Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Moses, then, was by ancestral stock a Chaldean, but was born in Egypt, his ancestors having relocated out of Babylon to Egypt because of a prolonged famine. Born in the seventh generation and reared in royal style, he found himself amid the following circumstances. When the Hebrews in Egypt had increased to a great multitude, the king of the country, fearing a plot arising from their numbers, ordered that the females born to the Hebrews be reared (for a woman is weak for war), but that the males be destroyed, since he suspected their vigorous youth. The child, being of noble family, his parents kept hidden and reared for three months running, natural affection overcoming the tyrant's cruelty; but afterward, fearing lest they perish along with the child, they made a kind of vessel out of the native reed, placed the child in it, and set it out along the banks of the river, which was marshy there, while the child's sister stood watching from a distance to see what would happen.
At that point Pharaoh's daughter, who across many years had borne no offspring though she longed for one, came that same day down to the river to bathe and perform rites of purification; and on hearing the infant's cry, she directed that it be fetched to her, and pitying it she began looking for someone to nurse it. Then the sister of the child ran up and said she was acquainted with a Hebrew woman who had recently given birth and would be able to supply a nurse, should the princess wish it; and once the princess consented and requested this, the sister fetched the child's very own mother, to serve as his nurse, presenting her as though she were a stranger, for an agreed payment. The queen then named the child Moses, aptly, since she had lifted him out of the water (the Egyptians' word for water being "mou"), the water into which he had been thrown to perish. And indeed anyone who perished in water they term "Moyses."
It is plain, then, that earlier on, when the child underwent circumcision, his parents assigned him a different name, and he was then called Joakim. Beyond this he bore a third name conferred in heaven once he had been taken up, as those initiated tell it — Melchi. Upon reaching maturity he was schooled in arithmetic and geometry, in rhythm and harmony, and moreover in metrics and music too, under those Egyptians most accomplished in such matters, and beyond that the symbolic philosophy their hieroglyphic writings display. The remainder of a well-rounded education came from the Greeks then resident in Egypt, fitting for one raised as a prince, so Philo relates in his account of Moses's life; and additionally he mastered Assyrian script and the study of celestial bodies under the Chaldeans and the Egyptians alike, which is why Acts notes that he had been trained in every branch of Egyptian learning. Eupolemus, in his treatise concerning the kings of Judea, states that Moses ranked as the earliest sage, the first to pass the alphabet on to the Jewish people, and that from the Jews the Phoenicians acquired it, and the Greeks in turn from the Phoenicians. And once he had reached full manhood, he honed his intellect further, striving to match the erudition of his own kin and ancestors, until eventually he struck down and slew the Egyptian who had wrongfully attacked the Hebrew.
The initiates say that he destroyed the Egyptian by word alone, just as later, indeed, Peter is recorded in the Acts to have killed by a word those who had embezzled the price of the field and lied about it. Artapanus, at any rate, in his treatise On the Jews relates that Moses, having been shut up in prison by Chenephres king of the Egyptians because he asked that the people be released from Egypt, went out at night when the prison was opened by the will of God, and, entering the palace, stood over the sleeping king and roused him; and the king, shaken by what had occurred, demanded that Moses reveal the name of the deity who had dispatched him, and Moses, leaning in near his ear, whispered it to him; and the king, upon hearing it, collapsed unable to speak, but held upright by Moses, revived.
Concerning the upbringing of Moses, Ezekiel too, the poet of the Jewish tragedies, agrees with us, in the drama entitled Exagoge, writing thus in the person of Moses: For when Pharaoh the king saw our race grown greatly numerous, he devised much treachery against us, afflicting our people with brickwork and heavy buildings, and he built up cities for the sake of those ill-fated men; then he proclaimed to us, the race of the Hebrews, that the male children be cast into the deep-flowing river. There my mother who bore me hid me three months, as she told me; but fearing to be discovered, she put me out, having wrapped an ornament about me, at the edge of the river, into a deep, thick marsh. And Miriam my sister watched nearby; and then the king's daughter came down with her maidservants together to the baths, to brighten her young flesh. And seeing me at once, and taking pity, she took me up, and knew I was a Hebrew; and Miriam my sister, running up, says this to the princess: do you wish that I quickly find a nurse for this child from among the Hebrews? And she urged the girl on. So she went and told our mother, and our mother came at once quickly and took me into her arms. And the king's daughter said: nurse this child, woman, and I will pay you your wage. And she named him Moses, because of the fact that she had drawn him up from the wet bank of the river. And when the time of my infancy had passed, my mother brought me to the princess's halls, having told and related to me everything — my ancestral lineage, and the gifts of God. So then for as long as we had the time of childhood, she promised everything, royal upbringing and education, as though I were from her own womb; but when the full circle of days had come round, I went out from the royal house.
Then, once he has told of the clash between the Hebrew man and the Egyptian, and of how the Egyptian was buried in the sand, he speaks thus concerning the other fight: why do you strike one weaker than yourself? And he said: who appointed you a judge or overseer over us here? Will you not kill me, just as you did the man yesterday? And I, afraid, said: how has this become known? So from there he flees, and shepherds sheep, being trained beforehand for leadership through shepherding; for the pastoral art is a preliminary exercise in kingship for one who is going to have charge of that gentlest flock of all, mankind, just as hunting is by nature a preliminary exercise for men of war. And from there God leads him on to the command of the Hebrews.
Then the Egyptians, who were often foolish, were admonished many times, while the Hebrews became spectators of the evils which others endured without danger to themselves, thereby learning the power of God. And further, the Egyptians, who by hearsay would not accept the effects of that power, disbelieving out of folly like fools, then, as has been said, the fools came to know it only after it had been done; and afterward, when the Hebrews departed, they went off carrying much plunder of the Egyptians with them, not out of love of money, as their accusers say (for God was not persuading them to desire what belonged to others), but first because they were receiving the wage owed to them for all the time they had served the Egyptians, and second because in a certain way they took revenge, paying back the Egyptians in their own coin as lovers of money by the carrying off of plunder, just as those had wronged the Hebrews by their enslavement. So then, whether one should say this happened as in war, they thought it right to carry off the goods of their enemies by the law of victors over the vanquished, since they were the stronger over the weaker (and the cause of the war was just: the Hebrews had come to the Egyptians as suppliants on account of famine, and the Egyptians, enslaving these strangers, forced them to serve them in the manner of captives, without even paying them their wage) — or whether one should say this happened as in peace, they received the plunder as wages from those who were unwilling, who for a long time had not paid it, but had been withholding it.
← All of Clement of Alexandria: Exhortation, Instructor & Miscellanies