Moses, who was a hot-headed youth hit him. The blow was a bit too severe and the Egyptian fell down dead. To kill a native was a terrible thing and the Egyptian laws were not as wise as those of Hammurapi, the good Babylonian King, who recognized the difference between a premeditated murder and the killing of a man whose insults had brought his opponent to a point of unreasoning rage. Moses fled. He escaped into the land of his ancestors, into the Midian desert, along the eastern bank of the Red Sea, where his tribe had tended their sheep several hundred years before. A kind priest by the name of Jethro received him in his house and gave him one of his seven daughters, Zipporah, as his wife. There Moses lived for a long time and there he pondered upon many deep subjects. He had left the luxury and the comfort of the palace of Pharaoh to share the rough and simple life of a desert priest. In the olden days, before the Jewish people had moved into Egypt, they too had been wanderers among the endless plains of Arabia. They had lived in tents and they had eaten plain food, but they had been honest men and faithful women, contented with few possessions but proud of the righteousness of their mind. All this had been changed after they had become exposed to the civilization of Egypt. They had taken to the ways of the comfort-loving Egyptians. They had allowed another race to rule them and they had not cared to fight for their independence. Instead of the old gods of the wind-swept desert they had begun to worship strange divinities who lived in the glimmering splendors of the dark Egyptian temples. Moses felt that it was his duty to go forth and save his people from their fate and bring them back to the simple Truth of the olden days. And so he sent messengers to his relatives and suggested that they leave the land of slavery and join him in the desert. But the Egyptians heard of this and guarded the Jews more carefully than ever before. It seemed that the plans of Moses were doomed to failure when suddenly an epidemic broke out among the people of the Nile Valley. The Jews who had always obeyed certain very strict laws of health (which they had learned in the hardy days of their desert life) escaped the disease while the weaker Egyptians died by the hundreds of thousands. Amidst the confusion and the panic which followed this Silent Death, the Jews packed their belongings and hastily fled from the land which had promised them so much and which had given them so little. As soon as the flight became known the Egyptians tried to follow them with their armies but their soldiers met with disaster and the Jews escaped. They were safe and they were free and they moved eastward into the waste spaces which are situated at the foot of Mount Sinai, the peak which has been called after Sin, the Babylonian God of the Moon. There Moses took command of his fellow-tribesmen and commenced upon his great task of reform.