Let my people go: Exodus Revisited

I offer no explanations and certainly no apologies.

Exodus:

A member of a suppressed socio-political group, fearing for his life, sends her only son out from the working-class proletariat of which she is a part so as to save him the death ordered by the king (Pharaoh). Hiding him in an ark - and here we cannot ignore the resonances back to that other political dissident, Noah - she saves him by setting him afloat in a river.

He is found and raised by none other than one of the ruling class who, ironically enough, pays his own blood-mother to act as a surrogate, he is planted as a deep undercover sleeper agent. Little is known about his childhood except that he was named Moses "Because I drew him out of the water."

Some time later "when Moses was grown," he encountered a situation which we must assume activated his latent training, causing him to kill an "Egyptian and hid him in the sand." Because of the nature of his assumed position as adopted son of the Pharaoh's daughter, it would take more than the killing of one man to fail the safeguards of his position (especially in a pre-feudal, iron(?)-age society) and cause him to receive an immediate death penalty.

Indeed the Pharaoh's reaction in 2:15: "When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses" suggests not the  ethical upholding of justice but rather the socio-political strivings of a man seeking to rid himself of an unwelcome outsider much in the way this same Pharaoh commanded  the sons of the Hebrew women to death.

Thus, whatever code that awakened Moses, also marked him as not quite belonging to the Egyptian caste to which he had been adopted. "Then he said, 'Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?'" Exodus 2:14

Moses fled to the land of Midian, presumably to complete his training, where among other things, it is said that he communed with God, a euphemism that combined with the visions he saw, suggest experimentation with psychoactive substances. Here he married and settled down until such time as he could return from exile without fear of the repercussions of his earlier trespass against Egypt, the statute of limitations on such crimes being the longevity of the men who would seek to punish you.

Ten times Moses met with the Pharaoh, attempting to negotiate some kind of deal by which the Israeli people could be released from their bondage to the militaristic, monarchal state. His ultimatums, however, were met upon deaf ears, so Moses, acting in the interests of God resorted to fear tactics, inciting the bourgeoisie and elite to appeal to their leader and submit to Moses' demands.

 It took the death of every firstborn child of Egypt before Pharaoh actually let his people go, and even then, the decision was arbitrary.