The Pillar of Fire; or, Israel in Bondage

by J. H. Ingraham

LETTER VIII.

City of On.

My dear and venerable Father:

Many days have passed since I wrote to you. You will wish to hear the ultimate issue of the command of Pharaoh, to increase the burdens of the Hebrews, and its effects upon them.

In obedience to this command, the taskmasters and officers of this unhappy people went out and strictly fulfilled it. The poor Hebrew brick-makers, in whose work coarse straw of wheat cut fine is necessary to make the clay cohere, as they are only dried in the sun, are now distributed all over Egypt seeking straw, which hitherto the Egyptian laborers brought to them in carts and laden barges. Thus dispersed, they gather stubble, and dry bulrushes, and grass, and every thing they can in their haste find on the surface of the ground; for if night comes and their tale of bricks falls short, they are beaten. As, therefore, one half of the time of many is consumed in searching the highways and fields, instead of being all the time, as heretofore, engaged only in making brick, the task put upon them is an impossible one; and everywhere the sound of the rod and whip, and the cry of sufferers, goes up from the land. At length the elders and officers of the Hebrews (for their own people are often made their taskmasters, who also had to account to their Egyptian captains for their fulfillment of the king's command), got courage from despair, and meeting the king as he was abroad in his chariot, cast themselves before him, crying, "Wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us? It is not our fault that we cannot make up the number of bricks, as heretofore, seeing straw is not given us; and thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own officers."

Pharaoh angrily answered, "Ye are idle! Ye are idle! Ye have not enough to do, or ye would not think ye had time to go into the desert to sacrifice to your God. Go, therefore, and do your tasks, for there shall no straw be given you."

"And shall we deliver the tale of bricks?" they cried.

"To the last one of them!" answered the king; and with an impatient sign for them to stand aside from his chariot-wheels, he dashed forward on his way, attended by his brilliant retinue. The unhappy men then perceived "that they were in evil case," as one of them said to me in relating this interview; and meeting Moses and Aaron in the fields not long afterwards, one of their number said, indignantly, and with grief—

"The Lord look upon you, Moses and Aaron, and judge you, because by your interference with the king, thou hast put a sword into the hand of Pharaoh to slay us."

Moses looked sorrowfully and troubled, and raising his eyes heavenward as he left them without a reply, for he wot not how to answer, they heard him cry unto his God, and say—

"Lord, wherefore hast Thou so evil entreated this Thy people? Why is it that Thou didst send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither, O Lord God, hast Thou delivered Thy people at all!"

Then came a voice from heaven, which they heard, and said—

"Thou shalt see what I will do to Pharaoh; for he shall let you go, and drive you out of his land. I am the Lord who spake to thee in Horeb, out of the burning bush; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty. But by my name Jehovah was I not known to them. I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel. Wherefore say unto them, 'I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land which I did swear to give to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you for an heritage. I am the Lord!'"

With these words, Moses sought to comfort the Hebrews, his brethren, going to them and proclaiming it to them in their ears; but for an anguish of spirit, and the great pressure of their cruel bondage upon their minds, they did not hearken unto him. Hope in their bosoms was utterly dead. Moreover, many of them looked on him with eyes of hatred, as the author of this increase of their wretchedness.

What a situation was this for the servant of God! Confident of the power and truth of Jehovah, he could not reconcile therewith this increase of the power of Pharaoh. Perhaps, at times, his own faith was severely tried.

Since then, a month has passed, during which period I saw Moses often in Goshen, where he passed his time in encouraging those of his brethren who would give heed to him.

In the mean while, Pharaoh, as if in contempt or defiance of the God of the Hebrews, has been engaged in extraordinary religious rites; and every day the streets have resounded with the music of instruments and choral songs of processions to the gods. I witnessed all of these ceremonies, and will describe some of them that are not mentioned by you in your letters from Egypt, my dear father.

On the seventh day after Moses and Aaron left him, Thothmeses went in state to the black marble temple of the sacred serpent, Uræus, to offer sacrifice and oblation to its great image of gold with jewelled eyes and hideous head. He addressed it as the god of wisdom and sagacity, and presented offerings of flowers, and a necklace of emeralds; while, for the living serpents, held sacred by the Egyptians, he left gifts of money to purchase food for their repletion.

The next day he proceeded, at the head of the priests and the most magnificent religious procession I have seen in Egypt, from his palace along the sphinx-lined avenue to the terrace of the Nile, opposite the Island of Rhoda, where stands a brazen statue of the god Nilus, with those of Osiris and Thoth on either side of its pedestal.

Descending from his chariot, he advanced to the river, and poured from a goblet, set with diamonds, a libation of wine into its waves, and invoked the river itself as a deity, concluding his prayer with a curse upon the God of the Hebrews. Then, at his command, the chief sacrificer advanced, leading a Hebrew boy four years old, whom he laid upon the altar before the statue of the god, and, at a stroke of his sacrificial knife, sacrificed there. I could scarcely refrain from a cry of horror. I knew that the Egyptians, on certain occasions, sacrificed human beings to the gods; but I never expected to behold an immolation like this. The palpitating form of the child was then taken up by two assistants, and the blood of its heart was poured forth into the Nile, as a libation to the god. The empurpled wave then received the inanimate form, amid a crash of instrumental music. This unusual libation of blood to the Nile was intended as an act of defiance to the Hebrew Jehovah.

The following day, Pharaoh made a procession to the temple of sacred frogs, on the borders of the canal of Amun. Here libations were poured out before a colossal sphinx having a frog's head, and offerings made. The frog is held sacred by the Egyptians, because it is supposed to purify the waters by feeding on poisons in the marshes and river.

The succeeding day Pharaoh, as if possessed with a religious infatuation, that now led him to seek the favor of gods hitherto neglected by him, in his dread of the God of the Hebrews, paid a visit, with all his court, to the temple of the scarabæus, or sacred beetle of Egypt. This is a marble edifice, adorned with a frieze of scarabæi, having heads of every variety of animal. The god himself is a gigantic beetle of black marble, with a human head. He is supposed to protect the temples from vermin, such as lice and fleas; for one of these seen in a temple, or upon the garments of a priest, causes ceremonial defilement, and neither priest nor temple may be made holy again but by purification.

The next day a procession was made by Pharaoh and his people to the little temple of Baal-Zebel, a deity that is reverenced as their protector from flies, which sometimes infest the land in ravenous swarms, and which, it is believed, this idol only can remove. Can Thothmeses be so superstitious? Or does he make all this show of piety merely to humor the superstitions of his people, and sustain the priests of these shrines? Does he fear Moses and his power, so as to desire to strengthen himself in the affections of the priesthood and people?

The day after the visit to the temple of the fly-god, he went in great state to the temple of the sacred ox of On, Mnevis. Here he sacrificed, prayed, poured libations, and offered oblations. It was an imposing scene, as he was attended by one thousand priests clad in rich vestments, and wearing shining crowns, the whole waving censers of gold. Of the god he asked protection to all the cattle of Egypt, and prosperity to the harvests; and then solemnly denounced the God of the Hebrews, as a God not known or honored in Egypt, and who, if He existed, was but a God of slaves.

The next day of this ten days' ovation, Pharaoh proceeded to the gloomy temple of Typhon, on the edge of the desert. Here a Nubian slave was sacrificed to the Evil Principle, by being bound to the altar and burned alive. The officiating priests then gathered the ashes and cast them high into the air, calling on their god and praying him, that wheresoever an atom of the ashes was borne on the wind, evil might not visit the place.

Thothmeses has diligently revived the human sacrifices which Queen Amense forbade, and the act sufficiently illustrates the native cruelty and superstition of the man.

Two days afterwards, having crossed the Nile in great pomp, he proceeded, in grand procession, to the temple of Serapis. The god Apis, you are aware, my dear father, has the peculiar office, besides many others, of protecting the country from locusts; and at the seasons when these destructive insects visit Egypt, Apis is invoked to command them to retire from the land.

The rites performed by the king before the god were imposing and gorgeous. He invoked him, not against locusts, but against the God of Moses!

Does not all this show a secret dread of the God he defies? Yet he knows nothing of His power, and has witnessed no act of wonder performed by Him. Doubtless he felt, that a servant who dared to be so bold and confident, must have a divine Master, who is great and powerful. Perhaps he had heard of the God of the Hebrews in times past;—of the dream of Prince Joseph and the seven years' famine;—of the destruction of the vale of Sodom, with its cities, by fire from heaven at God's command;—of the dispersion of the nations at the pyramid of Babylon;—of the mighty deluge which He caused to overflow the mountains and drown the world! Perhaps, for he is learned and intelligent enough, when Aaron spoke to him of the God of the Hebrews, he remembered who He was in times of old, and trembled to hear His name again.

Three days afterwards the king visited the shrine of Isis, and poured libations, and made thanksgivings; and invoked her, as the moon, and controller of the seasons and weather, to send abundant rains upon the mountains of Ethiopia, and the sources of the Nile, so that the annual overflow, now near at hand, may not fail, nor the land be deprived of its fertility.

Two days later, with a procession of all the priests of all the temples, and with chariots, and horsemen, and footmen,—a vast array,—he visited the great temple of Osiris, or the sun; and, after august ceremonies, himself acting as high-priest, with the high-priest of On for his assistant, he presented the statue of the god with a new crown of gold, and a crook and flail of ivory inlaid with jewels. He invoked him, by the appellation of the god of light, the dispeller of darkness, the terror of clouds, and the foe of lightnings and storms. And he implored clear skies, and serene weather for the harvests, as heretofore.

Thus the piety of Thothmeses has been quickened into unwonted activity by the dread of the God of Israel, as if he would secure his gods' faithfulness should the God of Moses be too strong for him. In the mean while the children of Israel are groaning under the weight of their increased oppression. I have seen Aaron to-day. He informed me, with looks of holy faith in his God, that Moses and he were, to-morrow, by God's command, to appear again before Pharaoh, and demand the release of the Hebrews.

What a scene will be enacted! Will these two courageous men brave his anger, and escape? I tremble for the result. They are firm and resolved, being strong in the strength of their God. I shall be sure to be at the palace to-morrow, that I may behold these servants of Jehovah meet, once more, face to face, this cruel Pharaoh and his gods.

Your affectionate son,

Remeses of Damascus.