60 free Moses trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Moses trivia quiz follows the prophet from the basket in the bulrushes to the summit of Mount Nebo. The easy questions cover the story most people know from Sunday school or the movies: who found the baby, the burning bush, the first and last plagues, the golden calf, the smashed tablets and how old Moses was when he died. The medium questions dig into the details that get forgotten: his wife Zipporah and their sons, the Song of the Sea, manna, the bronze serpent, Korah's rebellion and Miriam's punishment. The harder end goes beyond the Book of Exodus. There are questions on Moses in the Quran and Islamic tradition (Samiri, Al-Khidr, the fifty prayers), on rabbinic legends, on the meaning of his name, on Michelangelo's horned statue and Freud's strange last book, and on Hollywood's two great Moses films, The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Moses, the plagues, the crossing of the sea, the Ten Commandments and the films, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you want more, our Exodus, Ten Commandments and Bible quizzes pick up where this one leaves off.
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Q 01As a baby, Moses was hidden by his mother in a basket among the bulrushes of which river?
The Nile
Pharaoh had ordered every newborn Hebrew boy drowned; the princess who found the child adopted him as a foundling.
Q 02Who found the infant Moses in the river and raised him?
Pharaoh's daughter
Exodus never names her; Josephus and the Book of Jubilees call her Thermouthis, and Jewish tradition Bithiah.
Q 03Moses' birth mother, who was later hired to nurse her own son, was named what?
Jochebed
She was a daughter of Levi and, by one reckoning in Numbers, the aunt of her own husband Amram.
Q 04Moses fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian who was doing what?
Beating a Hebrew
He escaped to Midian, where he met his future wife at a well.
Q 05Moses' wife Zipporah was one of the seven daughters of which Midianite priest?
Jethro
Exodus also calls him Reuel and Judges calls him Hobab, a puzzle that has kept commentators busy for centuries.
Q 06On the road back to Egypt, Zipporah saves Moses' life by doing what?
Circumcising their son
The strange 'incident at the inn' has God trying to kill Moses for neglecting the rite.
Q 07What were the names of Moses' two sons?
Gershom and Eliezer
Their grandsons Shebuel and Rehabiah get a passing mention in Chronicles.
Q 08God first spoke to Moses from a burning bush on which mountain?
Horeb
The Hebrew word for the bush, seneh, appears nowhere else in the Bible and may be a pun on Sinai.
Q 09What did God tell Moses to do before approaching the burning bush?
Remove his sandals
Visitors to the Chapel of the Burning Bush at Saint Catherine's Monastery must still take off their shoes.
Q 10What reason did Moses give for not wanting to be God's spokesman before Pharaoh?
He could not speak eloquently
A rabbinic legend blames a childhood injury to his tongue for the stammer.
Q 11Which sign was Moses given at the burning bush involving his staff?
It turned into a snake
Before Pharaoh, a Hebrew rod later swallowed the rods of the Egyptian sorcerers.
Q 12What was the first of the ten plagues of Egypt?
The Nile turned to blood
Even water stored in jars turned to blood, and it was a week before the plague lifted.
Q 13Which plague came second, with Pharaoh's magicians conjuring a second wave of their own?
Frogs
Three days passed before all of them died, and even Pharaoh's private quarters were infested.
Q 21Exodus says the raw wilderness food tasted like wafers made with what?
Honey
One modern theory identifies it with the crystallised honeydew of scale insects living on Sinai tamarisk trees.
Q 22The Israelites defeated which people at Rephidim while Moses held up his hands?
The Amalekites
Two companions held his arms up until sunset, according to Exodus 17.
Q 23The Hebrew name for the Ten Commandments literally means what?
The Ten Words
The Greek dekalogos is a straight translation, which is why they are also called the Decalogue.
Q 14The tenth and final plague was what?
Death of the firstborn
The plagues are still recited every year at the Passover Seder.
Q 15The Hebrew name of the sea the Israelites crossed, Yam Suph, is often translated as what?
Sea of Reeds
The Greek Septuagint rendered it Erythra Thalassa, the Red Sea, and the name stuck.
Q 16Where does the Bible say Pharaoh's chariots overtook the Israelites before the sea parted?
Pi-hahiroth
The camp lay between Migdol and the sea, opposite Baal-zephon.
Q 17In the oldest layer of the crossing story, what does God use to push the sea back?
A strong east wind
Scholars see four layers in the account; the two walls of water belong to a later one.
Q 18Which sister of Moses leads the women in song and dance after the crossing of the sea?
Miriam
The Torah calls her a prophetess, and the Talmud lists her among the seven major female prophets of Israel.
Q 19The Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 is regarded by some scholars as what?
The oldest surviving text about the escape
The Sabbath on which it is read is called Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song.
Q 20What did the Israelites call the food that appeared each morning in the wilderness?
Manna
The name is said to come from the question 'man hu?', roughly 'what is it?'.
Q 24How long was Moses on Mount Sinai before coming down with the tablets?
Forty days and forty nights
The mountain had been covered by cloud for six days before he went up on the seventh.
Q 25Who fashioned the golden calf while Moses was on the mountain?
Aaron
He told the people to bring their golden earrings, then claimed the calf simply came out of the fire.
Q 26What did Moses do with the golden calf after burning it?
Ground it to powder and made the people drink it
Some three thousand people were killed by the Levites that day.
Q 27What did Moses do with the first set of stone tablets when he saw the calf?
Smashed them at the foot of the mountain
God then told him to hew two new tablets and rewrote the words on them.
Q 28Moses' brother and sister criticised him for marrying a woman described as what?
A Cushite
His sister was struck with a skin disease for a week as punishment; midrash insists the 'Cushite' was really Zipporah.
Q 29Who led a revolt against Moses' leadership and was punished for it?
Korah
The rebels were swallowed up by the earth, and the priest Eleazar was told to collect the censers of the dead.
Q 30Moses made a bronze serpent on a pole to cure Israelites bitten by what?
Fiery serpents
A later reforming king smashed the object, by then called Nehushtan, because people were sacrificing to it.