The Deliverer (16 page)
All I know is they threw the gold in the fire, and
presto
, there was a golden calf. Some said Aaron made it with a chiseling tool, but honestly, Aaron didn’t have the skills to make something like that. Others said the sorcerers who were hidden among the mixed people had used their magic to bring forth the calf. Whatever. There it was for all to see: a golden idol, courtesy of Aaron, the priest of God.
That was when throngs of Israelites came running up to see what was going on. The mixed people shouted to them, “These are your gods who brought you up out of Egypt.”
The looks of shock and disbelief on the faces of the true Israelites made it clear they could not have possibly been party to such a scheme and it really had been instigated by the mixed people. The Israelites looked first to the calf and then to Aaron, having no idea what to do next.
Aaron saw the confusion on their faces as well. He was quicker on his feet than I had previously given him credit for.
“Help me build an altar in front of the calf,” he shouted to the crowd. “Tomorrow is a feast day to our God. We’ll celebrate His goodness right here in front of the calf.”
The people still looked confused, but if Aaron said it was all right, they thought it must be. They set out to build the altar and to party like all of this would work out just fine, not giving another thought to where Moses was.
I watched for a little while, but I’d seen unbridled revelry before in the name of religion, so it wasn’t all that interesting to me. I knew I should probably leave right then and report to Satan, but my curiosity about where God and Moses might be was supplanting my good sense. I decided to go find them.
The last time I saw them they were on the mountain, so I flew to the base where the Israelites had gathered before to hear Moses deliver God’s commands. All signs of life were gone, but the ominous clouds still hovered over the top, a sign to me that God was still there, and where God was, Moses would have to be close by. I wondered if I dared go to the top of the mountain to find them. I remembered how God had warned the people not to come close or to try to touch the mountain, and normally, that would have been quite enough to send me running back to my perch in the second heaven.
But I can go up the mountain without touching anything. I can fly.
Such courage was unusual for me, but I was compelled to find Moses and God.
I heard the rumbling before I saw Moses standing on a rock and looking toward the cloud. His face glowed from the flashes of lightning rolling over him as the voice of God spoke. I hovered within a crevice in the rocks, touching nothing, and listened.
“Go! Get down there! Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have fallen to pieces.”
“My people, Lord? Aren’t they Your people?”
“You know the ones I’m talking about, the mixed hoards you allowed to follow you out of Egypt. You let them join with you without consulting Me.”
“But, Lord, I thought that would please You, having true Egyptians deny their false gods to follow You. Granted, they’ve whined and complained the whole way, but no real harm has been done.”
“No real harm? In no time at all they’ve turned away from the way I commanded them and made a molten calf and worshiped it. They’ve sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are the gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt!’ It’s a mess down there.”
Moses looked sick.
“I can’t stand to look at them. What a stubborn, hardheaded people! Leave Me alone now; give My anger free rein to burst into flames and incinerate them.”
“Surely You would not, Lord.” Moses was nervous. “You must have a people to follow You.”
“I’ll start again. I’ll make a great nation out of you.”
That might have thrilled some people, but it was the last thing Moses wanted to do. I could see it in his eyes. Can you imagine? Starting all over with kids and more kids at eighty years old? No, thank you. Moses just wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
“Why, God, would You lose Your temper with Your people? OK, I’ll take the responsibility for the mixed people, but Your own people are at risk of Your anger. You brought them out of Egypt in a tremendous demonstration of power and strength. Why let the Egyptians say, ‘He had it in for them. He brought them out so He could kill them in the mountains and wipe them right off the face of the earth’? Please reconsider bringing evil against Your people! Think of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants to whom You gave Your word, telling them, ‘I will give you many children, as many as the stars in the sky, and I’ll give this land to your children as their land forever.’”
God listened to Moses and decided not to do the evil He had threatened against His people—at least not right then.
If only I could have found the courage to seize the moment to fly in front of God and demand justice. It would have been the perfect opportunity. He simply could not have justified letting these people get away with their sin while refusing to reconsider my situation.
“God,” I should have said. “Listen to Yourself. You know those people have committed the unforgivable. How can You let them escape Your wrath just because Moses asked You to? What about me? My only sin was poor judgment. Why can’t I have another chance?”
If only I had the nerve.
The flashes of lightning ceased, and I knew God had nothing further to say on the matter. Moses, his face still shining from the glory of God spilling out over him, bent over and picked up the tablets upon which the finger of God had been writing and started down the mountain. I hadn’t noticed the tablets earlier. They were beautiful, engraved front and back in a way that no human of that day would have been able to do.
In my flight up the mountain, I was so obsessed with finding Moses and God that I completely missed Joshua, who’d been waiting beside the trail halfway up the mountain. When he saw Moses coming down with the tablets, he rushed to help him. Together they made their way down the winding path toward the camp.
They heard it before they saw it. The noise of unrestrained revelry grew louder with each step taking them nearer to the camp. When Joshua heard the sound of the people shouting noisily, he took Moses by the arm as if to warn him.
“That’s the sound of war in the camp!”
“Oh, that it were only that, Joshua. Listen again. Those aren’t songs of victory, and those aren’t songs of defeat. I hear songs of people throwing a party.”
And that’s just what it was. As Moses came near to the camp and saw the calf and the people dancing, his anger flared. He threw down the tablets and smashed them to pieces at the foot of the mountain.
It was as if the people had awakened from a trance. The dancing and music stopped in mid beat. They saw the wrath and fire in Moses’s eyes and panicked, running to and fro as if some horrible thing were loose in the camp and pursuing them. Moses strode into the camp with Joshua close behind, pushing the people aside as the two made their way to the golden calf.
With the strength of ten men half his age, Moses took the calf and threw it into the raging bonfire the people had built. The people were stunned at how fast the calf melted, but I wasn’t. I’d seen the angel of the elite guard of heaven throw holy fire into the flames to increase the heat beyond what can occur through natural means. The primary purpose of God’s fire is to consume His enemies; it works every time.
Aaron ran up to Moses and hugged him, but Moses did not hug back. Aaron stepped back and lowered his head in anticipation of what he knew was coming.
“What on earth did these people do to you that you involved them in this huge sin?” Moses demanded.
“Brother, don’t be angry with me. You know the mixed people and how set on evil they are. Why did we ever let them come with us?”
Moses did not respond.
“They were spreading discontent among the Israelites, telling them that you had left and weren’t coming back. Then they came to me and demanded that I make a substitute god to calm the people down and lead them out of here.”
Moses did not respond.
Sweating profusely, Aaron continued. “So, I tried to buy some time, just till you got back. I ordered them to gather up the gold from the Israelites and bring it to me. Who knew the people would turn it over so easily? I thought it would take days—weeks even—to get the gold together, if they could do it at all.”
Aaron paused again, but still Moses did not respond.
“So, anyway, they brought the gold to me, and I threw it in the fire, and just like that, out came this calf.”
Up to that point, I think Moses might have been softening a bit toward Aaron and the impossible situation he had found himself in. I should have helped Aaron with his story before he got to sounding ridiculous. He should have told Moses how his very life was at stake or he would never have done such a terrible sin. He should have emphasized the role the sorcerers played in the whole thing. He should have added a lot more drama than he did. Otherwise, how could he possibly have thought Moses would believe such a preposterous story?
Moses shook his head and turned away from Aaron and saw that the people were simply running wild. He took up a position at the entrance to the camp. When the people saw him, the frenzy stopped as they literally froze in place under the fierce look in Moses’s eyes. Finally, Moses raised his staff and bellowed at the people.
“Whoever is on God’s side, join me!” All the Levites stepped up and stood behind him.
I can tell you it got ugly after that. If you ask me, Moses was out of control as he and the Levites went through the camp killing people all over the place. I don’t know if they were aiming for the mixed people or not, but by the time it was said and done, more than three thousand corpses lay scattered throughout the camp. I didn’t recall hearing God say the first thing about a massacre, and I wondered if Moses had done this on his own without consulting God.
Time to go; Satan would want to know all about it.
S
ATAN ROARED WITH
delight when I told him about the golden calf.
“It didn’t take them long to get over the idea of their great deliverer, now did it?” he asked in that sarcastic way I hated. The others laughed along with him as they always did. No one would dare imply by failing to laugh that Satan wasn’t clever.
“Well, to be perfectly accurate,” I said, “it wasn’t the Israelites who came up with the idea of making another god. It was the Egyptians who went with them. They’re the ones who intimidated Aaron to do it; the people just got caught up in fervor.”
“Whatever.” Satan dismissed my comments entirely. “Tell me more, and don’t leave anything out.”
“That’s about it. Moses threw the calf into the fire, and it melted immediately. That’s when he lost all reason and began to behave like a madman. He called the Levites together and led them on a rampage through the camp killing about three thousand people.” I paused, wondering if I should add my opinion; oh, well, why not? “I don’t think God told him to do that. I would have heard it.”
“Are you saying Moses disobeyed God?”
“No, no, I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t
hear
God tell him to kill so many people. If Moses acted on his own, technically, one could not call it disobedience in the general sense.”
Satan sat back on his haunches as if pondering whether or not this meant anything to him.
“Is Moses still mad?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Satan turned to one of his captains and ordered him to go to the Israelites’ camp.
“Stir Moses up. Whisper in Moses’s ear. Tell him Aaron betrayed him. See if you can incite him to kill more people—Aaron too.”
“Wait, sir,” I interrupted. “I don’t think that will work.” As everyone gasped I realized I had made the very foolish mistake of correcting one of Satan’s ideas.
“What I meant to say, sir … ” I tried to dig myself out of the hole I’d dug myself into. “Moses is a lot more like God than you know, personality-wise, I mean. His anger doesn’t last. He gets aroused in righteous anger and punishes the disobedient, but right after that he always returns to loving them and seeing himself as responsible for them. He doesn’t carry a grudge—nothing like you at all.”
Before the words rolled off my tongue, I realized I should have swallowed them.
“Are you comparing that pseudodeliverer wannabe to me?”
“No, no, absolutely not;
cunning
, that’s what I meant. Moses is not as cunning as you. Simpleminded really … doesn’t have the … the chutzpah … that’s it. Doesn’t have the chutzpah to conduct a massacre for very long.”
“Chutzpah? Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“You know, the Jews say it all the time when they want to communicate, uh, virility, sort of.” I stopped mid sentence. There was no way to make this better. “Never mind, sir, all I meant is Moses will not stay mad. He’ll feel bad about the people for a little while and then feel bad that he felt bad and punished them.”
“Never mind what Moses feels.” He began to chuckle in that evil tone I hated. “No, never mind about Moses at all. The question is, how does God feel now that His precious people have bowed down to another god?”
“Idol, sir.”
“Did the people acknowledge it as a god or not?”
“They acted like they did. Some of them probably; yes, I suppose.”
“Then God will abandon them or, better yet, kill them. He has to do it. He can’t break His own rules. No one can save them. We’ve won. Get ready to descend on the earth unopposed,” he shouted to the onlookers.
Cheering broke out from the demon guards like it always did when Satan announced a victory, real or not. I stood quietly by, shuffling my hoof back and forth in front of me, never looking up and hoping I would be dismissed as no longer needed. Satan was basking in the shouts of praise from the others when he looked at me from the corner of his yellow eye and stopped in mid chuckle.