At a time when the Israelites
had multiplied in Egypt and were spread throughout the whole country, the
Coptic Pharaohs of Egypt determined to strengthen and favor their own Coptic
peoples and to degrade and dishonor the children of Israel, whom they regarded
as foreigners. Over a long period, the Israelites, divided and scattered, were
captive in the hands of the tyrannical Copts, and were scorned and despised by
all, so that the meanest of the Copts would freely persecute and lord it over
the noblest of the Israelites. The enslavement, wretchedness and helplessness
of the Hebrews reached such a pitch that they were never, day or night, secure
in their own persons nor able to provide any defense for their wives and
families against the tyranny of their Pharaohic captors. Then their food was
the fragments of their own broken hearts, and their drink a river of tears.
They continued on in this anguish until suddenly Moses, the All-Beauteous,
beheld the Divine Light streaming out of the blessed
Vale, the place that was holy ground, and heard the quickening voice of God as
it spoke from the flame of that Tree “neither of the East nor of the West,” [Qur’án
24:35] and He stood up in the full
panoply of His universal prophethood. In the midst of the Israelites, He blazed
out like a lamp of Divine guidance, and by the light of salvation He led that
lost people out of the shadows of ignorance into knowledge and perfection.
(‘Abdu’l-Baha, ‘The Secret of Divine Civilization’)
