By Way of the Wilderness

by Gilbert, Morris

  Some of them went to Korah, urging him to be the leader, but Korah was shrewd and knew that if Moses came back he would be angry at anyone who usurped his position. He refused, saying, “Go to Aaron. Go to others. Not me.”

  Weeks passed and still Moses did not return. Finally the Hebrew people succumbed to the most shameful event in their history. During their long enslavement in Egypt, they had been exposed to the gods of the Egyptians and to the gods of other heathen nations. They were well aware of Ashtoreth and the god Moloch. Calf worship was particularly strong in this cult, and the people began to cry out for a god they could see. They finally came to Aaron, screaming, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

  Nadab and Abihu grabbed their father by the arms and said, “Quick, we must do what the people say. We must make them a golden calf.”

  Stunned, Aaron licked his lips with uncertainty, but his sons urged him, and he finally cried out, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So the people brought him their gold jewelry from Egypt, and he took the massive pile of ornaments and melted it down. He asked Bezalel to fashion the gold into a calf, and the young man considered it, but then refused. So Aaron himself created a golden calf and presented it to the people, saying, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

  When Miriam heard what was happening, she ran to Aaron, weeping and wailing for him to stop, but she was held back by Nadab and Abihu from going to her brother. Bezalel also tried to stop them, and fought with Aaron’s sons to come to their senses and let his mother go. “We cannot do this thing! Remember what we promised God!” Bezalel’s heart had been gradually changing as he had spent time in the wilderness, watching God’s deliverance and provision for His people. Now he could not abide this terrible abomination against the God who had made himself known to them all.

  But Aaron ignored Miriam’s and Bezalel’s protests, crying out to the people, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.”

  He built an altar before the golden calf, and the next day the people rose early and eagerly brought their animals to offer burnt sacrifices to their new god. They spent the day, and far into the night, eating and drinking and indulging in all manner of revelry.

  That night in the desert, below the very mountain where God himself spoke to the people, the demons were loosed from their captivity to play among the Hebrews, encouraging them in all the abominations of the heathen worship from which they’d been delivered.

  Finally, at the height of the festivities, Miriam ran through the camp, crying, “Hebrews, listen to me! Remember the holy covenant that you swore to the Lord to keep. Have nothing to do with this idol. The Lord is your God.”

  “Out of the way, old woman,” one of the men said with a laugh, shoving her roughly to the ground.

  She lay there weeping, and Bezalel came to her and helped her to her feet. “Come, Mother,” he said sadly. “There is nothing we can do here.”

  ****

  For several weeks Joshua had been camping on the side of Mount Sinai, just below the summit, awaiting Moses’ return. He heard a sound and looked to see Moses finally descending from the peak after his long sojourn with God. Joshua was shocked to see him. His white hair shone as brightly as the sun, and he wore a mantle that blazed like silver in the sunlight. In his hands he carried two stone tablets, which flickered in fiery letters that spelled out the commandments from God.

  Joshua was afraid to even speak to Moses. He had waited for forty days and nights, hunting for his food and drinking from a spring. He wondered what Moses had done for food all this time.

  Joshua could not interpret the stern look on Moses’ face. He did not know what God had just told him: “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’”

  Joshua followed Moses as they made their way down to the stony plateau at the base of the mountain. Joshua heard the shouting and tumult of the people and said to Moses, “There is the sound of war in the camp.”

  “No,” Moses replied. “It is not the sound of victory; it is not the sound of defeat. It is the sound of singing that I hear.”

  As they came to the rim of the plateau, Joshua saw thousands of people below in a frenzy, dancing wildly around a glittering calf. He threw a worried glance at Moses, who stood silently without speaking. Then suddenly Moses lifted the two tablets above his head and flung them down the slope. The tablets shattered into fragments, and Moses ran down the hill toward the camp, leaving Joshua behind.

  As Moses entered the camp, flinging right and left with his mighty arms to make a path through the crowd, panic struck the idolaters. They drew back while Moses took hold of the golden calf and threw it on the stony ground, breaking it to pieces. He cast the pieces into the fire that burned on the altar. He did not say a word as the people fearfully watched him. He took the blackened pieces out of the fire and ground them into a powder, which he carried in a basin to a pool of water nearby formed by a stream flowing down the mountain. He poured the powder in the water and commanded the elders to make all the people drink the water.

  The people cried out in fear, but Moses did not listen. He found Aaron and shouted at him, “What did these people do to you, that you led them into such great sin?”

  Aaron stuttered, his face pale as parchment. “Do not be angry, my lord,” he stammered. “You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, ‘Make us gods who will go before us.’”

  Moses glanced around at the people running wild, and his anger toward his brother burned within him that Aaron would have let them get so out of control and become a laughingstock to their enemies. He stood at the entrance to the camp and declared, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.”

  The sons of Levi quickly rallied around him. So Moses said to them, “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.”

  The men of the tribe of Levi carried out Moses’ order, and immediately began slaying people right and left throughout the camp. When three thousand lay dead or dying, Moses finally called a halt to the massacre. Wails of sorrow and grief rose up all night from the camp of Israel.

  Moses went to his tent and stayed there, listening to the sounds of grief and wailing from the camp throughout the night. He cried out to God in despair, and God spoke to him that night.

  The next morning he spoke to the people, who stood before him, shaken and wan. “You have sinned a great sin,” Moses said. “But now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

  Moses went back to the Lord and prayed again. “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.”

  The Lord replied to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin.”

  Moses bowed on his face before God and wept, for he knew that the people whom he loved so much were a long way from being the people of God.

  ****

  Moses went a distance from the camp to a special tent of meeting he had set up, where people could go to inquire of the Lord. There Moses met with God face-to-face while the entrance to the tent was guarded by a pillar of cloud from God. This day he met with God to seek His assurance. How could he possibly continue to lead these people, he wondered, when they would not listen to him?

  God did assure him,
saying, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

  “Show me your glory, Lord!” Moses pleaded.

  And God said to him, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live….

  “Be ready in the morning,” the Lord continued, “and then come up on Mount Sinai. Present yourself to me there on top of the mountain. No one is to come with you or be seen anywhere on the mountain; not even the flocks and herds may graze in front of the mountain.”

  Moses bowed his head and worshiped.

  ****

  Moses looked out over the desert that lay at his feet as he climbed toward the top of Mount Sinai. He turned back to look up the mountain and saw a cloud descend and wrap itself around the summit. The Lord passed before him as Moses stood still, waiting for God’s further direction. First the Lord commanded Moses to chisel new tablets of stone. And after they were completed, the Lord wrote on them the commandments that were on the first tablets.

  Then the voice of God proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

  Moses bowed his head and made a covenant with his God, knowing that God would forgive His people. But he also realized that the way to the promised land of milk and honey was going to be much longer than he had ever imagined.

  Chapter 21

  “Miriam, what’s wrong with Bezalel?” Shani asked one day.

  Miriam looked up from the goatskins filled with milk that were attached to two small saplings. She swung them back and forth, making butter, and kept up the rhythm while studying the young girl’s face. “I didn’t know anything was wrong with him.”

  “He’s so quiet, and he doesn’t tell me stories very much anymore.”

  Miriam continued the rhythm, pushing the goatskin with one hand. With the other she tucked a loose curl up under the scarf she wore. She wanted to put the girl off, for she was always full of questions, but she felt this was too important to ignore. Ever since Bezalel had saved her from death, she had clung to him closely, which both troubled and pleased Miriam.

  Finally she answered, “He’s troubled about himself, Shani.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he thinks he’s not a good man.”

  Shani’s oddly colored green eyes shone with anger. “He is too a good man!”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t. I said he doesn’t think he is.”

  “Why would he think that? He’s good to me.”

  Miriam laughed, reached over, and pulled the girl closer. She still seemed to be nothing but skin and bones, but Miriam knew that soon she would grow out of her awkwardness, blossom and fill out, and one day be a tall and beautiful woman. “He’s worried about that golden calf that nearly brought us all to disaster.”

  “Why’s he worried about that?”

  “Well … Aaron was wrong to build that idol, but at first he asked Bezalel to make it.”

  “But he didn’t do it.”

  “No, he didn’t, but he almost did, and that’s what’s been bothering him, I think.”

  Shani’s face assumed a stubborn set. “You can’t blame yourself for something you almost did. It’s what you do that matters.”

  “Well, our people have very strong feelings about idols. The father of all of us, Abraham, was once an idolater. He lived in a land called Ur of the Chaldees, but when the Lord spoke to him, he gave up his idols to follow the one God. Even though Abraham showed us the truth we are to follow, our people have always had a weakness about turning back to idols whenever things get bad.”

  Shani listened as Miriam spoke at length concerning the history of the Hebrews and their struggle against idolatry.

  When Miriam finally stopped talking, Shani said, “I’m going to tell him that he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “No, don’t bother him, Shani. Some things a person just has to work out alone. What he’s trying to find out,” she said, her face growing sober and troubled, “is what kind of a man he’s going to be. And God will help him to make the right choices!”

  ****

  Bezalel had wandered away from the camp. He had taken his bow and a quiver of arrows with him on the off chance of seeing a deer or a coney that he might bring back for the pot. So far he had seen nothing except one bear that he was rather glad was far off in the distance. It occurred to him that he might pursue the beast and bring him down, but bears were bad business, especially a wounded one. Bezalel knew he was not the greatest archer in the world. If Joshua or Caleb had been with me, we would have taken that beast, he thought.

  He shrugged his shoulders and headed eastward, his eyes on the far-distant mountains. The sky looked brittle enough to scratch with a stone, and there was not a single cloud in it except for the cloud that continually hung over the camp. It was a daily miracle to Bezalel that a cloud would lead such a multitude of people to their destination. He glanced at it now and saw the towering column rising high into the sky. It was stirred slightly by the wind but immediately resumed its shape.

  As Bezalel walked along, he tried to push bad thoughts out of his mind—-thoughts that had troubled him ever since the incident of the golden calf. He could not understand why he was so shaken. He had, after all, made many idols for his Egyptian master. That had not troubled him in the least. He had known that no matter what the Egyptians said, the idols he made had nothing to do with human existence. He could not understand how anyone could be so stupid as to think that something a man made with his hands could control his life. He had laughed secretly with Oholiab behind the backs of the Egyptians, the two of them seeing a ridiculous situation in all of it.

  Bezalel grew thirsty and started hunting for a spring or a little pool of water trapped in a rock. He finally found a tiny spring no bigger than his hand. He lay on his stomach and drank from it, finding it deliciously cool.

  He rolled over on his back and lay with his eyes half closed, trying to put aside the memory of how he had almost agreed to Aaron’s request to make the golden calf. A shiver ran over him, and he remembered the fear that had touched him and how confused he had felt. He could not understand how Aaron could do such a thing! And then, of course, he remembered the terrible and depraved behavior of the people as they worshiped the idol, and the wrath of Moses and the massacre of so many by the tribe of Levi.

  I could have been one of them! Bezalel thought, realizing that he had come very close to death.

  For a long time he lay there and had almost dozed off when something touched his shoulder and brought him out of his half-sleep with a start. His first thought was that the bear had found him, and he let out a cry and leaped to his feet. But when he whirled, he saw Shani standing there looking up at him.

  “Don’t sneak up on a man like that, Shani! You scared me to death!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought maybe you might want some company.”

  Bezalel could not help grinning. “You always think I want your company.” He sat down and drew his feet up under him, and Shani sat down beside him. “How did you find me out here?”

  “I saw you take your bow and arrow, and I’ve been following you,” she said simply.

  Bezalel could only shake his head. “Why don’t you go play with the other children?”

  “No, I don’t want to.”

  “Well, it can’t be much fun for you sitting out here with me in the desert.”

  “I don’t like to see you sad.”

  Surprised, Bezalel turned to face the girl. As always he was rather shocked by her enormous green eyes. They were well-shaped, and one day, he re
asoned, they would be the eyes of an attractive woman. He studied her, thinking of how she clung to him like a burr, and said, “I’m not sad.”

  “Yes, you are. I can tell. Besides, Miriam told me why you’re sad.”

  “Didn’t she have anything to do but talk about me?”

  Shani reached out and took his hand and held it. She stroked the back of it with one of hers and said, “You cut your hand on something.”

  “It was a chisel. What did she tell you?”

  “She said you were sad because you almost did a bad thing.” She looked up and nodded confidently. “You shouldn’t be sad about that. You didn’t make that gold calf.”

  “I almost did.”

  “But you didn’t. You’re not a bad man. You’re the best man in all of Israel.”

  Bezalel suddenly laughed. He reached out with his free hand and tousled her auburn hair. It was clean now, thanks to Miriam, and reached down her back almost to her waist. “I’m not the best man in Israel, Shani.”

  “You could be if you wanted to be. You could be anything you want to be, Bezalel.”

  Bezalel was touched by the child’s faith in him. He put his arm around her and hugged her and left it there. She sagged against him, and he said, “I wish I were as good a man as you think I am.”

  As for Shani, she was content. He was holding her, and she was leaning against him, and no matter what he said, he was the best man in all of Israel!

  ****

  Bezalel could not forget Shani’s words: “You could be anything you want to be.” She had spoken them without thought, but he knew that her faith in him was as boundless as the sky above. It pleased him, yet troubled him at the same time. Again and again he seemed to hear her small voice, saying, “You could be anything you want to be.”

  For days he would go for long walks in the desert, trying to forget the golden calf incident, but it would not go away from him. He could not sleep well at night, and his work was poorly executed so that Oholiab said more than once, “What’s the matter with you, Bezalel? You can’t do anything right these days.”