Slow-in-speech killer who ran off

Cesar Gorillo .

HE saw for himself how his kinsmen were made slave labor because the people with whom they served gave them the hardest task of making building materials and  also gathering the raw materials at the same time with the same quota of production as when they just made them while the raw materials were harvested by others and brought right in their working area.

Those who failed to meet the quota were given the severe punishments and this pained him greatly. After all, their blood ran in his veins.  But this is not all.  He saw one of their labor task masters kill one of the workers who was one of his own, a sight he could never afford to contemplate. He, therefore, got his dagger and killed the task master, an act also seen by one of his kinsmen. The whole episode never came to the knowledge of the powerful king and remained hidden until an unexpected event happened. He saw two of his kinsmen quarrel and he came between them to prevent them from further violence. But one of them shouted, “Are you going to also kill us the way you killed the labor task master? This greatly made him afrais because he knew that if the news reach the king, he will surely be put to death.

So, before the news could reach the king, he ran off to the farthest mountain beyond the reach of the king’s army.  There he settled, got married and supported his family as a shepherd. He lived there for a very long time and simply waited for his death in that forsaken land.

What he never knew was that God had already laid the plan for him because he was tasked with extricating all his people from the bondage of the heartless king. But he complained that he could not do it because he was slow in speech.  But God told him to appoint his brother as speaker in his behalf and for God to make his walking stick which he used as shepherd  to be the source of his  power.

With only a stick as a weapon and using the services of his brother as speaker, he faced the king and upon the mere motion of his stick, he filled the king’s palace with snakes, frogs, gnats, flies,filled their farms with locusts, turned their water into blood, made their land dark for three days,  killed all their animals, allowed hail to fall into the whole land and finally killed all their first born sons before the king finally agreed to free all of his people.

As to why God gave a giant task to a murderer and slow of speech, we can never fathom.

Because until now the life of Moses defies ordinary description as the man with whom with God conversed for the longest time and tasked him with the Ten Commandments which became the basis of all laws of the people following the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions.