And when Moses saw that the people were naked
for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies,
Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come unto me.
And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them,
Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side,
and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,
and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses:
And there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
Act 1 Scene 1: The Calling of Moses.
Only one
infinite
omnipresent
unperceived
and inconceivable God!
Here lay your shoes aside. You have gone far enough now;
You stand on holy ground. Be God's prophet!
God of my fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
who reawakened their great thoughts in my own mind,
O God, ask not Thy servant to be Thy prophet.
I am old, I ask Thee let me tend my sheep in peace.
You have seen your kindred enslaved, the truth you have known,
so you can do nothing else:
You must set your folk free!
Who am I to combat the power and force of that blindness?
United with God in oneness, to Him joined, from Pharaoh torn loose!
What will give them proof of my mandate?
The name of one holy!
The Infinite will set them free; They shall no longer perish in bondage.
No one will believe me!
Before their ears you shall do wondrous things.
And their eyes will recognise you.
And by your rod will they behold you, and admire your wisdom;
By your hand they will believe your power, and feel in the Nile waters what their blood commands them.
But my tongue is not flexible.
I can think, but not speak.
Even as from this, in darkness,
ere the light of truth fell thereupon,
will you perceive My message in everything.
Aaron will be enlightened; He shall be your mouth!
From him will your own voice then issue, as from you comes mine!
And your people will now be blest, for this I promise to you:
Your folk are the chosen ones before all others.
They are the folk of the one God alone.
They are thus to know Him and give Him alone their worship.
Also they will undergo all hardships
that have, in millennia, ever come to be conceived.
And this I promise to you:
I shall conduct you forward,
to where, with the Eternal Oneness, you'll be a model to every nation.
Now be gone hence!
Aaron nears you in the wasteland.
You soon will see him approach and greet him.
Of this you are to inform him.
Proclaim it!
Scene 2: Moses meets Aaron in the desert.
O son of my father, O son of my father, brother in spirit,
are you sent by mighty. Through whom the Only One is to speak, now hear me and Him,
God? And tell me what you perceive.
My brother,
did the Almighty One give you me as His vessel,
to pour forth eternal grace on our brothers?
Grace is granted through recognition.
O happy folk, to have one god alone to belong to,
Others live within a people, only
against whose forces no other power prevails. - Only in fantasy, but God the Almighty exists apart from men.
O vision of highest fantasy,
how glad it is, that you have enticed it to form. How can fantasy thus picture the unimageable?
Love will surely not
weary of image forming. - Folk set apart to know the ever unseen One,
Happy is this folk to revere its God so! To reflect on greatness unimagined.
To love forever with a thousand time more devotion.
Chosen is this folk, one God alone
than all other earthly peoples for their many godly beings.
Folk, chosen by the Only One,
Folk, chosen by the Only One, can you worship what you dare not even conceive?
Dare not?
Not conceived, because unseen, because invisible
because infinite, because eternal, because ever-present, because all-powerful.
The one God is almighty.
Thou punisheth sins of the father on his children and children's children.
Punish? Are we able to originate what thou demand'st as outcome? O righteous God:
Thou rewardest those who are faithful...
to Thy commandments! O righteous God: Thou hast directed how everything must befall.
How good Thou art! Then who is rewarded? The one who could or...
the one who could not want things otherwise? Thou hearest the pleas of beggars,
takest up the offerings made by the good. - O almighty God, do the offerings of beggars then buy Thee, who Thyself made them poor?
Purify your thinking.
Free it from worthless things,
Let it be righteous,
no other reward is given your offerings.
Only an Almighty God could such a weak,
and downtrodden people have chosen
to exhibit all His might and His great wonders to them,
and to teach them, in Him alone to believe.
Almighty One!
Law of thought irresistible forces fulfilment.
Release them from Pharaoh's harsh bondage.
Scene 3: Moses and Aaron bring God's Message to the People.
I saw him, just as a fiery flame sprang forth and called him!
He threw himself on his knees and concealed his face in the sand.
He then went forth. In the wasteland.
He passed by my house like a luminous cloud, even so came he by.
He floated rather than walked. Hardly indeed did he touch the ground,
and quickly passed from my sight.
I called him, but he didn't notice me, or pause, and then I heard it said.
A god had commanded that he meet his brother, Moses, in the desert.
Moses, he who murdered the guard?
Moses! He ran away! We then suffered the wrath of Pharaoh! Moses! Now returning, will he stir rebellion?
Are we now bound to serve a new god? Moses! Another god: Other offerings!
He will be our protector!
The olden gods also protected us.
And if one of them failed, you could turn to another.
O ask not the gods, then, impossibility's fulfilment.
The other gods only helped our oppressors... - Stronger than our other gods? - This god will come to our aid.
I think he must be a lovely God, young and handsome and glowing like Aaron. The newest god perhaps will be stronger than Pharaoh?
If we are to judge him by this Moses then blood offerings will be needed. The new god also will not help us!
The new god helps us not! Blood offerings! Blood offerings!
Blaspheme not! There are gods who only punish, and those who only favour.
Many often must be appeased; Blood offerings!
Others can be won over forever. Blood offerings!
He makes me so glad! My heart is swelled with joy! - You soaring God, high in the heights of the heavens, higher than other gods... - If He aids, if He shields us from Pharaoh's men and also from his false gods...
O holy, worshipful God, be Thou revealed in all Thy glory. Then He shall be our God and the God of Israel,
- I serve in love of Thy greatness. - Of false and powerless images. - Whom we serve, to whom we make offerings.
A loving God - heed not the liars - He reveals himself in glory - A soaring God he lifts us to Him.
Heed not the lying ones! He will free us!
The gods don't love us! We will love Him!
Who is this would mightier be than Pharaoh's gods are?
We want to make offerings! Leave us in peace now! We want to worship!
Continue working!
Lest it become harder!
He shall make us free!
See Moses and Aaron! Moses' powerful head! Moses, his rod in his hand, moving slowly -
He's waiting or is he moving?
Moses waits! No, he's moving slowly! Moses waits! He moves! Moses waits! No, he moves!
Mighty his whitened head, and strong is his arm! His powerful head! See!
Aaron, a young man no more, moves along with a light step -
Far before him, and yet stands close to him! No he goes before! Is Aaron at Moses' side now? In front or behind him?
They are moving, but not in space!
Are nearer - are farther - are higher. Are deeper Have vanished wholly!
See Moses! See Aaron! They have arrived!
Bring you good tidings, word from the mighty new god?
Come you to lead us, once more to make us hopeful?
We yearn to give him gold, goods, and living offerings!
Take, do not ask us. Self love compels us, forces us to make offerings,
not only for his favour; Giving itself is pleasure, the highest favour!
The Only One, infinite, All-powerful One
the Omnipresent One, invisible, inconceivable. He's chosen you before all other people...
demands no offering from you: He wants not a part, for everything's wanted... and gives you alone His...
unbounded holy favour.
On your knees then, to give Him worship!
Worship? Whom?
Where is he? I see Him not!
Has He gentle or angry mien? Are we to love Him or to fear Him?
Where is he? Point him out?
We want to kneel!
We want to bring beasts for Him, and gold, grain and wine!
All will go to your God almighty, if we are His people,
if He is our God and if He guards us well.
But then where is He? Point Him out!
Close your eyes.
Stop off your hearing.
For in this way you shall hear and see him!
No living man otherwise perceives him!
Can He never be seen?
Is He never visible?
He, your most mighty of gods, cannot show Himself before us?
But the righteous shall see Him.
I saw how He gleamed! He must be our god! You soaring God!
Then why need the murderer ever fear him?
Who sees Him not is forsaken!
Then we must all be forsaken, since we still see him not! Ha ha ha!
Keep away with your new god, with this almighty one!
Through him we do not want our freedom!
Keep far away, like your god! The all-present deity!
We fear not, nor love we your god!
So little does he give reward or chastise!
Through him we do not want our freedom!
Almighty One, now my strength is exhausted,
and my thought becomes powerless in Aaron's word!
Silence!
The word is mine and the deed!
Aaron! Aaron, what're you doing? What's happening, Aaron?
This rod leads you:
Look, a serpent!
Flee! The serpent grows! It's twisting!
See, it's turning against the people!
In Moses' hand a rigid rod:
The law.
In my own hand the most supple of serpents:
Discretion.
Now stand so, as it commands!
Move! Go farther back!
Come this way! Go that way! Move! Take other places!
We are helpless. It has us in bonds!
Know then the might, that this staff
imparts to the leader!
A marvel has filled us with terror: The rod changed to a serpent, shows Aaron as lord of this people. - How great is the might of this Aaron!
Is Aaron the servant of Moses?
Does Moses in turn serve this new god?
How vast is the might of this great god,
when such mighty persons do serve him!
We want to serve him! - He shall make us free! - We want to make offerings!
Your rod compels us,
yet it does not compel Pharaoh
to give us freedom!
O your spirit has been broken
and your pride is shrunken.
Hoping not, you labour,
have no faith in God or yourselves,
for your heart is sick!
This way you will not vanquish Pharaoh!
Pharaoh is powerful! We are weak!
See Moses' hand: So hale it is, and strong.
But now Moses' heart is like your own,
because he knows you lack spirit.
Placing the hand on the heart, that's sick just as yours is,
see!
Leprous! Leprous!
Flee! Flee! Shun his path. And touch him not
you will be sick! Leprous! Leprous!
Therein see yourselves,
Weak,
sick,
detested, enslaved, tormented!
Now, even there in Moses' bosom the spirit of great God dwells,
that soon will force this Pharaoh to release you.
See!
Moses now places that leprous hand upon his strong and healthy heart...
Marvel!
The hand is now hale and strong!
Discover therein your likeness.
Your spirit shall prevail over Pharaoh.
O Aaron has shown as a marvel. The hand that can be hale or sickly,
is proof of the being of this God, who yet will not show His visage.
Through Aaron this Moses has shown as how he saw his God. O leprous the hands of the faithless, and healthy the hearts of believers...
the visible wonder shows us. The symbol enlarges to image Him, the spirited heart trusts in one God, attested by visible wonders.
Almighty God!
Everything for freedom!
Now let us shatter the shackles!
And kill the taskmasters!
And kill all their priests!
Destroy all their idols!
Off to the desert!
Madmen you are! How can the desert give you nurture?
In the wasteland pureness of thought will provide you, nurture you, sustain you...
and advance you...
and the Eternal lets you see an image of your earthly good fortune
in every spiritual marvel.
The All-knowing One knows that you are still a child-like folk
and does not expect from a child what's hard for elders.
He reasons this way: That every child grows older
and every elder shall be wiser.
He grants you time to devote to the pleasure
of preparations and the wisdom that agedness will bring with it.
He never will fail to provide you with food in the desert.
The Almighty One can change mere sand to fruit,
fruit to gold, gold to rapture, rapture to soul.
Who feeds the Nile, that nurtures this land?
He, who changed rod to serpent and health to leprosy's terror.
See the Nile's clear water within this jar:
No, you are not wrong. What you see is blood!
What does this mean?
This is your own blood, that gives the land nurture,
as the flow of the Nile.
You fatten the servants of falsehood, the slaves of false gods.
But the Almighty One will free you and free your blood.
Chosen folk!
You He has chosen over other peoples
to be the people of God alone;
Him alone to worship, in no other's service!
You will be free then from toil and misery!
This is His promise:
He will then lead you to a land where milk and honey flow.
There you shall have earthly pleasure from what in spirit was vowed your fathers.
What for Pharaoh remains, is once more the Nile's clear water alone.
And therein is he sure to drown.!
We are His chosen folk before all others,
Him alone to worship, Him alone to serve:
We shall be free then from toil and misery.
This is His promise:
He will then lead us to a land where milk and honey flow
and we shall enjoy then what He once did promise our fathers.
Almighty, Thou art stronger than Egyptian gods are,
Thou will strike down Pharaoh and all his servants.
Now we are freed from toil by Moses and Aaron.
Infinite God, we worship Thee, consecrate to Thee offerings and our devotion.
Thou hast chosen us, lead us to the promised land.
We shall be free, free!
Act 2 Before the Mountain of Revelation.
Where is Moses? - Where is our leader? It's been a long time since he was seen!
Never. Never, never shall we see him! Where is he? Where is Moses?
Abandoned are we! Where is his God? Where is the infinite? The infinite? Moses!
Moses? Never shall we see him! - Where is his god? Where is the infinite? Never, never, never shall we see him! - Where is he?
Forty days now!
Forty days now, yet we're still waiting here! Forty days now! When will this end?
How long is this to continue?
Forty days now we have awaited Moses, and still no one knows either law or command!
Unperceivable command from One who's yet unperceived.
All of the best pastures are occupied by Judah!
Far worse than in Egypt, to toil without day of rest, as Ephraim makes Benjamin's sons do!
Ephraim's women have been stolen by Benjamin's sons!
Thus might now reigns! Lewdness knows not its punishment, virtue knows not reward!
Forty days now we have waited vainly
before this summit!
When Moses has come down from the summit,
from where the laws are revealed to him alone,
you shall hear both law and command from my mouth.
You cannot expect form before idea,
for together they'll make their appearance.
That is too late for us! The people are downcast!
They distrust this high summit, for the enclosure keeps the revelation far from them.
They rage, they trust not one of us,
think the enclosure is senseless, the revelation is pretext,
Moses' silence means flight!
Hear! Hear! Too late!
Where is Moses? We'll tear him asunder,
Where is the great Omnipresent One? How can He condone this?
Where is the Almighty One? Why does He now impede us? Have no fear! Destroy him!
The Inconceivable God did not forbid it!
Give us back our gods to worship, let them bring us order,
lest we tear you limb from limb, you who took command and law away from us!
Aaron, help us! Speak out for us!
They'll murder us! They pay you heed! You have their hearts!
O Israel,
my brother Moses tarries where he always is,
though he be near to us or far:
He rests upon that summit,
close to his God.
It may be that he has left us,
being far from us.
Or maybe his God has now left him, being so near to him.
Perhaps he approached too near!
That God is so severe,
it may he that He has destroyed him!
His God may have destroyed him! The gods have probably destroyed him!
The gods indeed destroyed him! The gods so mighty destroyed this offender! - The Infinite could not protect him. The great unseen One lets none behold Him.
The unseen One will never give help! The unseen One lets no one behold Him! His God is powerless! O slay them, kill all the priesthood!
O smite them and burn them, the priesthood, servants of the false god! O burn them! - O smite them - slay them all!
Aaron, help us.
Relent!
O Israel!
I return your gods to you,
and also give you to them, just as you have demanded.
Leave distant things to one infinite,
since to you the gods have ever present and always common substance.
Rejoice!
You shall provide the stuff, I shall give it a form: Rejoice, be glad! Rejoice, Israel! Rejoice!
Common and visible, imagined in gold forever.
Bring out your gold, yield it!
Call him forth! You then shall be happy! Our gods, imagined in our vision; Our gods, masters of our senses!
You are earthly and visible, manifest, assuring our certainty.
Your extent and your finiteness do not ask for that which our hearts deny.
O gods, near to all our feelings, O gods, we can understand you.
Virtue's prize is great ecstasy; Acts of wrong are punished by righteousness.
Show us how are deeds answered. O gods, let as see your power.
Rejoice, Israel, be glad, Israel!
Bright is this present instant, and dismal that distant timelessness.
Pleasure shuns not its consequence, fearlessly seeks it out willingly.
Joy borders life and also death, heightened by each,
from each partakes. Danger inflames our love of life, steadfastness too and bravery.
You have given your gods your innermost feelings as content and form.
Now your gods' great glory fastens your gold. Renounce all your wealth!
Make yourself poor, make them rich!
They will not let you ever hunger!
Rejoice, Israel! Rejoice!
This gold image attests that in all things that are, a god lives.
Unchangeable, even as a law, is the stuff,
the gold that you have given.
Seemingly changeable, as all else must be.
Much less matters the shape that I have provided.
Revere yourselves in this gold symbol.
O goldly form, your rays give warmth,
you heal, as never the sun's rays have healed.
I merely placed my hand on you,
and even now the crippled limbs begin moving.
Here, o great gods, take the only tatters,
that have protected us from desert sand and sun's blazing
and here are the last of our morsels,
those which we have begged for tomorrow's sustenance.
The final living moments that are still remaining to us we give as offering.
They have slain themselves as offering!
Free, under lords of their choosing,
they'll be governed only by those gods
who rule with power.
Tribal leaders,
swear now with me to this image of governing power.
We speak for all of the tribes that name us leader,
O gods, see how we kneel down before you,
We yield to a power that is higher, being highest!
Free, under lords of their choosing!
As high as thought were we once up-raised, present afar, future at hand!
Deep as life are we degraded, deep as life.
Annihilate this image of the temporal;
Clear be the view of eternity!
Here, view now eternity,
since your present life has so little value.
Happy are the folk and great is the wonder,
and the rapture, and the joy they've created.
None is untransfigured; Each is exalted.
None is unaffected; Each is enraptured.
Powerful human virtues are reawakened:
Grave and joyful; Temperate, dissolute, cheerful,
pleased and longing, active and resting. Mindfulness,
lust, abstention, greed, profusion, and envy.
All of beauty, goodness, ugliness, evil, all that can be witnessed,
manifest, sensed.
Sense first gives to spirit sense. Spirit then is sense.
Those gods who have given you spirit, sense and spirit to affect you,
let them be exalted!
O golden of gods, your glow streams through me with pleasure!
What gleams must be good.
Unassailable virtue of gold, its virginity cannot be lost,
repaid as model and image.
O golden of gods, o priests who serve gods so golden,
our blood, virginal and still unblemished,
is coldly metallic-as gold is, not warmed to bear fruit.
O great ones, enrapture your priesthood,
transport us, arouse us to first and last rapture,
Enkindle our blood, let it hiss against cold gold as forth it rushes!
O crimson gold!
Blood offerings!
In your godly image we shall let our passions live!
Holy is the creative power!
Holy is fertility!
Holy is desire!
Great gods, who have given you spirit...
Senses, spirit to affect you. O golden of gods.!
Gold gleams like lust! Gold gleams like blood!
Human virtue is gold-like!
Gold is lust! Lust is wildness!! Gold is power, devotion, and righteousness!
Bewildering gleam!
Moses is descending from the mountain!
Be gone,
you image of powerlessness to enclose the boundless in an image finite!
The golden rays are now quenched!
Once again our god is unseen. - Every joy, every pleasure, every promise is gone!
All is again dark gloom! We must now escape from his might!
Aaron, o what have you done?
Naught different, just my task as it ever has been:
When your idea gave forth no word, my word gave forth no image,
I worked marvels for eyes and ears to witness.
Commanded by whom?
As always, I heeded the voice from within.
But I did not instruct you.
Nevertheless, I still comprehended.
Cease!
Your... mouth...
Your were far away from us...
There with my idea. That must have been close to you!
When you remained apart we believed you were dead.
From your words the people had,
for long expected, both law and commandment to come.
I was compelled to provide an image for them.
Your image faded at my word!
But your word was denied image and marvel, which are detested by you.
And yet was the marvel an image, not more:
When your word destroyed my image.
God's eternity opposes idols' transience!
No image this, no marvel!
These are the commands.
The Everlasting One spoke them, just as these tables
so temporal, in the language you are speaking.
Israel endures, thus proving the idea of One Timeless.
Grant you now the power, which idea has...
over both word and image?
I discern only this:
That this folk shall remain protected.
But then, a people only feel. I love this humble folk.
I live just for them and want to sustain them.
If the idea wills it. My love is for my idea. I live just for it!
You also would have loved this people,
had you only seen how they lived when they dared to see and feel and hope.
No folk is faithful unless it feels.
You have not shaken me! They must comprehend the idea!
They live for that end!
What a piteous people, a folk made of martyrs they would then be!
No folk can grasp more than just a partial image,
the perceivable part of the whole idea.
Be understood by all the people in their own accustomed way.
Am I to debase the idea?
Let me present it then,
describing without specifying: Restrictions,
fear-inspiring yet not too harsh, insuring their understanding;
Further perseverance; The need thus will be clearer.
Stern commandments,
give rise to new hope and strengthen the idea.
Unbeknown, what you want will be done.
Human wavering you'll find your people still have... yet worthy of love.
I shall not live to see it!
You must live! You can do naught else!
You're bound to your idea so closely!
Bound to my idea as even these tables do set it forth...
They are images also, just part of the whole idea.
Then I smash to pieces both these tablets
and I shall also ask Him to withdraw the task given me.
Faint-hearted one! You, who yet have God's message,
without or with the tables.
I, your mouth, do rightly guard your idea
whenever I do utter it.
- In image! - Image of your idea;
They are one, as all is that emerges from it.
I simply yield before necessity;
For it is certain this folk will be sustained
to give proof of the eternal idea.
This is my mission: To speak it more simply,
than I understand it.
For He has chosen us! Yet, the knowing ones surely.
Before all others as His folk, to serve the only God. Will ever again discover it!
Him alone to worship.
- Look there! - The fiery pillar!
To lead us by night.
Thus through me has God given a signal to the people.
The cloudlike pillar!
It leads us by day.
Godless image!
God-sent signal, burning again glowing... where milk and honey flows.
The Infinite thus shows not Himself, He will lead us to the Land...
but the way to Him. And we shall enjoy then...
and the way to the Promised Land! What He once did promise our fathers.
Almighty, Thou art stronger than the Egyptian gods!
Inconceivable God!
Inexpressible, many-sided idea,
will You let it be so explained?
Shall Aaron, my mouth, fashion this image?
Then I have fashioned an image too, false,
as an image must be.
Thus am I defeated!
Thus, all was but madness that I believed before,
and can and must not be given voice.
O Word,
thou Word,
that I lack!
Aaron, now this must cease!
Will you then kill me?
It is not a matter of your life...
The Promised Land...
An image...
I was to speak in images, while you spoke in ideas;
I was to speak to the heart, you to the mind.
You, from whom both word and images flee,
you yourself remain, and live in the images you provided for the people to witness.
Having been alienated from the source, from the idea,
then neither word nor image satisfied you...
I was to perform visible marvels, when the word and the image from the mouth failed...!
But you were satisfied only by the act, the deed.
You then made the rod a leader, of my power a liberator. And the water of the Nile attested the supreme might...
You then desired actually, physically, to tread with your feet...
upon an unreal land where milk and honey flowed.
You then struck the rock, instead of speaking to it, as you were commanded,
to make water flow forth from it...
The word alone was to have struck forth refreshment from the naked rock...
Never did your word reach the people without meaning...
And so with the rod I spoke to
the rock in its language, which the people also understand.
You speak more simply than you understand,
for you know that the rock is, like the wasteland and the burning bush,
three that give not to the body what it needs with regard to spirit -
the soul, whose very renunciation is sufficient for eternal life.
And the rock, even as all images, obeys the word,
from whence it came to be manifested.
Thus, you won the people not for the eternal one,
but for yourself...
For their freedom - so that they would become a nation.
To serve, to serve the divine idea is the purpose...
of the freedom for which this folk has been chosen.
You, however, expose them to strange gods,
to the calf and to the pillars of fire and cloud;
For you do as the people do, because you feel and think as they do.
And the god that you showed to them is an image of powerlessness,
is dependent upon a power beyond itself,
must fulfil what it has promised, must do
what it is asked, is bound to its word...
just as men act - well or badly - so must it;
It must punish their wickedness, reward their virtues.
But man is independent and does what pleases him
according to free will.
Here images govern the idea, instead of expressing it.
The Almighty One - forever remaining so - is not obliged to do anything,
is bound by nothing.
He is bound neither by the transgressor's deeds,
nor by the prayers of the good, nor by the offerings of the penitent...
Images lead and rule this folk that you have freed,
and strange wishes are their gods, leading them back
to the slavery of godlessness and satisfaction.
You have betrayed God to the gods, the idea to images,
this chosen folk to others,
the extraordinary to the commonplace...
Shall we kill him?
Whensoever you went forth amongst the people and employed those gifts
which you were chosen to possess so that you could fight for the divine idea
whensoever you employed those gifts for false and negative ends,
that you might rival the lowly pleasures of strange peoples,
and share them,
and whenever you abandoned the wasteland's renunciation
and your gifts had led you to the highest summit,
you were ever hurled back,
as a result of that misuse,
into the wasteland.
Set him free, and if he desires,
he may live.
But even in the wasteland you shall be victorious
and achieve the goal: Unity with God.