Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

  “Let us hope for the meeting,” Moses said with restrained feeling. And he was gone.

  CHAPTER 26

  Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress. The palace and the peasant slept. Pharaoh and the servants of Pharaoh had assured the Egyptians that the terrors of Moses were ended. He had said that Moses must cease and the word of a Pharaoh was enough. So the nation slept its sleep untroubled.

  In Goshen the blind-eyed goddess of night huddled close, and families stayed inside their houses and waited. A bloody bunch of hyssop had swished against every door in Goshen three times—once on the lintel overhead and once on the door facing at either side. Then the people had gone inside and sat behind the blood and waited as Moses had ordered. Their new god, who had chosen them through Moses, was going to fight Pharaoh for their sake. He had asked the sign of the three bloody marks on the door and the people had done their part. The rest was for Moses and God to do. So the dark stillness in Goshen was not sleeping darkness. It meant waiting. The lamb had been sacrificed and eaten in every house in the land and his signal blood guarded the doors. The night went on its way.

  Darkness balanced up on midnight looking both ways for day. Then the great cry arose in Egypt. They cried and died in Egypt. It was the great cry that had issued first from the throat of Israel years before and spread to the rim bones of the world and come back again. And now it poured out through the mouth of the Egyptian nation. It was such a cry that there was none like it since the morning stars sang together, and never shall be another like it as long as heaven is happy. Egypt cried out at the death of the first-born. Every house in Egypt was bloody. Blood outside the door in Goshen, blood inside every other house in Egypt.

  Pharaoh looked upon his first-born and wept. His son was dead and the son of his son was dead in his own blood. There were snorts and bellows from his stables from the smell of animal blood. So Pharaoh cried for his dead with all of his voice. Every house in Egypt strained its voice trying to express its bereavement. The noise of it struck the sky and came back to the Nile and ran with it to the sea, the Egyptian chorus of sorrow indoors.

  Outside, the paths and pavements were full of soft, swift feet fleeing into Goshen with its listening ears. These were the sounds of the night, sounds without words.

  With the sunrise, Princes and people said, “This is the hand, the right hand of Moses.” They lifted their dead from beds and said in awe, “Moses and the God of the Israelites.” They rolled their dead from straw mats and pallets and said, “Moses and his right hand.” They crowded in and around the palace and shouted, “Get Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt. If you don’t, everybody in Egypt will be dead.”

  So Pharaoh sent for Moses to dismiss him, his God and his people from Egypt. He was no longer proud Pharaoh with the mask-like face. He was a man whose son was dead. But Moses refused to go see Pharaoh all that day. Burials went on and burials went out from houses all day in long lines and solemn weeping, and all Egypt was in tears. Pharaoh sent messengers to Moses again telling him not that the Hebrews might go, but that they must go.

  Moses heard the message sitting in his house but he didn’t say a word right then. The news was too big to speak at once. He had to sit with his feelings for a while. Afterwards he called his leaders to him and told them, “Your slavery is over. Pharaoh is broken at last. We march out of Egypt with a free people. We march out with a high hand.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The 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.

  CHAPTER 28

  Next 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.

  CHAPTER 29

  It 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!”

  Mo
ses 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.”