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.
4Then the LORD said to Moses, "Reach out your hand and take it by the tail." So he reached out and caught it, and it turned back into a staff in his hand—
5"This is so that they may believe that the LORD, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you."
Moses confronted Pharaoh repeatedly, and God sent ten plagues upon Egypt. The final plague, the death of the firstborn son, led Pharaoh to finally let the people of Israel go, and the Passover meal was instituted.
15Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water. Stand and wait for him on the bank of the Nile, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a snake.
16Say to him, 'The LORD, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to tell you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness. But until now you have not listened.
17This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD. Watch: with the staff in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will turn to blood.
19The LORD said to Moses, "Tell Aaron, 'Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over their rivers and canals, their ponds and all their reservoirs—and they will turn to blood.' There will be blood everywhere in Egypt, even in vessels of wood and stone."
20Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD had commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and his officials, Aaron raised the staff and struck the water of the Nile, and all the water in the river turned to blood.
4If a household is too small for a whole lamb, he and his nearest neighbor shall share one, according to the number of people; you shall apportion the lamb by what each one can eat.
11This is how you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste—it is the LORD's Passover.
12For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and I will execute judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.
13The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. When I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will come upon you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14This day shall be a day of remembrance for you, and you shall keep it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall keep it as a lasting ordinance.
29At midnight the LORD struck down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the prisoner in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock.
30Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a great outcry in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.
31He summoned Moses and Aaron that night and said, "Get up, go out from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have said.
When the Israelites were trapped between Pharaoh's army and the Red Sea, Moses stretched out his staff, and God parted the sea so that the people could cross on dry ground. The Egyptian army was drowned when the waters returned.
13Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.
21Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided,
25He made the wheels of their chariots come off so that they could barely move. And the Egyptians said, "Let's get away from the Israelites! The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt."
26Then the LORD said to Moses, "Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians, over their chariots and horsemen."
27Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians tried to flee from it, but the LORD swept them into the sea.
28The waters flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.
31And when Israel saw the mighty hand of the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.
Moses ascended Mount Sinai where he received the Ten Commandments and all of God's law, written on stone tablets. This established the covenant between God and Israel.
16On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud blast of a horn. Everyone in the camp trembled.
18Mount Sinai was completely wrapped in smoke, because the LORD had come down on it in fire. Its smoke rose like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently.
5You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the guilt of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the foreigner residing within your gates.
11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything in them, but he rested on the seventh day. That is why the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
17You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."
18When the LORD had finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written by the finger of God.
Moses was allowed to see the Promised Land from Mount Nebo in Moab but was not permitted to enter it because of his disobedience at Meribah. He died there, and God Himself buried him. The New Testament mentions that Moses appeared together with Elijah during Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain.
1Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. And the LORD showed him the whole land: Gilead as far as Dan,
4Then the LORD said to him, "This is the land I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob when I said, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you will not cross over into it."
6He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.<note>The Hebrew verb is singular with an unstated subject; the implied subject is understood to be the LORD, though it may also be read impersonally, "he was buried."</note>
1So then, holy brothers and sisters, who share in a heavenly calling, fix your attention on Jesus, the apostle and high priest of the faith we confess.