Torah Study Blog

We don’t often talk about the fact that Moses, the prince of Egypt, the man that led the Israelites out of bondage, killed someone. In this week’s Torah portion we are told:

When Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turn this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

According to the Bible, although Moses did not see anyone before he killed the man, someone saw him. Pharaoh learned about the matter, causing Moses to flee for his life.

This episode provided the impetus for Moses to leave Egypt and eventually become the leader of the Israelites. The writers of the Torah could have created any number of other reasons for Moses to leave Egypt, but chose this violent one. The fact that Moses was responsible for the death of another man is an example of an episode that causes people who study the Bible to pause.

During one of the stops while Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. One of those Commandments, as listed in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, is You Shall Not Murder. If someone is responsible for the death of another, according to Exodus 21, the penalty is a life for a life.

Also, Genesis 9 gives humans permission to eat other living things on earth, but not man. The passage reads that:

I require a reckoning for human life, of every man for that of his fellow man!
Whoever sheds the blood of man,
By man shall his blood be shed.

Exodus 21 makes allowances if the killing was the result of an accident. Long-time readers may recall that the Bible allows for a Blood Avenger. The Blood Avenger is a member of the family of the killed person, and he has a moral responsibility to find and kill the killer. But, in the case of an accidental death, this would heap wrong upon wrong. Therefore, the Bible allows that the killer may flee to a sanctuary city and remain there, unmolested.

But all of this text about how people should not kill each other should not lead people to believe that there is no killing in the Bible. There is lots of killing in the Bible! These episodes are about the wrongful, unsanctioned spilling of blood - which has consequences. According to the Bible, killing in the name of God is justified and it is not considered murder. For example:

According to the book of Exodus, after Moses received the Ten Commandments, he descended from Mount Sinai and saw people worshipping a golden calf, which was decidedly not allowed. Moses, saying that the Lord demanded it, ordered the Levites to go through the camp and, of those revelers, “slay brother, neighbor, and kin... and three thousand people fell that day” (Exodus 32:27-28).

Another example can be found in Numbers 25, where the Israelite men are drawn into worship of the Moabite god Baal-peor and the Lord became incensed. The Lord said to Moses:

Take all the ringleaders and have them publicly impaled before the Lord, so that the Lord’s wrath may turn away from Israel.

Just then, Phinehas, a son of the priestly line of Aaron, saw an Israelite with a Moabite woman and he:

Followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them,the Israelite and the woman, through the belly.

This gory scene was enough to turn the wrath of God away from the Israelites.

In these episodes, God specifically directs Moses to order the killings. In the first story, the killing is carried out by the Levites, who are the subordinate members of the priestly class. In the second story, the killing is carried out by a direct descendant of Aaron, meaning that he is a senior member of the priestly class. Therefore, not only are these killing justified, but they are carried out by prominent members of the community.

But, let’s get back to Moses: The Egyptian that Moses killed was beating an Israelite. We have no more information than that, but we know it was not an accidental killing. Therefore, according to the text in the book of Numbers, the family of the killed man should have set a blood avenger to find and kill Moses. Exodus 4 tells us that, when Moses told his father-in-law that he would return to Egypt to try to free the Israelites, his father-in-law acknowledged that it would be all right for Moses to return to Egypt because “all the men who sought to kill you are dead.” Meaning that the blood avenger would no longer be looking for Moses.

However, on the way to Egypt, in a story that is seemingly out-of-the-blue, God tried to kill Moses. Moses’s wife, Zipporah, a woman who is a Midianite, performed an Israelite ritual which caused God to leave Moses alone. The scholar William Propp has pointed to this strange interlude as proof that God did not forget the wrongful spilling of blood by Moses. God sought retribution for this death.

The ancient rabbis also tried to come up with an explanation for why Moses was able to kill a man and have no repercussions. They told a story about how the Egyptian was guilty of adultery. Another one of the Ten Commandments is You Shall Not Commit Adultery; therefore, Moses’s killing of the man was justified. Even if we do not like this story, it is noteworthy that the ancient rabbis struggled with the problem of Moses getting away with murder.

We have reviewed that one of the Ten Commandments states that murder is a sin. But, according to our sacred texts, there are times that killing is justified. This lack of consistency can be found throughout the Bible, making it possible for people to make an argument for the most despicable actions and ground them in the Bible. The portions a leader chooses to emphasize highlight what is important to that leader or to that community. Different emphasis from different leaders is one of the reasons that our country is so divided today.

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