The Deliverer (20 page)

“Doesn’t God also speak through us? Aren’t Miriam and I prophets as well as you? Or are you the only one who can hear from God?”

“Yes, you can hear God; I suppose so. What’s this about?” Miriam and Aaron exchanged looks with one another.

Miriam gave him that “go ahead” nod.

“It’s about your wife.”

“Zipporah? What about her?”

Aaron looked to Miriam for encouragement before speaking again.

“She’s unhappy. She told Miriam that you haven’t been a husband to her in all this time.”

Moses looked embarrassed. “She told you that?”

Miriam jumped in. “Why not? You said Aaron and I are also prophets. Yet we don’t have to deny our spouses to hear the Lord. Where did you ever get such an idea?”

“Or is there another reason?” Aaron asked.

“Like another woman?” Miriam whispered.

Moses was the most humble man on the earth, and he simply didn’t know how to reply to such an implied accusation.

None of them realized God was hearing every word. No one expected Him to break right into the middle of their conversation, but that’s just what He did. At the same moment, the loud
whoosh
by my ear told me the demon menace had taken off at the first hint of God being in the neighborhood.

God said to the three of them, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” The three went out, not saying a word. I can tell you Aaron was wishing he had minded his own business and stayed out of the women’s talk.

When they got to the tent, God descended in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance to the tent. He called Aaron and Miriam to come closer to Him, which neither was eager to do. When they stepped out, God spoke.

“Listen carefully to what I’m telling you. Most of the time, if there is a prophet among you, I make Myself known to him in visions. I speak to him in dreams. That’s the way I do it with you two. But I don’t do it that way with My servant Moses. I speak to him intimately, in person, in plain talk without riddles. He knows Me personally. You have no way of knowing what I’ve said to him or what I require of Him in our relationship. So, why did you show no reverence or respect in chastising and accusing My servant?”

The anger of God blazed out against the two of them from the pillar, and then He left.

When the cloud moved off from the tent, Miriam had turned leprous; her skin was white and covered with lesions. Aaron took one look at her, rolled up his sleeves, checked himself out, and then pleaded with Moses.

“Please, my master, please don’t allow God to come down so hard on her for this foolish and thoughtless sin.”

“Am I greater than God that I can tell Him what He can do?” Moses was distraught, but he pleaded with God as Aaron had asked. “Please, God, heal her. Please heal her.”

Aaron dropped to his knees, sweating rivers in fear of what might be about to happen to him.

God answered Moses: “Quarantine her outside the camp for seven days. She will get well, and then she can be readmitted to the camp.”

So, Miriam was placed in quarantine outside the camp for the seven days. The people didn’t march on until she was read-mitted. Aaron had dodged a bullet, and he knew it.

I sat down on the bench outside Moses’s tent and tried to remember if I’d ever seen God in a four-way conversation with humans before. I was certain it had never happened.

C
HAPTER
23

F
OR A BRIEF
moment, I almost felt like I was one of them. Of course, they didn’t know it, but I planted myself right there beside Moses, Aaron, Hur, and Joshua as they stood quietly at the top of the hill and gazed long and hard at the land of Canaan spread out before them in the valley below. It was a picture-perfect moment. They’d made it. They’d survived the desert, and the Promised Land lay before them for the taking.

Suddenly, the realization of what this meant hit me.

“They made it!” I yelled as if waking myself up from a dream.

“What am I doing hanging around here? I must get back to tell Satan.”

Think talking on a cell phone and driving a car at ninety miles per hour and you can understand how my mind was not on my flying as I careened over the rim into the second heaven at daredevil speed (pardon the pun). In my zeal to tell the news, I forgot to adjust my speed for altitude and crashed right into the stone door that blocked my path to Satan’s lair. Disheveled and stunned from my sudden stop, I must have also looked desperate because the guards didn’t try to stop me or bother to laugh as I rushed passed them and entered in without any protocol at all.

“Lord Satan … ” I was breathless.

Satan had plenty of breath and seemed only mildly curious as to why I’d barged in the way I had.

“So, speak,” he said to me as his attendant held a mirror for him to check out his appearance. He’d developed new interest in preening himself, or, better said, having one of the lower-ranking demons do it for him. I was momentarily distracted by the primping; there wasn’t a makeover artist in the universe who could make him pretty. I wondered what he saw in the mirror that kept him coming back to take a look. Maybe he still imagined himself as he used to be when he was Lucifer, the light bearer of heaven.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he said with irritation. “Why are you here?”

“Right. Why am I here?” The preening caused me to lose my train of thought. When he glared at me, my recall returned.

“They made it, sir. They’re on the hill above Canaan. They actually made it.”

“Have they entered in yet?” Continuing to admire himself in the mirror, he showed some interest in my report but not nearly enough for this kind of news.

“No, not yet. They won’t go in all at once. If I know Moses, he’ll send a scouting party in first.”

He took the mirror from the attendant and held it closer to his face.

“One of the boys brought me some aloe gel from the earth. I’ve only used it for a week, but I think it’s given me a smoother look. What do you think?”

“You’re lovely, sir.”

“Now, what were you saying?” He gave the mirror back to the attendant.

“The Hebrews have reached Canaan.”

He snapped his claws in the direction of one of the guards. Alert the Nephilim.”

“The Nephilim?” I knew my voice cracked. “Are there Nephilim in Canaan? How? They all drowned in Noah’s flood.”

Satan looked at me as if I were too simpleminded to live. “Og, the Nephilim king, survived. He has a new clan, the sons of Anak.” He sneered as if telling a dirty secret. “Why do you think Canaan is so wicked? Og is serving me well; you could learn a few pointers from him. I never have to send anyone down there to be sure he’s doing his job.” Then, pressing his claws together and cocking his head with the prissiness of mock courtesy, he continued. “But manners do require me to alert him that lunch is about to be served.”

The guard laughed right on cue.

“Tell Og they’re coming,” he snapped at one of the messenger demons who always hung out around his throne, waiting to do his every bidding. The messenger sped away with a mere nod of acknowledgment.

“And you.” He turned to me.

“I know, I know. I’ll show myself out.”

I looked around the camp until I found Moses, Joshua, Caleb, and Aaron huddled around a drawing in the sand where Moses had sketched a rough layout of the land. I knelt down beside them to take a look.

“Go up through the Negev and then into the hill country. Look the land over; see what it’s like. Assess the people: are they strong or weak; are there few or many?”

Joshua nodded, anxious to be off, but Moses wasn’t through giving instructions.

“Observe the land: is it pleasant or harsh? Describe the towns where they live: are they open camps or fortified with walls? Pay close attention to the soil. Is it fertile or barren; are there forests?”

Joshua and Caleb rose to their feet. Moses grasped Joshua’s garment before he could get away.

“And try to bring back a sample of the produce that grows there—this is the season for the first ripe grapes.” With that, the twelve scouts led by Joshua and Caleb headed into the land God had promised their ancestors.

At last, they were on their way without the slightest notion as to what awaited them over the next hill. Motley crew though they were, they eagerly scouted out the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob toward Lebo Hamath. Their route went through the Negev Desert to the town of Hebron.

“Pay close attention in Hebron,” Joshua warned. “It is said to be a city older than the cities of Egypt. There’s a legend that the descendants of Anak are there.

“Who’s Anak?” several asked together.

Caleb looked sharply at Joshua and said nothing with his mouth, but his eyes said it all. “Too much information, Joshua.”

“Never mind.” Joshua returned Caleb’s look and tried to change the subject.

“Nephilim,” called out the skittish one who lingered toward the back of the group. “The sons of Anak are the Nephilim.”

Uneasiness spread rapidly through the men.

“Nephilim? Impossible.”

“They were drowned in the great flood.”

“If there are Nephilim in there, we can’t go in.” Eagerness was giving way to nervousness.

“Like I said,” Joshua answered, “it’s a legend.”

“A myth,” Caleb said. “Never proven; now let’s get going.”

When they arrived at the Valley of Eshcol they cut off a branch with a single cluster of grapes that took two men to carry it slung on a pole. They also picked some pomegranates and figs. They named the place Valley of Eshcol (“valley of grape clusters”) because of the huge cluster of grapes they had cut down there. After forty days of scouting out the land, they returned home.

Moses and all the people were waiting for them. Some boys from the camp had been on watch for the scouts, and when they saw them from a distance with the luscious produce of the land, they raced back and told the people.

There were loud cheers and slaps on the backs as the twelve arrived and presented themselves before Moses and Aaron and the whole of Israel.

“Just look,” Caleb exclaimed. Everyone wanted to try one of the grapes that were as large as plums. “This is just a sample of the fruit of the land.”

“Now tell us what else you found there,” Moses said.

“We went to the land just like you told us to do, and, oh, it does flow with milk and honey. Just look at this fruit.” Joshua held a pomegranate high above his head so people in the back of the throng could see.

“Tell him the rest,” said one of the twelve.

Joshua and Caleb exchanged a look with each other and then sent a piercing glare to the one who had spoken.

“Yes, you must tell them,” said another. “Tell them why we can’t go back.”

The crowd murmured. “What? Why can’t they go back?”

Joshua glared at the frightened man who belonged to the voice.

“There is one challenge,” Joshua began, “but it’s only a challenge.”

“How naïve would we be if we didn’t expect challenges?” Aaron chimed in.

“Go ahead,” Moses encouraged him. “What did you find?”

“Well,” Joshua continued, “the people who live there are fierce; no doubt about it. And their cities are huge and well fortified.”

“That’s not all. Tell them the rest.” The man whose voice had earlier quaked with fright jostled his way through the crowd to get in front of Moses. Joshua reached out as if to push the man away, but Moses stayed his hand.

“Let him speak,” Moses said.

“We saw descendants of the giant Anak.”

Some of the people looked puzzled.

“Nephilim, get it? There are Nephilim in the land. They didn’t all drown.”

The people gasped in disbelief and fear.

“That’s not all,” the man said. “Amalekites are spread out in the Negev; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites hold the hill country; and the Canaanites are established on the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan.”

Sounds of concern and fear rose up from the crowd.

Caleb interrupted. “Silence all of you.” Turning to Moses, he continued. “Let’s go up and take the land—now. We can do it.”

The mob roared and turned on Joshua and Caleb.

“Is Caleb crazy?”

“Does he have a death wish?”

“We can’t attack those people; they’re way stronger than we are.”

“They’re not even people. They’re giants.”

“That’s right. It would be a massacre if we tried to fight them,” the other ten scouts said, one right after the other. Then they dispersed through the crowd and spread scary rumors among the people.

“We scouted out the land from one end to the other. It’s a land that swallows people whole. Everybody we saw was huge.”

“Didn’t you hear what we said? Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants. The Anak giants come from the Nephilim, in case you’ve forgotten. Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers.

“And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers,” another added.

Satan would have loved it. Instead of cheering and praising God for safely bringing them into the land they had come all this way to subdue, ten scared voices turned the hope of thousands to paranoia with cries to go back to Egypt. As if that were even an option.

Moses was angry and sent them all back to their tents with a stern warning to keep silent lest the Lord hear their grumbling, but they were so afraid that nothing could have kept them quiet. The whole community was in an uproar and wailed the whole night long. All the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

“Why didn’t we die in Egypt? Or in this wilderness?” voice after voice lamented.

“Why has God brought us to this country to kill us?”

“Our wives and children are about to become plunder.”

“Why don’t we just head back to Egypt?”

“And right now!”

Soon they were all calling for the inevitable. “Let’s pick a new leader; let’s turn and go back to Egypt.” A crowd of men headed toward Moses’s tent where Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb had gathered in an emergency session to figure out what to do.