Face to Face with Moses by Stephen Zelnick

[Michelangelo’s “Moses”, church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Muscular, commanding, poised for action. His horns result from a mistaken translation of “shining rays” in Exodus 34.]

Face to Face with Moses

Stephen Zelnick (Moses) and Ronald Kostar (Interviewer) [1] A Radio Play supported by the Roosevelt Arts Project Roosevelt, New Jersey

Interviewer: I am delighted to be face-to-face with Moses, the great liberator of the Jewish people, author of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible … a man who talked with God.

Moses: Thank you, but you praise me for what belongs to God alone. I was imperfect. I don’t know who my parents were … likely I was born a Hebrew. Some say my name means “recovered from the waters” – and fits the tale of Pharaoh’s daughter fishing me from the river. I was raised in Pharaoh’s household … grew up an undisciplined playboy, enjoying my accidental royalty. And then, in anger, I killed a man and was banished. [2]

Interviewer: It is strange to think of you as a person with faults.

[Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) “The Finding of Moses, 1904. Cast adrift by his Hebrew mother, Moses was found by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised as a prince in Phraoh’s court.]

Moses: It’s all right there in Exodus -- I was easily frustrated. In my youth, life was easy. Later, when God called on me to serve Him, I was impatient … overwhelmed by what he asked me to do. I lacked experience, lacked intelligence; and at times I wavered in my faith.

Interviewer: This doesn’t sound like the Moses I have heard about.

Moses: Look … I beat a man to death and ran off into the wilderness. There I met my beloved Zipporah, married her and retreated to a shepherd’s life. When the Lord awakened me from my slumber to be His champion, I tried with all my might to convince Him I was unworthy … an insignificant person. How poor a speaker I was …. I needed my Brother Aaron’s help even to speak to Pharaoh … along with shabby magic tricks – sticks and snakes, and such nonsense. Later, in the desert, I all but gave in to my people’s complaints. I fomented a civil war that killed many Israelites. I treated my people’s enemies harshly. In the end, for my faults, God denied me entry to the Promised Land. He demands so much. [3]

Interviewer: But I see you heroic, your staff upraised, parting the Red Sea.

Moses: You’re thinking of Charlton Heston … Exodus describes a people’s liberation. But it is also my story of how I grew into my destiny as a leader. My life was difficult … my heroism imperfect. 23

[Cecil B. DeMille’s film (1956). DeMille chose Heston for his resemblance to Moses statuary. Yul Brynner provided an excellent Ramses II.]

You claim I wrote the first five books of the Bible. How absurd! Where and when could I have written them? … stories of my death and later events? Rather praise clever scribes in Babylon, collecting folktales, centuries after my time.

Interviewer: For what, then, can you take credit?

Moses: I killed an Egyptian. He was beating a poor slave, and my sense of justice drove me to it. Injustice infuriates me. I am passionate, quick to act against evil. Would a liberator be anything else? Though slow of speech, I spoke up to Pharaoh and hardened his heart against my people. Though I trembled and begged God to find another to serve Him … I carried out His commands.

Interviewer: But overcoming fears shows a greater fortitude.

Moses: Yes, that’s true. But a passionate man makes mistakes, wanders into wrong paths, arriving only later in life at his best self. That’s my Exodus story. I was angry, sometimes confused, but always whole-hearted. Hunger for life showed me the way. When I stopped to drink at a desert well, I was set upon by ruffians and beat them bloody. I was a rough fellow, angry, and capable of violence. You can’t make battle armor out of silk.

[Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540). Moses confronts the shepherds, who deny access to the well to Jethro’s daughters, and pounds them into submission.]

And there I met Zipporah and followed my heart into her clan, a free people, living simply. Jethro, my father-inlaw, taught me to lead an honorable life, based upon family affection … lessons I could not have learned from the haughty Egyptians or the disheartened Israelites. Even now, I feel Zipporah in my arms, her dark eyes aglow, her heart swelling with desire. These affections attached me to the glory of creation and to God’s endless blessings.

Interviewer: Yet you left all that when God appeared to you in the burning bush.

Moses: I was stunned; who wouldn’t be – a burning bush, God speaking to you directly?

Interviewer: You boldly asked Him his name.

Moses: Yet, listen closely, and you’ll hear my uncertainty. In thunderous voice, He answered me: “I am, that I am”! Some think this mockery. But He was saying “I am what Is” – the bedrock of reality – whatever is truthful, enduring, and feeds life at its roots. Leaving my beloved wife and children, and my father-in-law’s wise counsel, could only be at the call of ultimate reality.

[Pietro Perugino (1446-1523). In this scene, Zipporah leads her children away after Moses has departed to answer the call of God.]

Interviewer: And how resolute you were! You’re associated with death and slaughter – including the killing of Egypt’s First-born.

Moses: And this offends you? Does your world get on without blood-letting? Tell me when your nation hasn’t armies in the field, slaughtering enemies. Tell the story … without blood and suffering … of the founding of your nation. History is a cluttered and winding path towards Peace and Human Dignity.

Interviewer: Still, all those children slaughtered by God’s Angel of Death!

Moses: Oh, terrible, but unavoidable. If only Pharaoh had been a sensible Tyrant! But tyrants never are, and the people pay a terrible price.

Interviewer: Let me speak frankly … God’s regime is far from liberal and free.

Moses: Yes, I have heard, over and again, these arguments against God --- He lays down laws – 613 of them – and threatens to exterminate all who disobey. At Mt. Sinai, God’s presence so terrifies the people, they cover their ears in horror. Here is the account in Exodus, chapter 19: 16 And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people in the camp trembled. 17 And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount.

18 And mount Sinai was enveloped in smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. How well I remember! Yahweh warns He is a jealous God and demands stern morality and exacting rituals. God seems the ultimate tyrant … unyielding and greedy for power.

[Balustrade statue in the Main Reading Room of the US Library of Congress. Note the bulk and power of Moses, bearing the tablets of the laws.]

Interviewer: Exactly …

Moses: But we need to understand how God operates. Recall … the Hebrews had lived in Egypt 430 years. They had become accustomed to being slaves … and slavery does terrible things to people. The Jews worked, ate, and mated – like animals. They lost all memory of themselves as a nation, a people blessed with the sacred Covenants He had made with their ancestors.

Interviewer: You would think the Israelites would embrace their liberty.

Moses: And you would be wrong. A slave follows his appetites … prefers Egyptian “flesh pots” to the hard road to freedom. The slave does his work carelessly. He complains of his helplessness … prefers grumbling to action … lives in the moment, without past ideals weighing on him, or dreams of the future driving him forward.

Interviewer: It sounds like people I know -- and on bad days … like myself.

Moses: Without God, without “What is, and must be so”, we are enslaved to lives unworthy of us. We lose our way … the path where God leads us.

Interviewer: How grim this is … Where’s the fun? God gave us bodies -- to savor delicacies, to dance, to create heavenly music, embrace in passion, enjoy good fellowship … and, sometimes -- most delicious -- to rest and do nothing at all.

Moses: If only we could keep this in perspective! But these delights often lead to destruction, as the Israelites demonstrated, journeying to the Promised Land.

[Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Julius, 1794-1872, “Miriam’s Song”, bible engraving, 1860. The sister of Moses, Miriam, celebrated God’s victory over Pharaoh’s legions at the Red Sea in song.]

Interviewer: But why judge them harshly -- in Sinai’s desert, they were hungry and thirsty … fearful, lost … not knowing where they were, or whether they would survive.

Moses: But the Almighty was by their side, answering every need … Recall the miracles – parting the Red Sea, drowning Pharaoh’s legions; providing pillars of cloud by day and fire by night; bringing forth water from rocks; raining Manna from heaven. Wouldn’t these prove God’s fatherly care? Still, they whined and complained … day to day, forgetting what God had done for them.

[Famed for portraying mobsters, Edward G. Robinson played Dathan, a demagogue, who railed against God and Moses in DeMille’s 1956 “The Ten Commandments“.]

Interviewer: But they were wandering in a hostile desert, fearful and hungry. This hardly seems a fair test for human nature.

Moses: Look … This was not a test – God isn’t petty. His purpose was to move humanity forward and establish a holy nation … an example for all, to show what following God’s law could achieve. The “Chosen People” would show God’s power to all nations. As He explained to me in Exodus 19: 4 Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. 5 Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a special treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: 6 And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.

Interviewer: What else should we know about God? God seems always to be angry and threatening … jealous and intemperate.

Moses: Such nonsense! Yahweh a “jealous God”? Of whom would He be jealous? Other gods? – that motley collection of hallucinations? How would God be diminished when ignorant people worship a fish or a bull … or now-a-days, a rock star, an estate in the Hamptons or Hollywood’s hills, a luxury sports car?

Interviewer: Yet God appears enraged, ready to punish the Jews for ingratitude? God boasts of his anger and of terrible punishments for those who disobey.

Moses: He presented Himself to them as a betrayed lover, hungry for vengeance; an angry father threatening his children; a brutal taskmaster. It’s right there in Exodus 20: 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I -- the Lord thy God -- am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of fathers upon their children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

These are threatening words. But consider … to whom is He speaking? and how could He make Himself be listened to? We would prefer, no doubt, a calm, celestial reasoner. But in Exodus, God is speaking to a lowminded rabble, accustomed to obeying the man holding the whip.

Tell me, how would you have spoken to them? What disguises do your leaders put on to address their people? What success awaits the leader who speaks simple truths, explaining patiently? … God Almighty is a master rhetorician; He adapts Himself to His audience. He addressed them harshly for their good and not for His glory. God doesn’t need our approval. God doesn’t need to be loved.

Interviewer: Still, God’s Ten Commandments put Him first. Why doesn’t “Thou Shalt not Kill” come first, instead of our obedience? Does God’s authority eclipse all else? And your own style of leadership rejects democracy.

Moses: Democracy? … democracy provides a weak foundation. The events of Mt. Sinai show this. God asked the Israelites to enter into a contract with Him. He would make them a Holy Nation and “bear them on eagle’s wings”, if only they obeyed His laws. He promised them perfection if only they agreed to do merely that which was best for themselves. And as with Eden’s Garden, humankind betrays God’s trust. Remember their promises … and then the apple and their pitiful lies? And here, again, the Israelites agree to have no other gods, but break their promise first chance they get. [4]

[Nicolas Poussin, “Adoration of the Golden Calf” (1634). Here the Israelites revel around the fertility god, led by Moses’ brother Aaron, a leader compliant with the wishes of his people.]

Interviewer: Remind me, how did that happen?

Moses: Ascending Mt. Sinai to meet with God, I had left my brother Aaron in charge. They came to Aaron demanding a Golden Calf, and what did this politician do? He let them revel around this fertility god. They danced, they sang, got drunk, fornicated. They abandoned God -- the only reality that matters … God, whose laws would lead them to holiness, self-respect, and national honor. But Aaron, my esteemed brother, is the democratic leader – his wisdom? … give the people what they want so they will like you … and rally round you. Democracy and slavery – are they opposite, or sometimes the same thing?

Interviewer: But suppose we followed the lessons necessary for a holy nation. Wouldn’t we then need democracy to emerge from enslavement to the appetites and to false leaders?

Moses: If only we weren’t sunk in sin. Enlightenment Philosophers could imagine otherwise … but look around you, what do you see? – greed and hatred; contempt for reason, for God’s creation, and for fellow feeling. In some essential ways, we wander still in a desert of blank confusion.

Interviewer: But I can’t get passed the harshness of your actions … you started a civil war, and thousands perished. Why punish your own people for following natural desires?

[From DeMille’s 1923 “Ten Commandments”. The Israelites set out for the Promised Land. Forty years later, Moses views Canaan but cannot enter “the land of milk and honey.”] Moses: Natural desires?! All would have been lost that way … the people doing as they pleased … while the brutal desert and savage enemies destroyed them!

[Rembrandt, “Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law” (1659) Moses, twisted in rage and sorrow, smashes the two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.]

Interviewer 31 : Something else puzzles me. God looks down and sees them dancing around the Golden Calf …

and decides to kill them all, but you, a mere mortal, calm His wrath. You remind God of His Covenant, and then offer Him a lesson in politics. It’s there in Exodus: 9 And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

11 And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?

“Look here, God,” you say … as if to tutor Him … “destroying the Israelites will frighten other nations and defeat your plan to reclaim humankind.” Did God need you to explain political reality?

Moses: Think beyond the words, my friend. God does not forget His commitments and needs no lessons from me … God maneuvered me to take command in order to prove … to me … that I could. Recall, Exodus is the story of creating a nation, but also of shaping a leader. At the start, I was unworthy … but God made me understand what history requires. God forced me to accept my responsibility for this wayward people. Once I herded sheep … now I was the shepherd of my people, enforcing God’s law with threats of punishment and with guile … the “rod and staff” of the 23rd Psalm. [5]

Interviewer: So you descended Mt. Sinai, embarrassed Aaron for his weakness, and proposed a ghastly choice to the people.

Moses: To be precise, I required the faithful to go forth and slaughter those who broke the Covenant … brothers, wives, fathers, sons … thousands died that day.

Interviewer: You imposed God’s deadly law upon them.

Moses: Read closely … I told the people God had ordered me to tell them to kill family members and neighbors -- when in fact He had not … The hard truth is, God left it for me to do. When Machiavelli – that astute political scientist -- praised the politically able representatives of God, whom he called “armed prophets” -- he mentioned me, in particular, and first of all.

Interviewer: I am shocked. How justify this great lie and thousands of deaths?

[“Victory O Lord!” (1871) by John Everett Millais (1829-1896). So long as Moses holds aloft the staff of the Lord, the Israelites prevail against the Amalekites. With the help of Aaron and Hur, Moses’ failing strength insures the victory.]

Moses: Think … God didn’t have to do anything to destroy them. Without discipline, this rabble -- wandering a brutal desert and surrounded by enemies -- would surely have perished. Cleansing the community of the weak and troublesome avoided destroying the entire Jewish nation … forever. With that bloody civil war, I preserved the chance to place not only the Israelites but all humanity on the right path. The survival of humankind required it.

Interviewer: I am shocked.

Moses: Shocked, are you? Regard your own tortured history. Lincoln, like me, a liberator, also had his political moment with God … he chose to do what I did and with far greater slaughter. And where would your nation be, and the world that depends upon your nation for a model of righteousness, if Lincoln had chosen instead to preserve peace at any cost?

Interviewer: I have one final question. Exodus is a mix of adventures, miracles, and wonders … and long passages so tedious you could lose your mind.

Moses: You refer no doubt to the precise details for constructing the Tabernacle that Yahweh demanded His people build for Him. Just to recall, here is a taste of this tedium, in the words of Exodus, chapter 26: Moreover thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work shalt thou make them.

2 The length of one curtain shall be eight and twenty cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: and every one of the curtains shall have one measure.

3 The five curtains shall be coupled together one to another; and other five curtains shall be coupled one to another.

4 And thou shalt make loops of blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvedge in the coupling; and likewise shalt thou make in the uttermost edge of another curtain, in the coupling of the second.

5 Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the edge of the curtain that is in the coupling of the second; that the loops may take hold one of another.

6 And thou shalt make fifty taches of gold, and couple the curtains together with the taches: and it shall be one tabernacle.

And on it goes, like this, for 35 more dreary verses, and continuing in this exacting manner from Exodus 26

through four additional chapters, of approximately 40 mind-numbing verses each.

And to burden the reader more, these instructions are repeated at Exodus 36-40 … as if you weren’t sufficiently bored the first time. Look how clever the Bible is!! Let me explain:

Exodus asks the Israelites but also the bible’s readers to stay awake and pay attention to details … serving God requires precision and care … making the specifications so precise, and telling them in so exhausting a way, reminds us – just as careless as our ancestors -- of the close attention God requires of us.

These specifics are not about what God needs. God needs nothing. It’s we who need to learn precision and determination. Serving history requires attention to detail, things done right; humans working at the finest level of their capability. Without that, we are lost to inner turmoil – to nature’s challenge, false leaders, and the brutality of one another. Good work done with care -- as if God Himself had to be pleased with the result – that is the grounding of human dignity.

Interviewer: Our discussion has caused me to think about things I thought I understood … how to thank you?

Moses: As in all things, thank God.

Facing Page Art: Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), “The Trials of Moses” (fresco, Sistine Chapel). Moses, figure in orange, kills the taskmaster (lower right), flees, subdues the shepherds, assists Jethro’s daughters, approaches the burning bush, receives God’s commission, and leads his people from Egypt.

NOTES:

[1] Stephen Zelnick, Emeritus Professor (English Literature), Temple University, is former director of the Temple’s Intellectual Heritage Program. He is co-founder of the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC) and currently resides in Santa Cruz, California. Ronald Kostar, was a member of the Intellectual Heritage Faculty for several years. He is an artist and musician in Roosevelt New Jersey, and a Board Member of the Roosevelt Arts Project.

[2] “Moses”, or some variant of “m_s”, is a familiar indication of “brought forth from” at that time and place. “Ramses”, the Pharaoh in Exodus, means “brought forth from Ra”, the central Egyptian deity of that era. “Moses” has been taken to mean “brought forth from the waters” but might instead mean, “from the unnamable”.

[3] Thomas Paine, English friend to the US Revolution, Enlightenment pamphleteer and author of Common Sense (1791),despised the figure of Moses, and wrote as follows:

“The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): ‘And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, ‘Have ye saved all the women alive?’ behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, ‘kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.’

[4] The bible offers several moments of unexpected comedy. When Moses commands Aaron to explain the Israelites turning against God’s First Commandment, Aaron resorts to a ridiculous, politician’s evasiveness: “ For they said unto me, ‘Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.’ And I said unto them, ‘Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off.’ So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf ” (Exodus 32: 21-22).

Aaron’s childish lawyering recalls God confronting Adam for eating the apple: “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, ‘Where art thou?’ And he said, ‘I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ And he said, ‘Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?’ And the man said, ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.’” (Genesis 3: 9-12).

[5] Aaron Wildavsky, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader, University of Alabama Press (1984), a full-lengthstudy of Moses and his politics, with different interests and conclusions from this interview.

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