Nightmares

Genesis 15 ⁷ Then the Lord said to Abram, "I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land." ⁸ "JHWH, my God," Abram replied, "how can I be sure that I will possess it?" ⁹ "Bring me a three-year-old cow," said YHWH, "a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." ¹⁰ Abram brought all these animals, cut them in half, and placed the two halves of each animal opposite each other. Only the birds he did not cut in half. ¹¹ Birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. ¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep. Suddenly, he was overcome by fear and deep darkness. ¹³ Then YHWH said, "Know for certain that your descendants will live as strangers in a land that is not theirs, and that they will be slaves there and will be oppressed."

(…)

¹⁷ When the sun had set and it was completely dark, suddenly there was a smelting furnace with smoke coming out of it, and a burning torch passing between the halves of the animals. ¹⁸ On that day, YHWH made a covenant with Abram. "This land," He said, "I will give to your descendants, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates: ¹⁹ the territory of the Kenites, Kenizzites, and Kadmonites, ²⁰the Hittites, Perizzites, and Rephaim, ²¹ the Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites."

How do you tell someone that he may live in a land where he was not born? Where his memories have no connection? Where his parents are not buried? Because God promised it?

"How can you trust in a God you cannot see?" Moses asked.

"Can you see the path that brought you here?" asked Reuel.

"When I close my eyes, all I see is a slave driver beating my people."

Reuel told him the story of Abraham. "All you have to do is walk in the land he has given you. This is your land too."

"If he is my God, I want to hear it from him myself."

Moses sacrificed a ram at daybreak. He laid it on the altar but did not light the fire. Then he sat down. He waited. The sun rose in the east. Moses tried to hear the voice of God, but he heard only the birds.

The sun rose and it grew hotter and hotter. Moses remained seated. The pieces of meat began to smell foul. Moses tried to focus on God, but had to swat away the flies. When evening fell and it grew cold, he wrapped a blanket around himself. He saw no melting pot and no fire. At dawn, he got up.

"Did you find your answer?" asked a sleepy Zipporah. Moses shook his head. He lay down next to her and crawled toward her—until his body had found the shape of hers.

The name

Genesis 4 ²⁵ Once again, Adam ("earth dweller") had relations with his wife, and she gave birth to a son. She named him Seth, "for," she said, "God has given me another child in place of Abel, who was killed by Cain." ²⁶ Seth also had a son, whom he named Enos ("man"). At that time, people began to call upon the name of YHWH.

Moses did not know who the God of Zipporah was. He only knew the names of the gods of Egypt. He had been educated in the sacred words and rituals. He knew the images and names of each god, and knew exactly what to say when he bowed down before them—even though there was also a Pharaoh who had said that only the sun god should be worshipped.

            "What is the name of your God?"

            "Our God," Zipporah corrected him. She did not say the name.

            "Why not?"

            "We honor God without carving His image in stone or capturing the sound of His name with consonants."

            "So you do have a name for Him?"

            "We hear his name in the blowing of the wind and the blowing of the fire. We hear his breath in us." She sat up straight and closed her eyes.

            Moses also sat up straight, but he looked at her. He saw her chest moving gently with her breathing. Now that he had become quiet, he heard the air going in and out, ie-aah or oe-aah. Zipporah seemed to lose track of time. Moses looked fascinated at her beautiful face. What did her closed eyes see?

After a while, he grew impatient. "Zipporah," he called, "help me. I need to know how to call upon Him so that He will answer me."

            She opened her eyes and looked at him lovingly. Without a trace of judgment in her voice, she said, "That's exactly the problem, my love. First learn to listen, then you will be able to answer Him."

The Temple of Timna

Isaiah 31:9: "Thus says the LORD, whose fire burns, whose furnace blazes."

Exodus 20 ⁴ You shall not make for yourself any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (...) ²⁵ If you build an altar of stone for me, do not use hewn stones, for if you use an iron tool on them, you will profane them.

Zipporah must have taken Moses to Mount Sinai and also to the valley of Timna at some point. Since time immemorial, Kenites and Amalekites had been mining green malachite from the bowels of the earth, dozens of meters deep. Four loads of rock for one load of malachite. Moses saw rocks full of gaping crevices and shafts, lined with tall rock pillars that pointed upward like fingers along the mountainside.

The Egyptians also came in winter with their soldiers, miners, and administrators. They hired the Kenites to smelt the copper from the ore. In Timna, they built a temple for Hathor, the mother of the sun god. For thousands of years, people watched the sun fade away in winter, until it was reborn and rose in the constellation of the ox, or Hathor. She is the night from which the day emerges and the solstice that brings spring. She dances and drinks and celebrates until morning. Out of her darkness she gives birth to light, from deep mines the brilliance of precious metals. And because the sun was reborn from the ox, its power on earth was represented by the figure of a perfect bull or a golden calf.

            In the narrow valley, a courtyard had been built with rough stone walls, inside which was a small square chapel against the overhanging rock face: two pillars with the bovine head of Hathor and the image of the goddess in a niche in the rocks. Next to this chapel stood the two smelting furnaces in which copper was born from malachite. In them, the finely crushed green stones were burned with red-hot charcoal until the golden yellow copper was born. One part red-hot copper from one hundred parts malachite and one hundred parts charcoal.

After an earthquake, the temple was not rebuilt. The Midianites, and in particular the Kenites, removed the statue of the goddess and chiseled her images from the pillars. They placed stone benches to the left and right of the entrance to the courtyard. Red and yellow tent cloths provided shade. God was worshipped there without an image; only the standing stones referred to Him. Shards of pots, jugs, and bowls have been found there.

What did they drink from them, what did they eat? More importantly, what did they see? On one of the shards, they painted the figure of a human being with a particularly large head—actually not a head but just an enormous eye.

Later, another remarkable work of art was found: a small, writhing copper snake with a gilded head and large eyes, sensual and terrifying. One and the same Hebrew word, nachas, lies behind the meanings snake, copper, and omen. To make the copper flow from the earth, the Kenites literally played with fire.

The birth

Psalm 139 ¹¹ Even if I said, "Let darkness swallow me up, let the light around me turn to night," ¹² even then, darkness would not be dark to You—the night would shine like the day, the darkness would be as bright as the light. ¹³ It was You who formed my kidneys, who wove me in my mother's womb. ¹⁴ I praise You for the awesome wonder of my existence; wonderful are Your works. I know this, deep in my soul. ¹⁵ When I was made in secret, skillfully woven in the depths of the earth, my being was no secret to You.

For the Kenites, copper smelting was a form of worship, a ritual in which the blacksmith led his fellow tribesmen like a priest, as is still the case in Ethiopia today. The work begins weeks in advance. The malachite, which had been hewn from the rocks by sweaty, dusty diggers, is crushed and pulverized by many hands. Others gather wood that must smolder for weeks under ash and sand, with just enough air to produce charcoal.

In the final weeks before smelting, the furnace must be rebuilt with care to withstand the scorching heat for long enough. It is a sacred task in which purity is paramount. Menstruating women or men after ejaculation cannot participate. Contact with outsiders is forbidden during these weeks. A sheep is sacrificed and its blood sprinkled around to consecrate the ground for the union of heaven and earth. The furnace is the womb of Mother Earth herself, which may only be fertilized with pure air from the heavens. The copper is conceived from the fire of their passion. The blacksmith and his family make shafts of clay that will penetrate the oven wall. They are connected to a handful of bellows with reed pipes. A bellows consists of two clay pots with leather covering, one under each foot of the pump operator.

In the middle of the day of smelting, the family gathers around the furnace. Branches or tent cloths provide protection from the heat of the sun. The bellows are coated on the inside with a mixture of manure and water to prevent the leather from drying out. The furnace is lit with dried grass, topped with a first load of charcoal. An hour and a half later, the charcoal is red-hot and the blacksmith shovels the first load of malachite into the furnace. Another hour and a half later, all the charcoal and malachite has been put into the furnace. Once again, an offering is made, blood is sprinkled, and prayers are said so that they are all ready for their sacred task.

Then the pumping begins. By rhythmically moving their feet up and down, air is alternately sucked in and blown into the furnace: ie-aah, oe-aah. With ropes in their hands, they operate the valves. Singing and dancing, the fire in the furnace is stoked to a high heat. Hours pass in dance and trance. The fatigue, the heat, the sweating and panting. One with the oven and with each other, one with heaven and earth. Even when evening falls, they continue. It is now getting dark around them, the circle getting smaller and smaller and the universe getting bigger and bigger. So it is with my people in Egypt, Moses thought. They are crushed and pulverized, and tormented in the heat of the sun.

And then the miracle: the golden-orange copper slug shoots out through the tap hole. It burns without the fire consuming it. It writhes downwards until it curls up in a hollowed-out stone, slowly cools down and comes to rest. The pure copper remains like a flower at the bottom of the furnace.

The fire

Exodus 3 ¹Moses was tending the sheep and goats of his father-in-law Jethro, the Midianite priest. Once he drove the flock far into the desert, and so he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a fire that blazed from the bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire, yet it was not consumed by the fire. ³ How can the bush not burn? he thought. I will go and take a closer look at this wonderful phenomenon.

⁴But when YHWH saw that Moses was going to do so, He called to him from the senah, "Moses! Moses!" "Yes, I am listening," Moses replied. ⁵"Do not come any closer," YHWH warned, "and take off your sandals, for the ground on which you stand is holy. ⁶ I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

Moses covered his face, for he did not dare to look at God. ⁷ YHWH said, "I have seen how miserable my people are in Egypt, I have heard their cries of distress under their oppressors, I know how they suffer." ⁸ Therefore, I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of Egypt to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. ⁹The cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen how cruelly the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ Therefore, I am sending you to Pharaoh: you must lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.

Moses lived the life of a nomad in the desert, a wandering Hebrew like Abraham. He drove his flock further and further west, closer and closer to Egypt. Could he see Goshen, the land where the Israelites lived, from the mountains? Did he send messages to his family with traveling merchants?

Moses was not alone. He saw God's presence during the day in the all-seeing sun and in the red-flaming mountains at dusk. At night he saw Him in the glowing campfire and in the twinkling of stars. And now he saw another fire, or perhaps he himself was changing. Today, for the first time, he finally heard the voice of God. And God called him, "Moses!" Moses looks at the flame and listens to a voice. A voice that tells him what was already tearing him apart deep inside. "I have seen it and I hear their cries. I know how they suffer." And that moves Moses. The God of Abraham is also the God of Israel. The God of Zipporah is also the God of Moses. And with that emotion and joy comes the awe-inspiring realization of his calling: "I have come—and that is why I am sending you on your way."

What is that fire that blazes from the senah? Traditionally, we read it as "a burning bush." Later, God is described as the one who "dwells in the senah." Outside of that, the word senah does not appear in the Bible—or perhaps in one other place, but then as the name of a sharp rock. Some say that the sound of this rare word refers to Sinai, where God would reveal himself to the people: "Sinai was completely shrouded in smoke, for YHWH had descended upon it in fire. The smoke rose like the smoke from a smelting furnace, and the mountain shook violently."

The name

Exodus 3 ¹¹ Moses said, "But who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

¹²God replied, "I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that I have sent you: when you have led the people out of Egypt, you will worship God at this mountain."

¹³ But Moses said, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' What shall I say?"

¹⁴Then God said to him, "AHYeH, AHYeH, I am, I am. Therefore, tell the Israelites, ‘AHYeH has sent me to you.’”

¹⁵ He also said to Moses, "Tell them, 'JHWH has sent me, the God of your ancestors; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And He has said, 'This is what I will be called forever, and this is what I will be called from generation to generation.'"

That becomes Moses' goal: that the people here on this mountain may experience what he has experienced. That they may learn to hear the voice of God in the fire. That they may be purified by their misery, that they may set out as new people and shine like the sun.

"But who am I?" Moses asks.

"You are who you are, because I am who I am."

"Who are You, then, how may I call You?"

"I am who I am."

"What shall I say to the Israelites?"

"He is. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: He is."

What Moses learns here is breathtaking. And then that deep breath: ie-aah, in and out. For the first time, he understands Zipporah. God has no name by which you can define and frame Him; God is being itself. AHJeH: "I am." You can also read YHWH as JaHWeH, "He is." But it doesn't matter how you pronounce it. The four letters of his name are not the consonants of a long-forgotten word, as we hear from an ancient Jewish writer: they are vowels. They are the sounds that give words their voice. The breath of life of human language. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is how He wants to be known.

Nothing in creation can exist without being. No word is heard without a sound. God's unspoken name resounds in everything. In the blowing of the wind and the blowing of the fire. In the breath in and out. He lives. He is.

I am.

The staff

Exodus 4 ¹ Once again Moses objected. "They will not believe me or listen to me," he said. "They will say, 'The Lord has not appeared to you.'"

² YHWH asked, "What is that in your hand?" "A staff," Moses replied. ³ "Throw it on the ground," YHWH commanded, and when Moses did so, the staff turned into a snake. Moses recoiled, ⁴ but YHWH said to him, "Grab the snake by its tail." When Moses did so, the snake turned back into a staff in his hand.

⁵ YHWH said, "This will prove to them that YHWH, the God of their ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you."

(…)

¹⁰ But Moses replied, "Please forgive me, Lord, but I am not a good speaker. That has always been the case, and it has not changed now that You have spoken to me, Your servant. I find it difficult to express myself."

¹¹ The LORD said, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf, sighted or blind? Who other than I, the LORD? ¹² Now go, I will be with you when you speak and put the words in your mouth."

¹³ But Moses said, "Please forgive me, Lord, send someone else, whoever you want."

¹⁴ Now the LORD became angry with Moses. "You have a brother, the Levite Aaron," He said. "I know he is eloquent. He is already on his way to you and will be glad to see you. ¹⁵ Speak to him and put the words in his mouth. I will be with you when you speak and tell you what to do. ¹⁶ He will speak to the people in your place: he will be your mouth, you will be his god. ¹⁷ And take your staff in your hand, for with it you must perform the miracles."

For Zipporah, the story of the snake that became a staff was hardly a miracle; the same thing happened when the copper was melted. Nor was it strange to her that God's voice could be heard in the fire. The miracle was that her husband had recognized God's voice—and that they would now finally go to Egypt.

"When are we leaving?" she asked. She was beaming.

Moses had to laugh. "I'm really dreading it, but you can't wait."

"You say your brother Aaron is coming to meet you? Then we must go quickly."

*      *      *

Suggestions for reading groups

• Check in with the group and with yourself, seek stillness/humility.
• First, share the story. Moses tries to "grasp" what "God" is, using names, images, and dogmas. He sees the gods as primal forces that want to influence people for their own benefit. But Zipporah teaches him that he must let go in order to be "grasped" himself. What did you read?
• Encourage, comfort, inspire. What are the primal experiences in which you feel the presence of something greater? Do you find them in nature (the sun, the starry sky, lightning, or fire)? Or do you find them in life (birth, love, death)? What is 'God' (or whatever word you use) at its core for you?

Reflecting on Genesis 1-11²⁶, primordial stories about God and creation

At the beginning of Genesis, we find primal stories about the cosmos, the awakening of humanity, and our hubris. These stories found their way into the Hebrew Bible from ancient traditions. They also serve as an introduction to the Ten Commandments: in the creation story, we learn to honor God alone and not to idolize the sun or moon, to celebrate the Sabbath, and to honor marriage. Cain and Abel warn us against envy and murder. The sons of God who abuse the daughters of men are a warning against debauchery. In the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, and even Cain, we learn about the covenant between God and humans, as partners who commit themselves to each other.

• Encourage, comfort, exhort. What is man, if God created man, male and female, to resemble God and to interact with Him freely in a paradisiacal state? Literally, it says that Adam, "man," became a "living soul" because God breathed His own breath into him. Do you also experience that you have something of God's spirit in you, something that enlivens your soul and inspires you? What do you think of the character of the serpent, which represents the knowledge of good and evil, the loss of innocence, and the development of a self-aware ego? How can knowledge, morality, and progress be both positive and negative in human existence? What is gained and what is lost as a result? How can a "covenant" offer the chance for restoration of an intimate relationship between God and self-aware people? Is that covenant more of an individual "agreement" with God for you, or is it more something of your family or faith community that you may be part of? 
• Leave room for silence and contemplation. Perhaps you will 'see' or 'hear' something from 'God'. Like Moses and Zipporah, do you dare to enter into conversation with that voice? What answer wells up within you? How do you test that answer?