Stone tables, p.38
Stone Tables, page 38
“You don’t have to persuade me.”
“I’m just saying, God is the one who made us the way we are, isn’t he? I mean, isn’t that the whole point? The God of Israel is like Ptah, he made everything, so didn’t he make me, complete with all these needs and desires? And if he put these desires in me, then how can it be wrong to satisfy them? In fact, I’m worshiping him more fully than these pious people are, because I’m using my whole self in my worship.”
“Have you tried that argument on Aaron?”
“He hasn’t had a desire in fifteen years. Have you seen his wife? This is an old man’s religion they’ve got here.”
“You’re going to persuade Aaron to gather the gold, melt it down, and pour it in?”
“Watch me.”
* * *
The angel sat across from Joshua and opened the book again.
“The more I read,” said Joshua, “the easier it gets.”
“This is the book of the days of Noah,” said the angel.
“Has Moses read it?”
“A fragment. With most of the plainest truth lost from it. Even the name was lost. And yet it still opened a door in his heart, because his wife read it and taught him from it.”
Joshua had only read a few words when he stopped. “Why am I never hungry or thirsty? I’ve been here for days, but I never even think of eating.”
“You thought of it now.”
“I just read this verse: The fruit is given to man to eat, but he lets it ripen and fall to the ground, while he gnaws on old bones and grows thin.”
“The glory of God is on this mountain,” said the angel, “so you have no need of food or drink.”
* * *
Aaron heard the tumult before the messenger reached him. “Quickly!” the boy shouted. “At the boundary of the Lord’s land!”
Aaron leapt from the judgment seat, Hur behind him, and rushed as quickly as he could to the foot of the mountain, where the line had been drawn that the people could not cross. Hundreds had gathered there. Many were onlookers, but most were a group that was shouting and cursing at the young men of the patrol, who looked sick at heart at the prospect of striking out with weapons against their own people.
“Let us by!”
“The Lord has forgotten us!”
“Moses is dead!”
“He’s not coming back!”
“Moses is dead!”
It became a chant. Moses is dead. God has forgotten us. Moses is dead. God has forgotten us.
Aaron strode at once into the space between the soldiers and the crowd. He held up his arms for silence, and because the staff that had become a snake was in his hand, the people recoiled a little, and relative quiet settled over the crowd.
“Moses is alive,” Aaron said.
“You haven’t seen him either!”
“The Lord has much to teach us. Be grateful at how long he’s been up the mountain! It means the gift he’ll return to us is that much greater!”
“How do you know he didn’t fall and die!”
“Because the Lord that gives you manna every morning is also the Lord who led him up the mountain. Do you think the prophet’s foot could slip when there are angels to bear him up?”
“But nothing changes! Day after day!”
“Go home!” Aaron said. “Back to your tents. Don’t defy the Lord by crossing this boundary line. It would be death to you if you tried! Go to your families!”
They obeyed him, straggling away. But then, to his chagrin, one group of them began chanting again as they walked among the tents: “Moses is dead! God has forgotten us!”
“Do you want me to take some of these men and go silence that chant?” asked Hur.
“And then what?” said Aaron. “Send soldiers wherever people say things we don’t like? Is that what these young men entered into this service to do? Is that why we came out of Egypt?”
“We didn’t come out of Egypt to have troublemakers tear the nation of Israel apart, either,” said Hur.
“They’ll quiet down soon enough,” said Aaron. “Most people will know that the whole idea that Moses might be dead is ridiculous. Or that the Lord has forgotten us. They have only to look at the cloud over the mountain on a day that’s completely clear. The Lord is with us.”
“Well, technically, the Lord is with Moses,” said Hur, “and we’re on our own down here.”
Aaron glared at him. “You, too?”
Hur smiled uncomfortably. “I think I was joking.”
“I think I’m relieved to hear it.” Aaron held up his hand, listened. “Hear that?”
“What?” asked Hur.
“The chant has already stopped.”
Hur grinned. “Well, what can I say? You were right.”
But later that day it began again, somewhere among the tents of Manasseh. And in the darkness, it began in Gad and went on for an hour before people in neighboring tents pulled the stakes on the tents of the chanters. It became a fistfight and Aaron had to come and arbitrate, and the result was a new rule against loud noises at night. But the chanters bruited it about that Aaron was now trying to make them be quiet because he knew Moses was dead but was afraid that if the camp of Israel knew it, they’d divide up and each family would go to Canaan or back to Egypt or wherever they wanted. “And then who would have Aaron as ruler and judge?” It was a vicious rumor, but it was repeated often enough that some people started to believe it, a little, and wonder aloud about whose interest was foremost in Aaron’s heart.
At least at home Aaron finally had some peace. “You were right about them,” Elisheba said. “They’re no friends of mine.”
“What happened?”
“I overheard them telling somebody else that there was another army of Egyptians coming to attack us and take us back into slavery, and you knew about it but you weren’t going to tell anybody because you kept hoping the Lord would make you a prophet like Moses only the Lord doesn’t love you like Moses so you’ll try to stop the Egyptians yourself and—oh, it goes on and on, I can’t believe anybody was listening to it!”
“But they were?”
“When I challenged them on it, then everybody said that it was just speculating, and there was no harm in wondering about things, was there? Aaron, they really are vicious, trying to stir up trouble.”
“If you can see that, maybe others will see it, too.”
“But think how long it took me. I feel like such a fool.”
“Honest people are easiest to fool, Elisheba. It never occurred to you that they might be flattering you, because you don’t lie.”
“So much of what they said to me sounded true, and I still don’t—I can’t even sort out what I think now.”
“Then hold fast to the Lord, and wait. These are his people. He’ll open the door for us and make it clear what we must do.”
* * *
As Moses watched, the rough face of the stone crumbled and slid down, leaving a smooth surface. Then small bits of dust formed on the face of the stone. When he brushed them away, he could see that letters had been incised in the stone, deeper than any tool could have engraved them. He read, brushed away more dust, and read again.
What emerged was the order of the priesthood of the Son of God, and sacred rituals that would bind husband to wife and parents to children through every generation of the world. He read the pattern for ceremonies that taught the dead how to enter heaven, and knew that the Books of the Dead in Egypt were but a weak echo of what Melchizedek had known, and Noah, and Enoch, and the great prophets and patriarchs of the earliest age of man. Following this pattern, Moses would be able to ordain all the men of Israel who chose to live worthy as high priests after the order of Melchizedek, the great king of Salem, to whom Abraham had paid his tithes. A nation of high priests, all of them linked to the Lord and to their families by the holiest of bonds. And in the deep places in his soul, where he held memories that he could never fully bring to consciousness again, he felt how the order established by the writing on the stone fit in with the order of all the earths and all the heavens, so that instead of human beings being cut off from knowledge of the creations of God, they would know their place and gladly serve within it, and receive the joy that the Lord had in store for them.
He knelt and prayed, even as the writing went on, thanking God for his mercy and praying for the wisdom to know how to bring Israel to the point where all could receive these blessings.
* * *
It was a fullblown riot now, the chanters tearing down tents wherever they roamed. “Moses is dead! God has forgotten us!”
The captains of the guard waited for Aaron to tell them what to do. Hur, Caleb, and other elders of the tribes kept urging him to take action, that this could not go on, everyone was becoming frightened.
Harubel appeared at his side. “Aaron, what can I do to help you?”
“As far as I know, you’re the one behind all this,” Aaron snapped.
“What I want is peace and quiet,” said Harubel. “We won’t make a god, we won’t dance, but we’ll make an emblem, a visible sign that the people can gather around. Something to see—isn’t that what they’re calling for? Something to see.”
“This is what you wanted all along,” said Aaron.
“Yes, of course,” said Harubel. “I want Israel to be content. But this—it’s descending into chaos, and when Moses comes back and finds the whole camp in an uproar, what’s he going to say to you?”
“I’m not afraid of my brother, he’ll understand that—”
“He’ll understand that Israel has no leader when he isn’t here.”
“Spare me the sniping,” said Aaron. “I have plenty of people doing that already.”
“Let’s put it in the Lord’s hands,” said Harubel. “I know a smith, he’ll make a clay form with a hollow place in it. Gather the gold we got from Egypt, melt it down, and pour it in—and ask the Lord to make it into whatever shape he wants the people to see. That way we aren’t making a graven image, God is. It’ll be a miracle! The people will see that the Lord is with them!”
The chant was growing louder and louder, and so were the shouts and screams of the people who were fighting.
A miracle would be helpful at this moment.
“Whatever comes out of the clay,” said Aaron, “there’ll be no dancing. None of the rituals from the worship of the calf.”
“Of course not,” said Harubel. “The people wouldn’t stand for it anyway.”
“Not any of the hand-clapping music of Egypt, either.”
“Oh, suddenly that’s evil?”
“Nothing that sounds like the worship of other gods. Or that looks like it.”
“I agree completely,” said Harubel. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s the Lord who’ll do this.”
But when the smith and his assistants carried the wooden frame and the clay within it to the judgment seat, Aaron grew suspicious. “You already have a shape inside that, don’t you?”
The smith looked at him in puzzlement. “How could I? The gold pours in and burns away the clay and makes its own shape. I have no control over it.”
“Smiths shape things all the time.” If only he knew anything about how smiths did their work, but those were closely guarded secrets, and Aaron could only guess whether he was being told the truth or not.
“Yes, we shape things,” said the smith, “but not when the form is already enclosed like this. How could I? Am I supposed to reach in with teeny-tiny tools and carve something down in the hole?”
Aaron looked at him and knew that he was a liar but didn’t know what the lie was. He also knew that the chanting was growing louder, and so were the cries of those trying to silence the chanters.
What should I do, Lord? Can I believe these men? Will you make the gold come forth in some shape that will help to still this riot?
He heard no answer.
Aaron turned to the leaders of the patrol. “Go tell the chanters to come and see that God still remembers Israel.”
Moments later, the patrol headed off to find the chanters. In the meantime, Aaron had the elders of the tribes bring the carts filled with gold booty from Egypt and bring them to the large clay melting pot that was being set up before the judgment seat.
When the chanters fell silent, it was almost more frightening than the noise had been. The fire under the melting pot grew intense, and Aaron let the smith choose the ornaments of the most pure gold and put them in the pot to be melted down.
“What are you doing?” demanded Miriam.
“Trying to stop the rioting,” said Aaron.
“Harubel is a calf-worshiper,” she said. “So is that smith he’s working with.”
“The smith, also?”
“He’s not even an Israelite, Aaron. He’s a Hittite.”
“Then what is he doing here?”
“Maybe he came along on the journey so he could get his hands on some of that gold. And now you’re giving it to him.”
“The Lord will make it turn out all right.”
“The Lord has nothing to do with this, and you know it!”
“As the Lord did with the plagues, he’ll do now.”
“Not the way you think!” cried Miriam. “Aaron, the Lord won’t do anything with this. Whatever it is, it’ll be a graven image. Why would the Lord ever help you create the very thing he forbade us to have?”
“But it won’t be graven, it’ll be—”
The smith’s assistants ran their rods through the slots at the top of the melting pot, so that four long handles emerged from it. Then they picked it up by the handles and carried it to the form.
Zeforah and Elisheba ran to Aaron. “Husband!” cried Elisheba. “Don’t do this! It’s a trick!”
“Elisheba, I can’t stop now,” said Aaron.
Zeforah spoke up. “Aaron, I have said nothing about the governing of this camp, but you must listen to Elisheba, this will bring you nothing but shame.”
“What will bring me shame is standing before this crowd and letting them see that my wife and Moses’ wife and my sister Miriam are the real rulers of this camp. I’ve made the decision, and it will stand.”
“Aaron, please!” cried Elisheba. “God will destroy us!”
“You’re the one who was telling me we needed this,” said Aaron.
“But not like this. Look at them—those aren’t the children of Israel, those are devils!”
The faces of the chanters were all intently focused on the gold as it poured out of the melting pot and into the form.
“It’s in God’s hands now,” said Aaron. “Whatever forms in the mold, that’s up to God.”
“God has no part in this,” said Miriam.
“I was charged with governing Israel,” said Aaron. “By God I was assigned. The crisis is upon us! I have to act.”
“Act to stop them then,” said Zeforah. “Don’t surrender to them!”
“I’m surrendering to no one.”
“Moses would not do this,” said Zeforah.
Aaron whirled on her. “Should you govern us then? You’re his wife, so you know what he would do. I can’t believe I’ve lasted this long without your advice.”
“That’s not fair,” said Elisheba. “Zeforah has never tried to give advice before.”
“But you have,” said Aaron.
“I was wrong,” said Elisheba. “I’m glad you didn’t listen to me—then.”
“What I needed from you, then and now, is your support, not your criticism.”
“I am trying to support you in the righteous resolve you had before,” said Elisheba. “What happened to change that?”
“Look around you,” said Aaron, indicating the crowd of one-time chanters, now intently watching as the smith and his assistants carried the form on their shoulders. Inside it, Aaron imagined the gold changing shapes, growing into something. Whatever the Lord wanted it to be. O Lord, please make the gold take the shape you want it to have!
“Never mind,” said Miriam to the women. “He’s not going to listen. Get back to your tents and keep your children away from this.”
“I am keeping Israel safe!” cried Aaron as the women left.
“Of course you are,” said Harubel. “What do they know? Now we get a chance to see a miracle come from Aaron without Moses there.”
“The miracle, if it comes, will come from God.”
“What do you mean if?” said Harubel, laughing. “Have some faith!”
It was then that Aaron realized he had been deceived, that he had succumbed to flattery as surely as Elisheba had the week before. Harubel knew what was inside the form. It had been planned from the beginning.
“Don’t break the form,” said Aaron.
“You can’t be serious,” said Harubel.
“I forbid you to break the form.”
“Forbid? You forbid? Do you have any idea what would happen then? Look at these thousands of people, waiting, watching for the sign from God. If you refuse to break the form, what do you think they’ll do?”
“They can do what they want. I forbid you to break the form.”
Harubel responded by stepping in front of Aaron. “Aaron the prophet says, It’s time to see what God has given us!”
He turned around and leered into Aaron’s face. “As you were to Moses, now I am to you. Spokesman!”
When Harubel turned back around, Aaron could not bring himself to rush forward, for the people were now pressing close, frantic in their excitement. He could never silence them, could never push his way through that crowd to stop them, and even if he could make himself heard or seen, he knew they would not obey him now. They all knew what the gold would be. Some of them were already tearing off their clothes, to dance naked for the god the mold had shaped for them.
“This is not from God!” cried Aaron. But his voice was lost in the tumult from the crowd.
The wood frame was gone, and the clay stood alone. The smith’s hammer tapped at the baked clay. Pieces chipped off. More and more of them. The gold glinted underneath, lustrous with firelight, perfect, new. Four legs. The triangular head. The bull calf.
