Ever feel like you've been given a task that's just... too big? Overwhelming? Well, imagine being Moses, chosen by God to lead an entire nation out of slavery! It's a story we all know, but sometimes, revisiting those pivotal moments reveals a deeper, more relatable truth.
According to Ginzberg's masterful retelling in Legends of the Jews, Moses didn't exactly jump for joy when he got the divine call. In fact, he voiced some pretty significant doubts. Can you blame him?
He argued, "O Lord of the world, I a prophet and the son of a prophet obeyed Thy words only after much hesitation, and I cannot expect Pharaoh, a wicked man and the son of a wicked man, and the Egyptians, a disobedient people and the sons of a disobedient people, to give ear to my words."
Think about that for a moment. Moses, who himself had struggled with the idea, was being asked to convince Pharaoh – not exactly known for his open-mindedness – to release an entire nation. It was a monumental ask!
Moses continued, "O Lord of the world, Thou dost send me to Egypt to redeem sixty myriads of Thy people from the oppression of the Egyptians. If it were a question of delivering a couple of hundred men, it were a sufficiently difficult enterprise. How much severer is the task of freeing sixty myriads from the dominion of Pharaoh!"
Sixty myriads. That’s six hundred thousand people! The sheer scale of the undertaking must have felt crushing. It's like being asked to move a mountain, one pebble at a time.
But Moses wasn't done. He had another point, a particularly compelling one: "If Thou hadst called upon the Egyptians to give up their evil ways soon after they began to enslave Israel, they might have heeded Thy admonitions. But if I should go and speak to them now, after they have been ruling over Israel these two hundred and ten years, Pharaoh would say, 'If a slave has served his master for ten years, and no protest has made itself heard from any quarter, how can a man conceive the idea suddenly of having him set at liberty?' Verily, O Lord of the world, the task Thou puttest upon me is too heavy for my strength."
Two hundred and ten years! That's a deeply entrenched system of oppression. Moses understood the inertia of power, the way injustice can become normalized over time. He knew that trying to disrupt that system after so long would be an uphill battle. He felt the weight of history, the sheer improbability of success. "The task Thou puttest upon me is too heavy for my strength," he confessed.
It's a powerful and honest moment. It humanizes Moses, reminding us that even the greatest leaders experience doubt, fear, and a sense of inadequacy. It makes you wonder: what gives him the strength to ultimately accept the mission? Perhaps it's the unwavering faith that, even when a task feels impossible, we are not alone. And maybe, just maybe, that's a lesson we can all take to heart when facing our own seemingly insurmountable challenges.