The Deliverer by Linda Rios Brook Read Free Book Online

for Moses, and Moses would explain to God why His plan could not possibly work. Finally, God told Moses to go to the elders of Israel and tell them the cavalry was coming and Moses was leading them. Together they were to go to Pharaoh and announce the exodus of the Jews. With my face still smashed into the sand all that time and goats sniffing around my protruding backside, I found myself wondering how God thought this was going to happen.
    “Surely God doesn’t think Moses can just drop in unannounced on the ruler of Egypt and get past the front door. How would Moses, a goatherd, a nobody, get in front of Pharaoh?” I puzzled it for a moment.
    “Of course he can,” I mumbled into the sand. I tried unsuccessfully to levitate myself up out of the dirt as I answered my own question. “The old pharaoh is dead. Ramses is on the throne. He and Moses were once brothers. Of course he’ll get in.”
    God told Moses exactly what would happen. Ramses would resist. There would be signs and wonders. Plagues would be unleashed, but at the end of the day, Moses and the Israelites would leave Egypt with the plunder. Moses found his tongue and began to negotiate with God.
    “What if they don’t believe me or listen to me and say, ‘God did not appear to you’?”
    Now God had been talking to Moses for about a week, saying the same thing over and over. When God didn’t strike him dead right there on the spot for lack of belief or at least terminal thickheadedness, I couldn’t stand it. It was probably a good thing for me that I was stuck in the sand, because if I could have gotten up, I would have risked my life to get in front of God just to ask Him a few questions of my own.
    “God,” I would have said, “just what is Your definition of fair ? How do the humans get away with it? Why do You allow them to question You? They express serious doubts about You, and not only do You let them live, but You also answer their doubt. Take just a moment here and think about my case. I never doubted You in the least. I had one fleeting moment of uncertainty, a simple question for clarity’s sake when the rebellion started. Do You think I would have followed that maniac in his self-destruction if I had been allowed just one minute to think things over? Why do You allow the humans to do what You would not allow the angels to do—question You? How is that fair?”
    Not even a little put out by Moses’s doubt, God said to him, “What is that in your hand?”
    “A staff.”
    “Throw it on the ground.”
    Moses threw it on the ground, and it became a snake, and he ran from it, which is just what I would have done if I could have stood up.
    Then God said, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.”
    So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake, and it turned back into a staff in his hand.
    “This is so that they may believe that the God of their fathers has indeed appeared to you.”
    I thought I couldn’t bear to hear another word as God went on and on as to how He was going to address Moses’s every concern. When I thought Moses had gone as far as he dared, he went further.
    “O Lord, I have never been eloquent. I am slow of speech, and sometimes I stutter when I’m nervous.”
    With my head still in the sand, I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the bush flame hotter. I could tell God was just about done negotiating.
    “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”
    If Moses had any brains, he’d get going while the getting’s good. He may have been treading on holy ground, but it sounded to me like he was close to treading on God’s last nerve.
    When Moses spoke again, I was convinced he was addled. It must have been those years of talking to goats. Talking goats, talking bush, probably not all that different in his mind. That must have been it. Otherwise, he never would have dared say what he