The people said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do. We will be obedient.”
So Moses built an altar for God at the foot of the holy mountain. He also raised twelve pillars there, one for each of the sons of Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel.
Then he sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings. The blood of an ox he caught in bowls. While it was yet warm he threw half the blood against the altar of the Lord, and half upon the people themselves, to consecrate their promise.
He cried, “Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you!”
The bloody sacrifice was a sign that God and all the children of Israel were now bound by a covenant together. He was their God. They were his people. And the covenant would last as long as they kept their promise and obeyed the word of the Lord their God, his commandments and statutes and ordinances.
For the people had said, “All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do.”
AGAIN, GOD CALLED to Moses, saying, Come up and I will give you tablets of stone upon which I myself have written the law for the people’s instruction.
So Moses went again into the boiling cloud which was the glory of the Lord upon the mountain.
For six days the Lord was silent, and Moses waited.
Then on the seventh day God began to speak to Moses out of the cloud. He spoke a very long time. Through forty days and forty nights God gave to Moses his ordinances and his statutes.
He outlined a social code, civil and criminal laws, distinguishing the crimes that deserved death from those that warranted lesser punishments. If any harm is caused, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe…
Property rights were detailed and secured.
Moral and religious codes were given equal weight with all other laws of the covenant.
Justice was defined. The very spirit of justice was required of those who held authority in Israel.
The great ritual festivals of the people, by which they would keep their calendars thereafter, were named.
The Lord God touched upon the core of the covenant: If you do all I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. I will bless your bread and your water. I will take sickness away from you. I will drive your enemies out of your land until its borders reach from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, from the wilderness to the Euphrates.
And in order that I may be with you wherever you go, said the Lord, let the people build a sanctuary where I may dwell. Build it as a Tabernacle thus:
So then Moses learned the exact size and the right materials for a holy tent—together with all its appointments and furnishings. There would be an Ark in which the stone tablets of the law should be kept and upon which would rest the golden Mercy Seat of God. The Ark would sit in the innermost chamber of the tent. God would meet the people in darkness there, and his presence would make this the holiest place in Israel.
The Tabernacle would have two rooms. The outer must be divided from the holy of holies by heavy veils and should contain three pieces: a table for the sacred bread, a lampstand, and an altar for incense.
Outside the tent altogether, yet within a courtyard, should stand a brass altar for burnt sacrifice.
Moreover, the Lord described all the duties and the garments of a priesthood devoted unto him. And he appointed Aaron, Moses’ older brother, to be his first priest.
When he had made an end of all this speaking, God gave Moses two tablets of stone upon which he had inscribed the testimony with his own finger.
V
TO AARON THE GLORY of the Lord was like thick smoke and a red fire raging in the high gorges of Sinai. It frightened him. He had watched his brother walk away from Israel toward the mountain. He had seen Moses, so small among the boulders, take a deep breath and begin to wind his way upward—a toilsome journey, a tiny man enfolded by heaves of brown rock, disappearing and appearing again on the wild escarpment.
Finally Moses disappeared altogether.
During the first week of his brother’s absence, Aaron walked among the tents of the children of Israel, marveling at how quickly they could return to the daily business of satisfying their own wants. While Moses confronted the Lord on their behalf, the people were boiling quail and baking a hard cake on clay, gossiping, napping in the midday shade. Husbands and wives were quarreling over trivial matters. Old people crouched beneath tent-flaps, missing the very air of Egypt. The children wandered the alleys between tents, grumbling about how bored they were.
Aaron heard the smallest children ask for water, and then for the first time he heard his brother’s name mentioned. Mothers said, “We have to save our water. Wait till Moses comes back.”
“But I’m thirsty now.”
“Be patient.”
“When is he coming back, Mama?”
“Soon, Raffi. Soon.”
So it went for a week. Aaron shook his head over a people who could stand so casually upon such convulsions of the universe.
In the following week Moses’ name was used more often. “Where is he?” the people said. Now they were growing anxious. They cast glances at the mountain and its unquenchable fire. “What happened to him?”
“We have almost no water left.”
“Where do we go from here?”
During the third week the people became angry. They started to shout at the mountain. “Moses! What are you doing up there? Here is where your responsibility is! You brought us here! Come and help us now!”
The persistent muttering of the thunder only infuriated them the more. “Don’t you care about us?”
Aaron couldn’t tell whether they were speaking to Moses or the Lord.
“Have you forgotten us?”
The fourth week of their abandonment produced a genuine panic.
“He’s dead,” the people said. “We’re alone out here.”
Now there were tears in the camps of Israel. Little children watched with wide eyes as their parents groaned and wept out loud.
“Where is our God? Where is his pillar to lead us? Where is his right arm now?”
Some of the old people rolled over and covered their faces, hoping that they might swiftly die.
No one was cooking. No one was eating now. No one was sleeping or washing or grooming himself. The universe had gone through convulsions. Heaven and earth had collided, leaving Israel lonely under the thunder of this solitary mountain, and now they knew not what to do.
Aaron felt their agitation as a storm that was about to break. He could scarcely breathe. All the laws were gone. Bloody passions soon would destroy this people right where they sat, at the foot of the mountain.
When, therefore, the children of Israel came to him at the end of the fifth week and begged for gods that they could see—humbler gods, gods who would comfort them by a gentler, visible presence—Aaron agreed.
This is the way Aaron consoled the heart of Israel: he asked for all their golden jewelry; they obeyed immediately, heaping the gold before him; he melted it and molded it and graved it into the shape of a bright, golden calf. Then he lifted the figure up in the sight of all the people.
“Here it is!” they said, truly relieved. “Here is the god that brought us out of Egypt.”
Aaron himself was moved by the depth of their gratitude and by the sudden healing of this whole congregation. In that same spirit, then, he built an altar before the shining calf and proclaimed, “Let tomorrow be a feast to the Lord!”
And so their contentment turned to joy.
In the morning they woke early and offered burnt sacrifices on the altar before the calf. Then they sat down to eat a rich feast. They drank wine, and then they rose up to play.
On that day in the sixth week of their loneliness, the children of Israel were lonely no longer. They were laughing again. They sang songs with lusty jubilation. And they danced. They danced in wild aban
don, clapping, whirling in circles, crying out, streaming a salty sweat down their foreheads. They had forgotten the mountain—
—till suddenly thunder tore heaven in two. The air itself exploded, and there stood Moses on a crag above them. He was holding a flat tablet of white stone. Another lay in blinding white pieces down the skirts of the mountain. That had been the thunder which destroyed the joy of the people, for now he lifted the whole stone in his hand and threw it down to the foot of the mountain, and a second mighty quaking shook the earth.
Aaron stood at a great distance from his brother, yet he could feel the heat of his fury.
Moses now came striding into the midst of the camp. People stepped backward, mute, making a path for him. He took a great hammer and beat the golden calf and burnt it and ground it to powder. This he mixed with water, which water he forced down the throats of Israel.
Moses cried out to Aaron and said, “What did the people do to you, that you should bring such a sin upon their hearts?”
“Yes, it was the people!” Aaron said. He shook before the wrath of the prophet of God. “An evil people! They told me to make them a god.”
But Moses had already turned away from him, and the poor man fell down and covered his face in both hands. He stayed that way the rest of the day, hiding in shame from the sight of Moses and the sight of the Lord God upon his mountain. He did not see what followed. But he heard it.
Aaron heard Moses cry out: “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me!”
He felt the ground shudder under the feet of many men, and Moses said, “Sons of Levi, thus says the Lord: Put on your swords, every man of you, and go to and fro throughout the camp and kill them that turned away from me—”
So then Aaron pulled his knees up to his chest. He made a sad ball of himself—for he heard the sounds of a slaughter in the wilderness of Sinai. Men chopped and bleeding and dying.
The night passed in an unnatural silence.
Aaron did not move. Nor did he sleep.
In the morning Moses spoke again. It was a softer voice, but it, too, could be heard everywhere in the camps of Israel:
“I’m going back up the mountain,” he said. “You have sinned a great sin. Yet perhaps I can make atonement for you with the Lord.”
Shortly thereafter Aaron felt the touch of a hand on his neck. Very near his ear, Moses whispered, “Stand up, brother. Wash your face. If I return, I will have good news for you.”
ONCE MORE THE MAN named Moses stood before the Lord upon the mountain, wrapped in darkness, praying:
“Alas, the people have sinned exceedingly. Graven images, gods of gold, petty deities that they think they can control. They have sinned grievously.
“But now I beg you, Lord: forgive their sin. Blot it out.”
No, spoke the Lord God from the mountain: Those that sinned I will blot out. I have seen this people. It is a stiff-necked people. Let me alone, that my wrath may consume them!
Slowly Moses lifted his blind face. “O Lord, if you will not forgive them, then I pray you to blot me, too, out of the book which you have written.”
Not you, Moses! No, it is of you that I now intend to make a mighty nation.
Moses began to wring his hands. “What will the Egyptians say of you if you slay your people here? They’ll say that your powerful arm is evil after all. That you save a people to kill them! Oh, turn from your wrath! Remember the promises which you swore unto our fathers, to make of their descendants a great nation and to give them Canaan as an inheritance forever.”
There was silence in the universe. Then the sound of the mountain was somewhat softened. They may go. Tell that stiff-necked people they may go to the land I promised. But they go alone. For if I went with them, my wrath would consume them.
“So,” said Moses, “you want me to lead this people alone to the land of promise? How can I do this thing alone? I thought I had found favor in your sight.”
Moses, you have found favor in my sight. I know you and I call you by name.
“What favor is it if you depart from me? How can I know your favor if Israel must travel alone? Isn’t it precisely in your presence, O Lord, that we are made distinct from all other peoples upon the earth?”
Moses, Moses. All thunders ceased. The darkness lightened. And the Lord said, Moses, this very thing which you have spoken—I will do it. For you have found favor in my sight.
Now, Moses closed his mouth and lowered his hands and turned his face aside. His hair was like smoke. His brow concealed a difficult thought.
Finally he whispered, “I pray you, O Lord, show me your glory.”
Straightway the wind died. The yellow air stood still. The mountain hushed, as between the heaves of storm.
And all at once the Lord God lifted his prophet bodily and set him down in the cleft of a rock. He covered Moses with his hand—that he might not, by the direct sight of the holy God, die. Then the glory of the Lord began to pass that crack in the mountain, crying: The Lord! The Lord!
Only when he was going away did God remove his hand, and Moses saw the back of him.
But while it went, his glory proclaimed: The Lord, merciful, gracious, slow to anger—a God abounding in love. Forgiving iniquity, blotting out sin, but by no means clearing the guilty—
And Moses, as soon as he saw such majesty, bowed his head and worshiped.
THIS TIME WHEN Moses came down the mountain carrying two new tablets of the law, the skin of his face shined with a terrible splendor. So bright was his countenance that Aaron and all the people fell backward in fear.
“Cover your face!” they cried, “or we cannot come near you!”
So Moses covered his face with a veil.
And for the rest of that year, the first year of their deliverance, Israel continued obedient unto the Lord. As Moses recounted the plans which God had given him for a Tabernacle, they built it.
And when it was built, the cloud of the presence of the Lord came down and rested upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled its rooms, and not even Moses could enter it then.
VI
IN THE FIRST MONTH of the second year since the children of Israel had gone forth from the land of Egypt, they gathered into families and kept the Passover festival exactly as the Lord their God had commanded them. A lamb without blemish. Seven days of unleavened bread. Bitter herbs.
Miriam sang two songs, a sad song for remembrance and a sweet song for their freedom.
All was well.
Come, then, said the Lord unto Israel, his firstborn child. Come, let us go home together.
SEVEN
The Children of Israel
I
ON THE TWENTIETH DAY of the second month of their second year of freedom, the cloud was taken up from the Tabernacle, and the children of Israel set out by stages from the wilderness of Sinai.
This vast company followed the cloud toward the wilderness of Paran.
The standard of the camp of Judah set out first, and the host of Judah went in companies.
Next went the host of the tribe of Issachar, then the host of the tribe of Zebulun.
When the Tabernacle had been taken down, some of the men of Levi bore forward its poles and its covering only. Then in slow succession there followed the tribe of Reuben and the tribe of Simeon and the tribe of Gad.
In the center of the train, priests carried the Ark of the Covenant on long staves. By the time it arrived at the next encampment the Tabernacle would be ready to receive it.
As six tribes went in front of the Ark, so six tribes came behind: Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin; Dan, Asher, and Naphtali.
This was the order of march for the hosts of Israel as long as they traveled the wilderness.
Whenever the Ark set out thereafter, Moses cried: “Arise, O Lord. Let your enemies be scattered!”
And whenever it came to rest, he said, “Return, O Lord, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel.”
II
LITTLE ACHAN WAS one year old when his mo
ther gave him new sandals and his father finally took down their tent. Then they were walking together. Away from the mountain. They were almost the first to go—they and their family, the Zerahites, and their tribe, which was Judah.
Achan knew the names of his blood-kin. They were the names of his identity. Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah—Achan was not one. He was many. The children of Israel, they were one, and little Achan was a part of that.
His mother had taught him these things.
For a little while he walked by her side. Soon she picked him up and wrapped him in the folds of her robe and carried him on her back. He became drowsy. Each time she took a step he could hear a huff of wind in her lungs. He loved that sound.
His father said, “Elisheba, you have big feet.”
His mother’s voice hummed through her back to the ear of her son. “So I will have an easier time walking.”
“Well, why don’t you put sandals on?”
“My toes grip. And my soles can stand the rock. They have grown hard.”
“Fine, fine,” said his father, “but have you thought about me?”
“What about you?”
“What do you think? My wife’s feet are big and hard. It is an embarrassment to me.”
Achan’s mother stopped talking then. Her son heard only the huff of her trudging, that comforting sound. He fell asleep.
EVERY MORNING MANNA covered the face of the ground. Israel never wanted for something to eat. They could grind the manna in mills or beat it in mortars; they could boil it or make cakes of it; and though it tasted good enough, like cakes baked in oil, it always tasted the same.
One evening, then, when Elisheba set manna before Carmi, he jumped up and began to fling his arms around.
“I have been talking with Nahshon and Zuar,” he shouted. “Do you want to hear what they say?”
Elisheba didn’t answer, but neither did her husband wait for an answer. “They say their strength is being dried up, that’s what they say,” he shouted. Achan sat chewing and watching his father with big eyes.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 13