by Mary Rakow
God saw that his anger was there when the story of the manna was written on stone tablets. It was there when the plants that grew in the Nile were picked and the fibers soaked and dried under weight, his violence preserved on the long papyrus rolls. He saw it later when papyrus sheets were folded into quires and the quires made into codices. His anger there when papyrus gave way to vellum and then to parchment. And he despaired, thinking, is this how memory works in my people? That my anger is neither forgiven nor forgotten but is held like a treasure that grows in them over time?
He lifted the hem of his chiton to caress the quail embroidered there, admiring their black plumes, their plump bodies and dainty beaks, then he let them go so that they flew off the garment and walked on the ground around his feet. “Did I send scorpions to my people?” he asked them. “No, I sent you, my sweet ones.” But he wondered, why do they think my anger prevails above all else?
He took off his chiton and his himation of indigo blue and sat naked on the bench wondering, are they right? Is this who I am? Am I a God without mercy?
12
Moses and Memory
GOD SAID TO Moses, “My people love me then they don’t. They come to me then they forsake me. I want to bind them to myself. I want to make my presence permanent among them.”
Moses, hearing fear in the voice of God, asked, “What would you have me do?”
“Listen to me and tell my people everything you hear. For you, Moses, are the Great Rememberer.”
God began, his voice robust and determined, and Moses sat back to memorize each word as it came from his mouth. “I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. . . . Thou shalt have no other gods before me. . . . Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. . . . Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. . . .”
And Moses went down the mountain and told the people the words God had spoken and they said in one voice, “This we will do.”
THEN GOD CALLED Moses to the mountain a second time and the energy of God was greater than the first and he spoke faster, saying, “If you buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh year he shall go out free for nothing.” And then, “If the servant came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.”
The commands were more detailed, causing Moses to work harder remembering them. “And if the servant shall plainly say, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him unto the judges. . . . And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed. . . .”
God spoke still faster, “And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. . . .” But the cadence, the rhythmic repetition and steady hopefulness in God’s voice took Moses away from him and his mountain and into the cave of memory, black and damp and gently rocking, where he slept. Then suddenly a blast of light, something long poking him, bright orange, the basket rocking wildly, a white feathered head, two black eyes then gone.
“If he take him another wife,” Moses came back, “her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.”
Under the words Moses heard, “Remember this. Remember me, Moses,” and he had compassion for God and tried harder, with all of his strength, to remember each word, harnessing himself to them.
“And if a man smite the eye of his servant . . . if an ox gore a man or a woman . . . if a man shall open a pit and not cover it . . . if a man shall cause a field or vineyard to be eaten by his beast . . . if a fire break out and catch in thorns so that the stacks of corn be consumed . . . if a man deliver unto his neighbor an ass and it die . . . if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed . . .”
But Moses dozed off again, hearing only, “. . . and . . . and . . . and . . . and . . .”
The egret, the enormous beak, the rocking of his back against the blanket, the inside of the basket, that it smelled of reeds.
INSIDE THE MEMORY of the basket and the egret, another memory lay, and Moses turned away from God’s voice to find it. Further back. At the beginning.
Breath came down on the crown of his head. Skin against skin. A steady rise and fall of his body held from behind and below. His mother’s skin, that it smelled of moss.
And Moses could see why God wanted to be bound to his people forever, as he was bound, in memory, to her.
13
Moses and the Dream of the Law
MOSES STAYED ON the holy mountain because he saw that God needed him. For forty days he listened to the voice of God and learned that God was boundless and not like man, never tiring, inexhaustible.
“If men strive and so hurt a woman with child so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow, he shall be surely punished. . . . And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand.”
And Moses pitied the desperateness of God, frantic with desire.
“. . . gold and silver and brass and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen and goats’ hair and rams’ skins dyed red, and badgers’ skins and shittim wood, oil for the light spices for anointing oil and for sweet incense, onyx stones and stones to be set in the ephod, and in the breastplate. And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them . . . ten curtains of fine twined linen . . . curtains of goats’ hair, the length of the curtain shall be thirty cubits . . . covering of rams’ skins dyed red and badgers’ skins . . . a veil of blue and purple and scarlet . . . pillars round the court shall be filleted with silver, their hooks of silver, sockets of brass . . .”
Moses began to dream again of sleep. The lep-lep sound of the water when the egret walked away, the sound of the water when it lifted its feet. But he heard, “Remember me. Remember me, Moses,” even in his sleep and grew frightened then that he would be on the mountain forever. That God’s desire was infinite and his speaking would never end.
“And thou shall make a candlestick of pure gold . . . six branches shall come out of the sides of it, three branches out of the candlestick out of the one side, three branches of the candlestick out of the other side. . . .”
Until finally he screamed, “No more!”
And God stopped.
HE HEARD GOD catch his breath then slow himself until he finally saw the trees bending gently, the grass also bending to the left then to the right then to the left again in the breath of God.
And Moses said, “Show me your glory. I need to see you. I need to see your face.”
But God said, “If you see my face, you will die.”
“Show me anyway,” Moses answered.
GOD WAITED. THEN said, “I will make all my glory pass before you. But I will cover you with my hand and then will take my hand away and you will see the back of my body but not my face, and in that way you will live.”
So God covered the eyes of Moses with his hand and passed by Moses in all of his glory. And when he had passed by, he lifted his hand and Moses opened his eyes and saw the back of God. He saw the back of God walking away, the deep blue velvet of his robe spangled with stars like gold dust, uncountable. And Moses saw that the mind of God was orderly and that in his wishes for the candlestick, the incense, the robes of finely woven linen, in his rules for divorce and ownership and property and times and seasons, he was trying to bring his people to holiness. And Moses no longer feared God.
In the morning he would go down from the mountain and write every word that God had said. And he would call God’s rulings and instructions, “The Law.”
BUT FOR NOW, he stared at the back of God and realized that what had seemed like the infinite neediness of God was its opposite. All night long he stared at the sky and saw that each star was an ope
ning. And he heard God saying, “Come to me. I have given you infinite doors. Pick one and come to me. Enter into the fullness of my mercy.”
14
The Queen of Sheba
THE QUEEN OF Sheba, seeking to understand the difference between prayer and magic, healing and sorcery, wisdom and superstition, found her counselors wanting and hearing of the fame of Solomon concerning his god, made a journey of one thousand miles to pose her questions to him.
She traveled with a great train of camels bearing spices, gold, and precious stones. And when she saw his forty thousand stalls of horses and twelve thousand horsemen, the meat at his table, the sitting of his servants, the attendance of his ministers and their apparel, his cupbearers and the way he ascended into the house of his god, she grew faint and offered Solomon all that she had brought, nine thousand pounds of gold and more spices than anyone had ever given the king.
When he drew her away privately, she told him all the questions in her heart. “I’ve hid nothing from you now,” she confessed, and Solomon said, “You are a seeker.”
“Give me food to eat,” she answered, and he gave her the laws of Moses.
For many days she stayed in the household of the king where she remained in her room reading and did not come out. She saw the Law as a form of love, that each situation was anticipated and provided for, a kind of Mother.
WHEN AT LAST she reappeared Solomon sang to her, accompanied by the harp, speaking as if he were Wisdom herself, saying, “I was there when God prepared the heavens. . . . I was by him and was daily his delight. . . .”
And the Queen asked, “Can this god be known?”
ON THE DAY of her leaving, Solomon gave her eight packets each tied with a gold thread, a song he’d written, and asked her not to read them until she reached home. I will grow in wisdom and be like Solomon, she thought. I will rule with Wisdom and I will come to know his god.
In the cool of her palanquin, she slept with the chaplets under her pillow. The days were long, the nights longer, the trip seemed without end. Borne on the shoulders of a dozen men, she wished instead to be on her own horse, racing home. In the last hundred miles she ordered that they travel at night also, men carrying torches on either side, rotating the porters. The camels, freed of their burden, ran ahead. Still, her bed, the couch and curtain, nothing seemed to move fast enough.
BEFORE EXITING THE palanquin she opened the first packet. He’d written in the voice of a woman saying, “The king hath brought me into his chambers . . . my spikenard sends forth the smell thereof. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night between my breast.” Quickly she hid the chaplet under her skirt.
She untied the second. “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.” In her garden, apple trees espaliered against the thick warm walls, she read, “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me.” She dreamt of Solomon’s god but also of him.
In haste she opened the third packet and read, “Behold Solomon’s bed. Threescore valiant men are around it, the valiant of Israel. . . . Behold king Solomon with his crown.” And she pictured his bedroom and wanted to be there with him.
By the fourth chaplet, she realized he’d written her a love letter. There seemed to be no other way to receive his words. “Your two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies. Until the daybreak . . . I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.” She stopped for breath and looked out the window at the two swans in the lake she had built. The pair seemed so happy now. “Honey and milk are under your tongue and the smell of your garments is like the smell of Lebanon.” She smelled her perfumed linen, the sachets she had rotated daily in her closets. “Blow upon my garden,” he had her ask. “Let my beloved come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruit.”
Neglecting her duties, her ministers, visitors, she neglected everything but the horizon, the lake, and the swans. I will graft myself onto you, dear Solomon, my kingdom to yours, all that I have.
Quickly she opened the fifth. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine. . . . Return, return.” She called her maidservant. They laid out traveling clothes.
The seventh book she read in private, behind the drape. “I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of its boughs . . . . Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of spices.”
She should send word. But, no, she would just go.
“Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. . . .” She would take no gifts. “The time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs. . . .” Just her maidservant, her cook, manservants and guardsmen. “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” She rode her choice Arabians at top speed, a fresh horse every thirty miles, day and night, the mounted torchmen, across the desert in the moonlight.
They would marry, she would wear a diadem studded with topaz and bear many sons and daughters. She already saw them on the ridges of the hills where the goats played. Noble, they would be a beautiful race because they would shape their lives on the Law, all of life flourishing, covenants honored, the widow, the orphan. God would bless them as he was blessing Solomon, festooned in all his glory.
THE MINISTERS WHO went ahead to announce her approach returned ashen. They begged her to turn back but she refused and hastened without even bathing to the court of the king.
But Solomon did not greet her.
She returned the second day. And then the third. At last her ministers found courage to relay the news. Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. They were his when she had first visited, when she’d stayed in his household, when they’d spoken candidly. They were there when he’d given her the song he’d composed at their parting. Moabite women, Ammonites, Edomites, Hittites and Zidonians. He worshipped their gods, Ashtoreth and Milcom, had built temples in their honor where he burned incense and made sacrifices. When pressed, they reported he had “threescore queens and virgins without number.”
STRICKEN, SHE RETURNED to Sheba and sequestered herself where she mourned the king and the God of Moses he’d abandoned. Mourned for herself and for what she might have become.
SHE THOUGHT OFTEN of Solomon, that surely at some earlier time there was a condition in which he’d been held but from which, somehow, he had fallen. She wanted to name that prior condition. The name must be beautiful like the embrace of the lovers he’d so well described, like the two swans on her lake, their purity as they glided on the water and sometimes their long necks intertwined, like Wisdom. And she called the condition in which she thought he was held when she first met him and stayed in his rooms, but from which he had fallen, taking with him only appearance, “Grace.”
SOMETIMES SHE HEARD the reeds say, “There is a new Bridegroom,” and sometimes, “The God of Moses is yours.” But she discerned over time that it wasn’t the swans speaking and it wasn’t the reeds. It was Reason.
“The dry bough bears flower,” Reason said.
“But I have no one,” she answered.
“Prepare yourself so you may see the immortal Bridegroom and the Kingdom of Heaven be yours.”
“But I’m not one of them.”
Then Reason said, “Grace is for all, even the foreigner.”
And the queen believed these words.
THE NEXT MORNING she powdered her face with lavender and came from her confinement wearing a diadem of laurel leaves, singing,
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
Lord God of hosts.
SHE PROCLAIMED A Jubilee so that slaves regained their freedom. She had a psalter made.
Let every thing that has breath
praise the Lord.
She appointed judges and gathered her people and read them the words of Moses once every year, saying,
Ecce mater nostra Jerusalem . . .
See how your mother, Jerusalem,
Come, come to me!
15
Jonah
GOD SPOKE TO Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me.” But Jonah did not rise up and instead lay in his bed dreading another city. He knew what God wanted him to say. Tell them their city will be overthrown in forty days. He had done it before many times. Over and over God had sent him to cities, starting with the small ones, villages at first, then larger. And over and over Jonah did as God had asked. He’d frightened them then waited to see if they would repent.
It was different in the beginning when God let him preach repentance, too, and that he didn’t mind. He could say, “Your city will be destroyed unless you repent.” And some of them did repent, and Jonah felt good about his job then, saving the inhabitants and bringing about a reconciliation with God and the people. It was gratifying and they loved Jonah for warning them, and esteemed him as a prophet. He had built his reputation that way, almost a savior.
But lately God was asking him to preach destruction only so that Jonah felt used by God, that he was part of God’s testing people to see if, on their own, they would think of repenting. So that he dreaded God’s voice and dreaded going to work, dreaded packing his bags and saying good-bye. His wife didn’t know what to say to console him because he was a good man, a holy man, but, increasingly, an angry man, too.