Moses was the great-great grandson of Jacob in the line of Levi, Kohath, and Amram. He was born in Egypt in the year of the world 2383, which, according to our computation published in Elpis Israel, was 727 years after the Flood, and 350 years after the confirmation of the promise of Canaan to Abraham and his Seed for an everlasting possession. He was named Moses by Pharaoh's daughter, importing that he was saved out of the water. We do not propose here to compile a history of this, the greatest man of his time, and of the sixteen centuries and a half which succeeded the passage of the Red Sea. It cannot be better related than it is in the admirable writings current in his name. Our object is to call attention to him as a representative man --a man representing or typifying another man, even "the Man Christ Jesus."
The history of Moses is representative from his flight into the country of Midian, Arabia Petrea south of Mount Sinai, to his decease when the Lord hid him from his nation. There was a likeness, indeed, between Moses and Jesus in their infancy; for while the life of Moses was jeopardized by the decree of Pharaoh, Jesus was also endangered by the mandate of Herod against Rachel's children of two years old and under. But Yahweh preserved them; and thus were they cast upon Him from their birth, and kept in safety, or "made to hope" upon their mothers' breasts" (Matt. 2:13-18, Ps. 22:9,10). There was a resemblance also in the high qualifications and faithful self denial of these two personages in their manhood. "Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in word, and deeds." This was previous to his attaining the age of forty years. To this time, though the adopted grandson of Pharaoh, and heir apparent of the Egyptian throne, and surrounded by the licentious notables of its court, where the God of Abraham was unknown, Moses was a man of faith--a learned, mighty, and faithful man, who might have worn the crown of the greatest monarchy of the age, with all its treasures, but he renounced them all, and became a fugitive, and companion of oppressed bondmen, that he might share in the kingdom to be established under Abraham's Seed in the adjoining country of the Canaanites (Heb. 11:24-26). Jesus, too, was the most learned and the wisest man of that or any other age before or since. He was wise and learned by divine intuition (John 7:15-17); and in the language of Cleopas, "was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people" (Luke 24:19). His political self-denial was a conspicuous as that of Moses. Thrice he refused dominion and a crown at the hand of any power inferior to God (Luke 4:5-8; Jno. 6:15). "All these tetrarchal kingdoms of the land," said their possessor, "will I give to thee, if thou wilt do homage for them to me;" but on such terms he rejected them. He knew that all upon Israel's land was His, and the world in its widest sense beside. A then present possession would have saved him much suffering, and have exalted him at once to honor and glory. But he knew that to receive even his own at the hand of the enemy would be to forswear the supremacy of Yahweh, and to become Satan's king instead of God's. "Thou shalt do homage to the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." These were the words of Moses to which he had respect as the words of Yahweh. He knew that to receive the kingdom glory and dominion of the world from any other power than God would be to descend from the high position of the predestined representative of the Divine Majesty upon the earth for ever, to the degradation of a mere equality with Caesar, and the world-rulers of the age. Yea, like Moses, "he had respect unto the recompense of the reward;" and "for the joy that was set before him" he refused to let the people make him king, "choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season." The "kingdom is not from hence" (Jno. 18:36). It can only be received with eternal honor and glory from thence; that is, from God, not from satan nor the people. Moses and Jesus understood this well; therefore Moses forsook Egypt, and Jesus forsook Palestine, that they might receive the royalty from God at the appointed time.
Thus far the resemblance between Moses and Jesus is complete. Cradled in peril, saved of God, and hopeful of the same promise, they were men of renown in word and deed, whose faith was "made perfect" by their works after the example of their father Abraham (James 2:22), leaving behind them illustrious exemplifications of the truth, that the enjoyment of the pleasures of sin for a season is incompatible and fatal to an inheritance of the kingdom of God. But here the present similitude between them is suspended. Moses and Jesus were indeed the rejected of the nation, as is already implied in the allusion to their departure from their people, the one into Midian, where he met with God, in the bush; and the other to a far country, where he is still in the presence of Him whose glory illumined the rocky Arabia: but as yet, unlike the case of Moses, Yahweh has not yet sent Jesus from "holy ground," shining with unapproachable light, to be a ruler and a deliverer, to bring the tribes of Israel out of the land of the enemy, even those tribes which said unto him, "Who made thee a ruler and a judge? Away with such a fellow; we will not have him to reign over us." But Moses, whom they refused, they afterwards received as their commander, legislator, and king. They placed themselves under him as Yahweh's representative, through whom the nation should obtain political independence and organization, and by whom it should be put into possession of a country, even of that country from which their fathers came before they migrated into Egypt, and which was promised to Abraham and his Seed for an everlasting possession (Gen. 12:1-3; 13:14-17; 15:7, 8, 18-21; 17:5,6). This was an acceptance of Moses which finds no counterpart in the annals of Israel and the history of Jesus. They have refused him as they refused Moses, but a like acceptance of him is yet to come.
From the accession of Moses to the leadership of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, his history is that of the nation also. He is no longer to be contemplated as an individual isolated from his people; but as a prophet (Deut. 34:10), a mediator (Exod. 24:2,; Deut. 5:5; Gal. 3:19), a lawgiver, a man of war (Exod. 14:25-27; Numb. 21:34), and a king (Deut. 33:5). These were his relations to Israel from his second appearing in their midst to the end of his career. He was a mediator-prophet, a lawgiving-prophet, a warrior-prophet, and a royal-prophet. He was not simply a man through whom God spoke to the tribes of Israel as he spoke to them through Ezekiel--a man whose functions were restricted to the utterance of the divine purpose; but a man who was not only to speak but to execute the will of Yahweh, whose servant he was.
(By Dr. John Thomas)