In probing into the bitter distortions in the mind of the juvenile misfit, psychologists nearly always find somewhere the strong influence of a delinquent mother or father. With so many sick minds to work on, psychiatrists have no time to explore the mental workings of men and women of great stature, of well balanced, well adjusted, mature minds who have and are unselfishly contributing to the needs of humanity and by their efforts have made this world a better place in which to live.
I wonder if they wouldn’t find a parent’s influence in some of the good work that has been done on this earth ! Lacking clinical case studies of these good men, we are going to trace here the strange history of a man with two mothers -a man who spent nearly eighty years resolving the conflicts that these two women put into his life!
The man was Moses. He became the greatest leader of ancient times and he is almost a living presence in the world today, pulsating with life and power in every movement of human affairs, and exercising unconsciously an untold influence upon them, but he was not fit to be anything else than a shepherd until he had sorted out the tangled apron strings that bound him to his strangely assorted mothers!
Moses was born in a great era. It was the day of Egyptian splendor. Its territory had been extended by conquest, wealth rolled in, science and art were flourishing, and the King Ramses II, one of the few kings of the world to whom the title of great had been affixed, was carrying out the series of public works, temples, monuments, obelisks, and pyramids which are identified with his reign. It was a time of great national development and progress.
Rameses had the human labor ready at hand with which to carry out his enormous building operations. The Hebrews had come down into Egypt under stress of famine four centuries before, and had multiplied into a people numbered by millions. They were industrious and patient, both convenient and inviting to the greed of an ambitious tyrant. They were seized for the great projects which Ramses planned. They were organized into bands and companies, taskmasters were set over hem, cruel laws were enacted to keep them in servitude, heavier and heavier tasks were laid upon them as they became skilled in their work.
The picture writing remaining to the present day gives ample illustration of the harsh measures adopted in slave labor, and these were greatly aggravated in the case of the Hebrews. The laws in operation at that time were : no position above that of a common laborer was permitted to a Jew ; no leisure was allowed, lest any of them should seek to raise rebellion ; and the male children were to be cast into the Nile, to keep the population within manageable limits. In such a time was Moses born.
One mother of Moses, you recall, was a princess, the daughter of Ramses, king of Egypt, who found him floating in a basket on the Nile River. Her home was a royal palace. Servants wasted no time in carrying out her every whim. A maid arranged her hair in elaborate style. Another dozen or so maids looked after her regal wardrobe. The best of teachers had developed her tastes in all the arts.
Her poise and assurance were natural, since nothing was allowed to threaten them. She was a charming mother. From the princess, Moses learned to be a prince. He learned assurance, self-reliance, ambition and pride. She loved him, and she won his love when, as a boy of twelve, he left his own mother and father to become her son.
What did he leave behind when he went to the palace? What sort of a mother kissed him good-by as he stepped out of the old life? What kind of a front door did she stand in to wave a last farewell ?
The door was the door of a slave cabin. The mother was a slave and a member of a race of slaves. Instead of directing servants, she was a servant. Her clothes were simple and plain in contrast to the princess’ splendour. Her tastes may well have been undeveloped ; what arts does a slave woman have time to know ? She had no knowledge of politics, court etiquette, and protocol. She may have been drab and careworn.
Yet Jockeyed, the wife of Am-ram, was a great deal more than a slave. Here was a mother and father who by faith and action had saved their baby son when by the king’s command every other infant boy in the slave colony had been destroyed. Here were parents who resolved to disobey the king and from the papyrus of the Nile they prepared a chest or ark, making it water-tight with mud dried in the sun and then smeared it with bitumen. They sent Miriam, Moses’ sister, to watch the sequel: the coming of Pharaoh’s daughter, Themuthis, to wash in the water’s of the river, the discovery of Moses, the womanly sympathy of the princess as the child wept, Miriam’s bringing Jochebed to be the child’s nurse ; and Moses not only being saved, but becoming the adopted son and protégé of the great king’s daughter.
These were the two mothers of the man of God—the princess and the slave. In his own parent’s home Moses doubtless remained during the plastic years of infancy. It is fortunate that Jochebed was able to have him in his early years. Her’s was the better opportunity, and she used it well. The culture she knew was fidelity to God. Her etiquette was the law of kindness. Her poise was trust in divine care. And her beauty was the inner beauty that no maid could apply, because it came from an abiding relationship with God.
His parents, strong in faith, laid in his mind the knowledge of God, of the history of his fathers, of the promises of a country where they should expand into a great nation, and of the star which should arise out of Jacob shining in the far-off future as the pledge of a happier day.
Jochebed did not have a Bible to lay open on the table from which to read to him. It was Moses himself who later wrote the first five books of the Old Testament —the Pentateuch. But into his heart she tried to put love for God. From her he learned selflessness -the great principle of our Lord. We do not know that she saw any results at the time. A boy will cover his feelings. A twelve-year -old often speaks gruffly for fear some stray fringe of his emotions might be showing. Yet the early childhood in the humble home was full of indelible influence which helped to mould a marvellous future.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One