Moses, Man of the Mountain (24 page)

T
he other decision Moses kept to himself. But with his plan all formed he felt better. The spies would come back with a favorable report. They were bound to. It was late August and all of the fruit trees would be loaded down. He had been in Canaan at this time of the year and knew what it looked like. They were bound to be favorably impressed. Then a swift, hard military thrust and the journey would be over. The Israelites would have a home, a God and a name. He would miss the mountains of Midian with Jethro’s sheep trotting before him. The long exchange of thoughts with Jethro and the little comforts and delights with Zipporah. Jethro was getting mighty old. Maybe Moses would get back in time to spend a year or two with him. He hoped so very much. That night while the people feasted on quail which Moses had brought in to them on a big wind, Moses sat on the side of the mountain and fought with himself. He asked himself, “Why not go on home and leave these people to do whatever they want to? Aaron is stupid and full of conceit like all little men suddenly elevated to places of power. But if he wants to lead, why not go on and lead your life and let him lead? You brought them out of Egypt with the might of your right hand and you have done this thing up to now. Here they are in striking distance of Canaan with an army and with laws
and statutes. Why not quietly go on home?” It was a tough battle, but Moses came down the mountain in the morning and went on with his plans for taking Canaan. For a period during the night he had had a vision of freedom but morning found him back in harness. He was a man who had been called.

Forty days passed and the spies came back. They came back with a bunch of grapes that it took two men to carry and they brought melons and cucumbers and various fruits and vegetables and the people were fired to go where things like that were growing.

Then they heard about the people they had to fight before they could own the land and another wind swept the camp. It made no difference that two of the spies sent out said that they had a good chance to win. Not even the word of Joshua, the military leader of Israel, could talk down the fear inspired by the other ten.

“The land is rich,” Joshua and Caleb told them. Caleb said, “All we got to do is to go take it. It’s right there for us, ain’t that right, Joshua?”

“It certainly is. We could lay down a hard campaign of two weeks and own every inch of Canaan from end to end. All it needs is some good hard fighting before they get time to double-teen us.”

Another spy said, “Don’t you all listen to Joshua and Caleb. Them two is crazy in the head. Just listen at them now and all of us will be dead. Them people live in stone houses and even the town’s got walls around ’em. We couldn’t never take ’em. And just look how many nations we got to fight! There’s the Amalekites, and they live in the southern part there and they are stronger than they was when we fought ’em a few years back.”

“But we are stronger too,” Joshua cut in. “Don’t forget that. And then another thing, we was just as green as grass when we whipped ’em last time. We ought to mop up for ’em this time. Shucks! They ain’t no trouble.”

“Don’t tell me they ain’t no trouble. And then there’s some
mountains all around and they just full of fighting folks. There’s the Hittites and the Amorites and the Jebusites and, man, those folks can fight. And then over along the seacoast those Canaanites, and there sure is plenty of ’em to fight too.”

Caleb said, “Aw, let’s go on up and take the place. We can beat all those little nations one by one. Half a day to a nation and take that place. It sure is pretty country. Then we will have a place of our own that we can rule over and do as we please.”

“Folks, don’t you let Joshua and Caleb fool nobody. You ain’t heard the worst yet. Do you know we passed through one place where everybody was giants? Yesirree, those men of Anak are sure enough big men. Why, they are so big we look like grasshoppers to ourselves beside them and that ain’t the worst of it, we looked like grasshoppers to them, too. Don’t you let Caleb and Joshua fool you to run up against those people. Wouldn’t nothing be left of Israel but a grease spot.”

A few men wanted to follow Moses, Caleb and Joshua, but the big majority got scared and pulled back. They got so scared that they got mad.

“From one thing to another, that Moses keeps us in a strut. If it ain’t one thing it’s another. Now he wants us to go get ourselves killed just to make him a King and we just ain’t going to do it. That man don’t mean us no good at all. Let’s go on back to Egypt where we belong, but first thing let’s kill him for bringing us off.”

Moses heard the mad clamor of the multitudes and knew the danger that he faced. Men circled him where he stood, snarling like animals. All they needed was a leader with courage enough to cross that small bare circle of ground that separated them from Moses. “Now is your time, Aaron,” Moses thought to himself. “Now is your time if you only had the courage to seize it. But you are a snarling hyena, waiting for some lion to make your kill for you.” But never for a moment did Moses forget that some unknown might find the spark that would destroy him, and more than that, destroy his mission. But in spite of it all he was cool enough to note the shuffle of the grass in the wind and the little dance of dust in a whirlwind. He
realized that he was in great danger of being taken for a mere man where he stood. While in the Tabernacle of the Congregation they could scarcely think of him apart from the mysteries. So he turned suddenly and walked in that direction, wondering if he would live long enough to make it. And the clamoring mob, led by their Prince, followed him.

He invited the Princes and the Elders to enter and told the people to wait outside. He entered last and faced the angry Princes and Elders for a full minute in silence then fell on his face in the door.

A great gasp went up from the Princes and the people outside crowded back from the door in some nameless fear. The figure of Moses on the ground did not look helpless somehow. It inspired more terror than it would have even with the uplifted hand. Everybody shrunk away as far as they could.

Old Miriam outside crept forward a little in front of the others and then backed away as fast as she could. Then she broke a silence of several months.

“Something awful will happen from this,” she whispered from a throat so dry that it rattled. “It is a bad sign. He will lift that right hand and Israel will suffer terribly. It is better to do as he says.”

The people and the Princes stood back and gazed on Moses. Not a man in Israel would have touched him. Their weapons were frozen to their hands, though the wish for his death was in the minds of many Princes and Elders. Moses sensed his victory and slowly stood erect.

Moses stood up and swept the nation with his eyes and they were scared.

“Lord,” Moses said, “what kind of cowards are these You sent me to lead? You bring them out of slavery in Egypt with a high hand. You take care of them in the wilderness. You speak to them from Sinai and point out a beautiful rich country which You tell them is theirs. All they need to do is to show fight to a bunch of scrub nations and take the country and cease their wanderings in the wilderness. But will they do it,
Lord? No! They are cowards. And none of these slave-minded cowards shall enter the land You promised them. They shall wander in this wilderness until they are all dead. That is, all those who are grown enough to know what they are talking about. Their carcasses shall rot in this wilderness. I am not talking about Joshua and Caleb, Lord. I am talking about these others. I can make something out of their children, but not out of them. They have the essence of greatness in them and I shall fight them and fight myself and the world and even God for them. They shall not refuse their destiny. In this wilderness shall they be consumed, and here they shall die.”

When the people thought overnight about what Moses had said, they were more scared of him than they were of the fighting nations. So they got up soon in the morning and went up on the mountain and told Moses that they were ready to fight now, and they were willing to acknowledge to the fact that they talked too much the day before. But Moses told them, “It won’t do you no good to come around talking about fighting today, because that ain’t in my plans. You’re just breaking into my arrangements to be starting any war today. Go on home, all of you. The Lord ain’t helping you do no fighting today. You go beyond that mountain and tackle those Amalekites and Canaanites and you’ll get your whipping because I’m not going and the Ark of the Covenant is not going and Joshua is not going, so if you want to be hardheaded and go jump on those people, go right ahead.”

But some of the Princes told the people to come on and fight, because, they argued, if they won’t it would prove that they didn’t need Moses as much as they thought they did. In fact, if they won they could cut loose from him and God and everything else and be so free till they were foolish. So they went on to fight and the battle went against them from the beginning and they had to run it out for the most part, those who were able to run.

Therefore next day Moses turned the hosts of Israel back into the wilderness to serve their forty years and grow men and women in places of slaves. To wander and to fall down
and to die in strange places where nobody lived and where nobody would live again for thousands of years. The Voice had said to take a nation across the Jordan, and the generation which he had brought out of Egypt had failed him. “The third generation will feel free and noble. Then I can mold a nation. Forty years is a long, long time, Joshua, but the Voice commanded me to lead.” And Moses was very sad.

T
hey wandered in the wilderness and wandered and sickened and died and gave birth and revolted again and again. So they came in their wanderings to Kadesh which is in the desert of Zin.

Moses was sitting in his tent writing when he looked up and saw Miriam standing over him. Everything about her was asserting itself that day. Her rusty gray hair that used to be a dry-looking red; her pale eye-lashes that had always been that way and her drooping jowls and shrunken-up figure.

“Well, Miss Miriam,” Moses said, making a place for her to sit down, “this sure is a surprise, you coming to pay me a visit.”

“Naw, it ain’t,” Miriam said without taking her eyes off of Moses’ face nor changing a muscle in her own. “Nothing don’t ever surprise you. You know everything beforehand. You know, but you let things happen for reasons.”

Moses looked at the mask of her face. It looked like nothing had moved in it for years. Nothing had gone in its portals and nothing had come out. It seemed to have finished with everything and just to have been waiting on time.

“Moses, I come here this evening to ask you to let me die.”

“Why, Miss Miriam!”

“I ask you kindly, please, Moses, to let me die.”

“What makes you think you got to get
my
consent to die?”

“Cause I know I can’t die without it. That right hand of yours—it’s got light in front of it and darkness behind. Moses, I come in the humblest way I know how to let you know I done quit straining against you. I done quit putting my poor little strength up against yours. I’m just a beat old woman and I want to die.”

“But, Miss Miriam, you ain’t had time to enjoy your freedom yet. You ought to want to live to enjoy it and to see Israel a nation.”

“This freedom is more than a notion, Moses. It’s a good thing. It’s bound to be a good thing ’cause everybody wants it. But maybe I didn’t know what to do with it, ’cause I ain’t been so happy. That ain’t what I come to talk about, Moses. I come here to ask you to please let me die.”

“That’s something nobody ain’t never asked me before. That ain’t something that I can pass on like the vessels before the altar, Miriam. God got to tell you that and he is seldom known to even do that.”

“I want to go on back home and lay down, Moses. Is you going to let me die or not?”

“Miss Miriam, you sure your mind is all right and everything?”

“Yes, I’m real sure, and I know I want to die. I reckon I done tackled something too big for me and it done throwed me like a bucking horse. I been through living for years. I just ain’t dead yet.”

“How long do you figure you been through living, Miss Miriam?”

“Ever since I spent that week outside the camp when, er—when I was a leper. When I was unclean and had the leprosy and looked at myself all over and I was shut out from everything and from the living. That was when I got to thinking with only certain places in my head and I got to fleeing all over with fear. And you showed me your hand, that shiny right hand of yours, every night while I was outside the camp there in the dark. You kept it held up over my head and I’d run all
night long but I couldn’t get away from it. You see, I was a prophetess back in Egypt and I had power, that is what the people told me, anyhow. So when you didn’t do to suit me, I made up my mind to fight your power with mine. But I found out I was no more against you than a grain of sand against a mountain, because you beat me and then you bottled me up inside of my own body and you been keeping me in jail inside myself ever since. Turn me loose, Moses, so I can go on and die.”

“I can’t stop you from dying, Miss Miriam. This notion you got must come from a long way off because it is so strange.”

“Moses, I’m going home to lay down to die. Don’t let me see your hand over me like it’s been every night for years. I don’t need to drag my bones to Canaan to lay ’em down. This wilderness will do if you are through with me.”

“Just what did you want me to do about your case, Miss Miriam?”

“You know just as well as I do, Moses. Just let your right hand fall from over me. You still punishing me about that wife of yours, Moses? Don’t hold me here no more. Open your fingers, Moses, just a little bit and let the husks of a weak old woman escape out past ’em.”

“Do you think that I am God, Miriam?”

“Indeed, I don’t know, Moses. That’s what I been trying to figure out for years. Sometimes I think you’re just that Egyptian Prince that took up with us for some reason or other. Then again I would agree with some of them others that you was an Ethiopian. Once or twice I thought you was the sacred bull of Egypt with the known markings but the unknown history. Sometimes I thought God’s voice in the tabernacle sounded mighty much like yours. But ever since you punished me with leprosy, I knew you had power uncommon to man. I been knowing ever since you healed me and took me back into the congregation that you wasn’t through with me. You love that woman and we hurt her. You meant for us to punish and to punish well, didn’t you? So you locked me up inside
myself and left me to wait on your hour. Moses, ain’t I done punished enough?”

“How do you know all of this?” Moses asked and studied her while she answered him.

“Oh, I don’t know how I know, but I do. When I found out I couldn’t do no more in Israel than you let me, I made up my mind to go on off and die, but I found out I couldn’t even do that unless you let me. I saw all them people dead in the wilderness from snake-bites and disease and one thing and another and I looked at their bones and wished it was me. I waited and I waited, but death always avoided me. Aaron was waiting for the crown in Canaan, but I just been waiting to die. Now, I ask you please to leave me go. I done tried to be as stiff as you was stout, but I found out I got to come ask you to die. You knew it all along and you been waiting for me to come.”

“I certainly didn’t expect you to come here to say what you did.”

“No, Moses, don’t put me off like that. Talk to me straight. I come here to you for something and I don’t mean to go till you tell me yes or no. I don’t mean to leave here until I get what I come after.”

The repulsive old woman was tragic. She had been sent on a mission as he had been sent, and the burden had torn and twisted her. She had been petty, envious and mean, but she had served. But then fate had provided no compensations for making her a bearer. Miriam had lived on hopes where other women lived on memories. And that was bound to do something to her. She was not sent to be what she wanted to be, so she had wasted herself procuring pangs for people who had. Moses looked at her and through her with pity. She seemed to hold everything about herself very still until he got through looking. Then she got up and moved to the door.

“Much obliged, Moses. Now I can go.”

“Much obliged for what, Miriam?”

“I felt your right hand fall from over me. I’m going on back to my tent now and rest. It’s no sense in something like me
being alive. I am going to die now, Moses. Keep that right hand of yours down.”

Moses didn’t say anything more. He just looked at her and watched her go. She went off a little brisk. Her face almost moved. She seemed to see something with her eyes. She made deep prints with her feet.

Miriam went back and laid down just like she said she would, and the next morning they found her dead with a bitter twist on her mask of a face.

Moses called a halt and told the people what it meant to lose a patriot like Miriam. The young ones were told what the old ones had forgotten—all about those days back in Egypt when the house of the prophetess Miriam was the meeting place of all those who were willing to work for freedom. How she had gathered folks together by two and threes and changed weakness into resolution. Her dust weighed as much as all Israel. The people all listened and thought it was a great speech. They even mourned when Moses ordered them to mourn for thirty days. They held a great crying for Miriam. So Moses buried her with a big ceremony and ordered a great tomb of rocks to be piled up over her grave.

On the way back from the funeral Moses considered the life and death of Miriam. She was a woman, but he never had been able to quite think of her as such. What with her lack of female beauty and female attractions, and her loveless life with one end sunk in slavery and the other twisted and snarled in freedom. He wondered which had hurt her most. He thought how the threads of his life had gotten tangled with the threads of this homely slave woman. He wondered if she had not been born if he would have been standing there in the desert of Zin. In fact, he wondered if the Exodus would have taken place at all. How? If she had not come to the palace gates to ask for him and to claim him as a brother, would he have left Egypt as he did? He doubted it. He never would have known Jethro, nor loved Zipporah, nor known the shiny mountain, nor led out a nation with a high hand, nor suffered as he had done and was doomed to keep on doing. A mighty thing had happened
in the world through the stumblings of a woman who couldn’t see where she was going. She needed a big tomb so the generations that come after would know her and remember.

Well, Miriam was gone. There was Aaron left and himself. And there was the desert and the wilderness and the forty years and the people. This was the second going-out. He had led out Pharaoh’s slaves. Now he must lead out a free and singing people from inside the cringing slaves. He turned from burying Miriam and set his face grimly for the task.

Then a running messenger came from Jethro telling Moses that he must come. Jethro was sick and wanted Moses’ company. He mounted his white stallion in the night and rode hard back towards Midian, and was there on the third day.

The old chieftain was lying on his couch. On his face was a great stare that had not changed for days. But he saw Moses standing before him and smiled.

“Lift up his bed and carry him outdoors,” Moses ordered at once.

They bore him out and Moses ordered them to place him under a tree with his face to the mountain and then he sat down beside him and touched his feeble hand. Life seemed to come back into the sunken face at once.

“That was right, Moses. That was right and good.”

“Lying shut-in was no place for you, Jethro. You are a man without bounds.”

“My eyes and my mind keep taking me where my old legs can’t keep up. My old age is burdensome for that reason, now.”

He rested awhile then he said, “I knew you were worked to death, and I wouldn’t have sent for you except that I had to ask you a question, and I was afraid I couldn’t wait for you to come.”

“You know I would have been miserable if you hadn’t sent for me—if you hadn’t let me know in some way.”

“Well, Moses, you never said so in too many words, but your love for me had something to do with your going back into Egypt to lead the Israelites, didn’t it?”

“Perhaps it did, Jethro, but perhaps it was my destiny anyway.”

The old man reached out and caught hold of Moses’ hand and drew him closer. He lifted himself up and held the face of Moses between his hands and searched his face with his eyes.

“You don’t hold it against me, Moses, do you?”

“Hold it against you? No, Jethro.”

“I worried you so about my wish. You might have refused the call and been much happier here. Often and again I have blamed myself for urging you.”

“You shouldn’t have felt that way. You said yourself it was my destiny.”

“Your friendship didn’t shrink away from me in the least?”

“Not in the least, Jethro. Your friendship would have been worth ten times more.”

Jethro embraced Moses with his skinny old arms and lay back smiling.

“I knew better all the time but I had to ask. If I had another night and day, you could tell me about the Israelites and the work. But as it is, about all you can do is to cover up my face for me. I didn’t want anybody to do it but you.”

That night the family and the tribe mourned around Jethro’s body and the next day Moses buried him in the path that led up the side of the mountain and planted a grove of trees to honor him. On the seventh day he set out for the camp of Israel again, sadder and more bereaved than he had ever been in his life before, or was ever to be again.

He wished that he could order a great crying in Israel for Jethro. He wished that the nation could know how much Jethro had meant to it. But he knew misunderstanding would come out of his act and so he mourned alone. He must keep on doing them good on the sly.

The years went on doing their slow drag over Israel and left it fat and strong. When Joshua marched out against a people he won. There was no longer famine and thirst among his
army and always, now, the hosts moved nearer the Jordan, and Israel grew conscious of its might.

So at Jeshurun, the people offered Moses a kingly crown. “You brought our old folks out of slavery and you have led us from one degree of grace to another until now we are folks wherever our feet fall on dry land. We want to turn you some humble thanks so it ain’t nothing but right for you to be our King and live rich. You done worked forty years for us for nothing. Therefore we took all the crowns that we beat off of the heads of Kings that we conquered and melted them all down and made them into one crown, something that’s fitten for your conquering head. It ain’t much, Moses, but it will give you some idea of how we feel.”

Moses stood up and thanked everybody very kindly. But he went on to say that he wasn’t sure that people ought to have Kings at all. It’s pretty hard to find a man who wouldn’t weaken under the strain of power and get biggity and overbearing. He himself might not be any better than nobody else if he had the chance. So they better let this King business rest for a while. “This freedom is a funny thing,” he told them. “It ain’t something permanent like rocks and hills. It’s like manna; you just got to keep on gathering it fresh every day. If you don’t, one day you’re going to find you ain’t got none no more. I’m getting kind of old and I been with you like you say since back in Egypt. It’s been kind of tough sometimes, and maybe I neglected a lot of things I could have done off by myself. But if you just keep free and be a fine nation of folks I’ll feel like I bought something with my life. You done got free of Pharaoh and the Egyptian oppressors, be careful you don’t raise up none among yourselves.” Moses left with drooping heart.