Was Moses Really a Humble Man?

"Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth" says the Bible (Number 12:3).  But his humility did not come easily.  Right from the birth, he goes through a long process of humiliation.  Humility does not happen overnight; it is a lifelong process of knowing who we are.

For Moses, until three months, no one even knew he was born except the family.  After three months, he was given to the alligators of Nile; only to be rescued by the Princess.  Nursed by his own mother as though he was a stranger to her; and rejected by his own people when he tried to identify with them. 

Once a powerful Prince, but ran for his life in the wilderness only to be Jethro’s shepherd for the next 40 years of his life.  During those 40 years, all the memories of royalty and regalia had been erased from his memory.  He had made peace with himself and appears to be content to die in the wilderness as a nomad.   The zeal he had for the God of his fathers seemed to have become a faint memory of a distant past.  It seems as if Moses had given up on God and had decided to follow the kind of religion Jethro was practicing. 

Had God not appeared to him in the burning bush, Moses would have probably followed the customs of the family he had adapted himself in.  It is not sure if his parents had circumcised him, possibly they had or had not, but he had failed to circumcise his sons.  He just wanted to fit into Jethro’s culture and be forgotten.  The level of reluctance he demonstrated against the will of God when God told him to go to Egypt reveals as how far Moses had gone from the memory of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

At first, God simply tells him to go to Egypt and deliver the people.  Moses asks, “Who am I and how can I do such a thing?”  God says, “I will go with you”.  Since Moses had no experience of knowing God’s presence in a personal level, God gives him the assurance of his presence.  But Moses could not comprehend such an invisible presence.  He asks for God’s name.  For the first time in all of creation, a human being dared to ask God his name as if to say, “I don’t know you”.  In divine mercy, God reveals the ever present nature of his name “I AM”.  “I AM Who I AM” or “Yahweh” is to be the name of God for ever and ever in human lips.  The latter Hebrews would revere this name so much, they would never pronounce it; every time this name appears in the book of the Law, they would call “Adonai” or “The Lord”.

But Moses had not learned to revere this name.  Instead of falling on his face before this “Great I AM” in humble submission and obedience, he went on to ask God to prove his invisible presence with concrete evidences; he asks for signs.  By this time even the divine patience was coming to its limit.  With utter frustration, God asks him to throw his stupid shepherd’s staff on the ground.  When he did that, the staff turned into a snake as if to let this stone-head know that he was trading into the very ground where Adam had done.  The signs Moses had asked were turning into the signs of human sinfulness and disobedience in the face of God’s divine grace and mercy.  The second sign God gives to Moses is equally stunning in its revelation of human sinfulness.  Moses was struck with leprosy.  In those days, leprosy was a dreaded disease.  When someone was afflicted with leprosy; it would be the end of normal existence in human society for that person.  He/she would be separated from society for the rest of their miserable existence.  This is what sin had done to humanity when the serpent came into the garden and deceived the first stone-head.  But God was not done with Moses.  He gave him one more sign; the sign of water turning into blood, as if to say that there will come a day when a perfect man, the last Adam, would pour out his blood for the forgiveness of Moses’s sin of unbelief and disobedience. 

Even now, with such dramatic signs and prophetic messages, Moses comes up with some more excuses.  He said, “I can’t speak”.  So far as it depended on Moses, he never wanted to go back to Egypt.  God’s patience with Moses was really running out.  With great displeasure, God asks this stone-head some questions; “Who gave you mouth?  Who made you hear, speak and see?” Hoping to persuade this stone-head, with tenderness God says “I will teach you how to speak”.  But no, Moses was not willing to obey this amazing God of the universe who had come down to meet this idiot shepherd tending his father in-law’s sheep.  Moses was such a loser; even after working for 40 long years, he didn’t even have his own flock.  Jacob had become a wealthy man within 20 years. 

This great loser once again blurted out his stupidity by saying, “I won’t go, send someone else”.  At this the Bible says, “The Lord’s anger burned against Moses”.  Until then, Moses had only seen the mercy of God.  But he took God’s mercy for granted.  However, when he saw the wrath of God, he was terrified.  No more questions in the face of this terrifying wrath.  Yet, God in his anger does not destroy this loser because Moses’ disobedience wasn’t so much of a matter of unwillingness; it was rather a matter of unworthiness.  Moses had given up in life and the dream of doing something worthwhile.  He was willing to be forgotten in the vastness of the wilderness as someone’s hireling.  Possibly, Moses was just as annoyed by the mention of Egypt as God was annoyed by Moses’ disobedience. 

It was God’s will for Moses to come to such a low view of himself.  It was like Job who said “I had heard with my ears, but now I have seen with my eyes.  Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (42:5-6).  Moses had seen the futility of human efforts in doing God’s work.  Once upon a time a fearful prince; now he was all but a panting shepherd.  God saw in this man a total brokenness; so broken that unless God does something special, he won’t leave the desert.  Thus, to give him some consolation, God mentions the name of his brother Aaron.  When God mentioned this name, memories must have flooded back and a desire rose within this pile of desert dust and decided to go back to Egypt. 

While leaving for Egypt, he does not tell his father in-law as why he was going.   Rather he tells, “Let me go and see if any of my people are still alive”.  He never mentions what God had said and commissioned him for.    This guy had abandoned his hopes to such a degree; he didn’t bother to circumcise his sons.  This was a term of the covenant God made with Abraham; a Hebrew could not have imagined violating it at any cost.    Now on his way to Egypt, God’s wrath came so close to him, he was nearly killed.  Most likely, he may have had some arguments with his wife Zipporah about the need to circumcise the boys.  But Zipporah, a daughter of a Midianite priest, may have objected to it either for religious reasons or physical.  Moses had become such a wimp; he could not lead his own family in doing the right thing.

When Zipporah witnessed the divine encounter and saw how close Moses was to death, she circumcised her son in a hurry and brought the blood as a substitute for Moses’ life.  Possibly it was this encounter that transformed Moses’ life more than the one in the burning bush.  From now on, we see him run to God every time he faced difficulty.  He became a cry baby but not before the people but before this amazing God who even in his anger is angry only for our good.   Moses was absolutely sure that if God’s presence is not with him, there was no way to escape.  He would rather be in the presence of God’s anger than depend on himself or anyone else for that matter. 

It was such a long process that made him the kind of man Moses turned out to be.  No wonder, the Bible then calls him the most humble man on the face of the earth.  A man who knew his unworthiness and also a man who saw God like no other human being had seen.  In several occasions, God says that Moses is not like any other prophets because God never spoke to anyone the way he spoke to Moses.  Moses was a friend of God!  From a wimp, a coward and a depressed man, Moses had the privilege of becoming a friend of God.  All because he was willing to be humiliated, abused and be willing to be killed in order to fulfill what God had called him to do.  He did that without malice or anger toward anyone.  It was in this context that he is known to be the most humble of man.