2.

Moses: The Reluctant Hero

After setting the stage and background of the Exodus story, Moses was introduced in a manner
ancient hero-kings were initiated in a story.

In a time when so much oppression and death ruled over the lives of people and their destinies,
a baby boy was conceived. When Pharaoh decreed that every Hebrew boy be thrown into the
Nile river, Moses was set adrift by his family on the river to escape the slaughter but in a great
twist of fate, the Pharaoh's daughter found him, willingly took him, and cared for him (Exodus
2.1-10). Moses, the Israelite, grew up in an Egyptian royal court and enjoyed every royal
person's right and privilege, oblivious of his future vocation in overthrowing his own royal family
to bring about the liberation of the slaves, his kinsmen.

Indeed, it happened, or perhaps, it was bound to happen Moses reached the crossroad of his
life. One day, he saw people and felt their oppression because of the forced labor that was
imposed upon them. When an Egyptian beat a slave, one of his Hebrew kinsmen, he killed him
on buried him under the sand (Exodus 2.12). Fearing the Pharaoh would kill him for his act,
Moses fled to Midian, settled there married Zipporah, had a son named Gershom, and kept a
flock for a living (Exodus 2.11-3.22).-Moses was living a relatively settled, stable, and peaceful
life for a family man.

But the calling of Moses proved to be beyond the comfort and wealth of the palace, or the
consolation of having a happy family. Like every human being, Moses had a vocation (from the
Latin words, VOCO, vocare, "to call”) wherein his life found its place in the greater scheme of
things and achieved its highest meaning and purpose. On a holy mountain known as Horeb
(also known as Sinai), YHWH called Moses, revealed Himself to him, commissioned him to the
task of liberating the oppressed people, and gave His word of assurance to a reluctant hero.

Then the Lord God said, "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have
heard their cry on account of the taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I have come
down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of man land to a good and
broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the
Amorites, Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. "The cry of the Israelites has now come to
me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. so come, I will send you to Pharaoh and
bring my people, elites, out of Egypt. "But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that should go to
Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?' He will be with you, and this shall be the sign for
you that it is sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you I worship God on
this mountain'