He answered, “I am a man from a far country; I pray thee lodge me, and give me to eat this night.”
She took him in, and brought him some meat, and said to Aaron, “Sit down and eat with the guest, to do him honour.” Aaron, in eating, conversed with Moses and recognized him.
Then the mother and sister knew him also. And when the meal was over, Moses acquitted himself of his mission to Aaron, and Aaron answered, “I will obey the will of God.”[[490]]
Moses spent the night, and the whole of the following day, in relating to his mother the things that had befallen him.
And on the second night, Moses and Aaron went forth to Pharaoh’s palace. Now the palace had four hundred doors, a hundred on each side, and each door was guarded by sixty thousand fighting men. The angel Gabriel came to them and led them into the palace, but not by the doors.
When they appeared before Pharaoh, they said: “God hath sent us unto thee to bid thee let the Hebrews go, that they may hold a feast in the wilderness.”
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”[[491]]
Tabari tells a different story. Moses and Aaron sought admittance during two years. Now Pharaoh gave himself out to be a god.
But Moses and Aaron, when they spake at the door with the porters, said, “He is no god.” One day the jester of Pharaoh heard his master read the history of his own life, and when he came to the passage which asserted he was a god, the jester exclaimed, “Now this is strange! For two years there have been two strangers at thy gate denying thy divinity.”
When Pharaoh heard this, he was in a fury, and he sent and had Moses and Aaron brought before him.