Moses
Overview
- Testament: Old
- Role: Deliverer of Israel, lawgiver, covenant mediator, prophet, intercessor — the central human figure of the Torah
- Family: Son of Amram and Jochebed; brother of Aaron and Miriam; husband of Zipporah; father of Gershom and Eliezer
- Key Books: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Genesis closes before his birth)
- Period: c. 1526–1406 BC (traditional) — born in Egypt, fled to Midian at 40, called at 80, died at 120
Moses is the towering figure of the Old Testament. No single human being receives more sustained attention in the Hebrew scriptures than he does. He appears across four books of the Torah, delivers the law at Sinai, leads Israel through the wilderness for forty years, stands as the archetypal intercessor before a holy God, and dies on the threshold of the land he spent his life working toward. The New Testament reads him constantly — as a type of Christ, as a witness to Christ, as a foil for Christ. To understand Moses is to understand the shape of biblical redemption.
Early Life in Egypt (Exodus 1–2)
Moses was born into an impossible situation. Pharaoh, alarmed by the rapid growth of the Hebrew population in Egypt, issued a decree that all newborn Hebrew males were to be thrown into the Nile and drowned. Into this decree, Moses was born. His mother Jochebed hid him for three months — a remarkable act of courage against imperial power. When concealment became impossible, she did something equally courageous: she obeyed the letter of Pharaoh’s law while subverting its intent. She placed the infant in a papyrus basket, coated it with bitumen and pitch, and set it among the reeds at the bank of the Nile. Pharaoh said “into the river” — she put him into the river. (Birth and Rescue of Moses)
Moses’s sister Miriam watched from a distance. Pharaoh’s own daughter came to bathe, discovered the basket, opened it, and saw the child weeping. She had compassion on him. Miriam stepped forward and offered to find a Hebrew nursing woman — and brought Jochebed herself. So Moses was nursed by his own mother, at Pharaoh’s expense, in Pharaoh’s household, as Pharaoh’s grandson. Providence is often ironic.
Moses was raised in the Egyptian court and educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians (Acts 7:22). This was not incidental preparation — Egyptian administrative, linguistic, and legal competence would later shape how Israel’s laws were written and organized. He was trained for power. He was trained for leadership. And then God took forty years to undo what Egypt had built in him and replace it with something else.
At age 40, Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. He looked around, saw no one watching, killed the Egyptian, and hid the body in the sand. The next day he tried to intervene in a fight between two Hebrews. One of them sneered: “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14). Moses’s deed was known. He fled to Midian to escape Pharaoh’s anger.
In Midian, Moses sat down at a well. Jethro’s seven daughters came to water their flocks; shepherds drove them away; Moses rose and helped them and watered their flocks. This is a recurring biblical scene — a patriarch meets his future wife at a well — and it signals that Moses’s story follows the patterns of the patriarchs. He married Zipporah, Jethro’s daughter, and became a shepherd for the next forty years. The man who had been educated in all the wisdom of Egypt spent four decades alone with sheep in the wilderness. God was preparing him in ways Egypt never could.
The Call from the Burning Bush (Exodus 3–4)
Forty years later, when Moses was eighty years old, he led Jethro’s flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb — the mountain of God. There he saw a remarkable thing: a bush was burning, but it was not consumed. He turned aside to look. And God called to him from the bush: “Moses, Moses.” The double name — the address of personal intimacy and urgency. Moses answered: “Here am I.” And God said: “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). (Burning Bush)
The theophany at the burning bush accomplishes several things at once. It reveals God’s character: “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14) — the name Yahweh, the covenant God of personal, present, eternal deity. He is not a regional deity or an idol; he is the self-existent One who is and was and is to come. He identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — establishing continuity with the patriarchal promises. He announces that he has seen Israel’s affliction, heard their cry, and is coming down to deliver them. And he assigns Moses as the instrument of that deliverance.
Moses responded with five objections — each one a genuine protest, each one answered patiently by God:
- “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh?” — God answered: I will be with you.
- “Who shall I say sent me?” — God answered: “I AM THAT I AM.”
- “But what if they don’t believe me?” — God answered with three signs: the rod-to-serpent, the leprous hand, and the water-to-blood.
- “I am not eloquent — I am slow of speech and of a tongue.” — God answered: I made your mouth; I will teach you what to say.
- “O my Lord, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send” — a final plea to be excused. God was angry at this last objection but relented: Aaron would be his spokesman. Moses would be as God to Aaron; Aaron would be his prophet.
Moses returned to Egypt at age eighty. By any human reckoning, his best years were behind him. By God’s reckoning, his ministry was just beginning. The burning bush establishes Moses’s identity as a mediator: a man standing at the intersection of God’s holiness and the people’s desperate need, a man sent by God to speak God’s words to human authorities and human communities.
The Ten Plagues and the Exodus (Exodus 5–15)
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said: “Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness” (Exodus 5:1). Pharaoh’s response was contemptuous: “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go” (5:2). He increased Israel’s labor — requiring the same quota of bricks but no longer supplying straw.
The Ten Plagues followed. These were not random natural disasters. Each plague was a targeted attack on a specific aspect of Egyptian religion and power. The Nile turned to blood — the Nile was a god. Darkness covered the land for three days — Ra, the sun god, was Egypt’s supreme deity. The death of the firstborn — Pharaoh himself was considered divine, a son of the gods; his own heir died. The plagues were a systematic dismantling of Egypt’s entire theological and political order, a demonstration that the LORD alone is God.
Pharaoh’s heart was hardened through the plagues — a complex theological reality. Pharaoh hardened his own heart repeatedly in the early plagues (Exodus 8:15, 8:32, 9:34). Then God judicially confirmed and deepened that hardening (9:12). Both are true: Pharaoh’s stubborn rebellion, and God’s sovereign purpose being worked out through it. Paul treats this extensively in Romans 9:17-18. Moses was the instrument through whom God spoke and acted; God was the agent of both judgment and deliverance.
The Passover was God’s direct institution for the last plague. Each household was to take a lamb — unblemished, a year old — kill it at twilight, and put its blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses. They were to eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, with their shoes on and their staffs in hand, ready to leave. God would pass through Egypt and strike every firstborn; when he saw the blood, he would pass over that house. “For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night… and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD” (Exodus 12:12).
Israel left Egypt with 600,000 men on foot, plus women and children — potentially two million people total. They left with the wealth of Egypt, just as God had promised Abraham in Genesis 15:14. They had been slaves; they left as a plundered army’s worth of spoil.
The Red Sea Crossing brought the final confrontation. Pharaoh changed his mind and sent his army in pursuit. Israel, trapped between the sea and the Egyptian forces, panicked and accused Moses of bringing them out to die. Moses answered: “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will shew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever. The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:13-14). God drove back the sea with a strong east wind all night. Israel crossed on dry ground. When the Egyptian army followed, God threw their chariots into confusion, the waters returned, and not one of them survived. Moses led Israel in the Song of the Sea — perhaps Scripture’s oldest extended poem — exulting in the LORD who had thrown horse and rider into the sea (Exodus 15:1-18).
Sinai and the Giving of the Law (Exodus 19–40; Leviticus; Numbers 1–10)
At Mount Sinai, Israel camped for approximately a year. This was the central event in Israel’s national history: the God who had delivered them from Egypt now entered into formal covenant relationship with them. Moses was the covenant mediator — the only human being in Israel’s history described as speaking with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11; cf. Deuteronomy 34:10).
The Ten Commandments Given were spoken by God to the entire assembly from the mountain amid thunder, lightning, thick cloud, and the sound of a very loud trumpet. The people were terrified and drew back. They said to Moses: “Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die” (Exodus 20:19). So Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was — and the role of mediator was formally established. The people stood at a distance; Moses stood before God.
Moses received the full body of law — the Ten Commandments on stone tablets, the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21–23), and the detailed pattern for the Tabernacle Constructed and its priesthood (Exodus 25–31). He was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
While he was there, Israel made the Golden Calf. Aaron, left in charge, collected gold jewelry from the people and fashioned a calf. The people declared: “These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4). God told Moses what was happening and said he would destroy Israel and make a great nation from Moses instead. Moses’s response was one of the most remarkable acts of intercession in Scripture. He refused the offer. He argued: What would Egypt say? What about the oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel? “And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people” (32:14).
Moses came down from the mountain. He saw the calf, the dancing, the chaos. He threw the stone tablets down and broke them at the foot of the mountain — a physical enactment of what Israel had done to the covenant they had just made. He ground the calf to powder, scattered it in the water, and made Israel drink it. He called the Levites to him; they executed 3,000 men that day. Then Moses returned to God with the most extraordinary petition in his ministry: “Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin —; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (32:31-32). He offered himself as a substitute — he would rather be destroyed with Israel than saved without them.
God did not accept the substitution — that awaited Christ — but he heard the intercession and spared Israel. The tablets were rewritten. Moses received a glimpse of God’s glory, hidden in the cleft of the rock while God’s goodness passed before him. His face shone from these encounters with God, and he wore a veil before the people when he was not speaking God’s words — a veil that Paul would later interpret as signifying the fading, incomplete glory of the Mosaic covenant (2 Corinthians 3:7-18).
Wilderness Intercession (Numbers)
The wilderness years were marked by a rhythm of rebellion and intercession. Israel complained repeatedly — about food, water, leadership, the difficulty of the journey — and Moses repeatedly brought these complaints and crises before God, often absorbing the people’s rage while pleading for them before divine judgment.
At Taberah, Israel complained and fire broke out among them; Moses prayed and the fire was quenched (Numbers 11:1-3). In the same period, Israel wept for the foods of Egypt — fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks — and Moses was so overwhelmed that he prayed for death: “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness” (Numbers 11:14-15). God responded with compassion, appointing seventy elders to share the burden of leadership.
At Kadesh, after the twelve spies returned and ten gave a faithless report, the congregation wept all night and spoke of stoning Moses and Aaron and returning to Egypt. God threatened to destroy Israel and make a new nation from Moses. Moses again refused — and interceded on the basis of God’s own reputation, his power, and his mercy: “Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now” (Numbers 14:19). God relented. But the generation that refused to trust would not enter the land. (Spy Mission and Rebellion)
When Miriam and Aaron challenged Moses’s unique prophetic authority in Numbers 12, God called all three to the tent of meeting and vindicated Moses: “My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the LORD shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (12:7-8). God struck Miriam with leprosy. Moses’s response — immediate intercession for the sister who had just attacked him: “Heal her now, O God, I beseech thee” (12:13). Seven words in English; perhaps the most compressed display of his character anywhere in the record.
The Rebellion of Korah (Numbers 16) brought the most direct challenge to Moses’s God-given authority. Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and 250 leaders of the congregation accused Moses and Aaron of exalting themselves above the congregation. Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before the LORD. God opened the earth and swallowed Korah’s company alive; fire consumed the 250 men offering incense. The next day the congregation blamed Moses and Aaron for these deaths; a plague began; Aaron ran with a censer of incense into the midst of the dying congregation and stood between the living and the dead. The plague stopped. 14,700 died.
Meribah and Exclusion from the Land (Numbers 20)
At Kadesh again, the congregation had no water and contended with Moses. God instructed him clearly: “Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water” (Numbers 20:8). Moses gathered the assembly. Then, in a moment of exasperation and pride that Scripture records without commentary but does not minimize: “Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?” (20:10). He lifted the rod and struck the rock twice. Water came abundantly.
God’s response was devastating in its precision: “Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them” (20:12). The failure was threefold: unbelief (he did not trust God’s specific instruction), failure to sanctify God (he drew attention to himself and Aaron — “must WE”), and disobedience (he struck when told to speak). The water still came. The ministry continued. But the goal — the land, the inheritance, the culmination of the Exodus — was taken from him.
This is one of the most sobering passages in the entire Bible. Moses had interceded for Israel through decades of rebellion. He had refused God’s offer to build a new nation from him. He had borne their complaints, their accusations, their attempts to stone him. And in one moment of acting from his own anger rather than God’s specific direction, the consequence was absolute and permanent. The episode carries massive theological weight: even the law’s greatest mediator could not bring the people into their inheritance. The law shows, demands, and condemns; but it cannot deliver into the fullness of what God promises. Only Joshua — whose Hebrew name is the same as the Greek name Jesus — could lead them across the Jordan.
Deuteronomy: The Farewell Speeches
Deuteronomy is Moses’s swan song. Standing on the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan, with the land of promise visible but unreachable for him, Moses delivered three great speeches to the generation born in the wilderness — the children and grandchildren of those who left Egypt.
The first speech (Deuteronomy 1–4) recounted Israel’s journey and God’s faithfulness. The second and longest (Deuteronomy 5–26) restated and expounded the law — Laws Restated — culminating in the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (6:4-5). Jesus would call this the first and greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38). The third speech (Deuteronomy 27–30) set before Israel the Blessings and Curses Proclaimed — the terms of the covenant and the consequences of fidelity and apostasy. These curses, which Israel would eventually experience in exile, were also the context in which Paul would understand Christ’s work: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).
Moses then sang the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32) — a sweeping poem of Israel’s past faithfulness and future failure, ending in God’s ultimate victory and vindication. He delivered the Blessing of Moses (Deuteronomy 33), speaking a blessing over each tribe as Jacob had done before his death.
Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo. God showed him the entire land — from Gilead to Dan, Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh, Judah to the western sea, the Negeb, and the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, to Zoar. “And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab… but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day” (Deuteronomy 34:5-6). (Death of Moses) Moses was 120 years old. His eye was not dim and his natural force was not abated. God buried him in an unknown grave — to prevent it becoming a shrine. “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (34:10). The Torah ends with this: no one like him again. Until Christ.
Moses in the New Testament
The Transfiguration
At the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus on the mountain, speaking with him about his coming departure (Luke 9:31). The Law and the Prophets bearing witness to the One they had pointed toward. Peter offered to build three shelters — to put Moses and Elijah and Jesus on equal footing — but the cloud came and the voice said: “This is my beloved Son: hear him” (Mark 9:7). Moses and Elijah vanished; they saw Jesus only.
A Prophet Like Moses
Deuteronomy 18:15 and 18:18 contain one of Moses’s own prophecies: “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.” This text shaped Israel’s messianic expectation. Peter applied it directly to Jesus in Acts 3:22-23. Stephen cited it in his defense before the Sanhedrin in Acts 7:37. The Samaritan woman at the well asked Jesus if he was “that prophet” (John 4:19). John 6:14 records the crowd’s response to the feeding of the five thousand: “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.” The identification is sustained throughout the Gospels and Acts: Jesus is the Prophet like Moses, the final and complete Revealer and Mediator.
Moses vs. Christ: Hebrews
The letter to the Hebrews makes the most sustained argument about the Moses-Christ relationship. Hebrews 3:1-6 draws the comparison carefully: “Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant… But Christ as a son over his own house.” Moses served faithfully in the house; Christ built the house. The covenant Moses mediated was therefore a shadow of the covenant Christ mediates. Hebrews 8–10 develops this: the Mosaic system, with its priesthood, sacrifices, and tabernacle, was a copy and shadow of the heavenly realities. Moses was given a pattern on the mountain (Exodus 25:40; Hebrews 8:5); Christ is the reality the pattern pointed to.
Law and Gospel
John 1:17 — “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” This is not a demotion of Moses but a precise statement of function. Moses gave the law that reveals what righteousness requires and that human beings cannot meet on their own. Christ provides the righteousness the law demands. Paul’s argument in Galatians and Romans depends on this: the law was a tutor to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24), the law is holy and good (Romans 7:12), but it cannot justify because no flesh can keep it (Romans 3:20).
The Faith of Moses: Hebrews 11
Hebrews 11:23-29 meditates on Moses’s faith through his life. His parents hid him, “not afraid of the king’s commandment.” Moses “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward” (11:24-26). He “endured, as seeing him who is invisible” (11:27). By faith he kept the Passover. By faith the people passed through the Red Sea. The hall of faith in Hebrews 11 treats Moses as one of its great exemplars — a man who saw past the visible to the eternal.
Theological Significance
Moses is the Bible’s clearest type of the prophetic mediator. He stands between God and the people — receiving revelation and conveying it downward, bearing the people’s failures and rebellion upward before God in intercession. His life establishes the pattern that runs through the entire Bible: deliverer, covenant mediator, lawgiver, intercessor, prophet.
His family background — Hebrew slave heritage, Egyptian royal upbringing, Midianite wilderness training — is no accident. God prepared him through all of it: the slave heritage gave him identity with Israel; the Egyptian education gave him the tools to lead a nation; the wilderness decades gave him humility and knowledge of the terrain through which he would lead Israel. No part of his preparation was wasted.
His character is captured in one of the Bible’s most arresting statements: “Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). This is the same man who killed an Egyptian, broke the stone tablets at the foot of Sinai, and confronted Pharaoh repeatedly. Meekness is not weakness — it is strength under God’s authority, directed by God’s purposes rather than personal passion. Moses had enormous authority and enormous restraint. When he violated that restraint at Meribah, the consequences were permanent.
The exclusion from the land is finally a theological statement: the law cannot bring the people into their inheritance. Moses, who represents the law, could see the land but not enter it. Joshua — Hebrew: Yeshua, the same name as Jesus — led Israel across. This typology is not merely a linguistic coincidence; it is a theological pattern that the New Testament explicitly develops (Hebrews 4:8).
Jesus fulfills all of Moses’s roles more completely. He is the greater Deliverer, the greater Lawgiver (Matthew 5–7, “You have heard it said… but I say”), the greater Mediator (Hebrews 9:15), the greater Intercessor (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25), the greater Prophet (Hebrews 1:1-2). Moses served; Christ rules. Moses was in the house; Christ built it. Moses gave words from God; Christ is the Word of God (John 1:1).
Key Events
| Event | Reference | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Preserved from Pharaoh’s decree | Exodus 2:1-10 | Birth and Rescue of Moses |
| The burning bush and call | Exodus 3–4 | Burning Bush |
| Plagues on Egypt | Exodus 7–12 | Ten Plagues |
| Institution of the Passover | Exodus 12 | Passover |
| Crossing of the Red Sea | Exodus 14–15 | Red Sea Crossing |
| Israel’s golden calf apostasy | Exodus 32 | Golden Calf |
| Construction of the tabernacle | Exodus 35–40 | Tabernacle Constructed |
| Korah’s rebellion | Numbers 16 | Rebellion of Korah |
| The ten faithless spies | Numbers 13–14 | Spy Mission and Rebellion |
| Moses’s first farewell speech | Deuteronomy 1–4 | Moses First Speech |
| The law restated; the Shema | Deuteronomy 5–26 | Laws Restated |
| Blessings and curses set before Israel | Deuteronomy 27–30 | Blessings and Curses Proclaimed |
| The Song of Moses | Deuteronomy 32 | Song of Moses |
| Tribal blessings | Deuteronomy 33 | Blessing of Moses |
| Moses’s death on Mount Nebo | Deuteronomy 34 | Death of Moses |
| Moses at the Transfiguration | Matthew 17:1-13 | Transfiguration |
Key Verses
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” — Exodus 3:14
“And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” — Exodus 33:11
“Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.” — Numbers 12:3
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” — Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, In all the signs and the wonders, which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt… And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.” — Deuteronomy 34:10-12
“Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.” — Hebrews 11:25-26
Relationships
- Aaron — Brother, Levitical priest, initial spokesman before Pharaoh
- Miriam — Sister, prophetess, led the women in song at the Red Sea
- Jochebed — Mother, hid him as an infant, nursed him in Pharaoh’s household
- Zipporah — Wife, daughter of Jethro; circumcised their son during the journey back to Egypt (Exodus 4:24-26)
- Jethro — Father-in-law, Midianite priest, advised Moses to delegate judicial authority (Exodus 18)
- Joshua — Aide and successor; led Israel into Canaan after Moses’s death
- Pharaoh — Adversary; his resistance became the stage for God’s glory
Cross-References
- Exodus — The primary narrative of Moses’s ministry
- Leviticus — The priestly law given through Moses
- Numbers — Wilderness years, intercessions, failures
- Deuteronomy — Moses’s farewell speeches and death
- Hebrews — Systematic NT comparison of Moses and Christ
- Acts — Stephen’s defense (Acts 7) and Peter’s sermon (Acts 3)
- John — “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (1:17)
- The Covenant — Mosaic covenant as shadow of the new covenant
- Hall of Faith — Hebrews 11:23-29