Mastema Attacked Moses and the Coffin Waited Four Centuries

Something on the Road to Egypt

Moses had set out from Midian with his wife Zipporah and his sons, with his staff and the words God had given him at the burning bush. He knew what he was going back to face. He had grown up in Pharaoh's palace, been exiled from it, spent forty years in the wilderness, and now God had sent him back into the empire that had enslaved his people. He was walking straight into the teeth of that.

He did not make it far before something tried to stop him.

The book of Jubilees, written around the second century BCE, names the attacker as Mastema, the Prince of Accusation, the angel assigned to prosecute human beings before the heavenly court. Mastema had been watching Moses. He had heard the voice at the burning bush, understood what was coming, and moved to prevent it before it began. An Israelite was walking back to Egypt. If he reached it, an empire would crack.

The Angel Who Prosecuted Moses on the Road

The Torah in Exodus 4:24 records the attack in two sentences and does not explain it. God, or an angel acting in God's name, met Moses at a lodging place and sought to kill him. Zipporah acted immediately: she circumcised their son, touched the foreskin to Moses's feet, and said the blood had accomplished something. The threat withdrew.

Jubilees names Mastema as the aggressor and makes his motivation explicit. Moses had not yet circumcised his son. The covenant that bound Abraham's descendants had not been sealed on this child's body. Mastema used this as the legal basis for his prosecution. He stood before the heavenly court and argued that Moses had forfeited his right to carry out the redemption. A man who had failed to mark his own son with the covenant sign had no standing to bring covenant obligations to Pharaoh's court.

Zipporah's action closed the case. The blood of circumcision was the answer to the accusation. Mastema's legal argument collapsed, and Moses walked on toward Egypt.

The Oath Joseph Had Extracted

There was another obligation waiting for Moses in Egypt, one older than his own mission. Before Joseph died, he had extracted an oath from his brothers and from the generation that would come after them. The Israelites would not leave Egypt without him. When God remembered them, when the redemption finally came, they would carry his bones out of the country. "Take me with you," he had said. "Do not leave me here."

For four hundred years that oath had been waiting in the ground.

When the night of the Exodus finally came and the Israelites prepared to leave, Moses went looking for the coffin. The other Israelites were collecting Egyptian gold and silver and jewelry, as God had commanded them to strip Egypt of its wealth. Moses was searching for bones.

Three Days at the River

Joseph's coffin was not easy to find. According to the account in Legends of the Jews, the Egyptians had sunk it in the Nile, both to honor Joseph and to bind the Israelites to the river that had fed and sustained their captivity. Moses searched for three days and three nights before he found it.

He stood at the bank of the Nile and called out: "Joseph, the time has come. God is fulfilling the oath. Your descendants are leaving Egypt tonight. The oath you made them swear is being kept. If you are willing, rise."

The coffin floated to the surface.

Moses took it and carried it on his shoulders while the rest of Israel carried gold. The contrast was deliberate and noticed. Two arks traveled through the desert together: the ark of the covenant containing the Torah, and the coffin of Joseph containing the bones of a patriarch who had made his people promise not to forget him. The living law and the faithful dead, side by side.

Mastery Over Two Obligations

The rabbis saw in Moses's three days at the river something more than the difficulty of finding a lost grave. He had come out of Egypt carrying obligations in both directions. Toward the living: lead the people to freedom, bring them through the desert to the promised land, give them the law. Toward the dead: keep the oath, do not leave Joseph behind, carry what earlier generations trusted later ones to carry.

Mastema had tried to stop Moses before he could fulfill either obligation. The attack on the road was not random violence. It was the last attempt by the force of accusation to find a legal flaw in Moses, a reason to declare the redemption void before it began. Zipporah closed that door with a flint knife and a piece of skin.

Joseph's coffin closed another door. You could not properly leave Egypt without the bones. The Exodus was incomplete without them. Moses understood this when no one else was looking for anything but gold.