The Priest: Aaron Read online

  Aaron realized then that Moses no longer needed him. Where once he had been helpful, now he had proven himself unworthy to act as spokesman. Was this the cost of his sins? To be cut off from fellowship from the one he loved most in the world? How could he bear it?

  Moses stood alone before the people, Joshua at a distance, watching. “We are to go up to the land the Lord solemnly promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He told them long ago that He would give this land to their descendants. And He will send an angel before us to drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Theirs is a land flowing with milk and honey. But the Lord will not travel along with us. . . .”

  Tearing his robes, Aaron fell to his knees, weeping in anguish. This, then, was the cost of his weakness. All the people would be cut off from the Lord who had delivered them from Egypt!

  “The Lord will not travel along with us, for we are a stubborn, unruly people. If He did, He would be tempted to destroy us along the way.”

  The people wailed and threw dust on their heads.

  Moses did not weaken. “Remove your jewelry and ornaments until the Lord decides what to do with us!”

  Aaron was first to strip off his earrings and gold bracelets. He rose and left them at the boundary near the foot of the mountain. The people followed his example.

  Remaining in camp, Aaron grieved as he watched Moses go to the tent he had pitched at a distance. If Moses ever spoke to him again, it would be more than he deserved. Aaron watched as the cloud moved from the mountaintop and came down before the entrance of Moses’ Tent of Meeting. He stood at the entrance of his own tent with his sons and daughters-in-law, his grandchildren and Miriam, and bowed low, worshiping the Lord and giving thanks for his brother, God’s messenger and the people’s mediator. Aaron and all those who belonged to him did not leave the front of their tents until the pillar of cloud returned to the mountaintop.

  And the people followed his example.

  When Moses did not return to camp, Aaron gathered his courage and went out. He found his brother on his knees chiseling rock. Aaron went down on one knee beside him. “Can I help you?”

  “No.”

  Nor did it appear could Joshua, who stood at the entrance of the tent where Moses met with God. Even when Moses came into the camp, Joshua remained at the Tent of Meeting, as it had come to be called.

  “I’m sorry, Moses.” His throat was so tight and hot he had to swallow hard before he could say more. “I’m sorry I failed you.” He had not been strong enough to serve the Lord faithfully. He had let his brother down.

  Moses’ face was gaunt from days of fasting and praying on the mountaintop, but his eyes glowed with an inner fire. “We have all failed, my brother.”

  My brother. Forgiven, Aaron’s knees buckled. He knelt, head down, tears streaming. He felt Moses’ hands on his head and then his kiss.

  “And could I condemn you when the tablets I threw at the people from the mountain were God’s workmanship? It is not the first time I have allowed anger to rule me, Aaron. But the Lord is merciful and gracious. He is slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness. He shows this unfailing love to many thousands by forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion.” The weight of Moses’ hands lifted. “But even so, He does not leave sin unpunished. If He did, the people would scatter wild across the desert and do whatever was right in their own eyes.” Moses gripped Aaron’s shoulder. “Now, go back to camp and watch over the people. I must finish chiseling out these tablets by morning and carry them back up the mountain.”

  Aaron wished the Lord had given him some act of penance for his sins. A whipping might make him feel better. Leaving him in charge brought the full weight of his failure down on his shoulders. Joshua was looking at him, but Aaron saw no condemnation in the younger man’s eyes.

  Aaron rose and left his brother alone. He prayed that the Lord God of Israel would give Moses strength to do as the Lord commanded. For the sake of them all.

  Without the Lord, the Promised Land would be an empty dream.

  Eleazar ran inside the tent. “Father, Moses is coming down the mountain.”

  Aaron hurried outside with his sons and hastened toward the boundary line, but when he saw Moses’ white hair and glowing face, he drew back in fear. Moses did not look like the same man who had gone up the pathway days ago. It was as though the Lord Himself was coming down that pathway, the Law He had written on two stone slabs tucked beneath His arm.

  The people ran.

  “Come and hear the Word of the Lord!” Moses’ voice carried across the plain.

  Stomach clenched with fear, Aaron obeyed. Others followed, tentative, ready to flee at the first sign of threat.

  This is my brother, Moses, Aaron told himself in order to have the courage to stand before the mountain. My brother, the chosen prophet of God. Was the Shekinah glory of God inhabiting Moses? Or was this merely a reflection of the Lord? Sweat beaded and ran down the back of his neck. Aaron didn’t move. He opened his heart and mind to listen to every word Moses said, promising himself he would live by it, no matter how hard it was.

  “On these tablets I have written the Word the Lord gave me, for He has made a covenant with me and with Israel.” Moses read for all to hear the Law God had handed down from Mount Sinai. He had spoken the words once, but now they were written in stone and could be kept as a perpetual reminder of God’s call on their lives.

  When Moses finished speaking, he surveyed the multitude. No one spoke. Aaron knew Moses was waiting for him to come near, but he did not dare. Joshua remained at Moses’ side—a silent, solemn sentry. Moses spoke to him quietly. Joshua said something in response. Taking the thin shawl from around his shoulders, Moses veiled his face.

  Aaron approached him cautiously. “Is all well now between us, Moses?”

  “Don’t be afraid of me.”

  “You are not the same man you were.”

  “As you are changing, Aaron. When you receive and obey the Word of the Lord, you cannot help but change when you stand in His presence.”

  “My face does not glow with holy fire, Moses. I will never be as you are.”

  “Do you wish for my place?”

  Aaron’s heart drummed. He decided on truth. “I did. And I led like a rabbit rather than a lion.” Perhaps it was because he couldn’t see his brother’s face that he felt free to confess. “I have envied Joshua.”

  “Joshua has never heard the voice of God as you have, Aaron. He is close to me because he longs to be close to God and do whatever God asks of him.”

  Aaron felt the envy rise. Here it was again. Another choice. He let his breath out slowly. “There is no other like him in all Israel.” Strange that in the wake of that confession, he felt affection for the younger man, and hope that he would stand firmer than his elders had.

  “Joshua is wholeheartedly for God. Even I wavered.”

  “Not you, Moses.”

  “Even I.”

  “Not as greatly as I did.”

  Moses smiled faintly. “Will we compete over whose sin is greatest?” He spoke gently. “We all sin, Aaron. Did I not plead with God to send someone else? The Lord called you, too. I needed a spokesman. Don’t ever forget that.”

  “You don’t need me anymore.”

  “You are needed, Aaron, more than you realize. God will use you yet to serve Him and lead His people Israel.”

  Before Aaron could ask how, others interrupted. He was not the only one who yearned for personal contact with the only man in the world who spoke to God like he would to a friend. To be close to Moses made them feel closer to God. Veiled, Moses moved among them, touching a shoulder here, stroking the head of a child there, speaking to everyone tenderly, and always of the Lord. “We are called to be a holy nation, set apart by God. The other nations will see and know that the Lord, He is God and there is no other.”

  God’s promise to Abraham would be fulfilled. Israel would be a blessing to all nations, a light to the
world so that all men might see there was one true God, the Lord God of heaven and earth.

  Aaron walked with his brother whenever he came into camp, relishing what time they had together, listening to Moses’ every word as though the Lord Himself were speaking to him. When Moses spoke, Aaron heard the Voice come through his brother’s words.

  Moses pleaded with the Lord for the people’s sake, and God stayed with them. Everyone knew it was for the sake of Moses that God changed His mind, for had the Lord left them, Moses’ gray head would have gone down to the grave in grief. God knew Moses loved the people more than he loved his own life.

  Each time Moses spoke, Aaron saw the gap between the ways of God and the ways of men. Be holy because I am holy. Every law was aimed at removing sin from their lives. God was the potter, working them like clay and reshaping them into something new. All the things they had learned and practiced in Egypt, and still practiced in the hidden recesses of their tents and hearts, would not go unpunished. God would not allow compromise.

  Every time Moses came out of the Tent of Meeting, he came with more laws: laws against the abominations of Egypt and the nations around them; rules for holy gifts, holy convocations; crimes that required death; Sabbath days and Sabbath years; Jubilee and the end of slavery; prices and tithes. Every part of their lives would be governed by God. How would they ever remember it all? The laws of God were in complete opposition to everything they had ever known and practiced in Egypt.

  Through the Law, Aaron realized how deeply immersed his own family had become in practicing the ways of the people around them. He and his brother and sister were children of incest, for their father had married his aunt, sister to his own father. The Lord said Israelite men were to marry outside their immediate families, but within their own tribes to keep the inheritance He would give them from being cut apart. And never were they to take women from other nations as their wives. Aaron wondered how Moses had felt when he heard the Lord say this, for he had taken a Midianite to be his wife. Even their ancestor Joseph had broken this law, marrying an Egyptian, and Joseph’s father, Israel, had given his favorite son, Joseph, a double blessing, acknowledging Manasseh and Ephraim.

  All those years, the Israelites had not known how to please the Lord other than to believe He existed, that His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remained, and that one day He would deliver them from Egypt. Even during the years of living under the shadow of Pharaoh, and following too many of the ways of their oppressors, the Lord blessed them by multiplying their numbers.

  The seventy elders once again mediated cases, referring only the most difficult to Moses to resolve. Aaron longed for more time with his brother, but when Moses was not hearing cases, he was hard at work writing down all the words the Lord gave him so that the people would have a permanent record.

  “Surely, the Lord will let you rest for a little while.” Aaron worried about his brother’s health. Moses hardly ate and he slept little. “We can’t survive without you, Moses. You must take care of yourself.”

  “My life is in God’s hands, Aaron, as is every life in Israel, and all the earth for that matter. It is the Lord who has told me to write His words down. And write them I will, for words spoken are quickly forgotten, and ignorance will not be accepted as an excuse by the Lord. Sin brings death. And what does God consider sin? These things the people must know. Especially you.”

  “Especially me?” Living with the magnitude of the sin he had committed in allowing the people to have their way, and the number of lives that sin had cost, Aaron did not dare hope the Lord might use him again.

  Moses finished the brush strokes of the last few letters on the papyrus scroll. He set the writing tools aside and turned. “Once the Law is written, it can be read many times and studied. The Lord has set the Levites aside as His, Aaron. Remember the prophecy of Jacob: ‘I will scatter their descendants throughout the nation of Israel.’ The Lord will scatter our brothers among the tribes and use them to teach the Law so the people can do what is right and walk humbly before our God. The Lord has called you to be His high priest. You will bring the atonement offering before Him, and one of your sons—I don’t know which one yet—will begin the line for the high priests to follow in the generations to come. But all this must be explained to everyone.”

  High priest? “Are you certain you heard right?”

  Moses smiled gently. “You confessed and repented. Were you not the first to run to me when I called for those who were for the Lord? Once we have confessed them, the Lord forgets our faults and failures, Aaron, but not our faith. It is always His faithfulness that lifts us to our feet again.”

  As they went outside, Aaron remembered the entire blessing Jacob had given, if blessing it could be called:

  “Simeon and Levi are two of a kind—men of violence. O my soul, stay away from them. May I never be a party to their wicked plans. For in their anger they murdered men, and they crippled oxen just for sport. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; cursed be their wrath, for it is cruel. Therefore, I will scatter their descendants throughout the nation of Israel.”

  Did not Aaron’s family suffer from hot tempers, Moses included? Hadn’t it been his temper that brought about the murder of an Egyptian? And lest he cast stones at Moses, what about his own sins? He suffered bouts of fury as well. How easily his sword had been raised against his people, slaughtering sheep he had been left to lead!

  In his heart, Aaron was in fear for what the future could hold when the priesthood rested in the hands of a tribe so bent on violence and self-service. “Oh, Moses, if I am to teach and lead the people, God must change me! Plead with Him for my sake. Ask Him to create in me a pure heart and upright spirit!”

  “I have prayed for you. I will never stop. Now gather the people, Aaron. The Lord has work for them. We will see if their hearts are up to it.”

  * * *

  FIVE

  * * *

  Moses received instructions from the Lord to build a tabernacle, a sacred residence where God could dwell among His people.

  The instructions were specific: Curtains were to be made, and poles to hang them. A bronze basin for washing and an altar for burnt offerings would stand in the court of the Tabernacle. Inside the Tabernacle would be another smaller chamber, the Most Holy Place, where a table, a lampstand, and an ark would be placed.

  Details on how everything was to be made were given to Moses and handed over to two men the Lord named to oversee the work: Bezalel son of Uri, grandson of Hur; and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan. When they came forward, eager to do God’s will, the Lord filled them with His Spirit, so that they had the skill, ability, and knowledge in all kinds of crafts. God even gave them the ability to teach others how to do the work required! All skilled in any craft came to help.

  The people rejoiced to hear that their prayers and Moses’ pleading had been answered. The Lord would remain with them! They returned to their tents and laid out all the gifts the Egyptians had given them, gifts that had come from hearts stirred by fear of the Lord God of Israel, and they gave the best of what they had to the Lord.

  Aaron felt shame for having used gifts God had given the people to fashion the golden calf. God had lavished wealth on them before they left Egypt, and he had wasted a portion in worshiping a hollow idol. That gold had ended up burned, ground, and cast on the water that ended up as refuse in the latrines outside of camp.

  Aaron took all the gold he had and gave it back to the One who had given it to him in the first place. His sons and their wives and Miriam gave the best of what they had. They spread ram skins dyed red and piled up gold jewelry, silver, and bronze. Miriam filled a basket with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and another with fine linen, excited that what she had to give might end up as part of the Tabernacle curtain.

  Others in camp came with the hides of dugongs, jugs of olive oil, spices for the anointing oil, and fragrant incense. Some had onyx stones and other gems. The people brought their gifts bef
ore the Lord, waving them in offering, and placing them in baskets set out. Soon the baskets were filled with brooches, earrings, rings, and ornaments.

  Groups of men went out into the desert and cut down acacia trees. The best pieces were set aside for the ark, the table, posts, and crossbeams. The bronze was melted down for the basin with its stand, the bronze grating for the altar and utensils. Everyone brought something, and everyone who was able worked.

  Fires were kept burning so the bronze, silver, and gold could be melted down, impurities strained off, and then be poured into molds made under Bezalel’s watchful eye. Women wove fine cloth and made garments for Aaron and his sons to wear when they began ministering in the sanctuary.

  As the work progressed, more gifts poured forth. Every day, more piled up near the work sites until Bezalel and Oholiab left their work and went to Moses and Aaron. “We have more than enough materials on hand now to complete the job the Lord has given us to do!”

  Aaron rejoiced, for surely the Lord would see how the people loved Him. He and his sons and their wives and Miriam brought offerings each day, eager to see God’s plan accomplished, eager to have part in it.

  Moses looked at Aaron, his eyes awash with tears. “Gather the elders. Tell them no more offerings must be brought. We have all we need.”

  By Moses’ command, Aaron’s son Ithamar recorded everything that was given and used for the main Tabernacle and the Tabernacle of the Testimony. Almost everyone in camp was busy on some aspect of building the Tabernacle. Aaron was happy. He looked forward to each sunrise, for the people were content in the service of the Lord. Their hands were busy and their hearts and minds set on carrying out the work God had given them.

  Nine months after reaching Mount Sinai and two weeks before the second celebration of Passover, the Tabernacle was completed. Bezalel and Oholiab and the people brought everything that was made to Moses. Moses inspected the tent and all its furnishings, the articles to be placed in the Most Holy Place, and the clothing for the priests. Everything had been done exactly as the Lord had commanded.