Part 4

Overcoming Life's Disappointments
by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

(Page 4 of 5)

As I read the story, this may be the first time that Moses is told that he, like his forebears, is an Israelite, and although it may be too much to expect him to banish all oppression and evil from the world and too little to deal with it one victim at a time, he can strike a blow for freedom and against cruelty by working for the freedom of his own people.

Moses' first instinct, understandably enough, is to plead inadequacy: "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites from Egypt?" (Exodus 3:11). With these words, Moses establishes the model of the Reluctant Prophet who, summoned by God to do daunting things, responds by recognizing the magnitude of the challenge and his own human limitations. Later Israelites called by God to the prophetic role will follow his example. Hardly anyone (Isaiah may be the only exception) relishes the challenge of being God's prophet, tell- ing people things they do not like being told. In God's first charge to Moses' successor, Joshua, God has to tell him five times in eight sentences to be strong and not be intimidated (Joshua 1:2-9). The warrior Gideon pleads with God: "How can I deliver Israel? My clan is the humblest in the tribe of Menasseh and I am the youngest in my father's household" (Judges 6:15). Jeremiah responds to God's summons by pleading, "Oh Lord God, I don't know how to speak for I am still a boy" (Jeremiah 1:6). And Jonah famously tries to flee from God's presence instead of bringing God's word to the people of Nineveh, boarding a ship going in the opposite direction. It is a daunting, thankless job to bring God's word to people who don't want to hear it. Moses, knowing Pharaoh all too well, is terrified at the prospect of doing what God is asking of him.

To overcome Moses' understandable reluctance, God answers him in a sentence that is often overlooked but that I consider to be one of the most important verses in all of Scripture. When Moses says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?" God answers not by telling Moses who he is, but by telling him who God is, saying, "I will be with you" (Exodus 3:12). When Moses, in the next verse, asks God, "What is Your name?" that is, what is Your nature? What kind of God are you? God replies, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh," three words so vague as to be virtually untranslatable, usually rendered somewhat mystifyingly as "I am who I am" or "I will be what I will be." But the Hebrew word ehyeh is the same word God used just two verses earlier, "I will be with you."

As I understand it, that is God's name. That is what God is all about. God is the One who is with us when we have to do something we don't think we are capable of doing. God is the light shining in the midst of darkness, not to deny that there is darkness in the world but to reassure us that we do not have to be afraid of the darkness because darkness will always yield to light. As theologian David Griffin puts it in God, Power, and Evil, God is all-powerful but God's power is not the power to control events; it is the power to enable people to deal with events beyond their, or even God's, power to control. I imagine God saying to Moses, Where do you think the impulse came from to strike down the Egyptian slavedriver, to intervene on the side of the powerless, to protect Jethro's daughters from the shepherds who harassed them? And who gave you the strength to do those things? It was because I was with you.

God is with the person who speaks out against injustice and exploitation. God is with the man or woman paralyzed by illness or accident who strives to lead a fulfilling life, and is with that person's family as they care for him or her. God is with the person who doubts his or her ability to resist the lure of alcohol, drugs, or extramarital sex. Perhaps the most comforting line in the entire Bible, if not in all of literature, is the verse from the Twenty-third Psalm, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me" (my italics). To the people who insist, What do you want of me? I'm only human, God promises to be with them, assuring them that with God at their side they can be more than "only human."

Moses returns to Egypt, and if his first attempt to intervene on behalf of the Israelites, breaking up a fight between two people, was met with resentment, his second and more ambitious effort fares no better. Pharaoh is predictably scornful of his demand ("Who is the Lord that I should heed Him?" [Exodus 5:2]), and the Israelites complain that his interference is only making things worse for them ("May God punish you for giving Pharaoh reasons to hate us and kill us" [Exodus 5:21]). But Moses perseveres. The Bible (Exodus 4:1-3, 7:8-10) describes God giving Moses the power to turn his walking stick into a snake, to impress the Israelites and to intimidate Pharaoh and his advisers. Why a snake? Is it only sleight of hand, a magic trick? One psychologist writing a study of Moses speculates that the snake, which sheds its skin so that it can grow, represents the ability of living creatures to change and transform themselves. Moses might be using the snake to say to the Israelites, You don't have to be slaves all your lives. Life offers other possibilities. You can lose your chains even as the snake sheds its skin. He performs the trick before Pharaoh as a way of saying, You don't have to continue being the harsh, cruel ruler you have been until now. Like the snake, you can grow and shed that identity. But the Israelites can't bring themselves to believe him and Pharaoh dismisses him.

God then rains a series of plagues upon the Egyptians - frogs, vermin, hail, locusts, three days of darkness. (The darkness could not have been caused by a solar eclipse, which lasts for minutes, not days. Perhaps a sandstorm blocked the sun, but then couldn't the Egyptians simply have lit candles to banish the darkness? I have long suspected that this plague was more a psychological than a meteorological darkness, that the Egyptians were emotionally battered by plague after plague and maybe even by having to confront their guilt about liv- ing comfortably in a society based on the exploitation of an oppressed minority. The Bible's description of the plague of darkness, that people could not see anyone else or move out of their seats [Exodus 10:23], sounds a lot like depression to me.)

And finally, when none of these plagues could persuade Pharaoh to let his slaves go free, Egypt is hit by the most terrible plague of all. As punishment for a society that killed Israelite children, a mysterious illness kills the firstborn child in every Egyptian home. At this point, Pharaoh relents and lets the people go.

Copyright © 2006 by Harold S. Kushner.

About the Author

Harold S. Kushner is Rabbi Laureate of Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, where he lives. His books include When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Who Needs God, and How Good Do We Have to Be?