All depended, therefore, should the
opportunity of leadership come to him, on his being able, in the first
place, to satisfy himself that the god who presented himself to him was
verily the god of Abraham, who burned Sodom, and not some demon, whose
object was to vex mankind: and, in the second place, assuming that he
himself were convinced of the identity of the god, that he could convince
his countrymen of the fact, and also of the absolute necessity of
obedience to the moral law which he should declare, since without absolute
obedience, they would certainly merit, and probably suffer, such a fate as
befell the inhabitants of Sodom, under the very eyes of Abraham, and in
spite of his prayers for mercy.
There was one other apprehension which may have troubled, and probably did
trouble, Moses. The god of the primitive man, and certainly of the
Bedouin, is usually a local deity whose power and whose activity is
limited to some particular region, as, for instance, a mountain or a
plain. Thus the god of Abraham might have inhabited and absolutely ruled
the plain of Mamre and been impotent elsewhere. But this, had Moses for a
moment harbored such a notion, would have been dispelled when he thought
of Joseph. Joseph, when his brethren threw him into the pit, must have
been under the guardianship of the god of his fathers, and when he was
drawn out, and sold in the ordinary course of the slave-trade, he was
bought by Potiphar, the captain of the guard.
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