Moses in rabbinic literature

Of all Biblical personages, Moses has been chosen most frequently as the subject of later legends, and his life has been recounted in full midrashic detail in the poetic Aggadah.

[2] A cycle of legends has been woven around nearly every trait of his character and every event of his life, and groups of the most different and often contradictory stories have been connected with his career.

[6] The birth of Moses as the liberator of the people of Israel was foretold to Pharaoh by his soothsayers, in consequence of which he issued the cruel command to cast all the male children into the river.

He reminded Pharaoh that an enslaved person was entitled to some rest and begged him to grant the Israelites one free day in the week.

[52][53] These divergent opinions regarding his age at the time when he killed the Egyptian are based upon different estimates of the length of his stay in the royal palace,[54] both of them assuming that he fled from Egypt immediately after the slaying.

[55] Dathan and Abiram were bitter enemies of Moses, insulting him and saying he should not act as if he were a member of the royal house since he was the son not of Bithiah, but of Jochebed.

[58] The fugitive Moses went to the camp of King Nikanos, or Kikanos, of Ethiopia, who was at that time besieging his own capital, which had been traitorously seized by Balaam and his sons and made impregnable by them through magic.

Moses was imprisoned in a deep dungeon in Jethro's house and received only small portions of bread and water as food.

This curious rod had been handed down through Enoch, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to Joseph, at whose death it came into the possession of Pharaoh's court.

On the way, he met Satan, or Mastema, as he is called in the Book of Jubilees,[67] in the guise of a serpent, which proceeded to swallow Moses, and had ingested the upper part of his body, when he stopped.

Moses departed with his wife and children and met Aaron,[81] who told him it was not right to take them into Egypt since the attempt was being made to lead the Israelites out of that country.

[84] At the Egyptian royal palace entrance were two leopards, which would not allow anyone to approach unless their guards quieted them, but when Moses came, they played with him and fawned upon him as if they were his dogs.

[101] During the Exodus, while all the people thought only of taking the gold and silver of the Egyptians, Moses endeavored to carry away boards for use in the construction of the future Temple,[102] and to remove Joseph's coffin.

[106] When the Israelites saw Pharaoh and his army drown in the Red Sea,[107] they wished to return to Egypt and set up a kingdom there, but Moses prevented them, urging them on by force.

Moses was afraid that the angels might burn him with the breath of their mouths, but God told him to take hold of the throne of glory.

[116] The Torah was intended originally only for Moses and his descendants, but he was liberal enough to give it to the people of Israel; God approved the gift.

During the battle with Amalek, he sat on a stone and not on a cushion, which he could easily have procured because Israel was at that time in trouble, so he intended to show that he suffered with them.

[148] The fact that Moses, the foremost leader of Israel, who ceaselessly prayed for it and partook of its sorrows,[149] and on whose account the manna was showered down from Heaven and the protecting clouds and the marvelous well returned after the death of Aaron and Miriam,[150] should not be allowed to share in Israel's joys and enter the Promised Land,[56] was a problem that puzzled the aggadah, for which it tried to find various explanations.

[151] Moses prayed in vain to be permitted to go into the Promised Land, if only for a little while, for God had decreed that he should not enter the country either alive or dead.

[56] There is still another explanation, to the effect that it would not have redounded to the glory of Moses if he who had led 600,000 persons out of Egypt had been the only one to enter Israel, while the entire people were destined to die in the desert.

[155] Denying all these reasons, another explanation, based on the scriptures, is that Moses and Aaron were not permitted to enter the Promised Land because they did not have the proper confidence in God to call water from the rock.

Moses was careful not to provoke the people during the forty years of wandering in the desert because God had sworn that none of the generations that had left Egypt should behold the promised land.

He ascends Mount Abarim accompanied by the elders of the people, and Joshua and Eleazar; and while he is talking with them, a cloud suddenly surrounds him, and he disappears.

He was prompted by modesty to say in the Torah that he died a natural death in order that people should not say that God had taken him alive into Heaven on account of his piety.

Then he went to the mountains and valleys, which told him that God had concealed Moses, keeping him for the life in the future world, and no creature knew where he was."

[30] Moses then began to become excited,[180] saying he would live like the beasts of the field and the birds, which get their daily food only for the sake of remaining alive.

[181] He desired to renounce the entry into the Promised Land and stay with the tribes of Reuben and Gad in the country east of the Jordan if only he might remain alive.

[183] God answered that his children had not devoted themselves to the Law, whereas Joshua had served Moses faithfully and had learned from him; he, therefore, deserved to succeed his teacher.

As the angel of death was afraid to take his soul, God, accompanied by Gabriel, Michael, and Zagziel, the former teacher of Moses, descended to get it.

[213] Moses' modesty never allowed him to put himself forward (e.g., in liberating Israel, in dividing the sea, and subsequently also in connection with the Tabernacle) until God said to him: "How long wilt thou count thyself so lowly?