The Egyptian princess who raised Moses had to make him swear an oath before handing him over to the king. That is how little she trusted her own father's court—the same court whose priests had once demanded the boy be killed as a baby. Now those same priests needed him to save their empire.
Ethiopia had invaded Egypt and crushed its armies. City after city fell. The Ethiopians pushed all the way to Memphis and the Mediterranean coast, and not a single Egyptian force could slow them down. In desperation, the Egyptians consulted their oracles, and God Himself delivered the answer: use Moses the Hebrew.
Moses did not march along the Nile as expected. He cut overland through territory so thick with venomous serpents that no army had ever crossed it. His solution was brilliantly unconventional—he filled wicker baskets with ibises, the natural predator of snakes, and released them ahead of the troops. The serpents fled or were devoured. The army passed through unharmed.
He caught the Ethiopians completely off guard, routed them in battle, and drove them back to their island capital of Saba, a city surrounded by the Nile and two other rivers, ringed with massive walls and ramparts. It seemed impregnable. But Tharbis, the Ethiopian king's daughter, watched Moses from the city walls. She fell in love with the Hebrew general—his courage, his cunning, everything about him. She sent her most trusted servant to propose marriage. Moses agreed, on one condition: she would deliver the city. She did. Moses took the city, married the princess, and marched the Egyptian army home victorious.
His reward? The Egyptians immediately began plotting to kill him. The king burned with envy, the priests whispered treason, and Moses fled through the desert to Midian, where he sat exhausted at a well. There he defended seven sisters—daughters of the priest Raguel—from shepherds stealing their water. Raguel gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage and made him guardian of his flocks. The man who had commanded Egypt's army was now a shepherd.