In my last post on the Bible I wrote about the God of Genesis as a familial ‘God’, a localised, tribal and even household deity who bestowed his favour only on particular (male) individuals. Several people who commented on that post asked when this ‘God’ becomes *the* God, or as Jo put it: When exactly was the point that transformed him from a God jealous of the others to one who could admit no others? Having read Exodus this week, I’m not sure this is exactly the right question to ask – rather it should be: What was the point at which the Israelites, as believers, were transformed into a people who could admit no other Gods? Because I’m not at all sure that God’s own position ever really changes – he is always a jealous God, aware of the inscrutable lure of other divinities. The most repeated admonition in Exodus is the second Commandmant, 'Thou shalt worship no other God but me", and, of course, there is the famous episode of the Golden Calf (32: 1-29). Rather, it is an act of God's people to forget there are other options; it is an act of their will and a result of the psychological (and mortal) pressure he puts upon them. The Israelites persuade themselves of their Lord’s omnipotence and imminence because he crows so long and so loud, and because he lavishes his time on them. But God? As I read it, part of the drama of Exodus is His overwhelming failure to convince Himself.*
[*When I refer to 'God' and capitalise 'Him' I am gesturing at the Lord as a literary character in the book of the Bible that I'm discussing, not as a divinity per se.]
Exodus is dominated (more so than I knew) by the figure of Moses, the first great ‘prophet’ of the Old Testament, who receives and delivers the ‘laws’ of God: most famously the Ten Commandments, but also the nitty-gritty of how he is to be worshipped on a day to day basis (from the correct garments for priests to wear, to the way to burn an animal offering) and how the people are to behave in all sorts of 'practical' ways (e.g. under what circumstances you can sell your own daughter into slavery).
It begins with the Israelites - the descendents of Jacob - right where we left them (in Egypt) but picks up the narrative after a two hundred year lacuna. By this time Joseph is long dead and his influence along the Nile has been mostly forgotten; a new Pharaoh (certain Biblical scholars have suggested Rameses II, others Amenhotep II) is becoming impatient with the Israelites who, happily ensconced in the most fertile region of his land, are zealously applying themselves to Gods' insistence that they 'be fruitful and mulitply'. His answer is to ‘deal shrewdly’ and enslave them, setting them to work on the great building projects of the New Kingdom; this is swiftly followed by a programme of male-child infanticide. Moses is born into these sorry days, the son of a Levite mother who saves his life by placing him in a basket and floating him down the Nile. Plucked out by the Pharoah’s daughter – a prince/pauper scenario if ever there was one! – he ‘becomes her son’.
Now comes a gap of 40 years, which Hollywood screenwriters instruct us to fill with Moses' privilege, power and burgeoning sense of honour. But we next meet him again in a moment of extroadinary inequity:
‘He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no-one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.’
Again, cinema has eagerly filled in the moral gaps of this murder: when Charlton Heston kills the Egyptian he does so in a spasm of horror and righteousness, on the spur of the moment, and is immediately struck by guilt. Not the biblical Moses though. His act is premeditated and actively concealed; he feels no remorse, except a concern that he has been found out. Even the Israelites are scared of him afterwards. The Moses of Exodus is not the stuff Hollywood melodrama is made of.
But then, neither is God. He has already tricked us into betraying ourselves to sin in the Garden of the Eden, burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah and sent the Flood; he follows up with his own 'murder of the innocents' in Exodus (oh, the irony, r.e. the New Testament. Its enough to make my sides ache). Threatening Egypt with the twelve Plagues if Pharoah doesn't release the Israelites at Moses' request and allow them back to the 'promised land' (which they left 400 years ago and which is, one would suspect, populated by other peoples by now), God repeatedly makes sure that the Pharoah will refuse. A fairly stubborn ruler to begin with, it is God who really 'hardens his heart' against the Israelites. Still, after nine plagues - of gnats, locusts, boils, blood and other nasty things - Pharoah is ready to give in... but God isn't ready to let him.
'Now the Lord said to Moses, "I will bring one more plague on Pharoah and on Egypt. After that he will let you go from here... About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharoah, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill and all the first born of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt... Pharoah will refuse to listen to you - so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt." ...the Lord hardened Pharoah's heart..." [my italics]
When Herrod orders the murder of the children in the New Testament he is only imitating God, his maker. And it's not as though God is forced into this reprehensible act of vengeance (how could he be when he is omnipotent?); no, God wants to kill the children because he can. Now you might gloss it thus: the Egyptians have been complicit in the slavery of the Israelites, and Pharoah has been particularly cruel towards them, so they deserve to be punished. Leaving aside the fact that murdering children is a terribly extreme form for retribution, this just doesn't make sense. God has no interest in the abstract immorality of slavery; in fact, he generally supports it, laying down instructions on how the Israelites should treat their own slaves. It isn't the slavery that bothers God, it is the fact that the Israelites subjection gives him a bad name. He has to show, big time, that he is all-powerful and that a) those who worship him are in for rewards (and a lot of rules), while b) those who don't, are in for punishments out of all proportion. As he says himself, he wants to show his wonders - not charitable miracles as performed by Jesus, but gut-wrenching visitations of power and pain.
This is not a God who is serene in his divinity. It is a God who feels the desperate need to prove himself; who wants to be venerated, but also to be feared; who wants to head-lock his people to him with ties of obligation and terror. Like an abusive parent he wants to subjugate his children, confusing a show of love with his fist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other news:
- The Costa Book Awards shortlists have been announced. Once you've recovered from the shock and horror of the Whitbread Award being renamed after what is basically a substandard clone of Starbucks, you'll notice that there are a few surprises there: The Meaning of Night up for first novel award, alongside The Tenderness of Wolves, two books that have had decidedly mixed reviews and Mark Haddon's appearance with what has been an anti-climax of a second novel. Then there are sins of omission: where is Sarah Waters, for example? (For the love of all that is literary, isn't she ever going to win a prize?!) My predictions at this stage? I'm uncertain about the novel categories, adults and childrens, but I'm sure Seamus Heaney has already cleared a space on his mantel piece for his third poetry prize and that John Stubbs has it wrapped up with his biography of Donne. Category winners are announced on the 10th January, and the overall winner on 7th February at what is billed as a 'glittering' ceremony packed with London's 'literati'.
~~Victoria~~