8. In the Wilderness

In the wilderness once more. – The people’s murmuring over the lack of food. – Surfeit. – The remains of graves. – The spies and the people’s faint-heartedness. – The forty years’ wandering. – The decline of spirit in Moses and his shattered hopes. – The death of Aaron. – The attack of venomous serpents. – The last days of Moses’ life. – The dying vision of the Promised Land. – A touching death.

From Sinai to the southern borders of Palestine, in a direct line, it is reckoned to be no more than three hundred and fifty versts, and so the Israelites might look cheerfully into the future and console themselves with the hope of soon reaching the blessed land flowing with milk and honey. But this hope was not destined to be fulfilled. There is no direct road to Palestine; it winds through the desolate ravines and valleys of the peninsula. Properly speaking, there was never any beaten track here, and its place is taken only by mountain paths leading often through scarcely passable ravines. One may imagine, therefore, what hardships once again lay before the whole mass of the people, compelled to move with an enormous baggage train and with their flocks. Directly to the north the way was wholly barred by a mountain ridge running across the peninsula, and so they could move only toward the northeast – toward the shore of the Gulf of Akabah, which forms a branch of the Red Sea washing the eastern part of the peninsula.

During the long encampment at Sinai the people had already forgotten the hardships of the journey through the wilderness, as well as all the wondrous signs that had accompanied them on the way; and so, when they once again saw the wilderness before them, and were once again compelled with incredible exertions to push forward over rocks and sands – now climbing rocky heights, now descending into precipitous gullies – there arose again in their midst a faint-hearted murmuring against their leader. The hardship of the journey, which wore down their strength, naturally aroused a craving for more nourishing and substantial food than the people could obtain in the wilderness (the manna), and so one of the chief objects of discontent was precisely the lack of meat. The murmuring first showed itself among certain foreigners who had come out of Egypt together with the Israelites, and then passed over to the latter as well. At the sight, perhaps, of the sea, they remembered Egypt. The bitterness of Egyptian bondage had already been considerably effaced from their memory, and at the sight of the dreadful hardships of a free life in the wilderness they recalled only how they had eaten flesh there from the pots, and besides that «the fish, the cucumbers and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick.» «But now,» they cried, «our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes»[1]. This senseless murmuring brought about a repetition of the wondrous provision of the people with quails, but their being filled with them was at the same time a punishment for the discontented. Owing, perhaps, to an immoderate consumption of the meat, a terrible mortality broke out among the people. It is remarkable that on the way to Akabah Professor Palmer came upon the remains of an ancient encampment, surrounded by an extraordinary multitude of graves, which he connects with the mortality among the Israelites. Thus here we have palpable traces of the Israelite camp of Kibroth-hattaavah, or «the graves of lust.» A day’s journey farther on he discovered the traces of another large encampment, where even the sites of separate households may be discerned, with hearths and contrivances for the preparation of food. This place is undoubtedly Hazeroth, where likewise the Israelites halted in camp, the more so since to this very day it is called by the Arabs, after the ancient fashion, «the watch-post of Hazeroth»[2]. At the same time there survives among the Arabs a dim tradition that here a caravan of pilgrims once lost its way and was compelled to wander for many years in the Wilderness of Et-Tih, whence the wilderness itself derives its name («the wilderness of wandering»). Since no Mussulman caravan setting out on pilgrimage to Mecca could ever have lost its way here, it is altogether natural to suppose that the Arab tradition has in view precisely the wandering of the Israelites here[3].

At length, after heavy trials and misfortunes that overshadowed the spirit of the great leader – who was compelled to endure unpleasantness even from his own sister Miriam, who quarrelled with his wife and reproached him with his marriage to a woman of impure blood – the Israelites arrived in the Wilderness of Paran. The spirit of the people kept falling, and so it was necessary to raise it. Therefore Moses chose twelve men and sent them, at the head of whom was Joshua the son of Nun, as spies into the Promised Land, hoping that their tidings of the land’s fertility and wealth would awaken in the people courage and a desire to move toward it more quickly for its conquest. They were to examine the soil, the supplies of water, the climate, the character of the inhabitants, and the strength of their cities and fortresses. This was in July or August, when the first clusters of grapes ripen. The charge was successfully carried out by them, and after six weeks they returned to the camp. But their report was far from comforting to the people. They did not deny the wondrous fertility of the land, and in proof of it they brought back enormous clusters of grapes; but at the same time they so terrified the people with tales of the strength of the inhabitants of Palestine and the impregnability of their cities and fortresses, that their tales cast the whole camp into despair. This was the decisive moment in the history of the people, and the Israelites proved unready for it. Instead of going boldly and manfully forward, they faint-heartedly gave themselves up to despair and lamentation, and were ready to choose a new leader who would lead them back into Egypt. In vain did Joshua and Caleb strive to sustain in the people courage and the hope of a successful conquest of the Promised Land, if only it would remain faithful to Jehovah and rely upon His almighty help – the people had gone mad with fear, would listen to no arguments, and were even ready to stone the bold men. This sorrowful event decided the fate of the people. Moses saw that the people he had set free were, even after their liberation, slaves; that they were therefore unworthy of the Promised Land and must perish in the wilderness. Only the next generation, born and grown up already in freedom, would see and take the land that was but a dream for its hapless fathers. With a heavy heart Moses was compelled once more to lead the people back into the heart of the Sinai wildernesses, that by the hard school of a forty years’ wandering he might make it more worthy of its higher destiny.

The biblical narrative reports but few features from the history of the forty years’ wandering. It was a silent school of toil and of trials of every kind, out of which the people was to come forth renewed and reborn. Of the life of the Israelites in the wilderness one may easily form an idea from the life of the Arabs who now wander over the peninsula. According to the time of year, they moved with their flocks into the various plains of the peninsula, passing from one plain to another, and in part occupying themselves with sowing on the small plains that offer convenience for agriculture. The hardships of this life for so numerous a people were incredible. Now they were scorched by an unbearable heat; now the murderous sirocco blinded them with sand; and when winter caught them upon the heights of the peninsula, their camp was not seldom buried under snowdrifts. Often there must have been felt a lack of food and of wholesome water. All these hardships were the cause that the number of the people did not increase in the least; on the contrary, by the end of the wandering there proved to be two thousand souls of the male sex fewer than there had been at the setting out from Sinai. The wilderness was naturally a school not only of physical but also of moral education. Throughout the whole time of the wandering there were in force extraordinarily strict laws, which mercilessly punished every transgressor of the religious or social ordinances. Not only was blasphemy, for instance, punished with death[4], but even less grievous offences. Thus one man was stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath day[5]. It was necessary to accustom the people to the exact fulfilment of the law given at Sinai, and so all transgressors of it were punished mercilessly. If individual non-observers of the law were thus punished, then with still greater severity, of course, must those have been chastised who consciously and criminally rose up and stirred the people against the ordinances of the law. So it was in the well-known affair of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram[6], who raised an open revolt against the lawgiver, and especially against the institution of the priesthood as a special dignity appropriated to one class alone. They demanded the recognition of a universal priesthood. The religious protest, as always happens, quickly passed over into a political one, and they had already begun to rise up against the leader himself, refusing him obedience. When Moses summoned them to come before him for judgment, they answered insolently: «We will not come up. Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a prince over us?» On this occasion the revolt assumed enormous proportions. To the rebels there joined themselves two hundred and fifty elders, and it is hard to say how this affair would have ended had not the earth swallowed up the rebels and fire consumed their accomplices. This incident showed that for the people a mere ordinance was not enough; it had to be confirmed by a visible sign, and this sign was given in that, out of the twelve rods of the representatives of the tribes, the rod of Aaron alone blossomed, which was a palpable confirmation of his high-priestly dignity.

Tens of years passed in the wandering through the Sinai wilderness. The generation brought out of Egypt was gradually dying off, having despaired of reaching the Promised Land. It had shown itself unworthy of the land, and therefore had to yield its place to a new generation, brought up amid the toils and hardships of the wilderness. Only such a generation, tempered in toil and in obedience to the law, could meet manfully the numerous enemies and cleanse from them the Promised Land. And this new generation Moses led, at last, to the borders of Canaan. What an immense period separated him from the moment when, while still in the splendid palace of Pharaoh, the thought of liberating his people had first flashed upon him! Then he had burned with the hope and daring of youth. For forty years he had then been compelled to live by his great hope, until at last it was realized. He had led «his brethren» out of Egypt; out of a wretched throng of fugitive slaves he had transformed them into a people; he had given them a law and an organization. But, alas – the generation he had liberated proved unworthy of freedom and of the land that had been destined for it to possess. And so the leader, already grown grey with age, had to wait yet another forty years before his hope could be realized. Amid the numerous trials and grievances inflicted by a perverse and ungrateful, stiff-necked people, it is no wonder that at last in Moses himself the once bright and unshakable hope wavered. When once the people again raised a murmuring against him over the lack of water, and Moses had once more to bring it forth miraculously from the rock, his confidence in the possibility of a miracle had already failed him; and although he did indeed bring water out of the rock, he did so with a feeling of irritation and despair[7]. This incident decided his fate also, and he, together with his brother Aaron and with the whole elder generation of the people, was to lay his bones in the wilderness. The new generation was to be led by a new leader as well.

From the camp of Kadesh, where Moses with his rod in irritated unbelief shattered all his hopes, and where also his sister Miriam died, he with a heavy heart led his people toward the borders of Palestine, into which he himself was not destined to enter. And scarcely had he set out on the way with the aim of skirting the Gulf of Akabah, when there came to pass that sorrowful event which was a mournful foretoken of the speedy fulfilment of the judgment of God upon him also. To the northwest of the rocky ruins of Petra there rises high above the surrounding hills the craggy Mount Hor, with its two pointed summits. In the expression of Ritter, it rears itself in solitary majesty, rising high into the blue of the sky, like a huge, majestic, but ruined rocky city, with great crags, sheer granite walls, towers, and bare points of every kind[8]. Upon one of these summits the great high priest of the Israelite people, Aaron, breathed his last, in the arms of his son and successor Eleazar and in the presence of a truly loving brother who had been a guiding star to him throughout his whole life. The majestic mountain was a worthy place for the death of such a man. It was a symbol of the grandeur of his spiritual life, which had been wholly devoted to the people. From the mountain there opened a marvellous view over the wilderness that had been the place of the forty years’ sojourn of the hapless people, and there to the north, in the dim blue of the distance, one could even discern the hilly soil of the Promised Land. A poor tomb upon the summit of this mountain is acknowledged and venerated by the local Arabs as none other than the tomb of Aaron, though there are signs of its later origin.

After a thirty days’ encampment beneath the shadow of Mount Hor, which had become the grave of Aaron, the people moved farther on, to make a circuit around the land of the Edomites, who had refused their consent to let the Israelites pass through their territory. This circuit was of necessity again toilsome, and the people once more began to «be faint-hearted»[9] and to murmur against Moses, and for this they were punished by an attack of venomous serpents, from whose biting a multitude of the people perished. It is remarkable that travellers to this day meet here a multitude of serpents distinguished by the utmost venomousness. «The Arabs relate that there are found here a great number of flying serpents, three feet in length, very venomous, so that their bite brings death after it; they have no wings, but make great leaps»[10]. The only deliverance from this calamity for the Israelites lay in a sign of faith, which was represented to them in the form of a brazen serpent. This was the last trial for them, and it seems to have produced upon them so strong an impression that they no longer betrayed their faint-heartedness in ungrateful and base murmuring against the leader, who was even without this exceedingly oppressed not only by the weight of his advanced years, but also by all the misfortunes and incredible toils and grievances that had fallen to his lot.

But the field of Moses’ activity was visibly drawing to a close. Behold, after several victories over the native tribes, he had brought his people already to the very borders of the Promised Land. It was needful to sum up the whole of his past life. Therefore Moses once more made a numbering of the people he had liberated, and made a new review of all the legislation he had given. The great leader already felt upon himself the breath of death, although «his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated»[11]. He had, it seems, already for some time before his death handed over the whole burden of the governance of the people to his successor, while he himself lived that inner spiritual life which until then had been cramped in him by the cares of everyday labours. Now he calmly gave himself up to prophetic contemplation, and to this time belongs his composition of those inspired songs and prayers in which were foretold the destinies of Israel. But now the end too had come. He had to part from his people, but he longed at least from afar to look upon the land of his once bright hopes and dreams. Therefore from the plains of Moab he ascended Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which rose above the Jordan over against Jericho. From it there opened a majestic spectacle. To the east the hills went in undulating ranges, vanishing into the endless distance of the Arabian steppes. To the south, in a gloomy depth, gleamed the Dead Sea, and to the north the Jordan wound like a blue ribbon. Beyond the river rose the summit of Mount Gerizim, and farther on spread the plain of Esdraelon, beyond which in various places Tabor and Hermon towered like giants. There it was, the Promised Land, into whose borders he was not destined to enter! But great men are content with little, and the great leader and lawgiver of the Israelite people, having gazed upon the Promised Land, deemed himself entitled to leave his earthly course in peace. He died upon this mountain, and «no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day»[12].

And so the Israelites were bereft of their great leader and lawgiver, and this loss they bewailed for thirty days. A sense of orphanhood took hold of them all. He had been not only their liberator, but also their father and educator. By his legislative wisdom he had raised them to the level of an organized national life; he had given them laws and a morality, by virtue of which they became, in the spiritual respect, a light to the peoples of the ancient world. His love for his people was infinitely self-sacrificing. He had the right to say of himself that he had cherished them as a nursing-mother cherishes a child. His patience in governing a perverse and ungrateful people was astonishing. How many grievances and the most cruel affronts he had to endure from the people he had liberated, yet he magnanimously consigned all to oblivion, and himself by fervent prayers strove to turn aside the righteous wrath of Jehovah. He was a spiritual giant, with a giant’s mind and an infinite goodness of heart, a legislative genius, a holy prophet, and the glory of mankind.

It is no wonder that the death of such a man is surrounded by a multitude of legends, which from various sides characterize his personality. One of them touchingly describes the very moment of his death. «When Moses was ascending the mountain,» says this legend, «he met three men digging a grave, and asked them: for whom are you digging this grave? They answered: for a man whom God will call to Himself into Paradise. Moses asked leave to take part in the digging of a grave for so holy a man. When the grave was ready, he asked: have you taken the measure of the dead man? No, they answered, but he was of thy stature, lie down in it. – Moses lay down. These three men were the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Zagzagel. The angel Michael then stood on one side of Moses, Gabriel on the other, and Zagzagel stood at his feet, while above his head appeared the majesty of God. And the Lord said to Moses: close thy eyelids, and he obeyed. Then the Lord said: lay thy hand upon thy heart, and he did so – draw thy feet together, and he did so. Then the Lord God turned to the soul of Moses: Holy soul, My daughter, for a hundred and twenty years thou hast dwelt in this spotless vessel; but now thy hour has come, go forth and enter into Paradise. But the soul, trembling and with sorrow, answered: In this pure and spotless body I have passed so many years that I have come to love it, and I have not the courage to leave it. My daughter, answered the Lord, go forth! I shall set thee in the highest heaven, beneath the cherubim and seraphim who bear My everlasting throne. But the soul still tarried and trembled. Then God bent down to the face of Moses and kissed him. And the soul leaped for joy, and together with the kiss of God went into Paradise. Then a sorrowful cloud darkened the heavens, and the winds howled: who now is left on earth to struggle with sin and error? And a voice answered: such a prophet never arose before. The earth wept, saying: I have lost a holy one. Israel wept, saying: we have lost a leader. And the angels sang: he has departed in peace into the hands of God»[13].

After Moses the headship over the people of Israel passed to Joshua the son of Nun, a brave and proven captain, to whom it was destined to conquer the Promised Land. But his activity, which now unfolded upon the soil of Palestine, does not enter into the field marked out for these sketches.