Moses, Man of the Mountain

by Zora Neale Hurston

  “Well, I can give ’em what they want better than you ever did, and I’ll show you when we get over there. You can’t scare people away from what they want over there. We won’t need you any more. My time is coming just like I always knowed it would.”

  He gave Moses a look full of triumph and old hatred.

  “Take off those robes, Aaron,” Moses said shortly.

  Aaron acted as if he didn’t hear Moses right away. Then he gave Moses a scornful look. Then he chuckled slightly and crossed his legs and smoothed the skirts of his priestly robe.

  “Aaron, take off those robes.”

  “I ain’t going to do it, Moses. God put these robes on me and He’ll have to be the one to take ’em off. I know you been begrudging ’em to me for a powerful long time. I just wouldn’t step down for you.”

  “God didn’t put no robes on you, Aaron. I put ’em on you and I’m taking them off, because they don’t fit you.”

  “You mean God never called me down there in Egypt at all?”

  “No, Aaron.”

  “You told me He did.”

  “Yes, I did, Aaron. I thought I needed you for the big job I had to do because you were of the Hebrews. I did need you too, but you didn’t do the job I picked out for you.”

  “You always held me back. You—”

  “No, you got the wrong idea altogether. You held yourself back. You didn’t think about service half as much as you did about getting served, Aaron. Your tiny horizon never did get no bigger, so you mistook a spotlight for the sun.”

  Aaron began to crumble. He didn’t look at Moses any more. He began to finger his garments in different places all over himself and to dwindle and shrink.

  “Those robes don’t belong to you, Aaron. I planned them for a bigger man. Take ’em on off.”

  “What would I do without my robes?” Aaron wailed in anguish. “They’re mine! They belong to the high priest. How do I know that God didn’t call me? You said so yourself.”

  Moses snatched Aaron to his feet and Aaron looked into the eyes of Moses and lifted off his high headpiece and set it down on a stone in a soft, regretful way. Then piece by piece he shed his robes to his last undergarment and stood with his old corded arms and legs protruding from the short garment. Moses stooped and collected all of the rich regalia and laid them carefully on a rock. Aaron watched him without daring to move his feet out of his tracks until Moses turned back to him again.

  “Aaron.”

  “Yes, Moses,” Aaron whimpered.

  “Aaron, you can’t go over yonder with the people.”

  “Why, Moses? You know I always done the best I could.”

  “No. Not for the people, Aaron. You are blind. You didn’t see Miriam and her face. You didn’t see the graveyards in the wilderness. You didn’t see the significance of the Ark of the Covenant nor the Tent of Testimony. All you saw was the gold and silver vessels and the robes and the power that goes with it. No, Aaron, you can’t go over there and make a fool out of Israel’s graves.”

  “What am I going to do then, Moses? You can’t leave me looking like this. “How can I go back before Israel?”

  “You can’t go back before Israel, Aaron.”

  Aaron looked hard in Moses’ face and fell to his knees.

  “Moses! Moses, please. I’ll be a lot of help to you from now on. Moses, spare me, if you please.”

  Moses looked way off across the plain where the tents of Israel stretched for miles and held his eyes for a long pause. Then he said, “I haven’t spared myself, Aaron. I had to quit being a person a long time ago, and I had to become a thing, a tool, an instrument for a cause. I wasn’t spared, Aaron. No.”

  “No, and you didn’t spare my two sons at Sinai—just for dancing and making a little ceremony before a god of Egypt which we had always known. My poor boys—you killed them!”

  “I didn’t kill your boys at Sinai, Aaron, though I know that you have always accused me of it, and hated me. But you know just as well as I do why they died. What they signified had to die if Israel was to be great.”

  “Let me be high priest over there, Moses, in the big new tabernacle with—”

  “No, Aaron.”

  Aaron crawled to the knees of Moses and clasped them. “Moses, looks like pity and mercy would—”

  “Aaron, the future of Israel is higher than pity and mercy. And why should I spare you? I did not spare the first-born. I did not spare Pharaoh. I did not spare myself. I did not spare my wife and my friend. Jethro is dead and I might have spent several more happy years with him instead of out in the wilderness leading a people and being reviled for doing what was best instead of what was popular. No, Aaron, nothing and nobody has been spared to make this nation great. And since you wouldn’t give yourself in any other way, Aaron, you will have to do something for Israel by denial.”

  “Moses, you don’t need to take me along. Just let me go up here in the mountain and let me shift for myself. Please, Moses, don’t kill me.”

  “You don’t mean that, Aaron. You mean to double back and appeal to the people to back you up on account of your age and place. No, Aaron, fifty years of work can’t be destroyed to give you a tomb in Canaan. God called you on Mount Hor. The tomb of Aaron the first high priest of Israel will be huge and fine, high up in this noble mountain. God has built you a pyramid greater than Pharaoh, and generations of Israelites will make pilgrimages to the grave of Aaron, the patriot. God will remember your sacrifice and guard your memories.”

  The knife descended and Aaron’s old limbs crumpled in the dust of the mountain. Moses looked down on him and wept. He remembered so much from way back. “Is this my brother? Is this pitiful old carcass blood of my blood? Maybe this is me myself in other moods. Who am I to judge him?” Moses looked down the mountain at tented Israel and shook his head. “I have made a nation, but at a price.” Then he buried Aaron and marked the place. “Poor Aaron, he died so hard for God!” Then he picked up the robes and walked firmly down the mountain to where Eleazar waited.

  “Put on these robes, Eleazar. You are high priest now.” The young man seized the robes eagerly. Then he halted for a moment and looked back up the mountain the way Moses had come down. He looked back the second time and then he looked into the face of Moses and began to undress himself. He dressed himself in the priestly scarlet and purple and set the breastplate of twelve stones upon his bosom. After that he never looked back again. He straightened his figure to set his garments well and fell in beside Moses and they started down the mountain side by side.

  They descended to the camp and the people looked at Eleazar in the robes of Aaron, so Moses told them all, “God called Aaron in the mountain. You must build a big high tomb over him, and you must mourn him for thirty days. He was denied many pleasures for your sake.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Israel met nations and fought and conquered and moved on towards Canaan. Moses lifted his rod and made a way out of no way when it was needed and they moved on. They fought the giants of Bashan and conquered and moved on till one day they camped again on the River Jordan where their forefathers had been before.

  “When are we crossing over?” That is what everybody wanted to know. “We are here! When do we cross over?”

  Moses ordered Israel to camp and rest for two weeks. The battle against Bashan had been hard. Everybody needed a rest. So he sat in his tent day by day and wrote in his journal. The wanderings of Israel were there set down by his hand.

  Joshua kept running in and out for first one thing and then another, so Moses told him to have a seat.

  “Joshua, we been here at the river around two weeks, ain’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir, it sure is.”

  “How is the sick and the afflicted coming on?”

  “If you talking about the soldiers, all them that was going to die are already dead. The rest of ’em will get well. Everything is in good shape, considering. Anyhow, chief, we ain’t the same folks we was when we viewed the Jordan l
ast time. We’re a people now.”

  “It looks that way, Joshua. But when you was down at the Jordan last time you was such a lad of a boy that your moustache did not show. Your hair is all mixed with gray this time.”

  “Yeah, that’s so, but I still don’t feel no strain in a campaign. I’m able.”

  “That’s good, because you are going to need everything you got in you on the other side. And that brings me to a subject I been wanting to take up with you a long time.”

  “What is it, Moses? You know I’m always ready to listen when you talk.”

  “Joshua, I’m old. I ain’t getting old. I’m already old. Supposing the Lord was to call me. What would become of Israel?”

  “I’d do the very best I could in the same way that you would do it if you were there. But I don’t want to be no secondhand ruler because I’m a first class fighting man. You must live and cross over and govern us till the rod just naturally falls out of your hand. Everybody in Israel is expecting you to be there.”

  “But sooner or later I’ll have to go and you will have to govern in every way, Joshua, because there won’t be nobody else to do it. Eleazar is a good and obedient servant, but that’s all.

  “Anyway, we done passed a lot of mileposts and we done come to the place where we need a fighting leader more than anything else. Israel has got her laws and her God. All she needs now is land and it takes fighting to get that.”

  “You know I’ll fight, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, you’re a general among generals. But now when Israel ain’t fighting, you got to do something about governing the people. Now one thing I want you to get in your head: You can’t have a state of individuals. Everybody just can’t be allowed to do as they please. I love liberty and I love freedom so I started off giving everybody a loose rein. But I soon found out that it wouldn’t do. A great state is a well-blended mash of something of all of the people and all of none of the people. You understand. The liquor of statecraft is distilled from the mash you got. How can a nation speak with one voice if they are not one? Don’t forget, now. If you do, you encourage all the stupid but greedy and ambitious to sprout like toadstools and that’s the end of right and reason in the state. Coddling and wheedling is not going to stop these destroyers. To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest.”

  “I won’t forget. I saw what you went through with some in Israel.”

  “And don’t let the people take up too many habits from the nations they come in contact with and throw away what they got from God. They are blessed. Nobody else ever got a straight talk from God like we have. Don’t let ’em throw it away. You know, Joshua, it ain’t everybody who can go right up and talk with God. And then, too, it’s less than that who can talk with God and then bring back the right word from the talk. It is so easy to mix up what you are wishing with what God is saying. You might not get another good interpreter. You better hold on to what you got.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do just like you tell me, as far as I am able.”

  “I got every faith in your good intentions, son. Just do the best you can. And, Joshua, patience and understanding helps out a whole lot. What we been trying to do all these forty-odd years was to channel the intentions of men. We got to fix their intentions. I’m wondering if the doings of the best of us will ever be good, but we can give ’em intentions to fumble their way back to God.”

  They talked on for some time. Then Joshua observed, “Moses, we been through thick and thin since we pulled out of Egypt that night. You seen plenty hard times, but did you ever have any pleasure since you been with us? It didn’t look like it to me, except for the little time your wife was with us.”

  “The highest point of my feelings, Joshua, was when I spent the forty days on Mount Sinai talking with God and making plans for the people. And the highest feeling of that was when I had the laws in my hand ready to come down. The lowest feeling for me in these forty-odd years was when I came down and saw my Israel around that golden calf. I felt mighty sad, Joshua, when Jethro died. He meant more to me than anybody else in my whole life. Sometimes I feel he meant more to Israel than I do. He was a big man. A mighty big man if you look at him right. The worst time I ever had was when we fought those Amalekites. Oh! I was in plenty of trouble that time. We were out on a limb, Joshua, and we come pretty nigh getting sawed off. That fight showed me you were strong, Joshua, so it was worth it all right.”

  “Yes, that was a tight fight. Something like the monkey and the bulldog. The monkey told his bossman that he whipped the bulldog all right until it came time for him to sit down. Then he told his bossman he might have got the best of that bulldog, but the more he sit down, the more he doubted it.”

  “That puts me in mind of that tussle I had with Balaam and that mule of his. That was the best time I had on the whole trip up to now.”

  “Oh, I remember that time. He was that big hoodoo man from Pethor. He was coming down to put a curse on us and his mule turned around and sassed him good.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. I fixed that old mule up for Balaam and made him say what he did. And when I fixed old Balaam up just like I did his mule and made him talk for our side.”

  “Seems like it was a donkey he was riding.”

  “That point don’t seem important to me, Joshua, not from this distance. The point is, the fun I had with him. Here was old King Balak sicking Balaam on us to curse us and making big sacrifices of bulls and goats and things on seven altars at a time. Then when Balaam opens his mouth to curse us, out comes a blessing on Israel. Old Balak got right in behind him for saying a blessing instead of a curse so Balaam moved the altars to another place and sacrificed seven times and got his mouth all full of curses again. But when he opened it, out come another blessing, and by that time Balaam was scratching his head and thinking sure enough. Well, the third time he tried it and got fooled, he made out he intended to do that all the time. But that was fun for me, outdoing Balaam like that. It was the first time since we left Egypt that I had a chance to strain against anybody that was trying to do something. It’s good to sort of stretch yourself sometime. Power loves to meet power and strength loves strength.”

  “King Balak didn’t know who he was sending Balaam up against. But the rest of us were scared, because we had heard all about how much power he had.”

  “He did have power, Joshua. He certainly did, but not enough.”

  “It’s bad to have some power, but not enough.”

  “It certainly is, Joshua. It’s a good thing for anybody to know just how much they have and when to stop.”

  Both men fell silent and thought on that awhile. Then Moses stood up.

  “Joshua, I’m going up.”

  “Onto that mountain there—Mount Nebo?”

  “Yes, Joshua. I love mountains. And then, too, I want to talk with God.”

  “Can I go up with you this time?”

  “No, Joshua. I got to ask God some questions. You stay with the people. But you can go as far as the foot of the mountain with me and we can talk.”

  Moses took his rod and set out and the people saw him. And many feelings followed him as he went. Some thought ambitious thoughts and all of them thought awe. He halted at the very beginning of the climb and turned to Joshua.

  “I know you want to follow me, Joshua, but not this time. If I don’t come down in thirty days, you must come to search for me. God might call me up there, you know.”

  Moses put his arm around Joshua’s shoulder briefly and began to climb.

  Moses sat on the peak of Pisgah, looking both ways in time. He looked down first and saw the tents of Israel spread out like the pattern of a giant rug that moved and shimmered in the sunlight.

  It was a sight such as the world had never seen before. A whole nation assembled together and under tents. Prominent in the front was the Tabernacle, the Tent of the Testimony that sheltered the Ark of the Covenant and the sacred mysteries that had made Israel a nation and set it apart fr
om other nations. Inside were the gold and silver vessels, and candlesticks and basins. The rich and jewelled vestments of the priests and attendants and the instruments of worship. Outside, the cloudy pillar of the Guiding Presence hung serenely above the entrance as a sign and a promise to Israel. The Tabernacle sat brooding in the plain and hovering its mysteries like the sphinx.

  There, eastward before the Tabernacle was his own roomy tent and the tents of the families of Aaron. The tents of Reuben were a large city to the south of the main tent as always. Ephraim’s section in its allotted place to the west; the hosts of Dan to the north and Judah pitched to the rising sun. All good fighting men who would die for the glory of the tabernacle and Israel. A splendid and orderly sight—a magnificent spectacle. Moses lingered over it a long time with his eyes.

  The sounds of Israel’s existence came up to him. The lowing of herds, hammering of metal, sounds of strife, of crying and dying and sounds of song. Moses felt happy over that. His dreams had in no way been completely fulfilled. He had meant to make a perfect people, free and just, noble and strong, that should be a light for all the world and for time and eternity. And he wasn’t sure he had succeeded. He had found out that no man may make another free. Freedom was something internal. The outside signs were just signs and symbols of the man inside. All you could do was to give the opportunity for freedom and the man himself must make his own emancipation. He remembered how often he had had to fight Israel to halt a return to Egypt and slavery. Responsibility had seemed too awful to them time and time again. They had wanted to kill him several times for forcing them to be men. Only their awe and terror of his powers had saved his life. No man among the revolters had courage enough to touch his body or he would have died long ago. The few men, like Joshua who had courage, believed in his dream. So he had lived on and fought on through the wilderness and back again to the Jordan. And now he sat on Nebo’s highest peak called Pisgah and gazed down on Israel and across at the Promised Land.