The Last Testament: A Memoir (15 page)

¹¹
Aaron spoke first, in soothing tones; he told them that tomorrow would be the day of their liberation, and that they should pack their raiment, and fill their bags with food; and above all, that they would not have time to leaven their bread.

¹²
He dwelled on this issue for a long time, and rightly so; for one of the few commodities the Jews could afford and obtain in decent amounts during their time in captivity was yeast;

¹³
And as a result, their principal manner of displaying their relative wealth to one another, was overyeasting.

¹⁴
Overyeasting was a major part of their lives: families would peek into the windows of one another’s clay hovels, and peer atop their hearths, and comment upon the size of each other’s bread;

¹⁵
Or a wife would stop by next door with a fresh-baked “high loaf,” on the pretense of being friendly, but in truth simply to demonstrate to her neighbor, that her husband was rolling in yeast.

¹⁶
So Aaron explained I would be adopting a zero-tolerance policy regarding leavening, not even a single slice “for the road”; and that all baked goods leaving Egypt would have to be flat as a board, and taste like drywall.

¹⁷
On the positive side, they were free to pack all the other delicacies still eaten at seders today; such as bitter herbs, and sprigs of parsley, and eggs, and triple chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream;

¹⁸
Which last item everyone forgot, somehow.

¹⁹
But the Jews also needed to be told of the “pass over” plan; and on this topic Aaron wisely let Moses do the talking.

²⁰
The great prophet had spent all day covering himself in Nile mud, carving more runes upon his brow, and dropping tabs of hyssop;

²¹
And now he gathered around him the Jews—whom he had long since begun calling “The Moses Family”—and said unto them,

²²
“Dude, the fuckin’ shit’s goin’ down
tonight.

²³
This
is what we’ve been waitin’ for;
this
is what Pharaoh’s been fearin’, man, the reckoning.

²⁴
So if you know what’s good for your family, then each of you take one of your sheep, your precious fuckin’ sheep, and get set to introduce it to Mr. Shinyblade, man; ’cause tonight I charge ye all with mass slaughter; kill the sheep, kill ’em all, and smear their blood over your doorframes, and write ‘Isis Crisis’ with it, too.

²⁵
’Cause guess what, people? ‘Moses says your little lambs, little lambs, little lambs, Moses says your little lambs
all need to fuckin’ die!
’”

²⁶
True story: it played even creepier than it reads.

CHAPTER 6

¹
I
t is a truth universally acknowledged that the slaying of every firstborn male, boy, and animal can be an effective means of moving a diplomatic imbroglio toward a peaceful resolution.

²
Upon being apprised of the news, Pharaoh proved immediately amenable to the exit strategy proposed by Moses; and by that evening all 600,000 Chosen People—and also their wives and children, who in a sense were also human beings—were walking to the Red Sea along the principal caravan route;

³
Which proved slow going, there being an overturned howdah on the eastbound lane.

⁴
But I caused the Pharaoh’s heart to harden again, and pursue the slaves he had just freed; and I made him and his army give chase to the shores of the Red Sea, for the reason stated in Exodus 14, twice, in verses 4 and 18: “That the Egyptians may know that I am the L
ORD
.”

⁵
For I was still not 100 percent sure that the Egyptians knew I was the L
ORD
.

⁶
Yea, in the span of a week,
something
had slain their firstborn, destroyed their crops, and filled their graves with children, their rivers with blood, their homes with frogs, their streets with lions, their fields with dead livestock, their skies with darkness, and their faces with carbuncles...

⁷
But it might have just been a coincidence.

⁸
A reasonable person could still credibly explain these events as a series of unrelated natural phenomena.

⁹
So I thought, “But if the Egyptians see me part an entire
sea,
and watch the Jews cross through it; and then, when they attempt to follow, if I drown their entire army all at once;

¹⁰
Then they’ll
definitely
know I am the L
ORD
.”

¹¹
So we put the plan into action; but a small problem arose when Moses led the Jews to a point on the coast where the sea was wider than I had requested.

¹²
For he had disobeyed me by detouring through an abandoned desert ranch he knew of; saying he wished to “crash” there, and indoctrinate some of the comelier Chosen into certain arcane rituals of his own invention.

¹³
His defiance forced me to displace three times the amount of water I had been preparing to; not that I was incapable of doing so—for as thou mayest recall, I am the L
ORD
thy God, King of the Universe—but it did make it more of a hassle for the interns.

¹⁴
And the Egyptians approached; and Moses spread his hand out over the waters at sunrise; and I blew the winds all night, until the Sea was parted; and it took the whole of that day for the legions of children of Israel to walk across it into Sinai;

¹⁵
Thereby setting the world record for Largest Successful Naval Evacuation from an Anti-Semitic Army, which they held until 1940.

¹⁶
Then, just as the last Israelite family (the Zykoriahs) arrived on the opposite shore, the Egyptian vanguard began trekking across what was now the Red Valley; awed by the giant walls of water suspended on either side of them.

¹⁷
And those who looked up still further saw a strange and mysterious sight: for halfway between the sand beneath them and the sun above floated in the sky a giant red button; and hovering over this button, descending from heaven, was the tip of a single giant finger.

¹⁸
And now comes what was, and remains, a very embarrassing moment for me.

¹⁹
Long had the angels and I debated the wittiest and most memorable phrase for me to utter when I pressed that button.

²⁰
Gabriel had pitched, “Hey, Egypt, you’re all washed up!”; a little hack, I felt.

²¹
Raphael had pitched, “Hey, Egypt, ‘water’ you doing?”; meh.

²²
And Uriel had pitched, “Here’s some coverage that’s Pharaoh
and
balanced!”; a cunning pun, but on a slogan that would not exist for nearly 5,000 years.

²³
But Michael had pitched, “Time to turn the Red Sea . . . into the
Dead
Sea!”, and this I liked immensely; for it had the necessary wit, and punch, and even an internal rhyme.

²⁴
And so I floated among the stars, my anthropomorphized finger inches from the button, awaiting my cue.

²⁵
Yet when the last man in the Egyptian rear guard left the shore and entered the dry sea, and it was time to say the line and press the button, a powerful feeling came over me.

²⁶
It was the same feeling I had felt watching Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac; only devoid of guilt, and multiplied in intensity 200,000 times.

²⁷
I became lost in the moment; thankfully Michael was there once more to nudge me back to duty, but I had lost my focus; and as I hit the button, I said:

²⁸
“Time to turn the Red Sea . . . into the
Red
Sea!”

²⁹
Time to turn the Red Sea into the
Red
Sea?!

³⁰
That is a tautology; it made no sense at all; on no level didst it work, not even as a metaphor for blood;

³¹
For having monitored the subsequent deluge I can tell thee that but for a handful of small lacerations suffered by soldiers hit by onrushing mollusks, all 200,000 people and 100,000 horses died of drowning; there was virtually no blood.

³²
I was keenly embarrassed; so much so that I left my mistake out of the Old Testament, and once again was left to ponder an uncomfortable truth about my attitude toward human suffering.

³³
Yea; maybe there
was
something seriously wrong with me.

³⁴
But worse, I had blown the line.

CHAPTER 7

¹
I
magine driving an enormous, ungainly vehicle through a barren and unfamiliar desert; the air is scorching; the road is unpaved; thy brother is in the passenger seat, staring jealously at the steering wheel;

²
And in the back sit 600,000 children, who do naught but whine incessantly, “I’m thirsty!” and “Are we there yet?” and “The tribe of Napthali is touching me again!”

³
Now imagine this drive is of two-month duration, and thou wilt acquire some sense of what the ensuing 60 days were like for Moses.

⁴
The people’s first complaint was for water for drinking; I addressed this by having Moses strike his rod against a rock, which split open and gushed forth.

⁵
The people’s second complaint was for water for washing; I addressed this by having Moses strike his rod against a boulder, which split open and gushed forth into a natural basin.

⁶
And the people’s third complaint was for water for hydrotherapy; I addressed this by dropping a firehose from heaven and spraying the filthy ingrates at 50,000 pounds per square cubit.

⁷
Having addressed their water concerns, the people next moved on to grumbling about food; an issue I resolved that night, and every night for 40 years thereafter, by scattering their campground with the miraculous provision known as manna.

⁸
Manna was food for traveling that fell from the sky; and if thou hast ever partaken of the food they serve in the sky when traveling, thou hast a pretty good sense of what it tasted like.