Moses is a towering figure in the Old Testament. He stood up to one of the most powerful leaders in the ancient world, led the people, and wrote the law. But how old was Moses when God called him? The age of Moses has been a subject of discussion and debate since before Jesus walked the earth.
Let's delve into the biblical timeline of Moses’ life, focusing on his age when he left Egypt and his significance.
Early Life and Flight from Egypt
Moses was born at a time when the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians. Pharaoh decreed that all newborn sons should be thrown into the Nile, but Moses' mother hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she placed him in a basket and trusted God with his future.
“The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. Moses was found in his basket by Pharaoh’s daughter.
She paid his mother to nurse him, and then brought him into the Egyptian court as her adopted son (Exodus 2:10). He grew to adulthood in between verses 10 and 11. Stephen asserts in Acts 7:22 that during this time Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and that he became a man who was mighty in words and deeds.
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By the time Moses murders an Egyptian for striking a Hebrew slave (Ex. 2:11-12), he is 40 years old. Up to this point, he’s been raised in Pharaoh’s house as an adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Stephen later describes him this way: “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). He’s certainly skilled enough in combat to handle the Egyptian on his own.
No wonder Moses thinks he’ll be the one to deliver God’s people from Egypt. Forty-year-old Moses is strong and educated and skilled. He has political clout, military knowledge, physical gifting, and deep sympathy for his people. But it all unravels. The people reject him. Pharaoh wants to kill him. He’s left with no other option but to flee to the wilderness, marry a priest’s daughter, have some kids, and shepherd flocks for his father-in-law.
Moses fleeing from Egypt after killing the Egyptian. Source: bibleodyssey.org
Forty Years in Midian
Moses then enters 40 years of insignificance, languishing in the wasteland.
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Octogenarian Moses is weak. He can’t even talk well. Moses has gone from It makes sense that God would use me to Who am I that God would use me? God deconstructs Moses’s strength so that he’ll learn who’s really in control. God doesn’t need Moses; Moses needs God. And Moses’s game plan reflects his new attitude.
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He doesn’t march into Egypt with an elaborate military strategy. He doesn’t waltz in with an arsenal of sophisticated weapons to arm an enslaved nation for rebellion. Moses limps in with a stutter and a stick-and through him, God will overthrow the world’s mightiest nation and redeem his people.
God doesn’t need our impressiveness. He uses broken jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7), people who, like Moses, ask: “Who am I that you would use me?” And it’s there-in that confession of weakness-that his power is perfected, his glory revealed, his grace radiant (2 Cor. 12:9-10). Internalizing this frees us from trying to act like God. No longer do we need to white-knuckle our lives, taking matters into our own hands rather than resting in God’s sovereign schedule.
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Return to Egypt and the Exodus
Moses seemed settled in his life with the Midianites and likely never had plans to return to Egypt. But one day, he was tending flocks on Mount Sinai, and suddenly, “there the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush” (Exodus 3:1). God tells him to take off his sandals for he is on holy ground. Then He identifies Himself as “the God of your father-the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6).
God instructs him to return to Egypt and challenge Pharaoh to free the enslaved Israelites. Moses tried to argue that he was not the right guy for the job, It took much persuasion and 10 plagues from the Lord before Pharaoh let them go. The final straw was when God took the life of every firstborn in Egypt, while the Israelites were protected by God’s instruction to paint the blood of a young lamb or goat on their doorposts so that they would be “passed over” and the plague will not touch them (Exodus 12:12-13).
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Moses was 80 years old when the exodus took place (Exodus 7:7, 12:41-42) in 1446 BC, and 120 years old at his death (Deuteronomy 34:7). Given that Moses’ death was towards the close of the wilderness period, which lasted 40 years (Deuteronomy 2:7; Acts 13:18) (c.
The night that Pharoah let the Israelites go, about 600,000 men plus women and children left Egypt, where their people had lived for 430 years. Moses followed God’s instructions of which way to go, but it led them to the shores of the Red Sea. But God wasn’t through with showing His power: He parted the Red Sea to let the Israelites pass by on the dry ground. The water then came crashing in on the Egyptian soldiers coming to slaughter the Israelites (Exodus 14:15).
Moses parting the Red Sea.
The Wilderness Years and Death
What followed wasn’t easy. Moses spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness with people who complained, didn’t follow God’s rules (the Ten Commandments), sinned, repented, rebelled again, and finally built a Tabernacle to the Lord. The goal was to get to the land of milk of honey that God promised them.
But Moses wasn’t going to go with them into the Promised Land. After all those years of wilderness wandering with people who gave God grief time and again-doing something he never wanted to do-God withheld his promise from Moses.
It would be Joshua who would lead them into the land they had dreamed of for 40 years. Why not Moses (and Aaron)? Deuteronomy 32:51-52 tells us why: “This is because both of you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah Kadesh in the Desert of Zin and because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites. Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.”
The Meribah Kadesh story is what we read in Numbers 20, close to the end of the 40 years of wandering. The people were dying of thirst, and there was no water. Moses and Aaron prayed to God in the Tent of Meeting. God said to speak to the rock, and water would gush forth.
But in anger (“Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”), Moses didn’t follow the instructions. Instead of speaking to the rock as God said, he struck the rock twice, and water came forth in abundance. Then Moses hears what must have sounded incredulous to him after 40 years. God said in Numbers 20:12: “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”
Before his death, God showed Moses the land his descendants would inherit. Here we see how Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land.
The Bible does not provide detailed specifics about the exact manner of Moses' death at age 120, but it does describe the circumstances surrounding it. According to Deuteronomy 34:5-7: "Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone."
It’s interesting that the Bible says in Deuteronomy 34:7 that Moses’ “eyes were not weak or his strength gone.” God kept him strong long after he’d reached old age, using his strength for something important. Moses then died and was buried there at the age of 120.
Moses’ life can be divided into three periods of forty years. According to Acts 7:23, for the first forty years of his life, Moses was essentially a member of the Egyptian royal family. Once Moses determined to side with the people of Israel instead of the Egyptians, he was forced to live in exile for the next forty years of his life (Acts 7:30). After returning to Egypt to free the nation of Israel from slavery, Moses lived another forty years (Acts 7:36).
One would think that what Moses learned as a prince of Egypt for forty years was what prepared him to be Israel’s leader during the forty years of wilderness wanderings. But the Lord also wanted Moses to learn humility. Moses’ forty years as a shepherd taught him to be humble and to rely on the Lord. Numbers 12:3 declares, “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” Moses’ experience and training during the first eighty years of his life prepared him to be Israel’s leader.
It is interesting to note that, when Moses died at the age of 120, he did not die of old age. This is despite the fact that, by Moses’ day, the typical lifespan was much shorter than 120. Moses had been supernaturally strengthened and protected from the effects of aging; he died because God had completed what He had planned for Moses.
God had used Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, record God’s Law, and deliver the Israelites to the borders of the Promised Land. Because of Moses’ failure to obey the Lord in Numbers 20:1-12, God did not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land with the Israelites.
So, when the Israelites were ready to enter and take possession of the land, Moses went up Mount Nebo and saw the land from an overlook, and then the Lord took him home (Deuteronomy 34:1-7).
Moses' Timeline
Here is a summary of Moses' key life events:
| Age | Event |
|---|---|
| 0 | Birth in Egypt; Placed in a basket in the Nile. |
| 40 | Kills an Egyptian, and flees to Midian. |
| 80 | Returns to Egypt; Leads the Exodus. |
| 120 | Dies at Mount Nebo before entering the Promised Land. |
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