By Way of the Wilderness (14 page)

“Of the Egyptian gods?”

“Yes. That's sin enough. But there's also a woman involved.”

“A woman? What woman?”

“Her name is Zara. She's one of the prostitutes that the high priest keeps. Disgraceful.”

Moses was troubled. He knew how much his sister loved this young man, and Moses himself had seen something in him that was worth saving. “Surely he's not sleeping with her.”

“No!” Miriam spoke up quickly in Bezalel's defense. “But she's after him all the time. We've got to get him out of that place.”

“That will be hard to do,” Aaron said. “The high priest has brought him there, and from what I hear, he's very pleased with his work.”

“We can't leave him there when God takes us out of Egypt.”

“No. We must take him with us.”

Aaron nervously drummed his fingers on the table. “What do we do now, Moses? The people hate us because they have to find their own straw. I don't know how we can do anything else.”

Moses turned to Aaron, and his eyes seemed to burn. “It's time to move on.”

“Move on? Move on how?”

“It is time to show the pharaoh the power of our God.”

“The pharaoh will never give in!”

“No, he will not,” Moses said at once. “God has told me He will harden Pharaoh's heart. As I have told you, He is going to send plagues upon Egypt, and before each plague, we must tell Pharaoh exactly what is happening. He must understand these plagues are not natural but are a punishment upon Egypt for what they have done to our people for four hundred years. Come. We will begin this morning!”

****

As far as Aaron was concerned, the second audience with the pharaoh had been a total failure. He had, in fact, been astonished when the pharaoh had even admitted them. He had not been so surprised, however, when the pharaoh merely laughed after he had listened to their demands to let their people go. “This god of yours has no power,” he scoffed. “Show us a sign if he is the great I am.”

Aaron had glanced at Moses, and Moses nodded. Aaron threw the staff of Moses onto the floor, and it sprang to life as the hissing serpent he had seen before. Aaron drew back, frightened by the reptile, but Moses did not even glance at the snake. He was watching Pharaoh's face.

“Is this a sign from your god?” Pharaoh scoffed. “Magicians!” he called out, and a group of men who had been watching from the edge of the room swiftly stepped forward.

“O Mighty One, we can do such things as this.” The speaker was the chief magician, named Jambres. He nodded to the other magicians, and they immediately began a wild dance, chanting to their gods. They surrounded the serpent that had been Moses' staff, and from somewhere small snakes began to appear. To Aaron it appeared that they had been concealed in the robes of the magicians. He saw with astonishment, however, that the large serpent, which had been the staff of Moses, darted out and swallowed one of the magicians' snakes. He then moved on to others, and all the magicians shouted, afraid of the monstrous serpent that was swallowing up every snake they could produce.

Aaron glanced at Pharaoh and saw that his face was pale, but anger flared in his eyes, and he shouted, “I will have no more tricks! Leave at once!”

“Come, brother,” Moses said. “We will see Pharaoh later.”

As soon as they were outside, Aaron looked at the staff of Moses. “The God of Abraham is powerful.”

“Those magicians are nothing but tricksters. They have no real power,” Moses said.

“What shall we do now, brother?”

“We will seek God. That is what we must always do.”

****

Whenever Moses was uncertain about what to do, he would find a quiet place by himself to seek God. After their encounter with Pharaoh he was gone for hours. Aaron waited all day and part of the night. Finally he went to bed, and when he awoke the next morning, Moses was sitting in the doorway. Coming off of his sleeping mat, Aaron rubbed his eyes. “You have been gone all night.”

“God has been instructing me.”

“What did He say?”

“He said that you and I are to go to the River Nile and speak to Pharaoh when he goes for his daily visit there. We must command him to let our people go. He will not do so, however, for God has told me that He will harden Pharaoh's heart.”

“Then what will we do?”

“Then, according to God's command, I will strike the river with my staff, and the water of the Nile will be changed into blood, and the fish that are in the river will die, and the river will stink, and the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water. Come. Let us go.”

****

Pharaoh rode in his throne chair, carried by his powerful guards, for his morning trip to the river. He was accompanied by an armed guard and his oldest son, who walked before him. A choir sang a hymn of praise to Ra, the god of the sun.

Just as they reached the river, Pharaoh was startled by a shout. He straightened up in his throne chair and glanced around to see Moses and Aaron. The pharaoh's brow knitted, and anger touched his eyes. He had no time to speak, however, for Moses immediately cried out, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say to you: Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the desert. But until now you have not listened. This is what the Lord says: By this you will know that I am the Lord: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed to blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink.”

Pharaoh cried out in an incoherent rage, and Moses immediately turned to his brother and said, “Aaron, take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt.”

Aaron did as Moses commanded. He lifted the staff above his head and brought it down forcefully on the water of the Nile, and in the blink of an eye the river began to behave as it never had before. Huge ripples appeared, and the surface of the water was broken by what appeared to be the thrashing of many fish. The color of the water changed to a dull red at first, which became brighter by the second. Fish broke out on the surface, their bodies bloated and swollen as if they had been smashed by a mighty hand. An unbearable odor arose from the river, and Pharaoh, whose eyes were wide with horror, screamed, “Away, away! Take me back to the palace!”

His guards carried the throne chair as quickly as they could back to the palace, and no sooner were they through the front gate than Pharaoh frantically summoned the magicians. He met them in his throne room and told them what had happened.

“Be calm, O Mighty One,” Jambres, the head magician, said in his most soothing voice. “There is nothing to fear. We can do the same.” He immediately sent for two clay vessels and water, and taking them, he poured water from one to the other. The water in the second became red, and he held it up to the pharaoh to examine. “Behold.”

Pharaoh took the vessel, smelled it, and then flung it at Jambres's head. “It's nothing but colored water! I tell you the river has turned into actual blood and the fish are dead!” Pharaoh screamed at the magicians, who scattered in disarray. The mighty ruler then flung himself down on his throne and found, to his disgust, that he was trembling. “This cannot be,” he muttered over and over. Then raising his head, he stood to his full height and shook his fist toward the ceiling. “This god of the Hebrews cannot defeat me! I am the son of Ra.
I
am god!”

****

All that day the Egyptian people wept and cried out to Pharaoh, for the river was filled with rotting fish and no fresh water could be found anywhere in it. They immediately began to dig wells for water, but for seven days the river remained so foul it made the whole land stink.

Pharaoh paced back and forth in his throne room. What was he to do? His wise men and magicians were useless. He could concede defeat and let the Hebrews go…. No! His insides raged at such thoughts! From that moment Pharaoh saw the struggle against the Hebrews as a struggle for his very life. If this god of the Hebrews should defeat him, the people would see that there was nothing divine in him. They would know that the great Pharaoh Amunhotep II was a mere man—a pretender upon the divine throne of Egypt. Everything that had been said about him would be seen as the lie that it was. He was not going to concede defeat that easily.

“I will die before I give in! I
will
defeat him!” Pharaoh panted as he shook his fist toward heaven. “I am the son of Ra, the god of Egypt! I will not let this god of slaves defeat me!”

****

At the end of the week, the Lord spoke to Moses again, telling him to repeat the commandment to Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, then to say to him,
“If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile will teem with frogs. They will come up into your palace and your bedroom and onto your bed, into the houses of your officials and on your people, and into your ovens and kneading troughs.”

Moses strode into Pharaoh's throne room and delivered the message. Pharaoh refused point blank, and Moses could feel the pharaoh's glaring eyes on his back as he left. Before he made it to the outer gate, he saw swarms of frogs pouring into the outer court. The plague had begun. There had always been numerous frogs around the Nile River, but now they appeared to multiply instantly and one could not take a step without landing on one. They were ugly, monstrous things, and they filled the houses of Egypt, invading their food supplies and getting into their beds. The palace was not exempt, becoming a chaos of noisy, smelly amphibians.

Finally Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron. They stood quietly before the ruler, who glared at them while madly shooing frogs off his lap. “All right,” he growled. “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the Lord.”

Moses calmly said to the pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.”

“Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said.

“It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God. The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile,” Moses replied.

God did exactly as Moses had promised the pharaoh, and the frogs died by the thousands—in all the houses and villages and out in the fields. The stench from the rotting frogs was unbearable, and the Egyptian taskmasters drove the Hebrew slaves to gather them into heaps and burn them.

Once the frogs were finally gone, Pharaoh stood at the wide window in his throne room and looked over the land, smiling. His land was clean again! He could see his mighty building projects going on all over the great city, and he thought of his promise to Moses to let the Hebrews go.

“Never … never will I let them go,” he uttered to himself, the rage in his heart burning at the very thought of losing the workers that were building his city and his great tombs and monuments. While Pharaoh's heart grew colder and colder the more he thought about it, Moses and Aaron were waiting patiently outside the throne room.

Aaron had some hope that Pharaoh would keep his word to let the people go, and he said to his brother, “I am optimistic that these two plagues have proven to Pharaoh that he cannot fight the Lord of Creation. I believe today he will set our people free.”

Moses shook his head sadly, for he had heard the word of the Lord. “No, my brother, as hard as it may be to believe, he will not let them go,” he said to Aaron. “He will harden his heart time and time again, and God will send more plagues, until they destroy the land of Egypt.”

****

Indeed it happened as Moses said. A series of plagues, each more terrible than the last, fell on Egypt, and not a single inhabitant of the land could escape the horror of them. At first the wise men and counselors to Pharaoh insisted they were but natural disasters. They persuaded their king that they would survive, as Egypt had survived for millennia, and that he, Pharaoh Amunhotep II, would prove his divinity and be remembered for all eternity. As each plague occurred, however, the counselors gradually relented, one by one.

When the third plague—of gnats—struck Egypt, the head magician, Jambres, was already losing his faith in the gods of Egypt. It did not escape his attention that each plague was targeting one of their gods. The very creatures they worshiped in their temples were turning on them one by one. The challenge from this god of the Hebrews could not be any clearer. When the gnats covered Egypt, he gathered his magicians and tried to produce gnats using their secret arts, but they could not make one single gnat. Quietly the magicians told Jambres, “We are afraid! This god has power we cannot duplicate.” And Jambres went to Pharaoh and said, “My Lord, this is the finger of God. You cannot fight this.”

But Pharaoh's heart was like granite, and he would not heed Jambres's pleas. He lied to Moses. Over and over he promised he would let the people go, and over and over he took back his promise. After the gnats came flies, covering the people and animals and leaving open sores on the horses and oxen and livestock of the Egyptians. But in this case, and for the remainder of the plagues, God protected the Hebrews, making the land of Goshen, where they lived, a haven from the effects of the plague. In this way, the Hebrews and Pharaoh both knew that God was singling them out, making a clear distinction between His people and Pharaoh's people.

Following the biting flies came a plague on livestock. After that came a plague of boils, and when the magicians attempted to duplicate this, they were stricken by terrible boils themselves. But, still, the pharaoh's heart remained hard, and he refused to let the people go.

“Will you let the land be utterly destroyed?” Pharaoh's chief counselor cried. “Let these slaves go!”