In this blog we have often investigated how Psalm 91 tells the story of an eagle, figuratively the Holy Spirit, raises its young. Psalm 91 is thus a story of the Holy Spirit training believers.
Today we begin a series of articles on how the Holy Spirit causes believers to triumph over forces of death and destruction. Specifically we look at how Moses, the most likely author of Psalm 91, escaped mass murders on several occasions.
Psalm 91:5-7 tells us, “You shall not be afraid of … the destruction that lays waste at noon. A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not approach you.”
The first time that Moses escaped a mass murder was when he was a mere babe. Exodus chapters 1 and 2 tell us the reigning Egyptian pharaoh at the time of Moses’ birth, fearing the rapid growth of the nation of Israel within his borders, ordered the midwives assigned to the Hebrews to kill all male children at time of birth. The midwives found a way to avoid such heinous acts, and hence the pharaoh made an edict to the nation to cast the newborn Hebrew males into the Nile River. This act was highly unusual for the Egyptians, for Egyptian culture was renown for the saving of children from abandonment and death and making infanticide a punishable offence. But this also illustrates the power of Satan to bring extraordinary devices to destroy the messianic mission of God
The Nile is most usually associated with the Egyptian god Hapi, who was considered the author of the Nile’s regular inundations to provide watering and fertilization of the land. Because of the fact that life-giving crops resulted from this inundation, Hapi and the Nile are most often associated with fertility and life. 1 However, the Nile was also considered to be the residence of a number of gods associated with death: Aapep, The Destroyer, a black serpent several miles long; Aker, the god of earth and death, a male lion with a black mane; Amemt the Devourer, Eater of the Dead, possessing the head of a crocodile and the body of a leopard; Amset, Guardian of the Dead; Anubis, Guardian of the Dead; 2 and a number of others, including the crocodile-god, Sobek, whom travelers prayed to for protection from the feared crocodiles.3
The solution that Moses’ mother found to circumvent the killing of her son was first to hide him for three months, and then when this became impossible, she placed him in a little ark of reeds, daubed with tar and pitch, and hid it among the reeds of the Nile that grew in the water near the riverbank. He was discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised by her, becoming a prince of Egypt and general of the Egyptian army.
The unusual strategy of the mother of Moses provides an illustration of how to deal with a deathly onslaught of Satan. Jesus said, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mk. 8:35). Moses’ mother, whatever her reasoning, undertook actions that are highly significant to the story of salvation that unfolds in the Bible, surrendering her son to the deathly surroundings, but leaning on the providence and protection of God. The basket, or ark, of reeds recalls the ark of Noah, which was a vehicle of salvation for the human race and represents Christ. Just as the ark of Noah was coated with pitch (Hebrew kopher – – taken form kaphar, which means atonement),4 this little ark is covered with pitch (Hebrew zepheth). Once again the significance is of being saved by God’s atoning grace. However the word zepheth is used in Isaiah. 34:9 in connection with apocalyptic judgments similar to the 10 plagues of Egypt. The little ark carrying the child is also treated with tar (Hebrew chemar) which comes from a Hebrew word chamar indicating to glow with redness or to smear with pitch. 5 In all this we see strong foreshadowing of Christ’s atonement to cover us with His atoning blood and of Moses’ calling. For Moses and Israel will be saved in the Passover, having their doors covered by the blood of the lambs of sacrifice. He will lead Israel through the Sea of Reeds (Red Sea), leaving the bondage of Egypt (the World) behind.
Exodus 2:2 says that Moses’ mother hid him, using the Hebrew word tsaphan — to cover over. 6 Again this speaks of atonement, for atonement in the Old Testament is a covering of sins, but it also speaks of the hiddeness of a Secret Place. This Secret Place is a place of intimate communion with God, and a place of divine protection. Baby Moses’ little ark of reeds was a place of atonement to him, a Secret Place, just as the Holy of Holies with its Ark of God would one day be the Secret Place where God could commune with Moses. An experience he writes about in Psalm 91:1 when he declares, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
Our look at this part of Moses life teaches us this lesson: entering into the Secret Place may sometimes require a death to self, a surrender of one’s own life. When the believer is faced with fierce attacks of Satan, the inner peace of entering into our Secret Place with God may seem unattainable without surrender of one’s own life. Sometimes, just as Moses’ mother did, we must let go and let God. It is God’s battle, and only He can win it.
We know very little about Moses’ mother, only that her name was Jochebed and that she was married to Amram and the mother of Moses, Aaron and Miriam (Ex.6:20; Num. 26:59). But we can see that her sacrifice and yieldedness to God made it possible for her younger son to live a life of extraordinary dimensions, a life that had much of its future forecast in the simple reeds, pitch and tar of a basket that floated in the deathly Nile.
For additional information on how Psalm 91 portrays an eagle raising its young, buy a copy of my book, Heaven’s Eagle, from this website.
1. Wikipedia. Hapi (Nile god); http://en.wikpedia.org/wiki/Hapy (accessed January 25, 2012).
2. Necromancer Games, Gods of the Nile. http://www.necromancergames.com/pdf/khemitian-gods.pdf. (accessed January 2, 2012).
3. Wikpedia. Sobek; http://en.wikpedia.org/wiki/sobek (accessed January 2, 2012).
4. Strong, James The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible; Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary. Nashville, TN. Thomas Nelson, 2001 pp. 134-135.
5. Ibid. p. 77.
6. Ibid. p. 91.
