Moses, Man of the Mountain (22 page)

M
oses stayed up on the mountain so long because it takes a long time to learn God’s secret words that have the power in them to make and to do. Moses learned ten words from God. So he took the ten words of power and he made ten commandments out of them. On the back side of the words there were seals and these seals had the power of all destructions. So Moses came down the mountain with plagues of death in his hands, besides more power to create and to do. And Joshua walked behind him in adoration and awe. Moses walked with the two tables of testimony in his hands and Joshua walked with worship.

But Moses had stayed within the aureate cloud for forty days and the people below had just about given him up. Most of them thought that Joshua and Moses were dead up there in the smoke. But some said, “Oh, he ain’t dead. He just bit off more than he can chew so he done run off across the mountain and left us. We better begin to shift for ourselves.”

They didn’t say anything to Mrs. Moses because she seemed too much like a stranger to them to visit with her up close. Not that she tried to make them feel that way. But she looked like a ruler’s wife to them and they kept off and looked at her tent and her servants and her clothes.

Aaron didn’t give out any information at all. He kept on
saying, “How would I know what that man is doing up there? He never tells me nothing. The Lord told me and him and Miriam to run this thing, but you see how he carries on. He goes up on the mountain to talk to God by himself and that leaves me and Miriam in the dark. I am beginning to think like a whole lot of people in Israel. You can’t put no dependence at all in no Egyptian, don’t care who it is.”

Miriam said, “Yes, that no-count Egyptian come with his mealy mouth and talked me and Aaron into bringing you all off. We was the ones that done all the work because he ain’t one of us sure enough. He couldn’t have got nobody to follow him. Here I was a big prophetess in Israel and Aaron was a leader, so the people followed us on and off and now he done took full charge and full credit for everything. We ain’t even good enough to go up with him and speak with the Lord. And look at that dark complected woman he done brought and put up to be a Queen over the rest of us women. Why, it’s awful. I never seen such a caper cut in all my born days.”

“Well, that being the case, let’s we back the deal. We don’t know nothing about where we headed for and nothing, and nobody don’t know nothing about this new Lord in the mountain but Moses and Jethro.” A bosom friend of Aaron’s said this and looked to Aaron for the approval that he knew he would get.

“But we do know something about our gods back in Egypt,” Miriam went on. “Maybe that’s how come we having such a hard time, because we done give up our gods. Isis will sure help you if you pray to her and pray right. Did the Bull God Apis ever go back on us? No!”

“Well, then now, how come we can’t have an altar to our real gods and maybe they will help us. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, seeing the fix we’re in. Aaron, you been used to working gold. How come you can’t make us a golden calf for our altar?”

“I ain’t telling you all to do nothing behind Moses’ back that he wouldn’t like. But if everybody will go and break off them dangles off your earrings and build me the right kind of a fire,
I believe I could make a right good calf of gold for the altar. Then you can worship like you did in Egypt. Some of you go east and some go north and west and south and collect up all the ornaments you can get hold of. No telling what I might turn out if you all just will insist on me doing it. And while the image is being cast you all might just as well get ready to celebrate the service, you know what to do just as well as I do. Now everybody do around right smart and we might find something to consolate us out here in this wilderness where we been dragged for nothing.”

The thing shook Israel like a wind. Suddenly the camp came alive. People stripped themselves and their children of ornaments and threw the things in the collection baskets with a smile. “A real old down home Egyptian ceremony getting ready to come off with Aaron at the altar. Just like old times back home. And they tell me a breakdown and stomp is going to follow.” People began to rush around and collect wines and drinkables and stuff to eat. Everybody oiled their whole bodies before they put on their Sunday clothes. For the first part of the ceremony they put on their best clothes. For the last part they were prepared to take them off. So they oiled themselves all over. The oil would do for a dress in the after dance.

“When you reckon it’s going to be ready to worship, Aaron?” the people asked him about the golden calf he was making with engraving tools.

“Tonight some time. Be ready tomorrow for worship, since you all are forcing me to do this thing.”

That night when the image was cooling, Aaron looked at his work and admired it exceedingly. “That sure is one fine piece of work, if I do say so myself. Believe I’ll make an altar for it while it is cooling.” And that’s exactly what Aaron did. And the next morning when the finger of the eastern sun pointed in the face of the calf and set it to shining and shimmering, Aaron got behind the altar and the people worshipped.

“These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. We don’t know anything about no Lord in
no mountain at all. Moses made Him up so let Moses keep Him.”

Then they finished the altar part of it and got up to play. They cast off clothes and they cast off care. Drums and cymbals and harps and voices singing loud and happy. Shining bodies moved and turned and collided joyfully. Maidens danced in ecstasy with closed eyes and nobody looked too closely at faces. Joy was the feeling, joy!

M
oses lifted the freshly chiseled tablets of stone in his hands and gazed down the mountain to where Israel waited in the valley. He knew a great exultation. Now men could be free because they could govern themselves. They had something of the essence of divinity expressed in order. They had the chart and compass of behavior. They need not stumble into blind ways and injure themselves. This was bigger than Israel itself. It comprehended the world. Israel could be a heaven for all men forever, by these sacred stones.

With flakes of light still clinging to his face, Moses turned down the mountain with the tablets of testimony in his hands. He heard nothing earthly nor sensed anything about him until he descended to where Joshua waited for him. With his eyes turned inward, he sat down on a stone opposite Joshua to rest.

“Joshua, I have laws. Israel is going to know peace and justice.”

Moses indicated the sacred stones on his lap.

Then from far off a sound, a noise made up of many sounds came up to Moses and he listened. And his ears accepted what his soul refused. It was a wild and savage shout of voices and drums that Moses heard, but his spirit rejected it, because it injured his vision of destiny for Israel. It clashed with his
exalted forty days. It soiled what had passed between him and God. So for a long time Moses sat silent and listened, hoping that he dreamed. Finally he asked Joshua, “Do I hear shouting and singing, Joshua, or is it just a ringing in my ears?”

“It’s shouting and singing, Moses.”

Moses sat sodden and sad for a long while and then a new hope crept into his voice.

“Do
you
hear anything that sounds like singing and cymbals, Joshua, or does it just sound like that to me because I’m tired and sort of frazzled out?”

Joshua looked at the face of Moses and pitied him.

“I hear a mighty loud noise down below,” Joshua evaded.

Moses looked down at the stones in his lap and passed his hand over the carved figures reverently and then he looked back up the mountain as if he would retreat up there. Then he brought his attention back to the tumult below.

“Does it sound like the voice of the people shouting for victory, Joshua? Maybe the Amalekites have come up against Israel while we’ve been up here with God.”

“No, Moses, it’s not the voice of mastery that I hear. It’s the voice of Israel, but they are not shouting for conquering anybody.”

Moses sat and listened for a while longer, shutting his heart against what he feared.

“Well, Joshua,” he said haltingly, “do they sound to you like they are crying out for help? They could be overcome, you know, by some nation that might attack, with both of us away.”

Joshua listened carefully for a moment. “No, it’s not the voice of them that cry for being overcome.”

“What do you reckon could have happened to Israel, Joshua?” Moses tried to persevere in his hopes.

“Oh, that’s singing and dancing that I hear. Sounds like the dance songs to Apis, the Bull-god to me. Listen at those drums!”

Moses snatched his face away from Joshua and the last glimmer of light that had clung to his face from God, died to ashes.

“Oh, no, Joshua, they couldn’t do a thing like that. Not after all we have been through from Egypt on! Not after they cried to God to deliver them from Egypt and its sorrows! Not after the God of the mountain sent me to save them from all harm and danger, and brought them here to the mountain to give them laws and pledges! No, Joshua, they wouldn’t be back in unforgetfulness and ingratitude here at the foot of Sinai. They couldn’t be howling in idolatry in the very ears of God.”

“It certainly is the sound of drumming and chanting to Apis that I hear.”

Moses stood up and closed his eyes with the tablets clasped tightly to his breast. Then he started slowly up the mountainside again. “I better go back and talk to God again about Israel. He’d know better what to do than I would.” He left Joshua behind him and struggled on back toward God.

But he didn’t get far. At first he thought it was the wind scuffling around in the brush. Then he knew it was the Voice that spoke and halted him.

“Moses,” it said like a strong breeze in the pine tops, “don’t come up here to me. Hurry down!”

“Lord,” Moses sobbed, “have they betrayed you?”

“They have betrayed me. They have betrayed you, and most of all they have dirtied their souls by betraying themselves. Go down, Moses, and halt them in their headlong flight. The people that you have brought out of Egypt have soiled themselves and tempted me to destroy them. They are worshipping a calf of gold and giving it the credit for bringing them out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage. Go stop them before I get too tired of their ingratitude and kill them.”

The Voice was gone and the light was gone and Moses turned cold and heavy and went down the mountain like God descending into Eden. First it was the mountain top and then the high shoulder and then the heavy hips of the mountain and then the crumbling ankles of the mountain and then the plain where Israel waited for a sign from God.

So Moses stood before the altar of the golden calf with the tablets of stone in his hands. Drunken shouts filled his ears; bodies drunk on the liquor of feeling rocked and reeled and contorted about him with eyes glazed and covered. Aaron with his bearded chin stuck out in front of him was presiding at the altar. His two oldest sons, Abihu and Nadab, chief acolytes in the dance and revel were shouting and leaping, and thumping their naked bodies and urging the people on.

“Aaron!” Moses cried at him with a stern voice. “Aaron, do you hear me?” Moses had to call three times before Aaron really saw him standing before the altar with the law from Sinai in his hands. Aaron took one long comprehending look and sunk behind the altar on his knees. The eyes of Moses had gutted him. Aaron hid himself behind the pagan altar while Moses towered tall and grim before it with the tablets of God in his hands. All around the spot the tumult boiled, for few had seen with their eyes or heard.

The calf and all its meaning and all the thoughts it collected glimmered and winked at Moses from its altar and suddenly Moses raised one of the tablets with its fine writings and hurled it at the graven image and saw the golden calf topple over on its side. The force of the impact shattered the sacred stone and crumbled it in pieces. Moses lifted the other stone and hurled it, and the calf broke in pieces and the pieces scattered around the altar. But in breaking the calf, the tablets of testimony had been broken to crumbling stone. Moses stood in his wrath and considered. The law from Sinai had broken the idol of Egypt, but the sacred tablets had themselves been destroyed in the clash. Egypt against Sinai. It was going to be a hard struggle.

The crash of stone on metal had attracted attention. Drums faltered and stopped. Dancers paused and looked and saw Moses destroying Apis and froze to sculpture in poses, which broke into flight. Some ran heedless. Some crept off slowly with dazed faces to hiding places. Before Apis and Aaron they were clothed in joy and license. Before Moses and Sinai they were naked to their souls. They slunk into places of conceal
ment as best they could. Moses strode over the huge vacant square of celebration with Joshua at his heels, looking, looking and seeing. Looking inside of people by their outward appearance and sickening at what he saw. He circled and circled and came back to the naked altar and stopped.

Moses found Aaron squatting down behind the altar trying to hide himself. Moses kicked over the altar and snatched Aaron to his feet and looked him dead in the eye. He looked at the man and saw him as he was, stripped of the imitation of dignity that he affected lately; saw him naked of the imitation of himself that he wore as best he might.

“Aaron,” he said, “what on earth did these people do to you to make you bring such a sin on everybody like you did?”

Aaron tried to back off but Moses had him by his whiskers and he wouldn’t let him go. So Aaron cringed and fawned and said, “Lord, Moses, you’re my bossman, and I know it. I wouldn’t think of putting myself on an equal with you. You’re a great big high cockadoo and I ain’t nothing. So you oughtn’t to be wasting your time getting mad with me. You done been round these people long enough to know ’em. You know they ain’t nothing and if you and God fool with ’em you won’t be nothing neither.”

“Aaron, you haven’t said a thing yet to excuse yourself for what you have done. Tell me and tell me quick why you have betrayed God and the people in the way you have done.”

Aaron lifted his hand as if to break Moses’ grip on his beard, but the eye of Moses forbade him. He winced and said, “You oughtn’t to hold my whiskers like that, Moses, the people are looking at us, and me being a leader—”

“The people are looking at you naked and capering around like an old goat, too. Let’s forget about that while you answer me.”

Moses did not miss the look of hatred born of hurt vanity in Aaron’s eyes as he sought to placate Moses by dissembling.

“Now, Moses, you know these people is always up for something that ain’t no good. They don’t mean nobody no good including theirselves. Know what they did? When you
didn’t come back right away they was going round behind your back running you down and scandalizing your name and making out you was dead or done run on off and they took and brought me all them ornaments, just because they knowed I used to work in gold, and they told me, we don’t know what become of that man Moses. Make us some gods to march in front of us instead of that cloud. And they shoved all them earrings and things in my hands and naturally I didn’t want to be bothered with the things, so just to get ’em out of my hands I took and threw ’em in the fire and what you reckon, boss? All I did was to fling them earrings into the fire, and out come that calf.”

“Aaron, you haven’t said a thing yet and that is because you haven’t thought a thing yet, nor felt anything except your own importance. Your whole body is nothing but a big bag to toe your littleness in.”

Moses thrust Aaron from him so roughly that he all but fell. Then Moses strode away, noting as he went how many people who had taken no part in the ceremony to the bull. There was open disgust on the faces of many and that made Moses think. Some were here because of Sinai and all that it meant and some were just here. A divided people, and that would never do, not at this point in their history. So Moses made a decision. He straightened his shoulders and marched to the gate of the camp and lifted both hands in the air.

People saw Moses standing like a crucifix and came. Moses still stood and they kept coming and questioning each other and coming. When a great multitude stood before him, Moses began to speak and cried out, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Who is on the Lord’s side?” Moses kept crying until the words became a chant. “Who is on the Lord’s side?” Israel’s ears were wrung. “Who is on the Lord’s side?” It woke up fear in the guilty. Israel was stung. “Who is on the Lord’s side?” It freshened hope in the hearts of the just. Israel was called. “Who is on the Lord’s side?” And some young Levites were the first to come closer and say, “We are, Moses, we are for the Lord of Sinai.” Then others joined until thousands upon
thousands stood by Moses. Then he said, “You who are on the Lord’s side, take your swords in your hands and come to me.” The surging multitudes of young men gathered around Moses with ready swords. So Aaron saw one of his sons, Eleazar, and all the other Levites go to Moses with swords and he was afraid to stay away. He came to Moses also with his sword and his censor in his hand and stood.

Moses said, “You all know what a foul thing has happened in Israel today. You know better than I do who the leaders and the agitators were. If this is to be a great nation, it must be purged of such evil-doers, or all Israel must perish. You have your eager weapons, men. Spare not a soul who is guilty.” Their swords leaped out of their scabbards like day out of dawn.

The struggle began. Drunken people in hidden places roused from a stupor with their eyes wide open in judgment. Aaron saw two of his sons dragged forth and cut down before his eyes. He dropped his sword and swung his censor in wide arcs to call to the minds of the avengers that he was a priest. He stood between the living and the dead with his censor in his hand, weeping and quaking and cursing. He was afraid to fight, afraid to run and ashamed to cry out loud.

For hours there was fleeing and screaming and hiding and bloody swords. Then there was quiet again in the camp. It only remained to bury the dead. Aaron came creeping and looked down into the faces of Nadab and Abihu, his two dead sons, and wept. The men buried his sons with the other thousand leaders of the revolt slain by the sons of Levi. Aaron started a little song in his heart that went like this: “It’s your time now, be mine after while. Oh, it’s your time now, but be mine after while, oh, it’s your time now, but it’ll be mine after while.” And from that minute on till the hour he died Aaron kept his eyes on Moses in secret and waited his chance. All he needed was the strength to seize his hour for vengeance. His hate was strong but his heart was weak. From then on for forty years the underhand struggle went on. Sometimes he made an open attack upon Moses when Aaron thought he could succeed, but
always the secret struggle went on to destroy him and have Aaron in the saddle. And always the strength of Moses trampled down the weak cunning of Aaron.

Moses was hard on Israel, after that. He felt that only discipline would save what he had begun and so he chastened the people severely. They suffered epidemics of ailments and many discomforts. It was then that he established the House of God. It was called the Tabernacle of the Congregation and Moses set it apart from all other tents, even his own. He pitched it far outside the camp. And when Moses went out to the tabernacle everybody saw him go and everybody was afraid. Would he lift his rod against them? Would he raise that right hand? As Moses went the people stood in their tent doors and watched him pass. And every eye in Israel followed him in fear.

They watched him go inside the door of the new tabernacle and they saw the shimmering cloudy pillar descend and they saw it stand at the door of the tabernacle and in awe they rose as one man and worshipped the God who had chosen to live among them. They heard the Lord talking to Moses from the cloud like two friends talking face to face. They heard Moses tell the Lord, “If you don’t go with us, don’t send me by myself, Lord. Other people will make a fool out of us.”