Moses, Man of the Mountain (18 page)

T
he people cried when Moses told them. He had expected wild clamor; the sound of cymbals and exultant singing and dancing. But the people wept out of their eyes. Goshen was very still. No songs and shouts.

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty I’m free at last! No more toting sand and mixing mortar! No more taking rocks and building things for Pharaoh! No more whipping and bloody backs! No more slaving from can’t see in the morning to can’t see at night! Free! Free! So free till I’m foolish!” They just sat with centuries in their eyes and cried. A few could express themselves like that. But the majority just sat in the doors of their dwellings staring out at life.

But Moses put a stop to all of that. “You won’t be free for long if you keep that up. Stop that shouting, and stop that sitting, people! Get everything you got together and let’s go, and that quick.”

“Why, Moses?” some of them asked. “We’re free now and we can take our own time about everything.”

“You people been around Pharaoh all this time and don’t know him no better than that? He is scared today and so he says you can go. Tomorrow or next day he will realize what he’s losing and send his army into Goshen to put you back to
work. Grab up your things right now. Tonight we leave Egypt forever.”

“Good gracious!” somebody grumbled, “I was figuring on going fishing tomorrow morning. I don’t want to be bothered with no packing up today. It’s too much like work and I just got free this morning.”

“That’s the heaven’s truth, too,” plenty of others chimed in. “Looks like we done swapped one bossman for another one. I don’t want nobody giving me no orders no more.”

“But it was Moses that got us free,” Joshua told them. “If it hadn’t been for him we would be hauling rocks right this minute.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. This God that done chose us would have got us free anyhow. I never did much care for this Moses like some of you all.”

“What’s the matter with Moses? He got us free all right.”

“Oh, I have every confidence in the man, I just don’t trust him.”

But Moses himself moved from place to place urging hurry and everybody, unwilling or not, did what he said. The women told Miriam’s committee that they just couldn’t get ready because it was baking day. “We got dough set to rise and we can’t disturb it or it won’t be light.” Miriam went back and told Moses what they said and he went to see about it himself. “Mix your dough,” Moses told them, “but don’t put your seasoning in it so it won’t spoil, and while you are at it, mix enough for a week. And that is just part of what I want done. Everybody roast a lamb so that everybody in Goshen can eat a full meal with some greens to settle the stomach. We got a long, hard march in front of us—tonight!”

Finally Moses got them ready in the spirit so everywhere in Goshen the people were saying, “Tonight!”

Everybody said it according to their thought and their feelings. Some talked it with the edge of their lips. Some rolled it deep in their throats. Some throbbed it inside their hearts and let their bodies move with the rhythm. Some said it with
their eyes, with a gleam, with future-searching gazes. Some said it with a question, “Tonight?”

They fixed and they did around and got ready. Nothing was still. Children hunted the bitter herbs. Men slaughtered beasts and tied bundles. Women mixed dough and cooked. And all the time everybody thought back over the years and every now and then they breathed, “Tonight!” Moses had inspired them for the journey and they were going.

The God of the two horizons took flight beyond the western line and the frenzied hurry of the day took shape. Flocks and herds gathered and ready. Bundles tied. Every group had met its leader and been told.

“Now,” Moses said to a group of men under Nun, “go quickly to the tomb of Joseph and bring me the casket with his bones. He brought Israel into Egypt and Israel must take him out of a land that is no longer fit for his dust. Hurry!”

The gorgeous carved and painted casket of Joseph rested on a pedestal before the house of Moses, and its bearers were appointed. So Moses told everybody to eat in haste, leaving nothing to eat behind them when they were ready to go.

They sang a song. Now that they were ready to go and going, it was triumphant but it was sad. It was a long time since Israel had done any singing much and they had forgotten how to shout. Moses noticed that their glad notes broke on wails. Israel was used to wailing now. They had forgotten how to laud. His heart hurt for them. So he said to himself that they should see glory mountains and shiny valleys and they should learn to sing.

He led them out of Goshen with a high hand. Out and out the tread of the tribes behind him. A great horde of mixed-blooded people grabbed up their things and joined the hosts of Israel. “Let us be free too,” they begged and Moses said yes to them. His fighting men in front and behind with Joshua’s volunteer boys in the center to give aid and assistance to women and children. Out and out he led. People cried and died and stayed where they fell. Aged ones hobbled and were partly carried, old ones, crippled by the generations behind
them and blinded by the look ahead, grasped and clutched at young shoulders and gasped, “Don’t leave me behind.” Babies borned themselves and joined the procession out. Out was such a big word in Egypt to the Hebrews.

“Which way, Moses?” Aaron asked.

“By the wilderness of the Red Sea.”

“It’s a whole heap shorter through the land of the Philistines.”

“I know, Aaron. But our people are leaving slavery. It takes free men for fighting. The Philistines might let us through without fighting but it’s too much of a risk. If these people see an army right now they would turn right around and run back into Goshen. So let’s head them for the Red Sea.”

The soft murmur of sandals and bare feet kept up in the night without a moon as Moses and his hosts moved on.

“On our way at last,” Aaron said happily to Nun.

“After four hundred and thirty years to the day. It still seems like it ain’t so to me, Aaron. Ain’t but one thing I’m sorry about.”

“What is that, Nun? I can’t imagine any sorrows connected with the thing.”

“I sure hate to miss seeing those Egyptians doing our work in all that hot sun.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, Nun, but it sure would be a lovely sight. I never want to even see a brick again—not even a brick house to live in.”

“Me neither. Where we going now?”

“Out, Nun, out!”

“I don’t mean that. I mean just exactly where we’re going to live permanent when we get out?”

“Moses may know, but if he does he ain’t told nobody yet.”

“You reckon it’s all right to ask him?”

“I guess so. You can ask him if you want to.”

“Where is he now?”

“He was just ahead of us a few minutes ago.”

The two men looked up and became conscious of a changed rhythm in the multitudes around them and behind them. It
was a sort of spontaneous mass halt and they saw the reason right away. Ahead of them at a short distance was a column of fire. What it consumed was hard to understand for it towered up steady and solid as no flame they had ever seen. It was like an illumination that glowed but never flamed. It brightened the countryside, but never grew more nor less.

“What is that?” Nun asked in fear.

“It must be where Moses is. You think it is his right hand shining like that?”

“It could be. Is nothing impossible to Moses?”

“It don’t look like it. Let’s go ahead to see what it is.”

The two leaders marching ahead of the host hurried nearer the fiery column and stopped. It was moving ahead as if it was borne but nothing was holding it up. Its many colored lights just moved along ahead of Moses like a vertical beam.

“Moses! Moses!” Aaron gasped. “What is that?”

“The pillar of fire that will always go in front of us at night. It is the sign of the Presence. In the daytime it will be a cloud. Go tell the people not to be afraid.”

With the fiery sign the people marched all night and camped next day far from the city of Rameses at Pihahiroth on the shore of the sea to rest and eat. Moses gazed across the water and exulted.

N
ext morning Pharaoh woke up and looked out of the window on the city, new and fine, its towers, its parks and streets, which the Hebrews had built for his father and him. He had a strange feeling of newness as if he had not seen these sights for a long time. As if he had awakened among familiar surroundings after a long, horrid dream. Then he noticed something. No work was going on around the half-finished public building near the palace grounds. He called a servant right away and asked about it. The servant didn’t know.

“Well, go find out,” Pharaoh snapped and ordered his breakfast. After a while the servant came back and said that no Hebrews had been seen that morning by anybody except a very sick old Hebrew found by the road by some fishermen. No work had been done for two whole days.

“Two days! You must be wrong.”

“Send to Goshen and find out what’s the matter. Some more foolishness out of that Moses, I reckon. If it is, I’m through playing with that man. He dies today, him and all his magic. I don’t see why I stood him as long as I did.”

The word came back, “A great song was heard, then the whole host of the Israelites were seen marching out, driving
their flocks and herds, two days ago. Nobody has heard from them since.”

“Oh, that worship they were talking about. I did say that they could go. I was too worried about the funeral of the first-born to notice things. It is a terrible thing to lose a son.” Then Pharaoh became alarmed. “Do you suppose those Hebrews have run away?”

“A lot of people are saying the same thing, and they want their work done and they aren’t getting a bit done today.”

Pharaoh thought a minute and his blood jumped salty. He was angry with himself. He could have killed Moses and saved himself this trouble. But he had yearned to humble the man first. To outwit him and shame him. Then would have come death for Moses. But the man had made a fool of him instead before the whole nation, and now he was gone with the Hebrews as he had threatened. Pharaoh was resolved on his death if he could lay hands on him now. He rose up with a great scowl on his face. “That’s my trouble,” he said, “I’m too good-natured.”

“That’s right, you certainly are,” all the servants and courtiers agreed.

“I must have been out of my head to let those people go off and now we have nobody to work for us. That is, I mean that just because I was grieved down at the death of my son and my grandson and the first-born of all the other people and said things, this man Moses takes advantage of my good nature and runs off with our Hebrews.”

“And why should we let them stop working for us and go off like that?” one of the courtiers asked. “It’s a sin and a shame when you come to think about it. Them Hebrews off doing nothing and our work going undone.”

“It’s worse than that,” one of the others agreed. “And they could be stopped, you know. They couldn’t be very far by now, and them on foot, too.”

“Get me my war chariots!” Pharaoh shouted. “Six hundred fighting chariots and men to fill them and have them ready in half an hour. I’m going after those Hebrews and I’m going to
bring ’em back. And so far as that Moses is concerned I mean to kill him with my own hands. That rascal has been imposing on me for thirty-odd years. Always some trick up his sleeve. Get me my fighting chariots and do it now!”

People scurried in every direction and Pharaoh began to dress himself for war.

“My finest sword and javelin! I am a man of war today and it is the happiest day of my life. I have been tricked and tricked and made a fool of by that Moses ever since he was weaned from his nurse. He is facing me today for the last time. Where are my chariots and men?”

With a kill-mad cry, the six hundred chariots with Pharaoh in the lead thundered out of the city before a cloud of road dust, and raced down the road to way off.

I
t was late afternoon of the second day when Moses came down to the sea. He ordered rest overnight and plenty cooking and eating to keep up the strength of the hosts. Some people grumbled about sore feet and some missed their beds and houses. Moses let the Elders take care of that. He went down to look at the sea and beyond.

That was the way things were when Joshua came running and shouting, “Pharaoh! The Egyptians! They are coming down behind us. Chariots!”

Moses hurried back to the Israelites. By now the thunder of hoofs and the growl of chariot wheels were easy to hear.

Women screamed in open-mouthed terror and whimpered in fear. Men cursed, cried out and milled about in great whorls. Some tried to run away to the woods to hide, others just stood or squatted on the ground in dumb fear. When they saw Moses come among them they crowded about him. Some clung to him while others screamed at him. He shook them off roughly and kept marching towards the rear.

“I always told my husband not to bother with this mess,” one woman sobbed. “I tried to tell him we was getting along all right under the Egyptians. But he was so hard-headed he had to go and get mixed up in it.”

Voices broke out everywhere and all were sprung with fear.
The war chariots of Pharaoh were in plain view now though distant on the plain. Moses could hear many things as he shoved through the camp.

“Couldn’t that man find graves enough in Egypt to bury us all without dragging us out here in the wilderness to die?”

“Didn’t I say all along that this Moses was some fake prophet? That god he made up out of his own head—”

“Didn’t I always tell you all that them Egyptians was nice people to work for? You couldn’t find better bossmen nowhere.”

“The idea of coming and fooling people off from home and leaving ’em with no protection. I mean to tell Pharaoh just how it was.”

“Didn’t I always say we was better off in slavery than we would be wandering all over the wilderness following after some stray man that nobody don’t know nothing about? Tell the truth, didn’t I always say that?”

“I told you all a long time ago that we had enough gods in Egypt without messing with some fool religion that nobody don’t know nothing about but Moses. You all just let him make a fool out of you. I always knowed it was some trick in it. That man is a pure Egyptian and Pharaoh is his brother. He just toled us off so his brother could butcher us in the wilderness. I told you all so.”

“You heard me at the meeting distinctly tell that man to leave us alone and let us serve our Egyptian masters in peace, didn’t you? We was getting along fine—plenty to eat and a place to sleep and everything. We wouldn’t be in the fix we’re in right now if that Moses had of let us alone.”

“Who asked him to butt in nohow? Our business didn’t concern him, did it? It was our backs they was beating. It wasn’t none of his and if we was satisfied he ought to been tickled to death. Now Pharaoh is going to kill us all.”

“Great Ra! Great Horus! Great Thoth! Great Isis and the forty-two gods of the double justice! Save us.”

Slowed down by the weight of the chariots over the rough ground, the horses were coming in a walk. Moses reached the
rear of his great huddle of trembling humanity and took his stand, between danger and his charges. Again, he was one against all Egypt. Listening and thinking back, it was hard to keep his feelings from flying to his head. He had but to step aside and leave them to Pharaoh and his servants. But Pharaoh himself was driving the first chariot as the cavalcade approached, and he wanted to face him and beat him one last time. He laughed to himself as he thought, “Pharaoh thinks he’s pursuing me, but it’s the other way around. I been on his trail for thirty years, and now I got the old coon at last, as Jethro would say. Let me fuddle him all up for a night and then I will raise my hand. First and last, I’m showing him my ugly laugh.”

As the chariots drew near the panic grew in Israel. They committed every kind of folly and showed their inside weakness. Then Moses showed his power again. He turned his back on the Egyptian horde and spoke to his people. Spoke to them in their own dialect as one of them.

“Stand still!” he commanded in a sterner voice than they had ever heard before. “Stand still, every last one of you and stop that screaming and yelling. You haven’t got a thing to be scared of. That ain’t nobody but Pharaoh and his army and we done beat them too many times before. Don’t get so excited about nothing! The Lord is going to fight for you just as He’s been doing all along. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord which He is going to show you today. See those Egyptians there? Take a good look at ’em, because those Egyptians that you are looking at today, you’re never going to see
them
no more as long as you live. And nobody else won’t be seeing them either. Stand still and keep quiet is all I ask you to do.”

Moses didn’t lift his hand while he talked but the command in his voice was calming. Suddenly everybody felt secure and brave.

Moses just stood and looked and the pillar of cloud that went before the host moved around from the sea and spread itself like a great plumey curtain between the Israelites and Pharaoh and hid each camp from the other. The Israelites felt
shut in and safe. The Egyptians felt shut out and puzzled. They were afraid to attack until they could know what went on behind that cloud screen, so Pharaoh ordered his forces to camp until next day and then to attack with vigor.

“They can’t get away from us so we might as well get some sleep. Our horses need freshening too,” Pharaoh ordered. “We got them in a trap—between us and the sea. We’ll close the trap in the morning.” So they turned in and rested so they could have plenty of vim to butcher Hebrews in the morning.

But Moses never slept. The signal pillar of fire glowed behind the cloud screen and lighted the camp of Israel. Moses himself went back to the sea and stood. When the hour came he called up the east wind and stretched out his hand. They broke the head of the eastern drum and marched out on the sea. The retreating tidal waters did not creep on as was their habit; they fell back from the strait on either side like two mighty armies in retreat. Both sides shrank away from the uplifted hand like lambs before a lion. The waters fled back and back and back and stood in a solid wall on either side and waited on the powers to close them up again.

Then Moses ordered the march. In the same order in which they had come down to the sea, Moses told his hosts to cross over. Flocks first, then women and children followed by the six hundred thousand men of fighting age armed with whatever Moses could find in Egypt to put in their hands—clubs, spears, javelins, old swords, sticks and anything that could wound and tear.

The bones of Joseph crossed over after the women and children. Then Moses challenged Pharaoh. The smoky cloud screen lifted. The fiery pillar again went before the hosts and the sentries of the Egyptian army saw that the children of Israel were escaping across the sea and ran to wake up the camp. “Wake up! The Hebrews have broke camp and are gone.”

The camp woke up by degrees. Nobody could believe the sentry at first. They had to get to their feet and get their heads clear of dreams first, and then the peeping dawn did the rest.
It was hard to believe, but the sea was really divided and the Hebrews were tramping across on dry land.

“Well, I’ll be—” Pharaoh began, then sprang to action. “Get up and harness the horses! Don’t let ’em get away! A palace and high houses to the man who overtakes Moses and hands him over to me alive! Get up and get after our slaves.”

In a few minutes the camp was furiously alive. Leaping into chariots, shouts, cries, plunging and neighing of horses, clash of arms on shields, posing Pharaoh’s chariot with its three Arabian horses in front of the forces and the furious charge to the sea crossing while the last ranks of the Hebrews were still in sight.

Moses heard the commotion in the Egyptian camp and knew that his movements had been seen as he intended them to be. He hurried across after the last man and waited. He saw the mad charge down the beach. He saw them hesitate there to debate the wisdom of trying the unusual crossing. Then he deliberately showed himself to Pharaoh and the frenzied pursuit was on. The six hundred chariots dashed down into the sea ten and twenty abreast. The Egyptians shouted in triumph as they viewed the cowering Israelites on the opposite shore.

Then when the Egyptians had thoroughly committed themselves to the sea bed and wagered their lives and their vengeance on it, Moses stood on the opposite shore and looked hard at his pursuers. He could distinguish the royal chariot with its fiery Arabians well in the lead. Those were fine horses, Moses recognized, and a splendid chariot. But Ta-Phar had always thought too well of chariots. He could not see his uncle’s face at that distance and read its expression, but he could feel it, the hatred, the bafflement and the lust for vengeance. Behind him the Israelites were already over their joy at the miraculous crossing and were beginning to cry out in fear.

“Moses! The Egyptians are coming after us! Ain’t no more seas for us to cross.”

“I see them. Don’t worry.”

What he knew must come, happened. Away from the smooth sand of the shore, the horses and the heavy chariots struck rough going. Horses began to flounder and fall as they stepped into holes and soft clay. Chariots swerved, overturned, and control was lost. Chariots coming after plunged into the tangle and were themselves overturned. Then Moses lifted his hand.

The gripping east wind loosed its mighty fingers and the sea water came rushing back to its bed. It was a moving time. There was the outspoken voice of the wind going east; the mad grumble and shout of the waves as they raced back to embrace each other over the clamor of men in fright, the scream of drowning horses, the last mad struggle of the chariots. That all made a boiling place in the sea for a space. Then there was just the heaving Red Sea with its two shores. Egypt on one side and Moses and his mission on the other. Moses stood and looked on the sea. It was a long time before he thought to change his rod from his right hand to his left and let the wind and the sea subside.

Behind him he heard the people exulting. “Didn’t we outdo old Pharaoh, though?” Miriam was asking everybody. “It was a great victory for our God,” Aaron was saying. “The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is His name.” “Old Pharaoh thought he knew who to fool with and who to let alone.” “We showed him something. Yeah, he’s dead out there in the ocean and there ain’t no help for it. That’s one old Pharaoh won’t have no great big old tombstone over him.”

“Well, he’s got the great big sea over him, and I reckon that’s big enough to suit anybody.”

They made a song on that and danced it off. A man with a good voice got out in the center of the ring and sang.

“Old Pharaoh’s dead!”

And the chorus answered, “How did he die?”

And the solo man went to dancing and said: “Well, he died like this!” and he danced that off. Then he sang another part and everybody went on dancing and shouting.

They sang that over and over and danced on it until they got tired. Then Miriam took the cymbal and some more women went behind her and they went all over the camp singing:

And they clapped time on that with their hands and danced and double clapped it off like they did the other song because everybody was happy and felt like clapping and dancing. Then Moses told them to make camp for the night.

Moses strolled down the beach a little way and sat down on the same boulder that he had sat down on after the first crossing so many years ago. It was another morning and another crossing and so he thought thoughts again. This time he had crossed over safely with a nation behind him and no weapon worth talking about but his right hand. Well, the present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell. So Moses sat on the rock and said, “You, Voice, you told me to lead out, and by the hardest, I did it. So I’m down here by the Red Sea with these people. You know more about ’em than I do, Lord. What must I do with them now?”

A little tee-nincy voice raised up in the back of his mind and said: “Old Rameses is dead. Ta-Phar is dead. The set who bucked against you and hated you are dead. You know one time you were the idol of Egypt. The army still thinks you are the biggest man they ever made. Moses, you can go back to Egypt and be King. You can do even better than that. You can control the army which controls the King. The Voice told you to lead out and you have led out with a high hand. You have done your duty. The Israelites are out of Egypt and they are free. If they fall into slavery again somewhere else that’s none
of your business. You set them free. Moses, there is Egypt right over there and the King is dead in the sea.”

Moses sat on the rock and thought back. He had sat on this rock when he fled from Pharaoh the first time and something had shown him clearly the futility of a life of war. Right on this rock he had forsworn the sword and glory. He got to his feet and looked earnestly at the camp for a while, then he said, “Which way, Lord, which way must I lead Your people?”