Moses, Man of the Mountain (13 page)

M
oses sat up on the mountain passing nations through his mind. Way late in the day he climbed up to a place where he had been resting every afternoon for a long time. He was watching the development of a family of reptiles under a rock beneath a bushy growth. So he went on up putting words into the mouths of the various little creatures that he saw on the way. What these creatures had to say about people had plenty of seasoning.

Moses rounded a large boulder in sight of the spot where he was going and went on easily. There was the bush, and there was the rock under it. He was within a few feet of it when the bush burst into furious flame. Moses could not believe his eyes, but neither could he shut them on the sight. Because the bush was burning brightly but its leaves did not twist and crumple in the heat and they did not fall as ashes beneath charred limbs as they should have done. It just burned and Moses, awed though he was, could no more help coming closer to try and see the why of the burning bush than he could quit growing old. Both things were bound up in his birth. Moses drew near the bush.

“Moses,” spoke a great voice which Moses did not know, “take off your shoes.”

“How come, Lord? I know no voice like that can’t be like mine.”

“This ground you are walking on is holy ground. Take off those shoes.”

“Yes, sir, Lord.” Moses loosened his shoes and took them off without once taking his eyes off of the burning bush that did not wither. Moses stood barefooted and bareheaded and trembled with awe.

“Moses!”

“Yes, sir!”

“Come closer, Moses. There is something that you must hear.”

“I’m coming.” Moses faltered nearer the flame and stood. For the first time in all his life he felt naked, meek and void.

“Moses, look on the ground in front of you.”

Moses looked down, and started back in terror.

“What is it you see, Moses?”

“It’s a snake! It’s a deadly poison snake,” Moses said in fear, and started to run away down the mountain.

“Moses!”

“Yes, sir, Lord.”

“Come back here.” Moses came because the mysterious voice commanded, but he came in fear. “Moses,” the voice ordered, “pick up that snake.” Moses shrivelled and shrank from the order. “Pick it up by the tail.”

Moses gathered his strength and stooped. He seized the snake by the tail expecting to be bitten immediately. But except for a curious tremor of life that somehow communicated itself to the hand of Moses and from his hand to his arm and from his arm throughout his body, it might have been the wooden image of a snake. It was heavy for its length in wood, but it was stiff and motionless like stone. Moses was amazed that the writhing serpent on the ground could have become so quickly the lifeless thing in his hands. It was a walking stick carved in imitation of a snake.

“Moses, put it down.” Moses dropped the rod and it became a living snake again. Suddenly his fear left him. He
picked up the snake in that certain way again and it became again a rod to his right hand. It was his, he knew by the feel of it. It was the rest of him. But the voice came again.

“Moses, I want you to go down into Egypt.”

“Into Egypt? How come, Lord? Egypt is no place for me to go.”

“I said Egypt, Moses. I heard my people, the Hebrews, when they cried, when they kept on groaning to me for help. I want you to go down and tell that Pharaoh I say to let my people go.”

“He won’t pay me no attention, Lord. I know he won’t.”

“Go ahead, like I told you, Moses. I am tired of hearing the groaning in my ear. I mean to overcome Pharaoh this time. Go on down there and I’ll go with you.”

“And those people, Lord, they won’t believe in me. I don’t talk their kind of talk in the first place and then again, I got a stammering tongue. I never could make a speech. Send somebody else, Lord.”

“You go on; I’ll go with you. Open your mouth and I’ll speak for you.”

“Well, Lord, if I go, tell me what to say; they won’t believe in me,” Moses said with hopeless resignation. “I don’t even know your name. Who must I tell them sent me?”

“Tell them I AM WHAT I AM.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll go tell them, but I know it won’t do any good.”

“Somebody with a speaking mouth will be provided to talk for you. Go down into Egypt, Moses, and lead my people to the place I have provided for them. I AM WHAT I AM.”

The Voice was hushed. The bush no longer burned. In fact, it looked just like it had yesterday and the day before and the day before that. The mountain was just as usual with the wind yelling “Whoo-youuu” against its rocky knots. There was nothing to speak to the senses of Moses and verify what he had heard and to hold him to what he had so unwillingly promised. That is, nothing but the rod he held in his hand. Therefore it was not a vision and neither was it a dream. This bush had
blazed with fire before his eyes, but it had not burned as was natural. A serpent had become a rod to his hand and a rod had become a serpent and back again. Life could never be again what it once was. He had promised a god to go down into hated Egypt and command a man whom he hated and who hated him to permit a people whom Pharaoh hated to leave his servitude and go free. Moses dropped to a shady rock and sat with his face covered until the sun got low and red. Then he dragged himself home behind his mumbling sheep.

J
ethro was very helpful when Moses told him about it. In fact he seemed to Moses to glow and to swell with pleasure. “No need in you taking the thing so serious, Moses. It might not be as hard to do as you think.”

“No, it’s just ten times as hard. I can’t do it, and that I AM WHAT I AM ought to know it. It’s going to be just about as hard to talk to them Hebrews as it is to Pharaoh. But the promise done been made, so—”

“Oh, I don’t know, Moses. It stands to reason that anybody in slavery would be glad to be free.”

“Humph!”

“And when you look at it again, a nation of folks with no particular god would naturally be glad for a god to choose them for his own and then pick out a land to give them.”

“When they can get loose from slavery in Egypt and fight the folks that already got the land and lick ’em, they got it. It don’t seem such a much to me—that land part don’t.”

“Oh, I don’t know, now. With a good military leader, they might make out top-superior to everything they meet.”

“Did you ever lead an army? It takes more than promise of some land to make a fighting army out of folks that just got free. Men fight with more than their hands.”

“Well, anyhow, Moses, I can help you out some.”

“How?”

“On one of those trips down into Egypt I met up with some of those Hebrews and I think I could maybe find a sort of headman among them who could help you out some.”

“That would be mighty convenient if you could. Why, I don’t talk their language. I don’t talk with their thoughts. I don’t know the first thing about them and they know next to nothing about me. I just can’t go.”

“How about your promise on the mountain?”

“It wasn’t so much my promising as it was a command. I got to go, but I feel like the job don’t belong to me. I never could talk to crowds, and least of all these people that is so strange to me.”

“I’ll go down into Egypt, Moses, and bring out a man to help you handle the people until you feel you can manage. His name is Aaron.”

“And what am I going to say to him, Jethro, to get him to work with me?”

“Why can’t I tell him the Voice mentioned him by name?”

“Tell him whatever you want to, Jethro,” Moses said and walked away with his head hung down. “I’m going off to the wilderness to think. I am a man that has been called.”

M
oses talked with Aaron and got more aggravated and put out every time they sat down together to plan. This Aaron was a short, squatty man who wanted things. First he wanted clothes like an Egyptian noble with ornaments. Then he wanted titles. Then Moses must recognize him as a brother. Moses refused at first to even listen, but Jethro persuaded him that the connection might be useful down in Egypt. He could make the old legend serve him. So Moses consented by a freezing silence. Then he wanted things for his family, and then he wanted things for his tribe. He was a Levite and the Levites must lead in all things or he could not consider a thing.

“This sounds like the very kind of thing I hate,” Moses said with some heat, “and before I’ll be bogged down in a lot of politics, I’ll call the whole thing off.”

“But the Voice,” Jethro reminded him quickly.

“Oh, I’ll go back and ask that Voice again. I’ll find out if I have to go through all this to save people that think more of personal preference than they do of rescuing a whole people and making up a nation.”

So Jethro convinced Aaron that he really must give up some of his demands, or he would find himself back in Egypt and in the same fix he was before he, Jethro, had smuggled him
out. This frightened Aaron and no more was said about his offices and prerogatives for a while. He did mutter something about people who wanted to make kings out of themselves, but didn’t want anybody else to advance themselves the least bit. But Moses ignored all this and finished his plan of campaign.

It wasn’t long after that he was saying goodbye to Midian and to his family. Jethro and the family mounted camels and went with Moses and Aaron for a day’s march.

“It may be a month and it may be a year, but I won’t be back until I march out with the children of Israel. We have no army to face Pharaoh with. I got to fight all Egypt with my right hand.”

Jethro had dismounted and stood by Moses, showing all the old affection he felt.

“Be sure and come back, son. I hope you don’t come by yourself, but come back home.” He leaned his old head on Moses’ broad chest like a child. “I wish I was in your shoes, Moses. Going on missions is a great privilege.”

“I thought you was over-anxious for me to go, Jethro. That feeling helped me to consent to the Voice. I could feel how much it meant to you.”

“I’m anxious for you to go, but I’m more anxious for you to come back. I realize it now when you are going. Don’t let old Pharaoh kill you. You got power. Use it. Nothing can stand against your hand when you lift it up. All my love and all my powers go with you, son. And don’t hold my impatience against me. You will know what it is to get tired of waiting on visions when you get old like me.”

Moses looked past the outline of Aaron mounted on a camel toward the Red Sea, and for a moment he wavered. Then he looked back at the shape of Mount Sinai with its shoulder-wrapping of clouds and heard the mutter of thunder from its throat. He embraced Jethro affectionately and turned his feet resolutely towards Egypt. Jethro stood watching him for a long time, but Moses was on his way. He never looked back.

M
oses was back in Egypt and the people of Goshen knew it. The leaders in Israel had known that Aaron had slipped out of Egypt to meet him, and they had been listening and looking for his return. Aaron had sent the tremor along the grapevine immediately after he returned—“our man of god is in Egypt.”

Tremendous excitement rippled down the secret ways of Goshen.

“They say he owns a god” was whispered in hopeful emotion.

“Sure enough?” others questioned. “Wonder how do folks get hold of gods?”

“That’s more than I can tell you because it’s more than I know. But that ain’t the point. The point I’m coming out on is, this god wants to work in our behalf. He aims to put us in power with the Egyptians.”

“Hush your mouth! You don’t mean to tell me that!”

“That’s what he claims.”

“It sure is something if it’s so.”

“They say he can really do what he says.”

“What you say his name is?”

“The new god or the man—which one you talking about?”

“The man, fool.”

“They call him Moses, because they say he came out of the water in some way or other. So they call his name Moses.”

The other man paused and scratched his head and thought. “Look like to me I heard that name before somewhere a long time ago. Wasn’t there a Prince of Egypt named Moses?”

“This is the same one.”

“Well, what is he doing with a strange god and how come he wants to help us out? I ain’t never seen no Egyptian with that sort of a notion.”

“It seems like that’s how come he had to leave Egypt a long time ago—because he had sympathy for us. He took and killed an Egyptian overseer for beating on Hebrews, so old Pharaoh, I don’t mean this Pharaoh we got now, I mean the old gentleman, got in behind him to kill him, so he had to run on off.”

“Well, if he did that he’s a friend of the race, and that’s something we ain’t got too much of. When can I meet him and see him? I wants to shake his hand.”

“He was at the house of Aaron, they tell me, but he’s hard to locate. Don’t stay in one spot too long. That’s to keep them secret police all fuddled up in case they try to grab him. But they tell me everybody is going to have a chance to meet him, first and last.”

Other whisperers were asking, “Now this god that Aaron says Moses has got, where do he come from and what is his sign?”

“Nobody ain’t seen no sign yet. Ain’t even made no motion to build him a temple yet. It seems funny a god without a place to stay or anything.”

And as for Moses himself, now that he had accepted the call and was down in Egypt, a sort of grim and stony peace came to him. He set himself to his task with determination.

Immediately after his arrival in Goshen he told Aaron to summon the Elders of the tribes to meet him, and anyone else of influence. When they came, Moses was surprised to find a woman among them.

“Who is this woman, Aaron?” Moses asked.

“That’s Miriam, my sister.”

“But what is she doing here? I have called the Elders to me on serious business.”

Aaron showed irritation, pointed up by a certain arrogance.

“My sister Miriam is a great prophetess, Moses. Talking about influence, she’s got plenty. We couldn’t make out without her, that’s all. Everybody comes to her to get things straightened out. She’s a two-headed woman with power.” He looked at Moses and challenged him with his eyes.

“She can hit a straight lick with a crooked stick, just the same as you can do.”

Moses closed his eyes for a moment so that Aaron could not look through them into his mind and said simply, “In that case we need her. Tell her to stay. She would be useful in handling the women.”

“Oh, she can handle the women, all right. In fact she can handle anybody. We ought to call a meeting of all the people right away and let her speak before everybody for you.”

“No, Aaron,” Moses said positively, “this is not the time I have appointed for speech-making. It is too soon. First we have to organize the Elders, then let the Elders prepare the people for us.” He saw the petulant look on the goatlike face of Aaron and asked, “When did Miriam address the whole congregation of Israel last?”

“Oh, she ain’t never done it yet,” Aaron stammered.

“Did she ever speak to your whole tribe of Levi?”

“No, she ain’t, not yet. She ain’t never needed to, that’s all. But she could really do it if she wanted to.”

“Then what makes you so sure she could do all this speaking and influencing if you never have seen her do it?”

“Because her house is full every night of the people who come to her house to get help. Miriam got a certain little bundle that she makes, that ain’t no bigger than a man’s thumb. You put that around your neck and wear it, and nothing can’t do you no harm.”

“Hmm! It’s a wonder every Hebrew in Egypt wouldn’t have one of them. Pharaoh and his overseers wouldn’t be a bit
of trouble then. Why haven’t you and Miriam done that on a large plan and freed Israel long ago?”

“We haven’t considered like that and if we did, we might say that we, that is, Miriam, was called to prophesy to the people and not to save ’em.”

“Oh, I see,” Moses said significantly. “It’s nothing for us to get angry about anyway.”

“Who said I was mad?”

“I wouldn’t say you were mad exactly, but we do seem to argue a lot about everything, Aaron, and none of it is necessary. The point I want to get clear in your mind is that if you, I mean Miriam, is called to prophesy to Israel and I am called to save Israel, our paths don’t conflict at all.”

Aaron was caught off guard by this statement and he didn’t like it, and Moses saw it. Finally he said sullenly, “That ain’t the point at all.”

“What is the point?” Moses persisted.

“Well, er—the point is, I don’t see how come she, that is, both of us, can’t get credit for what we got to do in saving Israel. And that is mighty important.”

“Oh, you will be of great help in gathering the people and explaining my plans and you will get proper recognition for it, too. But we don’t need to worry about recognition right now. What we need to worry about is the success of the plan. It’s a mighty big project we got on our hands, Aaron. Let’s bury ourselves in it, Aaron, and give it our whole devotion, It’s too big for us to be mere people. We’ve got to give up being people and feel like the tools of destiny, that’s a big honor in itself, Aaron. I want you to think it over.”

A certain good humor was restored and Moses went on working out his plans and passing them out through Aaron, until finally the meeting of the Elders of Israel took place. When Moses spoke to them he said nothing about his whole plan. He merely said to them, “I come to bring you a message from a god who has chosen you as his people to love and protect.”

“How did this god hear about us?” the Elders wanted to
know. “You say he spoke to you in a far-away mountain. How did he hear about us here in Egypt?”

“You cried out for deliverance in your great sufferings, didn’t you?” Moses asked.

“We sure did. We been crying a long, long time, but no gods, least of all the very ones we worship, didn’t hear us at all,” the Elders told Moses with suffering in their eyes and hopelessness in their voices.

“But this god of the mountain has ears,” Moses said with conviction. “He heard your cries and sent me to tell you that he has chosen you and that he has the power to save you, even in spite of Pharaoh.”

There was great excitement at this.

“What is the sign of this god?” they wanted to know.

“His sign is power,” Moses answered with assurance.

“What we want to know is, What is his messenger?”

“I am his messenger,” Moses answered with equal assurance.

“We want to know how we can recognize his signs when we meet ’em. What animal does he live in? Is he a bull like Apis, a cow like Isis, a cat like—”

“This god never shows himself through any animal. He has no representation on earth in any form. He speaks in fire and smoke, but the fire and the smoke are not god. He has no images and wants none made in his name.”

“What is the name of this god, Moses? Maybe he is a god of Egypt who has left Egypt and sends to us from some place away off.”

“No, he is no Egyptian god. He has not uttered his name as yet.”

“You must not know a whole heap about this god your own self, Moses, if you don’t even know his name. Didn’t you even find out that much about him?”

“I asked him his name.”

“And what did he tell you?” the Elders asked.

“‘I am what I am,’ is all he said, but that is a great answer. It takes in the whole world and the firmaments of heaven.”

That was a great mouthful for the people and they went off muttering to themselves in their unlettered tongues “I am what I am” over and over and blowing in the ashes of their hopelessness to kindle hope. They had intended to ask many more questions about this strange god who had sent to them—about his wife, and his food and his children, and what especial sin he punished, but all these questions had been smothered. So the Elders went off from the meeting to begin to spread the word to the people to meet Moses in a secret grove for a ceremony.

There, deep in the forest and amid the silences, Moses built the altar of rough stone as Jethro had taught him and performed the sacrifice as he had come to do for so long on the mountain with Jethro. And the people began to catch fire and worship.

Moses instituted the ceremonies to the god of the mountain and established altars and more and more the people came to them and began the new practices.

“The god of the mountain detests the flesh of hogs,” Moses told them. “No worshipper of I AM WHAT I AM may eat pork,” Moses commanded, and people began to give it up. He taught them many other laws. His god loved justice, he taught them justice and right among peoples, more than obligations to altars.

“When do we bear down on Pharaoh and this freedom?” Aaron asked impatiently.

“One thing at a time,” Moses told him. “We have to lay a foundation before we try to build.”

After several weeks had passed the Elders asked Moses, “When will we be free?”

“You will be free when you hear the thunder,” Moses told them. “Pharaoh will issue a decree and you will think that you are free. You will march out and you will think that you are free. But one day, after you have suffered many things, when the thunder is heard from the mountain, you will be free, if you have courage.”

“You can see further with your eyes closed than we can with
ours wide open,” some of the people clung about Moses and told him. “You’re our rod of salvation, Moses. Lie down and sleep and dream for us.”

And the Hebrews, working and suffering, and wondering about the nature of thunder, went through their days holding their hearts still against the present, prayed for the day of thunder.