Highlights in Exodus: The Appointment

Highlights in Exodus: The Appointment

In our last presentation in Exodus, titled The Life, and Wife, of Moses, we had also taken some time discussing the Tel el Amarna tablets, which contain a cache of correspondence from the various rulers of the city-states of Canaan, most of them written to the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaton. This was expedient to do, since in our first presentation, The Exodus In Controversy and History, we discussed inscriptions left behind by his immediate predecessor, Amenhotep III, which mentioned a people whom he had described as the “nomads of Yahweh”, and as having been in the land of Canaan in his time.

We have dated the Exodus event to about 1450 BC. Amenhotep III ruled Egypt from about 1391 to 1353 BC, and Akhenaten from about 1353 to 1336 BC, according to the general chronologies which sometimes differ by a few years. So after forty years of wandering in the desert of Sinai, the children of Israel, the only group who could possibly have been called the “nomads of Yahweh”, are in Canaan, which is consistent with the Biblical account of the book of Joshua. Then some time later the rulers of the various cities in Canaan are appealing to help from Egypt to ward off the invading hapiru, or habiru, a group which academic scholars are resistant to identifying as Hebrews, in spite of the consistency of the reports in the Amarna tablets with the events recorded in the books of Joshua and the early chapters of Judges.

So we would assert that the academic scholars have an agenda, that the habiru are none other than Joshua’s Hebrews, and that this timeline and narrative makes evident the absolute historicity of the Biblical accounts of the events which followed the Exodus. We would also assert that the only way that Amenhotep III could have even been familiar with the Name of Yahweh, is because the Exodus event itself must have made a lasting impression on the Egyptians, giving them strong reasons to remember that Name. We shall discuss that further, when Moses faces the pharaoh of his time, who we esteem to have been Thutmose III. He ruled Egypt from 1479 to 1425 BC, and he was the great-grandfather of Amenhotep III. 

Now we are at a point in Exodus where we shall focus on the Scripture, although there will be further archaeological or historical references at a few points in the balance of this book. For that we have a long digression on a historical subject at the end of our presentation here, so that we may know more about Thutmose, the pharaoh of the Exodus. Going forward, we shall also evade all of the claims of various charlatans such as Ron Wyatt, who never found an Egyptian chariot wheel, or other claims regarding a Red Sea crossing far south of where it actually could have happened, and take a more pragmatic approach to interpreting the text.

While the archaeology is an important contribution to understanding the historicity of the Exodus account, there are other ways to prove to oneself that the Bible is true even without archaeology. In fact, Christians professed faith in the Scriptures for eighteen hundred years before the birth of modern archaeology. But the Bible is not true if one insists that it is a history of the whole world, and every race which dwells upon it. Scripture is only true, and consistent from Genesis through the Revelation, once it becomes evident that it is only dealing with one race of people, the creation of Adam, as opposed to other races which were already here, and that the concern of Yahweh God for that one race was narrowed, first to the sons of Noah after the other descendants of Adam had been destroyed, and then to Abraham alone, and the seed of the promise which would come out of his loins, through Isaac and then Jacob.

While the proof of this view is evident throughout the words of the prophets and the New Testament, there is also a significant example right here in Exodus chapter 2, in a lesson of which is conveyed in the early life of Moses, so far as it is related in Scripture. Only one incident in the early life of Moses is related in Scripture, which is what happened when Moses saw an Egyptian beating one of the Hebrews, and the necessary events which followed thereafter. According to the Exodus timeline, Moses was forty years old when he fled Egypt, and only this one event which led him to do so is recorded here from his long life, a life which must have been eventful, since throughout those forty years he was living as a son in the household of a quite powerful king. 

As we had already discussed in our last presentation, the martyr Stephen had given a description of this one event in the life of Moses, in Acts chapter 7. But Paul, describing the walk of the faith exhibited by various Biblical figures throughout history, had said of Moses in part, in Hebrews chapter 11: 

24 By faith Moses, becoming full-grown, refused to be called a son of the daughter of Pharaoh, 25 rather preferring to be mistreated with the people of Yahweh than to have the temporary rewards of error, 26 having esteemed the reproach of the Anointed greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, since he had regard for the reward. 27 By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the temper of the king, since seeing the invisible he persevered.

So Paul professed to have understood the motivation of Moses for what he had done, but so did Stephen, where he had attested:

25 For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not.

Perhaps those men had more information than we have available today, however the point is clear, and it is evident in Exodus chapter 2, that Moses had more regard for his own oppressed people than he had for the high status which he had enjoyed as the son of pharaoh’s daughter. So we would assert, that because Moses loved his own people even more than he had himself, for that reason was he qualified and chosen by Yahweh to lead his people out of Egypt. But this also speaks for the value of the life of the Egyptian in the eyes of God. In order to reward Moses for this act, by giving him a much greater responsibility as leader of His people, Yahweh God Himself must have also valued the lives of the children of Israel above those of the Egyptians. So in the eyes of God, all people are not the same. The Egyptian was a fellow Adamic man, of the race of Mizraim through Ham. There was a law in Genesis chapter 9 (9:6), that anyone who killed such a man would pay for it with his own life. But what Moses had done was never considered murder in the eyes of God, and instead, he was rewarded for his deed. This, of course, should stand as a lesson for all of us today. We should all wish to be like Moses.

With that, we should also repeat the fact that Moses was not a race-mixer, which is something that the modern denominational churches routinely accuse him of doing. As we had discussed, Moses actually married a remote cousin, a descendant of Midian, one of the sons which Abraham had with Keturah. While the later Midianites became adversaries to the children of Israel, and while they had also followed in the fornication of the surrounding nations, so they were ultimately rejected, but that was not the situation at the time when Moses went to Midian, where he had found a wife.

So now we shall commence with Exodus chapter 3, where Moses is still in Midian:

3:1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. 

Mount Horeb seems to have been another name for Sinai, as the Brown, Driver Briggs lexicon also attests [1], where it is defined as desert or waste. Sinai is generally defined as meaning thorny. Several times in Deuteronomy and elsewhere the name Horeb is used synonymously for Sinai, such as in Deuteronomy chapter 5 where we read:

2 The LORD our God made a covenant with us in Horeb.

Then in chapter 29:

1 These are the words of the covenant, which the LORD commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

Then even later, in Psalm 106:

19 They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image. 20 Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.

And in Malachi chapter 4:

4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

Of course, there are several other examples. So once again, this is further evidence that the wife of Moses was not an Ethiopian from Africa, but had simply dwelt in lands in Arabia which were associated with the tribes of Kush who had dwelt there for many centuries before Midian was even born. In Scripture, it is also not unusual that places had two different names, and both were known and used by the Israelites. The area of Horeb was within reasonable proximity to Egypt, Sheba and other tribes of Cush, to Edom and the Horites whom Esau had joined himself to, who were Canaanites, and also to Midian, Ishmael and other tribes. So it is quite possible that some of these tribes used one name in reference to the place, and others used the other name. Horeb is a specific name, and it is not used elsewhere in Scripture as a general word for desert, for which there are other Hebrew terms. 

2 And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

This apparent fire in the bush here is called “the angel of Yahweh”, but in the subsequent verses it is Yahweh God Himself who is said to have been doing the speaking, and who attests to having “come down” to deliver Israel from the Egyptians. But we would insist that there is no contradiction here. An angel is simply a messenger or representative. It need not even be a person, and the text is not insisting that there is a person here, referring to an entity with a human body. Often angels are persons, however here the fire itself, the apparent burning in the bush, is the angel. So we would insist that the burning in the bush is the way in which Yahweh had at this time chosen to manifest Himself to Moses. Yahweh, being invisible, and men, frequently needing physical manifestations in order to understand the actual presence of something, such as a Spirit, chose to represent His presence with this burning in the bush. That may be called an angel, but in this instance it is also a representative of the physical presence of God, so that Moses could understand that God is present. Often in Genesis, God had spoken to men in visions, but this time He chose something of greater substance. 

3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. 4 And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

“And Yahweh saw that he turned aside to see”: of course, Moses very likely did not record the event until some time later, but this is how he remembered it, that the “angel” burning in the bush had represented the presence of Yahweh God Himself, who was also manifest in the voice which he heard. 

5 And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

This incident is also recollected by Stephen in his account of Moses in Acts chapter 7, and the concept of “holy ground” appears again in Joshua chapter 5:

13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? 14 And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto his servant? 15 And the captain of the LORD'S host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so.

This happened as Joshua had the city of Jericho under siege, and the walls of the city would fall in a miraculous manner. So it seems that this “captain of the host of Yahweh” must have been an angel sent by God, who seems to have both assisted and tried the humility of Joshua. Therefore perhaps we may interpret the attribution of “holy ground” as a reference to the proximity of the presence of Yahweh God, and also of His angels. However when the angels of God who were sent to destroy Sodom had consorted and lodged with Abraham, and later with Lot, they did not insist that those men remove their shoes. So perhaps Moses was also told to remove his shoes as a demonstration of humility, which Moses displays in other ways as the account proceeds: 

6 Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

This informs us that Moses, once he was told these things, believed that to look upon the burning in the bush was to look upon God, for reason that he hid his face. So Moses was curious of the burning in the bush, but once he found it represented God, he was too humble and feared to look at it any longer. This also indicates that there was information which Jacob had passed down to his sons concerning Yahweh his God, the God who saw him through all of the trials which he had faced in Padanaram, and later in Canaan. Jacob must also have passed down the experiences of his fathers, since Moses had recorded so many of them in Genesis.

But we cannot rule out the possibility that at least some of the patriarchs had also kept journals. The keeping of journals in ancient Egypt is documented in works such as The Story of Sinuhe, an Egyptian court officer in the 12th Dynasty of Egypt and the rule of pharaoh Senusret I, who came to rule about 1962 BC, which by our chronology is just a few years before the birth of Abraham. Sinuhe was a court officer who fled Egypt, lived for a time in Syria, and was eventually returned and restored to his original status. The account is also valuable for its description of the Levant at that time. While most of the surviving journals uncovered by archaeologists in Mesopotamia were kept purely for business reasons, the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe is an example of a journal kept for personal or biographical reasons. 

7 And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. 

Of course this would mark a return to the same land which had already been promised to Abraham forever, from as early as Genesis chapter 15, where foreboding the captivity in Egypt, Yahweh had told Abraham:

14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. 15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. 16 But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. 17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. 18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: 19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.

Now Moses receives an explicit appointment:

10 Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.

This appointment is the entire reason why Yahweh had appeared to Moses here, and we have already seen how Moses was qualified for the position, both in his education, and in his love for his people, upon whom he had placed a much greater value than the status which he himself had in the household of pharaoh. So Moses was qualified for this appointment not only because he loved his people, but because on their account he denied himself, he denied his own life, and loved his people selflessly. This is what Christ Himself had meant where we read in Luke chapter 9:

23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

At this time, Moses is about eighty years old, and he has spent forty years in exile on account of the fact that he denied himself. But as we had demonstrated in our Genesis commentary, Jacob was seventy years old when he first went to Haran for a wife, and ended up staying there nearly twenty years working in the fields, and having thirteen children with four wives. Unlike Esau, Jacob lived in self-denial, never having sought the pleasure of a woman on his own, but awaiting the instructions of Isaac his father. His father Isaac denied himself when he was laid on the altar for sacrifice, and he never protested his father’s actions. Abraham had also denied himself, as he was evidently a wealthy man living among his own people, and gave that up in obedience to God, who told him to leave his ancestral town and move to Canaan, at the age of seventy-five, to live as a stranger wandering among an accursed people. Yahweh would sustain Moses in his later years, just as He had sustained Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which He promises as the dialog here continues. Now Moses, in yet another expression of his humility, questions God and asks how he is worthy of this appointment:

11 And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? 12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

Here we see that Horeb certainly is the same place as Sinai. In the opening verse of this chapter, Horeb was referred to as “the mountain of God”, but that label must have been applied by Moses much later, when he wrote this account, because of the experiences which he had with God on this mountain, both here and in the later chapters of Exodus. 

As we proceed, it is evident that Moses had accepted this answer, and the appointment for the task upon which he was about to embark. Moses, like Abraham before him, had accepted this task solely upon the Word of God, without having seen any of his mighty works or his ability to actually deliver, although the burning in the bush must have been a significant apparition. Another advantage which Moses had, that Abraham did not have, were the reports of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob which must have been made in reference to this God, and handed down to their sons. 

13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

This is a reasonable request, even if such a demand had not been made by the patriarchs, down through the time of the sons of Jacob. For Jacob, it was enough to hear the words “I am the God of Abraham thy father”, as we see in Genesis chapter 26:

24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake.

Nevertheless, Yahweh accommodates Moses, who would at least have something by which to refer to this God:

14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

Here we have a phrase which in Hebrew reads אהיה אשׁר אהיה, or ahayah ashar ahayah, and which is translated in the King James Version as I AM THAT I AM but in the New American Standard Bible as I AM WHO I AM. The connecting word, אשׁר or ashar (# 834) is a particle of relation, which may be translated as there, where, or who, among other words depending upon its context [2]. The Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew phrase in Greek as ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν, which Brenton had translated as I am THE BEING, which is a fair interpretation, but I would rather write I am HE WHO IS, reflecting the masculine gender of the final words in the phrase. 

The other word, which appears twice, is אהיה or ahayah, which is a phrase formed by prefixing the particle א to the word היה or hayah (# 1961). The א or aleph as a prefix means “I”. The word hayah has a wide range of meanings, to the point where its definition consumes four full and dense pages in the Brown, Driver Briggs lexicon. Among them are to happen, to come to pass, to become or to be or come into being. At the beginning of their definition, they explain that היה or hayah is a parallel form of הוה or hawah. [3]

So with great simplicity, here we would assert that the Tetragrammaton is formed by Moses, or perhaps by Yahweh Himself in his instructions to Moses at the end of this chapter, when the pronoun particle at the beginning of the phrase אהיה or ahayah is converted to the third person by changing the prefix to a י or yodh, spelling יהיה or perhaps yahayah, but the alternate spelling of the verb was also employed, הוה or hawah rather than היה or hayah, to form יהוה, spelled yodh-he-vau-he, which is the familiar spelling of the Tetragrammaton which we know as Yahweh. Of course, Yahweh referred to Himself when he said I AM THAT I AM, but from the perspective of men the pronoun would have to be changed to refer to Yahweh.

In Strong’s original Concordance, the Tetragrammaton is found at its own entry, יהוה or Yahweh (# 3068), which he transliterates it as Yehovah, and he acknowledged that the root of the word is היה or hayah. Seeing that the alternate spelling of הוה or hawah was evidently chosen by Moses to represent the Name, affixed with the prefix meaning he, it is easy to see how the form Yehovah came into use in English. However I would prefer the testimony of Flavius Josephus, who had explained, writing in Greek, that the Name of God is spelled with four vowels [4]. With four Greek vowels, we can spell Yahweh, but not Yehovah or even Yehawah. However it seems that vowel sounds were uttered in spoken Hebrew according to some colloquial usage of words, rather than by any strict grammatical rules. We may never know, because true Hebrew has not been spoken for many centuries. So we can only use what we can approximate from what little information we have. 

15 And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

So here we may perceive that Yahweh God does not really have a name as we know names, special labels identifying certain unique things or individuals. Rather, He chose to simply refer to Himself as He who is, or as the Septuagint has it, THE BEING, the I AM. No man can make such a claim, since man is vanity and all men come to the point where they are not. But God is, God was, and God shall be, as He is not vanity and He shall not die. So we read in the declaration of Yahshua Christ, in Revelation chapter 1:

8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Where He said “and which was”, it does not mean that He somehow was not, at some point in time. Rather, it means that He is the God of yesterday, as well as the God of the remote past when He dealt with our fathers, and the God of the even more remote past when He created the earth and the things in it, and He is also the God of now, as well as the God of the future. So HE IS, and that is the most basic interpretation of His Name, Yahweh. Not only was Moses appointed here at Horeb at the burning bush, but God appointed the Name by which His people should know and address Him, and that Name is a simple and humble phrase declaring His existence.

Now Moses is told how to begin the execution of his appointed task:

16 Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt: 17 And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.

This is a repeat of the words which Yahweh had spoken to Moses earlier in chapter, in verse 8. But the context is different, so the repetition is necessitated. In verse 8, Yahweh expressed His Own intent, which here in verse 17, He is instructing Moses to relate that directly to the elders of Israel. Perhaps this would also give Moses credibility when he does speak to the elders, since he would appear to be an outsider, but they should have been able to recall the promises and other things passed down to them from their fathers.

Where the next verse opens, Yahweh God expresses with confidence that the elders would indeed listen to and obey Moses. It is possible, but not certain, that at least some of them had heard of Moses. 

18 And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.

So Moses is told by Yahweh to use His Name, the Tetragrammaton which we pronounce as Yahweh, when communicating with the pharaoh, something which he must have done, since perhaps fifty or sixty years later, pharaoh Amenhotep III, the great grandson of the pharaoh of the time of Moses, who is Thutmose III, remembered that name and described Israel as the “Shasu of Yahweh” dwelling in the land of Canaan.

Of course the pharaoh of Egypt was a very proud man, so Yahweh also knew with confidence how he would react to the request of Moses:

19 And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand. 20 And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go. 21 And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty: 22 But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.

Here, in order to illustrate the type of man that Thutmose III, the pharaoh of the Exodus, had been, I am going to cite a lengthy section of an article from Britannica, which I think is a fair evaluation of the history of the period. Other sources are not so accurate concerning Hatshepsut, and still others glorify Thutmose III to a much greater extent. The subject of this article is the period called the Egyptian New Kingdom and begins with the 18th Dynasty. The first two pharaohs of this dynasty were Ahmose, who drove out the Hyksos rulers of Lower Egypt, and Amenhotep I, who began to expand the borders of Egypt. After him, the next rulers are as follows:

Thutmose I and Thutmose II

Lacking a surviving heir, Amenhotep I was succeeded by one of his generals, Thutmose I (ruled c. 1493–c. 1483 bce), who married his own full sister Ahmose. In the south Thutmose destroyed the Karmah state. He inscribed a rock as a boundary marker, later confirmed by Thutmose III, near Kanisa-Kurgus, north of the Fifth Cataract. He then executed a brilliant campaign into Syria and across the Euphrates River, where he erected a victory stela near Carchemish.

Thus, in the reign of Thutmose I, Egyptian conquests in the Middle East and Africa reached their greatest extent, but they may not yet have been firmly held. His little-known successor, Thutmose II (c. 1482–80 bce), apparently continued his policies.

Hatshepsut and Thutmose III

At Thutmose II’s death his queen and sister, Hatshepsut, had only a young daughter; but a minor wife had borne him a boy, who was apparently very young at his accession. This son, Thutmose III (ruled c. 1479–25 bce), later reconquered Egypt’s Asian empire and became an outstanding ruler. During his first few regnal years, Thutmose III theoretically controlled the land, but Hatshepsut governed as regent. Sometime between Thutmose III’s second and seventh regnal years, she assumed the kingship herself. According to one version of the event, the oracle of Amon proclaimed her king at Karnak, where she was crowned. A more propagandistic account, preserved in texts and reliefs of her splendid mortuary temple at Dayr al-Baḥrī, ignores the reign of Thutmose II and asserts that her father, Thutmose I, proclaimed her his successor. Upon becoming king, Hatshepsut became the dominant partner in a joint rule that lasted until her death in about 1458 bce; there are monuments dedicated by Hatshepsut that depict both kings. She had the support of various powerful personalities; the most notable among them was Senenmut, the steward and tutor of her daughter Neferure. In styling herself king, Hatshepsut adopted the royal titulary but avoided the epithet “mighty bull,” regularly employed by other kings. Although in her reliefs she was depicted as a male, pronominal references in the texts usually reflect her womanhood. Similarly, much of her statuary shows her in male form, but there are rarer examples that render her as a woman. In less formal documents she was referred to as “King’s Great Wife”—that is, “Queen”—while Thutmose III was “King.” There is thus a certain ambiguity in the treatment of Hatshepsut as king.

Her temple reliefs depict pacific enterprises, such as the transporting of obelisks for Amon’s temple and a commercial expedition to Punt; her art style looked back to Middle Kingdom ideals. Some warlike scenes are depicted, however, and she may have waged a campaign in Nubia. In one inscription she blamed the Hyksos for the supposedly poor state of the land before her rule, even though they had been expelled from the region more than a generation earlier.

During Hatshepsut’s ascendancy Egypt’s position in Asia may have deteriorated because of the expansion of Mitannian power in Syria. Shortly after her death, the prince of the Syrian city of Kadesh, stood with troops of 330 princes of a Syro-Palestinian coalition at Megiddo; such a force was more than merely defensive, and the intention may have been to advance against Egypt. The 330 must have represented all the places of any size in the region that were not subject to Egyptian rule and may be a schematic figure derived from a list of place-names. It is noteworthy that Mitanni itself was not directly involved.

Thutmose III proceeded to Gaza with his army and then to Yehem, subjugating rebellious Palestinian towns along the way. His annals relate how, at a consultation concerning the best route over the Mount Carmel ridge, the king overruled his officers and selected a shorter but more dangerous route through the ʿArūnah Pass and then led the troops himself. The march went smoothly, and, when the Egyptians attacked at dawn, they prevailed over the enemy troops and besieged Megiddo.

Thutmose III meanwhile coordinated the landing of other army divisions on the Syro-Palestinian littoral, whence they proceeded inland, so that the strategy resembled a pincer technique. The siege ended in a treaty by which Syrian princes swore an oath of submission to the king. As was normal in ancient diplomacy and in Egyptian practice, the oath was binding only upon those who swore it, not upon future generations.

By the end of the first campaign, Egyptian domination extended northward to a line linking Byblos and Damascus. Although the prince of Kadesh remained to be vanquished, Assyria sent lapis lazuli as tribute; Asian princes surrendered their weapons, including a large number of horses and chariots. Thutmose III took only a limited number of captives. He appointed Asian princes to govern the towns and took their brothers and sons to Egypt, where they were educated at the court. Most eventually returned home to serve as loyal vassals, though some remained in Egypt at court. In order to ensure the loyalty of Asian city-states, Egypt maintained garrisons that could quell insurrection and supervise the delivery of tribute. There never was an elaborate Egyptian imperial administration in Asia.

Thutmose III conducted numerous subsequent campaigns in Asia. The submission of Kadesh was finally achieved, but Thutmose III’s ultimate aim was the defeat of Mitanni. He used the navy to transport troops to Asian coastal towns, avoiding arduous overland marches from Egypt. His great eighth campaign led him across the Euphrates; although the countryside around Carchemish was ravaged, the city was not taken, and the Mitannian prince was able to flee. The psychological gain of this campaign was perhaps greater than its military success, for Babylonia, Assyria, and the Hittites all sent tribute in recognition of Egyptian dominance. Although Thutmose III never subjugated Mitanni, he placed Egypt’s conquests on a firm footing by constant campaigning that contrasts with the forays of his predecessors. Thutmose III’s annals inscribed in the temple of Karnak are remarkably succinct and accurate, but his other texts, particularly one set in his newly founded Nubian capital of Napata, are more conventional in their rhetoric. He seems to have married three Syrian wives, which may represent diplomatic unions, marking Egypt’s entry into the realm of international affairs of the ancient Middle East.

Thutmose III initiated a truly imperial Egyptian rule in Nubia. Much of the land became estates of institutions in Egypt, while local cultural traits disappear from the archaeological record. Sons of chiefs were educated at the Egyptian court; a few returned to Nubia to serve as administrators, and some were buried there in Egyptian fashion. Nubian fortresses lost their strategic value and became administrative centers. Open towns developed around them, and, in several temples outside their walls, the cult of the divine king was established. Lower Nubia supplied gold from the desert and hard and semiprecious stones. From farther south came tropical African woods, perfumes, oil, ivory, animal skins, and ostrich plumes. There is scarcely any trace of local population from the later New Kingdom, when many more temples were built in Nubia; by the end of the 20th dynasty, the region had almost no prosperous settled population.

Under Thutmose III the wealth of empire became apparent in Egypt. Many temples were built, and vast sums were donated to the estate of Amon-Re. There are many tombs of his high officials at Thebes. The capital had been moved to Memphis, but Thebes remained the religious center.

The campaigns of kings such as Thutmose III required a large military establishment, including a hierarchy of officers and an expensive chariotry. The king grew up with military companions whose close connection with him enabled them to participate increasingly in government. Military officers were appointed to high civil and religious positions, and by the Ramesside period the influence of such people had come to outweigh that of the traditional bureaucracy. [5]

It is significant to understanding the Exodus account, that Thutmose III had relocated his capital to Memphis. Since the time of the pharaoh of Joseph, in the middle of the 13th Dynasty, the Egyptian capital was moved far south, to Thebes, to escape the incursions of the Hyksos. So Egypt was divided into several parts, with different dynasties of pharaohs ruling each of them. But Ahmose, the first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, reunified all of Egypt under his own rule.

During the time of the division, the children of Israel were settled in Goshen, which is where the later city Pi-Rameses which they had been forced to build was also situated. During this period, they were under the rule of the 15th Dynasty of Hyksos rulers. The capital of Egypt, Thebes, was three hundred and fifty miles from Goshen by air. It would have been quite a burden for Moses to travel over 700 miles each time he went from Goshen to see the pharaoh.

But the ruins of ancient Memphis are located near the modern village of Mit Rahina, which is about 12 miles south of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile River. This site is only about seventy-five miles from Goshen by air. So Moses had to travel that seventy-five miles, or a little longer on the ground, each time he had gone to address the pharaoh. It is highly plausible that he traveled by boat, since both locations were within reasonable distance of the Nile River and its branches in the Delta. Sources state that this move happened around 1457 BC, only a few years before the main event of the Exodus.

As for Thutmose III, he had been king, or joint ruler along with his older sister, for nearly all of his life. He was at the height of his power by 1450 BC and the time of the Exodus. He had many military victories, which resulted in extending Egyptian power as far as Carchemish on the Euphrates River in far northwestern Syria. Here he was described as having out-generaled his generals. His victory brought him tribute from some of the most powerful nations of his time, the Hittites and the Assyrians. It is likely that they saw in Thutmose an ally who could balance power in the shadow of the power-seeking Mitanni. At the time, the Kassites who came to rule Babylon some time after the fall of the Babylonian empire of the Amorites, had only marginal power, but it was nevertheless significant for Thutmose to receive tribute from them also.

With certainly, all of this would have made Thutmose III a very proud man, and that is how he is characterized here in the account of the Exodus. 

Footnotes

1 The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Hendrickson Publishers, 2021, p. 352.

2 ibid., p. 81.

3 ibid., pp. 224-228.

4 Wars of the Judaeans, Flavius Josephus, Book 5, ¶ 235 (5.235).

5 The New Kingdom (c. 1539–c. 1077 bce), by Peter F. Forman, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Egypt/The-New-Kingdom-c-1539-c-1077-bce, accessed July 24th, 2026