by Cliff Graham
My water basin was filled with frogs. They began leaping out of it, first a few, then a dozen, then a stream of a hundred or more. I am ashamed to admit that I screamed like a woman in pure terror and fled from my room.
In the hall I stepped on several of the frogs, squashing them and falling down hard as my feet slid on their innards. I landed on my shoulder directly on top of another frog, and I was overwhelmed by them as they poured out of every room of the barracks, sending me running to get away. They landed on my face, dug their wet, clawed feet into my eye sockets as they piled themselves up into every corner. I was shaking with fright.
Other soldiers were swinging blades at them as though they were bandits in the desert. I heard a shout behind me.
It was Bakar, my closest friend.
“What . . . what . . . ?” was all he managed to say.
I gagged as a frog found its way onto my face and slid its clawed foot across my tongue. I could not even inhale without a frog leaping for my throat or my nose as if to suck out my very life breath.
“We must protect the king!” Bakar shouted. I nodded at him. We began pushing our way through the mass of frogs, which now rose to our knees. Every time my foot came down, I crushed several frogs.
Shrieks and screams echoed down every corridor, amidst the endless croaking noise the frogs made. All the torches and lamps had been snuffed out, leaving us to have to press forward in total darkness.
We knew the route to the king’s quarters by memory or else we would have never found it. We came to his door, which was open, and trudged our way inside. A few torches remained lit in the king’s chamber. By their light I saw that Thutmose III, god of Egypt, son of Ra, was standing on his bed, completely naked, using a mallet to knock frogs away from him. Several of his guards were by his side and doing the same.
“Come help us!” he roared when he saw Bakar and me. It was such an absurd sight that I very nearly laughed in spite of myself, but that would have been very dangerous indeed.
It was hopeless. The frogs overwhelmed even the king’s bedchamber, and even though we fought them away all through the night, with the coming of the day we were far worse off than before. As the sun rose and the heat came, the swampy stench and the decay of the frogs’ bloating bodies made us vomit until we had nothing left inside of us. Even the king spent his morning leaning over his balcony, retching.
I made my way to the balcony next to him and looked out over the city. Our Great Egypt had turned into a mass of dark green. In countless numbers that man has not reckoned, the hideous frogs covered every bit of ground from horizon to horizon, from canyon rim to city street, from the Nile to the eastern deserts.
Pharaoh ordered us to find the priests and sorcerers and “anyone else who communed with the gods or worked magic.” We crawled, stepped, and worked our way out to them in their temples and dens of witchcraft and brought them before Pharaoh.
The king had managed to clear out a spot in his palace free from the frogs. He had ordered the doors shut to his throne room with fifty servants remaining inside with him. The servants worked at trapping frogs and throwing them out the windows until none remained. Every time someone entered the throne room, the servants were there to catch the frogs that hopped in with the visitor.
When we brought the sorcerers before the king, he commanded that they conjure frogs from a basin of water. They did so, and this seemed to satisfy the king, but when he ordered them to cleanse the land of frogs, they could only stare at him, then bow low.
“Great Egypt, we do not know the mysteries of how to remove them,” the oldest one admitted. “We can only conjure them.” The old man seemed to swallow hard before he added, “Perhaps if you were to beseech the god of Moses—”
“Be gone!” Thutmose yelled, his anger flashing. “What use are you to me if you cannot even overthrow the power of the Hebrew tricksters?”
But the frogs grew worse. Much worse.
Later that night, Bakar and I were summoned to the king’s side, and when we entered his chamber, we put our heads on the ground before him. He was standing at the balcony overlooking the city from high above it. His expression was stony.
“Bring Moses and Aaron before me.”
Bakar and I made our way through the mass of frogs to the riverbank, where Moses and Aaron had been camping. The two of them were standing at the edge of their fire, fully dressed with staffs in hand, as though they had been expecting us.
When we brought them before the king, he said, “Plead with the Lord to take away the frogs from me and my people, and I will let the people go and sacrifice to the Lord.”
The brokenness on the king’s face shocked me. This did not appear to be a ruse.
“Tell me when you would like me to plead, so that the frogs are cut away,” Moses said carefully.
“Tomorrow,” the king said. He was struggling to maintain his bearing and apparently desired to exert whatever control he was offered.
Moses nodded. I would have expected a triumphant look on his face, but there was none. Only resolve.
“Be it as you say, so that you may know that there is no one like Yahweh our God. The frogs will go away from you and your houses and your servants and your people. They shall be left only in the Nile.”
The two men left.
The next day, all of the frogs died. Everywhere lay dead and rotting frogs. Your imagination can inform you of how awful that was, Othniel. And yet, true to his form, the king appeared to find his inner strength once the terror had passed.
Not strength, I should say. Stubbornness. Hardheartedness. Strength does not reflect in the suffering of the innocent.
The next plague came. Yahweh was relentless.
On this day, when I was checking the guards, Moses came forward with Aaron to the steps of the palace of the king. Crowds were always passing in front of the grand steps, and now they stopped to see the old, dusty Hebrews.
Under the gaze of the great statues of the king that had been built as columns, Moses touched Aaron on the shoulder.
Aaron raised his staff up high over his head.
We all froze, watching with dread what they would do next. Everyone recognized them as the Hebrew magicians who had struck the land with blood and frogs.
“Spare us!” some of them cried out. “Spare us! Do not afflict the land again!”
I tried to get my muscles to respond, to move myself down the steps to shove them away. But I was mesmerized by Aaron’s staff, which glinted in the late afternoon sunlight, hovering above him like a sword that he was about to drop across a neck.
“Behold, great king!” Aaron called so that all could hear him. Total silence was now in the streets.
“Because your heart has become stubborn, Yahweh has decided to smite the very sand and dust of this Egypt, so that you will know that he is the Lord of earth as well as water! Your gods will crumble before him!”
Then Aaron swung the staff down. The top of it thudded into a pile of dirt that had been kicked up by the hooves of donkeys pulling carts through the streets. A puff of dust rose from where the staff had struck, but instead of rising and dispersing as one would think, it seemed to hang there suspended a moment, as though it had been called to attention and would not move unless commanded.
We watched the dust cloud apprehensively, and just when I thought perhaps their god had abandoned them at last, an ear-shattering crash was heard above us in the sky like a strike of lightning, and the dust cloud from the end of Aaron’s staff erupted into a column of sand that blew densely skyward, reaching up and growing in size and swirling in fury. It darkened the sun briefly as it cast its shadow.
And then it burst outward, showering us with the thickest, densest cloud we had ever known. I gagged as my lungs filled with the dust . . . but it was not dust.
A crawling sensation began all over my flesh. I looked down at my hands and forearms.
In numbers beyond the calculations of our greatest mathematicians were lice, crawling and
swarming on my skin and the skin of those around me. We inhaled them, gagging and coughing. The sky grew dull brown, filled with the swarm.
I swatted at them. I scraped them from my flesh. I tried running and jumping, hoping to shake them off of me, not comprehending it at all. The frogs were awful, but this? Would we survive?
Water!
I staggered toward the nearest fountain but saw it was already full of palace men who had the same idea. Coughing, vomiting, my stomach and lungs retching to get rid of the irritants, I staggered through the porticos of the palace until I reached the lagoon where others sought relief as I did, but there was room for us.
Dimly visible outside the lagoon were thousands of people diving into the Nile, not caring if they were eaten by crocodiles so long as they could get relief from the lice. Many were eaten. I heard their screams of agony as they died with their eyes and mouths full of lice, their legs cut away from their bodies by slashing teeth. Many drowned in a pool of their own blood.
I did not pay them mind, though, because I did not care if I was eaten by a crocodile either. I dove into the water and held my breath for as long as I could. I listened to the gurgling sounds of others who were submerged as well. It finally occurred to me that the lice had slid off my flesh when I submerged, but hearing the thrashing of the Egyptians around me, they could not get the creatures to release their bites.
I suffered, yes. The lice crawled over my skin. They burrowed into my underarms and filled my eyelids. I stood, took a breath between my clenched teeth to prevent them from going into my lungs, felt them cover my head and face, and then submerged once again.
They washed away from my face. At the end of my next held breath, I emerged from the water and decided to hold very still. I kept my eyes and mouth closed. I stuck my fingers in my ears and curled my lip so my nostrils were blocked.
I must have looked absurd, but I knew that the lice could not swarm into any of the openings in my head.
I waited.
The tiny creatures continued to brush against me as they were carried by the wind, but the storm seemed to be subsiding. The breeze began to slow.
I opened my eyes slightly and saw that the air was clearing of them. They had been blasted from the source of Aaron’s rod like a windstorm, multiplying endlessly and with impossible speed, sent high into the sky to rain down on us, and now they were settling down. They were flightless insects, carried by the wind, and now that the wind had died they covered the ground in their hordes. Like the frogs, it would be impossible to step anywhere without touching thousands of them. They coated the trees, the Nile, the banks, everything around us.
I submerged once more into the river to wash off any remnants from my body, then came up to gather myself. I looked around the lagoon at the people writhing with itches, scraping flesh with fingernails, rubbing stones against their faces and arms to rid themselves of the tiny insects that had latched on and would not come off.
Shaken, I walked along the lice-covered path back to the palace. Up the steps and into the hallway, I passed dozens of people shrieking in terror at the infestation.
I went to the command post, where the palace guard kept its quarters. The strongest, most robust men in the guard were writhing on the floor or scraping their backs against the stone walls. I saw Bakar tearing at his eyes with his fingers.
“Bakar!” I called. “Bakar, over here!”
But he did not hear me over the wailing of the others. It did not matter, because I saw what I needed to see. He was affected exactly like the others.
I wandered the streets with those who suffered.
A night passed, then the next day. I scratched at my body until my flesh was red and raw. I hid in the shadows of the throne room as Pharaoh, his own body covered with the foul insects, screamed at the magicians. He sat on his throne, berating Nembit in particular.
“Conjure them! Conjure them for me now!”
Nembit bowed low before the king. The ruthless old magician was defeated and carried this on his countenance. He said, “Great Egypt, we cannot conjure the lice. They are of a kind we are unfamiliar with, and our best efforts result in nothing.”
“How did you turn the water into blood? How did you create the frogs?”
Nembit appeared unsteady on his feet. “Those were tricks we had learned for the lesser gods. This . . . Yahweh . . . is conquering them.”
Soon every head in Egypt was shaved, even the women’s. The ultimate humiliation for a woman is to lose her hair. The masses of bald women were hideous; they mixed with the men and looked like a herd of barren and starving lambs being led to slaughter. Their moaning for their lost vanity was insufferable.
We men were disgusted with them and had nothing to do with them.
16
Written by the Hand of Moses
Caleb was quiet for a while. He seemed to be gathering his strength to open his mouth and speak, couldn’t manage it, and closed his lips again.
“I know this has worn you out, Uncle. It is more than I ever expected you to tell me in one day,” Othniel said.
“I am not worn out,” Caleb replied quickly. “I just need a moment to drink a little water and gather my thoughts. I remember many things with precise details. My memory fails me elsewhere. Don’t grow old, Othniel. Die valiantly as a young man.”
Othniel smiled at the teasing. “I have the record of Moses, copied by the scribes. Would you like me to help your memory by reading it?”
Caleb thought a moment. “That might be best. In truth, it might be best to let the record of Moses tell you of the next few terrors, save the last two. Those I will tell you myself. They are quite vivid to me.”
Othniel pulled a scroll out from his pack. “I copied this one myself when we were at Shechem waiting for Joshua’s blessing.”
“That is good. A man must make every bit of the law known to his mind.”
“The law is known,” Othniel said, nodding, “but this is the narrative Moses wrote. I believe it is instructive as well.”
“It is good that there is a record of what Yahweh did to the Egyptians,” Caleb agreed.
Othniel held the scroll to the lamplight and searched the writing.
“How have you kept it dry?” Caleb asked, watching him.
“It is my most sacred possession. I keep it wrapped in oiled cloth so thick that it could fall in a river and not be ruined.”
“I have an idea. Read me the parts of the narrative where the other plagues occur. They have what you need to know, but perhaps I can add my part of it.”
Othniel held the scroll up and studied it. “You told me of the frogs. The flies came next.”
Caleb nodded. “I remember them. Read it for me. I wish to hear it from the hand of Moses, for that is how Yahweh wanted it to be heard.”
Othniel cleared his throat. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Rise up early in the morning and present yourself to Pharaoh as he goes out to the water and say to him, Thus says the Lord: Let my people go, that they may serve me. Or else, if you will not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies on you and your servants and your people and into your houses. And the houses of the Egyptians shall be filled with swarms of flies, and also the ground on which they stand. But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Thus I will put a division between my people and your people. Tomorrow this sign shall happen.’
“And the Lord did so. There came great swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and into his servants’ houses. Throughout all the land of Egypt the land was ruined by the swarms of flies.
“Afterward, Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.’ But Moses said, ‘It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not s
tone us? We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.’
“Pharaoh said, ‘I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only you must not go very far away. Plead for me.’ Then Moses said, ‘Behold, I am going out from you and I will plead with the Lord that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people, tomorrow. Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the Lord.’
“So Moses went out from Pharaoh and prayed to the Lord.
“And the Lord did as Moses asked and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; not one remained. But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also and did not let the people go.”
Caleb nodded as he listened. “Yes, I remember the flies. It was like the live gnats. So many that a man could hardly breathe. We choked on them. We would wake up from our sleep, whenever we actually had any, and our ears and nostrils would be full of them trying to hatch their offspring.”
Othniel winced at this. “Where were you?”
“I had been assigned to the training regiments. The king no longer sent for me, and I requested time away.”
“They granted it to you?”
“I wore the Gold of Honor,” Caleb said simply.
Othniel looked back down at the scroll. “Next were the livestock.”
“Read it to me.”
Othniel squinted and read carefully, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh and say to him, This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the Lord will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field, on your horses, donkeys and camels, and on your cattle, sheep and goats. But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.’
“The Lord set a time and said, ‘Tomorrow the Lord will do this in the land.’ And the next day the Lord did it: All the livestock of the Egyptians died, but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died. Pharaoh investigated and found that not even one of the animals of the Israelites had died. Yet his heart was unyielding and he would not let the people go.”
