Moses (review)

Never straying too far from the Book of Exodus, Hodges retells the story of the Israelite patriarch who led his people out of bondage in Egypt and set them on the journey back to the land of Canaan. Lingering over some episodes and gliding briskly past others, she begins with the plight of the Israelites at the time of Moses' birth, the story of his discovery in the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, and his slaying of an Egyptian slave driver, then fast forwards through his stay in Midian (here unnamed), the encounter with the burning bush, and his successive meetings with Pharaoh and the subsequent plagues. The longest stretch of narrative then recounts the Passover and the flight through the Red Sea, and the account draws to an end with a brief mention of years of hunger and hardship ahead, the Ten Commandments, and Moses' glimpse of the promised land just before death. In limiting the scope of Moses' event-filled life and designating the climactic event as the flight from Egypt, Hodges seems to have fashioned a work best suited for Passover or Easter seasons. However, background on how the Israelites came to be in Egypt, details about preparing for the Passover and flight, and serious consideration of the generation spent in the desert are noticeably lacking. Moreover, although the telling is smooth and lucid, there is no particular poetry to the language to recommend it over a good translation of a Tanakh or Christian Bible. Moser's full-page watercolors, however, do add considerable drama, from the sun-drenched figure brushing dripping blood onto the lintel of his mud-brick house, to the eerie nighttime scene of a multitude of refugees crowded shoulder to shoulder as they await deliverance at the shore of the Red Sea. A final spread that features the tablets with the Commandments and contrasts ancient and modern Hebrew characters should also be of interest, particularly to readers accustomed to "numbering" the commandments differently.