By Way of the Wilderness (23 page)

After God had spoken His commandments, the lightning returned, and the people fell on their faces, not daring to look on the flaming mountain.

The people backed away from the mountain and kept their distance, begging Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Moses told them, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

Then Moses went back up the mountain, and the people watched as he disappeared into the thick darkness at the summit to talk with God. There he received many more laws from God, which he was instructed to write down. After a time he descended from the summit and stood on a high rock, calling out to the people, “You have heard the commandments that God has spoken to you. Will you accept them?”

And with a single voice, it seemed, the children of Abraham cried out, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”

****

The next morning Moses led the people in offering their sacrifices to God as a promise to obey all that He had instructed them. They built an altar on which to sacrifice and burn their offering of oxen. Moses first sprinkled the altar with the blood of the slain animals, then sprinkled the blood on the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”

After this Moses, Aaron, and two of Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, along with seventy of the elders of Israel, went up the mountain together, and they saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself. But God did not raise His hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God and they ate and drank.

The Lord then told Moses,
“Come up to me on the mountain and stay here, and I will give you the tablets of stone, with the law and commands I have written for their instruction.”

Moses told Joshua to come with him, then turned to the elders and said, “Wait here for us until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur are with you, and anyone involved in a dispute can go to them.”

Moses and Joshua set off back up to the summit, disappearing into the cloud, and the people watched, wondering when Moses would return.

No one expected Moses to be gone for so long. Days went by, then weeks, and still he did not return. The people grew frightened and began to weep, believing that he would never come back. They cried to Aaron, “Moses is gone! He is dead. God has killed him.” Others wailed in grief and fear, “Who will help us? Who will defeat our enemies? Joshua is with Moses, and he is dead too.”

A peculiar thing during this time was that the Hebrews seemed to have forgotten the miracle of the manna. It continued to fall from the sky daily, but they came to regard it as simply a natural thing. They took the bread and ate it, no longer giving any thought to the fact that no people had ever been fed in this manner before.

As the days wore on and Moses still did not appear, Nadab, the oldest son of Aaron, became a spokesman for the people's grievances. “We must do something, Father,” he complained to Aaron. “The people are unhappy. No one knows what to do. What will become of us without a leader?”

Abihu, Nadab's brother, chimed in, “Yes, and why did he take Joshua, a man from the tribe of Ephraim, and not you, Father? Were you not called by God to help Moses lead the people?”

Aaron listened in anguish and total confusion. He tried to defend himself, but he was overwhelmed by his sons' words.

“The people are looking for a leader, Father,” Nadab insisted. “They want a god they can see but one that does not frighten them so much. They're bringing their gold and silver to Korah now to melt down, and he will set up a form of worship they will like.”

“Yes,” Abihu said, nodding vigorously, “and who knows whether Moses will ever come back with His commandments or not? The people are saying that all God does is give difficult commandments the people cannot possibly keep. Go out and listen to them.”

Aaron did listen day after day, and the people's cries became louder. “Where is Moses? Why isn't he here?”

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.”