Hour after hour, they passed down into the sea. When half the tribes had passed, Moses joined them and walked across. He walked quickly, overtaking them, walking among flocks and herds, among pack beasts and carts, among families with little children, companies of young men and women, old people leaning on their staves or on the arms of younger ones. And where he passed he saw some people laughing, others praying, some weeping—in awe? in relief? in fear? He could not guess. He spoke to many as he passed. “See how the Lord loves us,” he said. “See how his power makes all things possible.”

  It seemed a lifetime ago, or perhaps it was another man’s life, when Moses had passed down the Nile in a barge. Then he had heard the cheers of the multitudes, but those cheers meant nothing, and within a few days his name had been obliterated from Egypt, his life and works extinguished. He thought his life was over. Now he passed again through water, surrounded by multitudes, and none of them were calling his name. But this was triumph. This was the love of God made visible to his children. Moses had served Hatshepsut before, and in a larger sense had served the kingdom of Egypt, and therefore the people—but he had nothing to give Egypt except what little wisdom he possessed of himself. Now the gifts Moses had to give had real value, for they were not his own gifts, but rather the bounty of a loving God, and so Moses served the people of Israel, because he served God, and God loved this people and wanted them to be righteous and filled with joy.

  When he reached the other side, he looked back and saw that the last of the Israelites were beginning to move down into the road through the sea. Still the cloud stood in place to protect them. And Aaron and Miriam were both weeping with joy as they embraced him on the other side.

  * * *

  The morning passed, and then it was noon, and then afternoon, and still the fog did not disperse. The soldiers waited patiently, but the horses needed to be fed and watered; they could not stand all day in harness. Pharaoh allowed them to unharness a hundred at a time, so that five hundred chariots stood continuously ready. His only consolation through the long delay was that on the other side of the fog, the Israelites must be in terror, regretting bitterly that they had ever followed Moses out to be caught between Pharaoh and the depths of the sea.

  Then, at last, a cry from one of the men, with words that no one needed to hear because all could see with their own eyes: “The fog is gone!”

  It was true. Just like that, the fog gathered itself up into a single pillar and fled before them, rushing out over the water. Only then could they see from the ridge down to the shoreline.

  They were gone. All the Israelites were gone. Their footprints were visible, the ashes of their cookfires, the traces of their animals. Where had they gone?

  That, too, was visible. For as Pharaoh’s chariot led the way down the slope, all could see that the footprints led like a funnel directly down to the edge of the sea. But where the footprints crossed the shoreline, there was no water. Instead, a rift had opened in the sea, and the Israelites had obviously passed down into this impossible highway cut through water that held its shape like stone.

  “What are you waiting for!” Tuthmose demanded of his men. “Follow them! Destroy them!”

  These were good soldiers. They did not hesitate. Though the horses whinnied their misgivings, they too obeyed, and soon five hundred chariots had plunged down the road into the Red Sea.

  Tuthmose waited on shore, impatiently signaling for the remaining hundred soldiers to get their horses back in harness. Tuthmose would ride with this last contingent through the carnage. The battle would be bloody and there would be no glory in it, cutting down unarmed men and women. The triumph would come when Tuthmose, his chariot wheels red with the blood of Israelites, came out of the sea to take Moses captive before the eyes of his surviving people—before the eyes of his miserable, vicious god. There Tuthmose would have Moses watch the execution of all the remaining males of Israel, a matter that should have been completed at the time when Moses was born. Only then would Tuthmose grant Moses’ fervent plea that he, too, be allowed to die.

  Not more than two hundred yards down the road through the sea, the chariots stopped. From shore, Tuthmose raged, but he could see the problem. The chariot wheels had become mired, and in trying to drive on, some of the wheels had broken. “Ride on!” Tuthmose screamed, though no one could hear him. “Leave the broken chariots and ride on! Don’t let them get away!”

  * * *

  Caleb, Hur, and Joshua came up out of the sea.

  “You are the last?” Moses asked them.

  “Not one straggler was left behind,” said Hur. “All of Israel has crossed. But Pharaoh’s chariots have come down into the sea after us.”

  “Even now, those brave soldiers still obey him,” said Moses, marveling. “The Lord will honor their obedience, and take it into account when he judges the worthiness of their lives.”

  Then he raised his hand again over the sea.

  * * *

  The soldiers struggling with their chariots hardly had time to realize what was happening. One moment the water was a wall on either hand. The next moment the crushing weight of it collapsed on them from above, from both sides, snuffing out their lives in an instant. They hadn’t even the time to curse or pray.

  On the shore, Pharaoh was just assembling his triumphal party of a hundred chariots when the road disappeared, and the sea returned to its former placid lapping of the shore. Now the Israelites’ footprints and the tracks of Pharaoh’s chariots seemed to lead nowhere at all.

  Out on the water, there might have been crushed remnants of the wooden chariots, floating. But from where Pharaoh stood, there was no sign of his soldiers.

  He stood in his chariot, gazing in silence over the water. But not for very long. After a few moments he wheeled his chariot to face the surviving men. Their faces were filled with horror, but he was their Pharaoh, so they looked at him and listened to what he would say.

  “As you can see,” Tuthmose said, “today we have destroyed Israel. We drove them into the Red Sea. And though we lost five hundred brave men, it does not diminish the value of our victory. Moses is dead, forsaken by his god and by his people!”

  Then he fell silent and looked from man to man, the whole company of them, to see if anyone would dare to speak or even think to the contrary. There was no will to rebellion there. Indeed, they all had to be thinking: If I told the truth, who would believe me? So when Tuthmose commanded his horses to go forward, they fell in behind him and this fragment of his army began the return journey to the Nile.

  Within weeks, all record of the Israelites in Egypt had been wiped out—not that there had been much, since they were first servants of the Hyksos, whose monuments had long since been destroyed, and then were slaves, who are never worth mentioning. No one was permitted to write of the plagues, or even that the harvest was bad that year. Nor was there any mention of Sakhmet as the wife and queen of Tuthmose III, or of a child named Ptahmose. They had never existed.

  But in Tuthmose’s heart, they had once lived, and he had lost them. Lost them utterly because he could not bear to have any public admission of his defeat by Moses and his god. He could never grieve for them, never speak of them.

  What he could do, however, was search for Moses and the Israelites. As soon as he could recover from the devastating losses of the plagues, he began to launch campaign after campaign, plunging ever deeper into Canaan, searching for the place where Moses and his people had settled. But in forty years of campaigning, he never found them or heard even a rumor of them. When he lay on his deathbed, waiting to turn his kingdom over to a son who had never known his father’s approval or even the name of the perfect child against whom he was perpetually measured, he took some small satisfaction from the obvious truth that Moses and his people must have perished miserably in the wilderness. They probably starved. Or ran out of water and found no well. And as they realized they were all going to die, they must have turned on him and torn him limb from limb. Moses, who thought he could be Pharaoh, but never had the strength of will, the hardness of heart, to do the job.

  * * *

  The sea was flat and still.

  Miriam turned to Moses. “Were they caught? Did the army of Pharaoh drown in the sea?”

  “Whatever Tuthmose does,” said Moses, “there is always more grieving in Egypt.”

  “What of Tuthmose himself,” said Aaron. “Was he also drowned?”

  “The Lord will never let Tuthmose trouble Israel again,” said Moses. “Now come with me, and assemble Israel where I can speak to them.”

  Moses had no idea what he was going to say. Even when he climbed to the outcropping of rock and had the thirteen tribes spread before him, he had no speech in him.

  What he had instead was song. In his years as a shepherd, he had learned to pass the long hours of watchfulness the way the daughters of Jethro did, the way all shepherds did, it seemed, in all lands of grass and stone: he sang. Moses found that what he could not say easily in words would sometimes flow from him in song, and at times he did not know what he truly felt or thought until he heard his own music.

  The people of Israel had not forgotten the old tradition of shepherd song, though they had long ago become more accustomed to the rhythmic drumming and clapping of Egyptian music. But they had left that behind. It felt right to hear the prophet open his mouth in a shepherd’s psalm, and they understood the message deeper than words: This is a new age, and we are a new people, but also a very old people, who are at last returning to our homeland, to our folkways, to our faith, to our God.

  “I’ll sing to the Lord,” he sang.

  The Lord is my strength and song.

  He is become my salvation.

  He is my God.

  I’ll make a place for him.

  My father’s God,

  I will exalt him!

  Your right hand, Lord,

  Is glorious in power.

  Your right hand, Lord,

  Can break your enemy.

  Who is like you

  In holiness and glory?

  Who is like you

  Among the mighty ones?

  Like a young tree,

  You carry Israel

  To the land of planting,

  To the walled garden.

  Israel is the joy of your orchard.

  This young people,

  The jewel of your crown!

  And the people joined him, singing the words he taught them. And there in the desert, on the Sinai shore, Miriam took out her timbrel and led the women of Israel in dancing for joy. For their freedom, for their deliverance, for the love of the Lord God, in whom they trusted now, and to whom they would be grateful and obedient forever.

  I’ll sing to the Lord!

  The Lord is my strength and song.

  He is become my salvation.

  He is my God.

  I’ll make a place for him.

  My father’s God,

  I will exalt him!

  Chapter 12: Men and Women

  For the long months that Moses was gone, Zeforah’s only word of him came from the Lord, who told her little, but it was enough. She knew that he was on the Lord’s errand. She knew that the Lord would bring him back safely. So when she led the children in prayer for their father, and for their people, the Israelites, the answer she received was a feeling of peace in her heart. All was well with him and with his work. She could be patient with that.

  Gershom was not satisfied, however. “Why is Father bothering with slaves?” he asked one day. He had seen slaves, with the occasional traveler that passed by—they seemed to be treated like animals, less sturdy than camels, but more dextrous. Zeforah had to explain to him that slaves were people just like any other, who had been unfortunate enough to be captured in war. She didn’t know enough about the Israelites in Egypt—or about Egypt itself, for that matter—to explain much more about their slavery than that they had been taken into captivity in Egypt and Father was going to tell them that the Lord would set them free.

  “Then they must be happy to see him,” said Gershom.

  “I hope so,” said Zeforah.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” continued her inquisitive firstborn.

  “Because when your father lived in Egypt, he wasn’t a slave like the rest. He was adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and lived in the palace and commanded armies and was very famous and powerful.”

  “Why didn’t he set the Israelites free himself?”

  With Gershom, the questions only got harder. “Because he wasn’t the Pharaoh, he was only the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter.” No use trying to explain how Pharaoh’s daughter became Pharaoh, including the shocking behavior of dressing as a man. Especially since Zeforah didn’t understand it herself.

  “Didn’t Pharaoh like him, then?”

  “Pharaoh’s daughter loved him, Gershom, because he was her only son and he was good and wise. But he still had to obey her, and not her him. I don’t obey you, do I?”

  “I don’t always obey you, either,” he answered.

  “But you’re sorry when you don’t.”

  “Not always,” he said. “Sometimes I’m right and you’re wrong.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” she said. “But I’m always your mother. Besides, there was more to it than that, when your father was in Egypt.” She did her best to explain that Pharaoh could not lead the people where they didn’t want to go, that it was all Moses’ Egyptian mother could do just to stop the Egyptians from killing the Israelites’ boy-children.

  By the end, though, she knew she must have made a muddle of it, because Gershom’s response was to nod wisely and say, “So Father was a slave, after all, just like the rest of the Israelites.”

  “What? Why do you say that?”

  “Because he had to do what other people told him all the time, and never got to choose for himself.”

  “No, he wasn’t a slave, or else all adults are,” she said. “Think about it, Gershom. When do I get to choose what I’m going to do? Every day I have to provide a meal for you and the other children. There are duties to take care of with Grandfather’s flocks. I have to watch the little ones all the time so they don’t play with snakes and scorpions or tumble off cliffs. When during the day can I do what I want?”

  “When you read the scriptures,” he answered promptly.

  “Your father had moments like that, too,” she said, “when he could be himself. But the rest of his life was filled with duty.”

  “I don’t want to grow up,” he said. “I don’t like chores.”

  “But when you’re older, you understand the purpose of your work, and so you take joy in it. That’s why I’m not a slave, because when I married your father I knew I was making the choice to have wonderful children and care for them, and work hard all the days of my life.”

  “You didn’t know we were going to be wonderful.”

  “Yes I did. Gershom, slaves work because they’re afraid of being punished. I work because I rejoice in the lives of the people I serve.”

  “I don’t rejoice in Eliezer’s life,” said Gershom.

  “But you will,” she said, “when he gets older and he’s the most fun person to play with.”

  “Am I an Israelite?” asked Gershom.

  “Yes,” said Zeforah.

  “But you’re a Midianite, like Grandfather.”

  “I was until I grew up and married your father.”

  “So I’m half Israelite.”

  “It doesn’t go by halves,” said Zeforah. “Because the Israelites are the chosen people of the Lord, you either serve and obey the Lord, or you don’t.”

  “But Grandfather serves the Lord and he’s not an Israelite.”

  Zeforah despaired of making things clear to a child. “Then I guess you have to grow up and adopt Grandfather as your son, so he can be an Israelite, too.”

  It took a moment for Gershom to realize she was joking. For that moment, his eyes wide, she knew he was imagining blustery old Grandfather as his own little boy. Then he got the joke and laughed and ran off to tell Grandfather that he would have to call him Father from now on, so he could be one of the chosen people, too.

  Sure enough, within a few minutes, Jethro came charging into her tentyard. “What’s this I hear about you planning to become my grandmother?”

  “If I were your grandmother, I’d get you to bathe more often.”

  “I’m willing to become an Israelite,” said Jethro, “but I’m not willing to become an Egyptian.”

  “I hope it’s not dirt that separates Hebrews from Egyptians,” said Zeforah.

  “Dirt and water, as a matter of fact,” said Jethro.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “They’re coming.”

  “Who?” And then she realized. “Moses?”

  “And a horde of Israelites. They’ve been seen on this side of the Red Sea, heading toward the mountain of the Lord.”

  “So they did come out.”

  “And the stories that are being told about them are so fabulous as to be irresponsible. I won’t even repeat them.”

  “Yes you will,” she said.

  “You need to show more respect for your father.”

  “You need to tell me.”

  “It’s utter nonsense,” said Jethro. “Supposedly the Israelites not only left Egypt, but they’re bringing half the gold of Egypt with them, which was given to them by the Egyptian people as presents! I’m sure that one’s likely to be true, Egyptians are always giving gold to departing slaves. And then they supposedly didn’t go around the Red Sea at all, or even across it, they went right through it. And they don’t carry grain with them, they find bread on the ground in the morning every day and just gather it up, and when they need meat, flocks of quail come and land among them, waiting to be knocked in the head and cooked for supper. I know the Lord is with them, but people should keep some degree of reason about the rumors they spread.”

  “The Lord’s power is great,” said Zeforah. “Maybe it’s all true. Such a large number of people must be eating somehow, and there’s not much food to be found here in the wilderness of Sinai.”