In Matthew 2:15, the account of the escape of Jesus’ family to Egypt, we read: “This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet (Hosea 11:1), Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Moses is the prototype of the Saviour and the mediator between God and mankind.
The name Moses means “drawn from the water”. Pharaoh threw the children of Israel into the water and God drew a boy out of the water as a saviour. The great paradox is that it is Pharaoh’s daughter who becomes the key figure in the whole rescue story. God turns the story around with a woman.
The whole story is also a foreshadowing of the birth of Jesus. Moses and Jesus are both saviours; both have to be saved first as children.
For both mothers, they are no longer “their sons”. Moses has become a child of the royal house through Pharaoh’s daughter, and Jesus is the Son of God.
As in the story of Moses, Jesus is cared for by the courage of a woman and the faithfulness of Joseph. Jesus and Moses had extraordinary births and only escaped with their lives because of God’s intervention.
God often does things differently than we think. God is in control and we can know it: He cares and is there. He can also turn adversity into something good.
Messiah images in the Torah
- God seeks us – Adam where are you?
- The possibility of a choice – Two trees in the Garden of Eden
- Neediness instead divinity – A new view
- God’s master plan – Salvation through a human being
- A divine clothing – God acts
- A world upside down – Kai and Abel
- Living in the presence of God – Enoch
- God is calling – Noah
- A king-priest like Melchizedek
- God visits Abraham
- Life through a sacrifice – Isaac
- The ladder to heaven – Jacob
- New identity from Jacob to Israel
- Messiah Ben Joseph – Joseph the son of Jacob
- Shiloh, whom all nations will serve – Blessing on Judah
- Moses, the prototype of the Saviour
- References to Jesus in Moses
- The Passover Lamb
- The pillar of cloud and fire
- God wants to be with us – The tabernacle / The temple
- The snake on a pole – An image of a new beginning
- The rock in the desert – Faith is not a method
- A prophet greater than Moses
- A star from Jacob – Bileam