When Did We Decide Moses Was a Murderer? (Part 2)

A continuing examination of how Moses' killing of the Egyptian has been regarded throughout the history of the church

18th Century

John Gill and Thomas Scott were perhaps the two most prominent eighteenth-century commentators.

For Gill, there was no murder. When Moses checked to see if anyone was watching, it was not "from any consciousness of any evil he was about to commit, but for his own preservation, lest if seen he should be accused to Pharaoh, and suffer for it". Indeed it was "very ungenerous" in a fellow Hebrew "to upbraid him with it" and "since it was in favour of one of his own people, it was ungrateful to reproach him with it".

According to Scott, Moses "took an opportunity of executing just punishment on one cruel oppressor". In this he "seems to have acted rather prematurely". Why? Not because God hadn't called him, but because "the spirits of the Israelites were sunk, their dispositions become servile, and faith and hope were almost extinguished among them." It became clear to him "that the Israelites would not stand by him" and "Thus", just as Lightfoot had argued in the previous century, "the deliverance of Israel was delayed forty years because they rejected their deliverer".

(Yet that's not to say those 40 years weren't a learning experience for Moses: he learnt "to endure hardship, to exercise faith, patience, and meekness, and to walk with God in the lowly and retired life of a shepherd".)

Thomas Ridgley, in his exposition of the Westminster Larger Catechism, published in 1731 deals with the killing of the Egyptian under his treatment of the sixth commandment:

Some charge Moses with having been guilty of the breach of this commandment, in killing the Egyptian. But to vindicate him from this charge, let it be considered that the Egyptian whom he slew, not only smote an Hebrew, but did so wrongfully. As is observed in Acts 7:24, there was no offence given or just reason for this injurious treatment; and to oppress or abuse one who is in a miserable condition, as the Hebrews were at that time, is an heinous crime in God’s account.

...

Moses was, at this time, raised up and called by God, to be a ruler and a judge, to defend the cause of his oppressed people; and in this action he first began to fulfil his commission. The people, indeed, refused to own him, and seemed to join with those who designed him evil for his interference; but for this reason their deliverance was put off forty years longer, while he was an exile in the land of Midian. Now, to slay a public enemy and oppressor, and, as is probable, one who had forfeited his life, and to do this with a commission from God to act as a ruler and a judge over his people, cannot be reckoned a breach of this commandment.

In short Ridgley answers: "Who made you a ruler and judge over us?" with "God"! Once again, the forty year delay in the peoples' redemption is seen as the result of the people refusing to accept the deliverer God had sent.

19th Century: The Tide Begins to Turn

The tide began to turn in the nineteenth century, but Moses still had his defenders. Alford's criticism of Moses, cited in Part 1, suggests that even by 1872 there were still many "modern" commentators defending Moses — some of whom are listed below.

The famous commentary of Co. Londonderry Methodist Adam Clarke was published between 1810-24. For Clarke, when Stephen tells us that "it came into his heart to visit his brethren", he means "he was excited to it by a Divine inspiration". Indeed, as hinted at by Ridgley above:

Probably the Egyptian killed the Hebrew, and therefore on the Noahic precept Moses was justified in killing him; and he was authorized so to do by the commission which he had received from God, as all succeeding events amply prove.

Patrick Fairbairn is sympathetic to Moses, but says in his Typology of Scripture: (1845-7) 

though the motive was good, being intended to express his brotherly sympathy with the suffering Israelites, and to serve as a kind of signal for a general rising against their oppressors, yet the action itself appears to have been wrong...he was himself made to reap the fruit of his misconduct in a long and dreary exile.

For Keil, of Keil and Delitzsch, in 1861, Moses was guilty of:

the crime of murder, which cannot be excused as resulting from a sudden ebullition of wrath.

On the other hand, Robert Jamieson, in the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary (1871) says:

This act of Moses may seem, and indeed by some has been condemned, as rash and unjustifiable—in plain terms, as a deed of assassination. But we must not judge of his action in such a country and age by the standard of law and the notions of right which prevail in our Christian land; and, besides, not only is it not spoken of as a crime in Scripture, or as distressing the perpetrator with remorse, but, according to existing customs among nomadic tribes, he was bound to avenge the blood of a brother.

In 1874 Lange was unwilling to call it murder, but unwilling to completely absolve Moses:

by this act, which was neither simple murder nor simple self-defence, and which was not sustained by a pure peace of conscience, he anticipated Divine Providence.

Spurgeon seems to echo earlier commentators in 1899 when he says:

like a true hero, he threw in his lot with the despised people, and smote one of their adversaries, he thought, perhaps, that it would be the signal for a general revolt, and that the banner of Israel would wave defiantly in the face of Pharaoh, and that the people would boldly march to liberty; but they were too enslaved, they had been too long ground down and oppressed, to act like that; they had lost all spirit, and they did not hope ever to be free, they were a nation of hopeless slaves.

Indeed, "God's greatest difficulty" was not in bringing his people out of Egypt, but in giving them a desire to do so: "to incline these people to come out of Egypt". It's not until later that the people begin to cry out and are "willing to accept the leader whom God will send to them".

Admittedly, twenty years earlier Spurgeon had said:

There are many indications that Moses was not meek, but very far from it until the Spirit of God rested upon him. He slew the Egyptian hastily, and in after years he went out from the presence of Pharaoh “in great anger.”

However even then Spurgeon had commented: "In his own quarrel he has never anything to say: it is only for the people and for God that his anger waxeth hot".

20th Century: Lloyd-Jones a rare exception

By the 20th century, the tide had almost completely turned against Moses.
S. G. De Graaf (1889-1955), author of the criminally-overlooked Promise and Deliverance , says: "Moses' action revealed the urge of God's Spirit, who bound him to Israel and made him take up the cause of his own people", yet "he did not even shrink from committing murder".

Arthur Peake (1865-1929) makes a convincing argument, along with "the majority of commentators" in Heroes and martyrs of faith that when we are told that Moses "by faith left Egypt" (Heb. 11:27) this occasion is in view, rather than the Exodus. Yet he still accuses Moses of murder.

For A. W. Pink, Moses was one who "offended in many things", not least at this point.

More negative takes on Moses could be multiplied. Martyn Lloyd-Jones seems to be almost a lone voice when he says:

Moses was not doing this as a man but as the servant of God. It was God who had put it into his heart. This was a movement of the Spirit, a supernatural, miraculous intervention. Yet “they understood not.”

Conclusion

In the 21st century, condemnations of Moses have continued apace. John L. Mackay gives both views and doesn't come down on either side, but for Tim Chester ("Moses...becomes a murderer and has to flee to Midian"), John Currid ("the day after the murder"), the RHB KJV Study Bible ("he did so without authority or commission from God"), and many others, Moses is clearly in the wrong.

I'm not convinced. Not because of church history, but because of Acts 7 (which fits with Heb. 11:27). Indeed, I was convinced long before I preached on the passage, and started reading what the commentators said.

The man who Scripture tells us was "in the wrong" in upbraiding Moses asks: "Who made you a prince and judge over us?" Many today seem to want to ask Moses the same question. It seems to me, however, that Stephen's answer to the man's sceptical question is actually "God!" "God was giving them salvation by his hand" (Acts 7:25).

Criticism of Moses is not completely new in the nineteenth century. Augustine is a strong voice against him, and continued to be cited. (Though Augustine's opinion softened to the extent that Andrew Willet (1562-1621) said that "afterward he rejected this opinion"). Owen is not to be dismissed lightly. Since writing Part 1, I've given the new The Faith Received a spin, and found criticism of Moses from Martin Chemnitz (C16th Lutheran) and Henry Hammond (C17th Anglican), as well as C15th and 16th Catholics Thomas Cajetan and Cornelius Jansen. It remains, however, a minority view, and Alexander of Hales, Bullinger, Musculus, Amyraut and André Rivet could be added to the list of Moses' defenders.

So was Moses a murderer? Perhaps. My own take may be wrong. How someone answers the question isn't a test of orthodoxy.

But when did we decide Moses was a murderer? The modern consensus view seems only to have become such around the turn of the twentieth century.