“It always does,” said Moses. “Aaron, the greatest blessing God has for us is not to astonish the world with our achievements, but to be his hands, and do whatever he needs his hands to do. Do you think the Lord didn’t need you in his service? He sent you to me in the palace again and again, goading me until I finally walked out among the people and what I saw there transformed me. You were God’s hands that blessed me then, even though I was angry at you and didn’t understand what was happening. You and Miriam, you were serving God even then. You were doing what was needed, the first steps to bringing Israel out of Egypt. Your prayer was being answered, if you had only been willing to see it. Aaron, you have always been as strong as you dreamed of being, a pillar I have leaned upon through every step of this journey. You are the only one who doesn’t understand how God chose you and favored you and loved you all along.”

  The anger fled from Aaron’s face, as he was stricken with the knowledge of what he had not understood about his own life, until now.

  “Yes, your sin is grievous,” said Moses. “Yes, your heart will break. You have things to repent of, and by the gift of God you can be forgiven if you give yourself wholly to the service of God. Live to save his children! Live to teach his word! Every longing of your heart has been heard in heaven and even now the Lord holds out his hand to you and offers you the life you long for. You are already what you always longed to be. You already have the love of your God. And of your brother.”

  Moses embraced him, held him close. Aaron could not respond, could hardly move as thoughts raced through his mind and feelings swept through his heart. He felt Moses withdraw his arms and wanted to cry out, No, don’t leave me alone again! But he said nothing and Moses left the tent.

  Aaron sank to his knees and prayed as the words rushed into his mind.

  “O Father, turn your ear to the cry of my heart, for my soul is full of troubles, I have no strength. I’m as dead as the dead, and I’m laid in my own soul’s grave. Your hand has cut me off and my brother’s heart is far from me, you’ve laid me in the pit and closed it, I can’t escape from myself.”

  Yet even as he said it, he knew that it wasn’t true. The Lord had not cut him off; his brother’s heart was closer to him than ever, and he could escape from the grave he was buried in.

  “Can your loving kindness be felt in the grave? Will you do a miracle for the dead? Cast away my soul, and hide my face, I’m ready to die, from my youth I long for death. Your wrath flows over me, your floods have come to cut me off. The man I was, dies now in the flood. Here is the sacrifice you most desire, the broken heart, the bending spirit, fire instead of flesh, all these in me are yours.”

  He trembled and wept as he felt the Lord touch him in every part of his being. How can I bear to have you touch me! And then, as the sweetness flowed into him, he thought, How can I bear to ever have you stop?

  “Make me know wisdom,” he prayed. “Purge me with hyssop, and I will be clean. Oh, wash me and I’ll be whiter than snow! Put a new heart in me, your spirit in me, and then my old bones will rejoice, my eyes will sing, my words will dance, and I’ll write your law in my life.”

  For the first time in his life, the joy of the Lord filled him and he knew what it was. He rose to his feet, looked upward into heaven.

  “I’m the man who didn’t make the Lord my strength. I trusted in my arm and in my words. But now my ancient tree is fallen, now I’m a sapling branch that’s green within your house. I root myself in you for ever and ever, I drink from you, for you have forgiven me.”

  Chapter 15: The Promised Land

  There were trials and pitfalls in the road ahead, and for many years the camp of Israel moved from place to place in the desert of Sinai, fed by manna, watched over by cloud and fire. Moses brought new tables of stone down from the mountain; few guessed and fewer knew that it was not the same law that had been shattered into shards at the judgment seat. Aaron was ordained high priest, and his sons would succeed him as priests. The whole tribe of Levi would serve as a priestly clan, which removed them from consideration for a land of inheritance in the promised land. There would be twelve tribes again, with the Levites as a tribe apart, ministering to all.

  They built an ark to hold the stone tables of the covenant, topped by the mercy seat on which the Lord would sit when he came to visit his people. They built a tabernacle as well, which served as a movable temple, and when one day a king in Israel built a temple it was modeled after the pattern of the tabernacle. As the years passed in the wilderness, those who had known Egypt became accustomed to the new life, and to the worship of the Lord, and a new generation grew up that did not remember Egypt.

  There were trials for Moses’ family, as Miriam had her time of grief and rebellion, and as Aaron watched his two eldest sons struck dead as, defiantly or stupidly, they treated the rites of the tabernacle with contempt. And the people were also tried, with disease, with temptation, with their own fear to enter the promised land.

  Through all these years, Moses’ labor was to teach. He felt his responsibility, not just to the Israelites who gathered to listen to him, but also to the generations yet unborn. So he wrote, or dictated for others to write, and trained many to be scribes in the Hebrew language and make copies of the scriptures so that they might be preserved. When Zeforah’s children no longer needed her, she took on the project of assembling many accounts of the lives of the prophets and patriarchs into one account, to which Moses added a small part of his own vision of the creation. Aaron taught the order of the Levites and his regulations were written down. Joshua wrote Moses’ own story, as Moses told it to him, so it reflected Moses’ own reluctance to include the details of his life before the Lord awakened him and brought him to the desert.

  Miriam and Aaron both died before the journey ended, but they died knowing their work had been well done, their sins forgiven them, their people prospering and growing in their knowledge of the Lord. Aaron’s two eldest sons were gone, but the younger ones had grown to be faithful and responsible in their service as priests, and the people worshiped as before.

  At last the day came when the Lord told Moses that this next journey would take them into the promised land. They came through the desert up the east side of the Dead Sea, and when they were within sight of the prosperous Jordan Valley, Moses called Joshua to him.

  “You’re the one who will lead them now,” he said.

  “It should be you,” Joshua answered him.

  “That’s not for us to decide. Don’t forget I never asked for this work.”

  “How will I know what to do?”

  “The man who talked with an angel for all those days on the mountain—you’re asking me?”

  “The people of this land will not be glad to see us.”

  “The Lord raised you up to be a man of war, because the people of this land are ripe in their rebellion, ready to have their inheritance taken away from them. But the war is in the name of God, and not for any lust for blood. I know that you, by nature, are a man of peace.”

  “So why does God give this task to me?”

  “Because you didn’t ask for it, and don’t love it, and will gladly set war aside when the need has passed.”

  “Moses, will the people follow me? No matter what I say or do, they’ll whisper to each other, Joshua means well but he’s not Moses.”

  “Then you’ll be doing better than me,” said Moses, “because they didn’t always give me credit for meaning well.”

  “The Lord gave you signs to show them when you were first called.”

  “You’ll have the sign of the parting of waters,” said Moses. “When the time comes, your people will cross the Jordan on dry land.”

  Joshua bowed his head in gratitude. “Then the Lord is good to me, and to this people.”

  “Go and tell the others that I will bid them good-bye. But send my son Gershom to me first.”

  Joshua left, and after a little while, Gershom came into his father’s tent. He was a grown man now, with full-grown children of his own.

  “What a wise and patient man you grew to be,” Moses said.

  “As best I could,” said Gershom.

  “All these years, you watched as Aaron’s sons became priests, and I prepared Joshua to lead the people as their prophet. Today I’m giving Israel to him, and taking leave of everyone, and yet in all these years, you have never said to me, Father, what about my inheritance?”

  “My inheritance,” said Gershom, “is to have you and Mother as my parents, and the love of my wife, and my honorable children, and to feel the love of God in every morning and evening of my life.”

  “All that,” said Moses, “and yet there’s one thing more.”

  Moses took two scrolls out of a cloth bag and showed them to Gershom. “These books are not to be had among the children of Israel.”

  “What are they?”

  “The account of my vision on the mount, and of all I learned there. The higher law, the prophecies of the meridian of time, and of the fullness of time. This is what Israel lost when they allowed the dancing before the calf, not as punishment, but because they weren’t ready yet. Even the law they have now, they’ll forget again and again until they finally learn to obey; even the promised land that will be given to them now will be lost again, two more times. This law was too hard. But someday the Lord will see fit to give these books to his children. For now, though, they are to be kept as a secret treasure by you and your children, as long as the Lord allows or needs.”

  “The book will decay,” said Gershom.

  “You must open it and copy it,” said Moses, “and each new generation after you. But no one can ever know that it exists, or what it contains, until a time that the Lord reveals to you. If any of your descendants disobeys this rule, an angel will come and take the book. But the labor will not be lost. The Lord remembers every word that is written.”

  “Then my duty is to become as obscure as I can,” said Gershom. “And to think I’ve been practicing for that all my life, without knowing it.”

  Moses laughed, then kissed and embraced his son.

  Legends grew up about Moses, that perhaps he didn’t die, and in one sense he did not, for there was no fear of death, nor was there pain in his passage out of mortality. On the mountain, looking out over the promised land, one moment he was alive in the body, seeing with the eyes of flesh, and the next moment he saw with his whole spirit, and rose from the old shape that had contained him all those years. He was not surprised to find Zeforah at his side, for he had felt her there through the long years of separation after she died.

  As Joshua stopped the waters of Jordan and the children of Israel crossed over, Moses was with them. And Aaron and Miriam were both weeping with joy as they embraced him on the other side.

 

 

  Orson Scott Card, Stone Tables

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends