by Joshua Grant
“Please,” the slave managed to choke out. “Forgive me!”
The soldier didn’t say anything, but gestured toward another soldier to bring him something. In a moment, a coil of rope was in his hand. Wordlessly, he tied one end of the rope around the slave’s neck, after which he called for a chariot. A chariot pulled up next to the soldier, holding onto the other end of the rope.
“What is your command?” the chariot driver asked.
“Take this slave to the lion pit and throw him in. If he can’t learn to respect those that are superior to him, then he doesn’t deserve to live.”
The soldier sneered at the slave, whose wide eyes and terror-filled expression stared back at him. The slave looked so afraid that you’d think he was looking into the face of Satan himself. My heart began to pound again. Such cruelty! Such depravity that gave this soldier the power to condemn a man to a horrible, violent death for merely voicing a minor complaint. I watched as the slave moved towards the chariot, each step bringing him closer to his doom.
“Not so fast!” the soldier stopped him with a sharp yank to the rope. “Do you think I would allow you the luxury of riding in an Egyptian chariot? Whatever made you think you were worthy of such a privilege?” He jerked the rope tightly, pulling the slave off his feet. The slave landed in a heap on the ground behind the chariot. “You, unfortunately, will be riding… on the back.”
Giving the slave one last evil look, he tied the other end of the rope to the underside of the chariot. Then, to my horror, he turned to the chariot driver and issued an order. “Drive as fast as you can.”
The chariot lashed his horse into a full gallop as if someone had lit his pants on fire. Behind him, the slave screamed until the taut rope choked off his words and yanked him off his feet. A broken off scream issued from the slave as he was pulled through the sand, which would soon flail the skin off his body as he was dragged to death behind the chariot. In moments, the chariot had passed through the palace gates, dragging the man behind him in a cloud of rising dust. Even after the chariot had disappeared out of sight, the horrified screams of the slave still echoed in my head. I felt sick to my stomach and fought back the urge to heave.
“Does anyone else have anything to say?” the soldier asked the remaining slaves, a grin turning up one corner of his mouth. “No?” He gestured toward the Pharaoh’s palace. “All of you get to work before I decide to have the rest of you killed as well!”
None of the other slaves, and certainly not I, wanted to suffer the fate of that poor slave, so I followed the group as they walked toward the palace and didn’t stop until we reached the site on which the statue would be built. Even though it was only a mile’s walk to the Pharaoh’s palace, it seemed like much more than that. My feet and legs still ached from my ‘walk’ yesterday. I was hungry and thirsty as well. My legs trembled with weakness while my belly rumbled loudly. I was not alone. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard in my life, and for not even a penny. I learned a lot about hard labor that day. If I had ever thought anything was hard in the past, those memories were all but erased by being forced to help build the statue for the Pharaoh. Not only were we forced to do this work, but we were also under constant watch by the head slave driver. The look with which he watched everyone implied a terrible, unnamed punishment that awaited anyone who made a mistake while working on the statue. I helped cart stones, hold them in place while stone carvers worked to form them into a semblance of a human form, and clean up chips of stone that fell around our feet. My face stung from stone chips flung in my direction by the stone carvers’ knives, but I did not dare complain. The slaves worked in silence, only the sound of their harsh breathing attesting to their labors.
Around noon, some of the older slaves began to falter in their work. It started with small things at first, like one man tripping over his feet, while another dropped a heavy stone that he carried from the base of the statue to a cart filled with debris. Not long after, a middle-aged man collapsed in a heap from exhaustion. Then another older man teetered and fell to the ground. He immediately tried to get up, but his arms refused to bear his weight. The old man, who seemed to me at least eighty-years-old, caught the eye of one of the soldiers guarding us when he fell to the ground.
“Hey!” the soldier yelled at him. “Get back to work before I break your legs so you won’t ever walk again!”
I resisted the nearly overwhelming urge to rush to the old man’s aid. The old man tried, he really did, but he couldn’t get back on his feet. The soldier walked over to him and got right in his face.
“So you don’t want to work? Maybe this will change your mind.”
From his belt, I saw the soldier pull his flail and raise his hand, ready to strike the old man. This thing had to be one of the most painful-looking weapons I had ever seen. It looked like a short whip, but instead of one long cord, nine leather straps connected to the handle. Attached to the end of the leather straps were steel balls about the size of a golf ball as well as pieces of jagged metal woven throughout each strand of the whip. I’d seen pictures of this ancient weapon in my history books. The steel balls would severely bruise a person’s skin and break their bones, making it easier for the pieces of jagged metal to tear out huge chunks of flesh. This, by the way, was usually done after they had stripped you completely naked to add more embarrassment to the beating. While the soldier didn’t waste time ordering the old man to disrobe, that fact in no way mitigated the pain that was about to be inflicted on him.
“Please spare me!” the old man cried, raising his hands to protect his head and face. “I’m not even worthy for you to waste your strength on me. I’m just a poor old man near the end of his life.” He tried unsuccessfully to scramble away from the soldier. The soldier followed him.
“Now you’re going to be sorry,” the soldier sneered. He raised the scourge and brought it down on the old man’s back.
“Aaaaghhh!” the old man screamed as the flail ripped into his flesh. The soldier hit him with such force that blood and bits of flesh spattered up into his face. I felt the bile rise in my throat as I stared, dumbfounded at the scene in front of me. Other slaves had paused in their work to watch as well, their eyes wide with anger and sympathy. Just as the soldier raised the flail for another blow to the old man, a man bearing a wooden staff in his hand came up behind him.
The soldier was so involved with his beating of the old man that he failed to see the newcomer approach. He didn’t notice his presence until the stranger planted a solid blow to the back of his head with his wooden staff. I’ll never forget the sound that stranger made when his staff made contact with the back of the soldier’s skull. It sounded like he was a baseball player hitting a homerun. When the soldier fell to the ground, his unfocused expression and unblinking eyes told me one thing… he was dead. This was also obvious by the bloodied and gaping dent on the backside of his head, now a mass of hair, bone and bits of brain.
Seizing the opportunity, I lunged forward and sank to my knees beside the soldier. I reached into the folds of his robe looking for the T.O.M. device, hoping that it might have been passed to him since he was in charge. Fortunately, I found it inside his robe, tucked securely beneath the length of fabric that served as his belt. I made a pretend show of patting the soldier on the back to cover my moves, as if I attempted to wake him. While the slaves stared at the stranger who had just clobbered the soldier, I surreptitiously slid the T.O.M. device into my own pocket. Only then did I fully realize I was handling a dead body. I scrambled back on my knees, wiping my hands in the sand beside me. I then rose to my feet a moment later, also staring in amazement at the bearded man facing us, calmly holding the staff by his side.
After glancing around for signs of soldiers or other slaves, the stranger grabbed a shovel out of the hands of one of the slaves and started to dig. He had yet to say a word. Once the hole was deep enough, he rolled the lifeless body of the soldier in it and then proceeded to bury him. I wasn’t the only one st
anding by, watching with shock. The man moved quickly and efficiently with his shovel. When he finished, he moved toward the old man, still huddled on the hot sand nearby.
“Thank you so much!” the old man exclaimed.
Even though he was still in a great amount of pain from his thrashing with the flail, his unmistakable joy at being rescued from the brink of death obviously overshadowed the pain he felt. “What is your name?” the old man asked.
When the stranger replied, I couldn’t believe what I heard.
“My name is Moses,” the man calmly said. “I have come to release you from your service to Pharaoh.”
He then shifted his attention away from the old man to all the slaves and continued to speak. “God has sent me to take you away from Pharaoh. You have been slaves to the Egyptians for far too long, and now it is time that you are released from bondage.”
As Moses finished that sentence, a cheer of pure joy erupted from the slaves clustered around him. Leaving us standing there in shock, Moses then turned around and walked straight into Pharaoh’s palace as if he owned the place. As quietly as I could, I followed close behind Moses, unable to contain my excitement in anticipation for the miracles I knew I was about to see .
Once Moses arrived in the throne room, I saw his brother, Aaron, waiting for him. At least I assumed it was Aaron. Banners interwoven with gold draped around the room. The Pharaoh himself sat on the throne, wearing a headdress made completely of gold and various precious jewels. My attention was pulled from the finery around me when Moses spoke, his voice ringing deep and clear with conviction.
“Pharaoh, my Lord has told me that he wants his people, the Hebrews, let go. Will you allow us to leave so that we may worship the Lord freely?” Moses asked.
“No,” Pharaoh scoffed. “You and your people are far too valuable to the Egyptian people. Your labor is what builds our houses, cooks our food, and tends to our crops. I will never let any of the Hebrews leave.”
Moses stared at him a moment and then took a deep breath. “Then behold this sign that will show you that you aren’t the one who is in charge around here!” Moses spoke loudly and with force as Aaron threw his staff on the ground in front of him.
As soon as Aaron’s staff touched the ground, it’s shape began to change very rapidly. At first it grew soft, as if it had been soaking in water for a day or two. Next, the wood itself began to take on a scaly appearance. Finally, to my surprise, a huge forked tongue shot out of the knot at the head of the staff, just as two smaller knots turned into eyes. The transformation was complete. Aaron’s staff was no more. Now, Aaron’s staff had turned into a huge snake!
Pharaoh looked very unimpressed with this “trick”. He casually motioned to his three court magicians, commanding them to come forward and throw their staffs on the ground. As they did, their staffs turned into snakes as well. Although the magician’s snakes and Aaron’s snake looked the same, there were some very subtle differences. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what they were, though. I soon, however, found out.
With a terrifying hiss, Aaron’s snake lunged at the other three. Before I could even blink, the snake had injected the others with its venom and swallowed them whole.
After glancing in the direction of the Pharaoh, the snake slithered back over to Aaron’s feet. Aaron reached down and picked up the snake by its head. The transformation was so quick, that by the time Aaron had risen to his full height, the snake was gone, once again replaced by a wooden staff.
“That was just a cheap trick, not even worthy of applause,” Pharaoh sighed. “I still refuse to let your people go. You might as well go home, because you will never change my mind.”
Feeling slightly let down, I followed Moses and Aaron out of the palace and back to the slave barracks. Even though I knew that Moses was going to prevail against Pharaoh, I still couldn’t help but feel as if God was sitting this one out, despite the miracle I had just seen. If God wanted his people to go free, then he wouldn’t even have to ask for Pharaoh’s permission, right? Pharaoh should have capitulated immediately if God was so powerful, shouldn’t he? Feeling alone with my thoughts, I laid on my mattress of straw and shortly thereafter, fell asleep.
I was woken the next morning by the sound of the door slamming shut. I jumped out of bed, expecting to be accosted by the soldier, but then I remembered that he was dead. The Egyptians hadn’t seemed to notice that our group of slaves was now without a soldier. Around me, the other slaves slept. Even though I was still partially asleep, I moved to the window, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I peered outside to see who had just left the barracks. As I looked out the window, I saw Moses and Aaron walking toward the section of the Nile where I had heard that the Pharaoh bathed. Brushing loose straw from my robe, I quickly ran out the door after them.
As I arrived at the banks of the Nile, I heard Moses having a conversation with Pharaoh.
“The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has sent me to say, ’Let my people go, so they can worship me in the wilderness.’ Until now, you have refused to listen to him. Now the Lord says, ‘You are going to find out that I am the Lord.’ Look, Pharaoh! I will hit the water of the Nile with this staff, and the river will turn to blood. The fish in it will die, and the river will stink. The Egyptians will not be able to drink any water from the Nile.”
As Moses finished speaking, he raised his staff with both hands and brought it down on the surface of the Nile, as if he were chopping a log of wood. Immediately, a dark red color began to seep from the point of impact. It looked like the staff was leaking red dye. That’s probably what most people would have believed, except for the fact that the redness continued to spread further than it would normally have. It wasn’t long before the entire river had turned blood red. I saw dead fish go belly up in the water, floating down the surface of the river and piling up along its banks, contributing to the already horrendous stench emanating from the water. The stench coming from the river was almost unbearable. It smelled as if there were thousands of bodies lying dead and rotting along the banks of the Nile. Again, I felt bile rise in my throat and I couldn’t stop myself from retching.
Another sound greeted my ears - the sound of coughing and spitting. I turned around to see the Pharaoh and his friends who had joined him at the river this morning spitting out mouthfuls of blood on the ground. At first, I thought they had contracted some horrible disease, but on second glance, I noticed they held cups that had only been moments before filled with water. They were now filled with blood.
Overcome with an intense feeling of nausea, I ran back to the slave barracks. No sooner had I reached the rear wall of the structure than I bent over and vomited. I felt as if I was vomiting out all of my internal organs. If the smell of the river had done this to me, I thought, I could only imagine what Pharaoh and his friends were going through right now after having tasted that water.
Once I was finished vomiting, I was so exhausted that I scrambled back inside the barracks and fell onto my bed. My stomach still roiling, I drifted off to sleep. I awoke a few hours later; I looked around and noticed that all of the slaves had also remained inside. I supposed that Pharaoh and his minions were too sick to boss anyone around today. I felt like laughing, but didn’t. My stomach still felt queasy. I thought about my old Bible classes and recalled that the plagues that swept through Egypt weren’t very far apart in terms of when they happened. I decided I might as well skip forward a little and get these plagues over with as quickly as I could. I likened it to having to go to the principal’s office as a young student. It made me queasy and nervous, but I knew that running away wouldn’t make the problem disappear, that it would only prolong the stress and that it was best just to deal with it and get it over with.
Taking out the T.O.M. device, I pressed the “fast-forward” and “Activate” buttons. The other slaves still slept, so I quickly rose and stepped into the portal, hoping that I’d come out the other side and not have anyone see me. Fortunately for me, no one was around
to see me emerging from the portal. It was dusk once again, and the slaves would be back any minute now from their workday. Little had changed during my brief ‘departure’. I quickly found my bed and went back to sleep.
Chapter 7
When I awoke, the sun was just rising above the Egyptian landscape. A shaft of light shone into the small window carved into the side of the wall of the slave quarters, and as I lay still for several moments, I wondered if I had managed to time travel, or if I had been mistaken, and merely fallen asleep. Nothing seemed different, at least not that I could —I suddenly realized that something was terribly wrong. “My bed shouldn’t feel slimy.” I thought. I glanced around, but the half-dozen slaves in the room still slumbered on, oblivious. Still, I sensed movement.
I sat up, prepared to see what was going on outside when I got a big surprise. A croaking sound issued from beneath my covers. As I threw back the covers and jumped out of my bed, startled by the sound and looked around the room, I was greeted by a chorus of croaking frogs. Not one, but dozens… no, hundreds that seemed to grow in number with every passing second. I froze in place, fearful of taking a step and stepping on the writhing mass of slimy green amphibians suddenly appearing from out of nowhere. Now, I have never been afraid of frogs, but the number of them, creeping, hopping and emerging out of every nook and cranny, every crevice and space, unnerved me. They landed on my feet, and my open sandals did little to protect my skin from their cool, wet touch. I shivered in spite of myself.
Screams filled the air as the slaves woke to find their pallets overrun by frogs. The croaking grew in volume as the female slaves jumped around, trying to get away from the frogs, while the male slaves ran around trying to kill them. They stomped around the cramped interior of the space until I had to escape, not only the screams, but also the sound of squishing frogs. For every one that was killed, dozens seemed to take its place.
