en to work in the brick-molds of
Pa-Tum. And they had to go. The women and the children had to care for
the sheep while most of their men trod the clay and straw in the brick
molds at Pa-Tum and carried heavy loads of brick on their shoulders to
the masons on the walls. Of course the sheep suffered for lack of
care. The children also pined from neglect. Life for the Hebrews
became a grinding treadmill of hardship and weariness and drudgery.

THE BOYHOOD AND YOUTH OF MOSES

During this time of oppression a Hebrew baby boy was by chance adopted
by one of the princesses in Pharaoh's court and brought up by his own
mother as his nurse. He was given an Egyptian name with the common
Egyptian ending Mesu or M-ses, as in Rameses. The boy was given all
the educational advantages that the Egyptian palace could offer. But
all the time in secret from his mother he was learning the story of
his own people and their wrongs, and was being trained to hate their
oppressors. One day after he had grown to manhood he went down to the
city of Pa-Tum to see the work on the new granaries which were being
built. Here he saw one of his own people being flogged by an Egyptian
overseer. In a fury he leaped to the man's defense and killed the
Egyptian. Of course Rameses heard of it, and Moses had to flee from
Egypt into the desert. In the desert he found a shepherd clan related
to the Hebrews and lived there for some years brooding over the hard
plight of his people.

=Moses' call and the struggle for freedom.=--One day in the desert,
Moses heard from a passing caravan that old Rameses II was dead. Like
a flame that burned but did not consume the thought came to him: "Now
is your chance! The king and his officers will not know about you. Go
back to Egypt and lead your kinsmen out to freedom. This is God's call
and God will help you."

So back to Egypt he went. First, he undertook to rally his own people,
promising the help of their God, Jehovah. It was a dangerous
undertaking that he proposed. The kings of Egypt were accustomed to
make short work of those who resisted their authority. Moreover, these
Hebrews had been slaves for years, and their spirits might have been
cowed and broken. Yet they believed in Moses and his assurances and
accepted him as their leader.

Soon thereafter Moses and his brother Aaron went boldly to the palace
of the Pharaoh and declared to him that Jehovah, the God of the
Hebrews, had commanded that the Hebrews be