Hebrew Life and Times | Page 9

any other king had ever
built, so that wherever the traveler might turn people would point to
this or that great building and say Rameses II built that. To put up these
buildings he enslaved his people, compelling them to labor without pay.
To raise the funds for building materials he made war on his neighbors,
especially the Hittites in western Asia north of Canaan. Again and
again Hebrew children would see the dust of marching armies over the
roads past their pastures and men would say, "Rameses is going to war
again." And by and by, weeks or months later, the soldiers would return
with tales of bloody battles and sometimes laden with spoils.
=Enslavement of the Hebrews.=--Now, wars usually breed more wars.
Rameses having attacked the Hittites was afraid they would attack him.
Egypt was indeed very well protected from attack. There was only one
gateway into the country, and that was by way of the narrow Isthmus of
Suez. And there were a wall and a row of fortresses across the isthmus.
But who were those shepherd tribes living just west of the isthmus
inside the gateway? They are Hebrews, Rameses was told. They are
immigrants from Canaan. "Look out for them," said Rameses. "If they
came from Canaan, they may favor the Hittites and help them to get
past my fortresses into Egypt. Let them be put at work so that they will
have no time for plots."
Rameses was planning just then to build two large granary cities near
the northeastern border to be a base of supplies for his armies on their
campaigns into Asia. One was to be called Pithom.[2]
So one day armed men came to the Hebrew tents and the order was
given to send such and such a number of men to work in the
brick-molds of Pa-Tum. And they had to go. The women and the
children had to care for the sheep while most of their men trod the clay
and straw in the brick molds at Pa-Tum and carried heavy loads of
brick on their shoulders to the masons on the walls. Of course the sheep
suffered for lack of care. The children also pined from neglect. Life for
the Hebrews became a grinding treadmill of hardship and weariness

and drudgery.
THE BOYHOOD AND YOUTH OF MOSES
During this time of oppression a Hebrew baby boy was by chance
adopted by one of the princesses in Pharaoh's court and brought up by
his own mother as his nurse. He was given an Egyptian name with the
common Egyptian ending Mesu or M-ses, as in Rameses. The boy was
given all the educational advantages that the Egyptian palace could
offer. But all the time in secret from his mother he was learning the
story of his own people and their wrongs, and was being trained to hate
their oppressors. One day after he had grown to manhood he went
down to the city of Pa-Tum to see the work on the new granaries which
were being built. Here he saw one of his own people being flogged by
an Egyptian overseer. In a fury he leaped to the man's defense and
killed the Egyptian. Of course Rameses heard of it, and Moses had to
flee from Egypt into the desert. In the desert he found a shepherd clan
related to the Hebrews and lived there for some years brooding over the
hard plight of his people.
=Moses' call and the struggle for freedom.=--One day in the desert,
Moses heard from a passing caravan that old Rameses II was dead.
Like a flame that burned but did not consume the thought came to him:
"Now is your chance! The king and his officers will not know about
you. Go back to Egypt and lead your kinsmen out to freedom. This is
God's call and God will help you."
So back to Egypt he went. First, he undertook to rally his own people,
promising the help of their God, Jehovah. It was a dangerous
undertaking that he proposed. The kings of Egypt were accustomed to
make short work of those who resisted their authority. Moreover, these
Hebrews had been slaves for years, and their spirits might have been
cowed and broken. Yet they believed in Moses and his assurances and
accepted him as their leader.
Soon thereafter Moses and his brother Aaron went boldly to the palace
of the Pharaoh and declared to him that Jehovah, the God of the
Hebrews, had commanded that the Hebrews be allowed to hold a

religious festival in the desert to offer sacrifices unto him as their God.
The plan no doubt was that the people should escape once they were
outside the boundaries of Egypt; Moses evidently considered any
method justifiable in the effort to