Testament: The Story of Moses (2024) s01e03 Episode Script

[ominous music playing]
[Yahweh] Moses.
My Lord.
Tonight is different
from all other nights.
How, my Lord?
All the firstborn
in the land of Egypt will die.
From the firstborn of Pharaoh
to the firstborn
of the poorest maidservant.
What about the Hebrews?
Listen closely.
Every family is to eat
from a sacrificial lamb
prepared with bitter herbs.
Eat it with bread without leaven,
for there is no time for it to rise.
Take the lamb's blood and paint it
around the doors of your houses
to show where you live
as a protection from my vengeance.
I'm looking for the house of Moses.
I'm frightened, Moses.
There must be another way.
[Yahweh] I am the destroyer.
Inside. Quickly.
Quickly.
[narrator] And so the tenth plague begins.
Death of the firstborn.
[epic music playing]
[tense music playing]
[Kang] The last plague is so devastating
because it's saying
every firstborn in Egypt,
from the Pharaoh's firstborn
to, like, the nobody's firstborn,
to, like, the cattle,
they're all gonna die.
For Christianity, this is a foreshadowing
of the New Testament and Jesus Christ.
Blood of the Lamb.
Sacrifice of the lamb.
And it's only by his blood
that you're gonna be saved.
Exodus only by the blood of this lamb
on the doorpost
that you're gonna be saved.
Please. Eat.
Drink.
[Lewter] It was the marking
of the Hebrew homes
with the blood of the lamb on the doorpost
that caused the angel
to pass over that home.
[Adelman] That's where we get
the term Passover from.
Passes over their houses
and instead strikes the Egyptians.
[tense music continues]
[chatter and laughter]
[man] This one here. This is delicious.
[objects clatter]
[chatter stops]
Amen?
Amen?
Amen!
[screaming]
[dramatic music playing]
[Egyptians screaming]
[Enns] One way of thinking about it
is tit for tat.
What does Pharaoh do
at the beginning of Exodus,
but he kills the male children.
And here it's the firstborn
who are getting it.
The story is coming full circle.
What you tried to do to mine,
I'm now doing to yours.
[sorrowful music playing]
[Egyptians screaming]
Ancient rabbinic tradition
does not celebrate the suffering
that the plagues deliver
to the people in Egypt.
When we come to the part
of the Passover seder
where we chant the ten plagues,
we're instructed to take
a drop of wine out of our cups
with our finger
and place it on the edge of our plate.
It is wrong to take pleasure
in the suffering of others.
Whether they are people who have harmed us
or whether they are innocent people.
And therefore,
we symbolically diminish our joy.
[screaming and sobbing]
[panting]
Moses! Moses!
In Chapter 12, you have the destroyer
as coming down.
And sometimes that's understood
as the Angel of Death.
It doesn't say God.
Moses!
[Enns] But right after that in the story,
it does say God did it.
So I don't know
if this is trying to put distance
between God and what God is doing.
Moses.
Moses.
[narrator] "And there was
a great cry in Egypt."
"For there was not a house
where there was not one dead."
Moses!
Please! We must go, please!
[Lewter] I think redactors
and biblical authors
have substituted a death angel
to absolve God
from some of the more fierce
and some of the more vengeful character
that would be associated with any god
who would take the lives of children
and the lives of the innocent.
What have we done?
What God asked you to.
[sorrowful music swells]
[somber music playing]
[Kang] I look at that last plague,
and it is absolutely devastating.
It's all the reasons why you hear, um,
these arguments against God.
How could a loving God
allow this to happen?
What kind of vengeful God would do this?
You would kill all the firstborn?
What kind of merciless God are you?
And I'll be totally honest,
there's not a good answer for that.
But just on a humanity level,
that is devastating.
Moses.
Where are you, Moses?
Moses!
Moses!
Where are you?
Answer me!
- My brother.
- Bolt the door.
- I must go to him.
- No!
[Pharaoh] Answer me!
I will.
Moses is not here.
Too ashamed to stand face-to-face with me?
My son is dead!
Our children have died too, at your hands.
You were warned.
No man could stand in the way of God.
Your God is nothing but a murderer.
He is the giver of life.
And the taker.
My son
My son.
[somber music playing]
Go to the desert.
Go now.
No conditions?
None.
As long as you leave now.
Stay with us.
No.
I must grieve Egypt's loss with him.
His loss.
[rousing music playing]
We must leave. Quickly.
Before he changes his mind.
[grave music playing]
Oh, beloved boy.
You brought this evil into my house.
You pushed Moses to this
calamity.
And look what happened.
You thought you were invincible.
Invulnerable.
I commune with gods.
Do you?
[tense music playing]
Bow to me.
- I'm begging you to heed me.
- Bow!
[tense music swells]
I am Pharaoh!
King of the Nile!
[narrator] "The Egyptians urged the people
to hurry and leave the country."
"'For otherwise, '
they said, 'we shall all die.'"
[Einhorn] Everything
now moves very quickly.
It's as though there sort of is
a collapsing of time.
You've been here all these years.
How long? Two, ten, four hundred?
They lost track of time.
A slave is not in charge of their time.
A slave is told where to be and when.
Now, for the first time,
they're told, "Let's go."
They are no longer slaves to time.
They will take charge of time.
[foreboding music playing]
[narrator] "They had asked
from the Egyptians articles of silver,
articles of gold and clothing."
"And the Lord had given the people favor
in the sight of the Egyptians
so that they granted them
what they requested."
"Thus, they plundered the Egyptians."
"Plundering" is the word that I typically
have heard translate the Hebrew.
But let's not mince words.
It's the same idea.
"We're gonna get ours now."
Actually, this was such a problem
in early Judaism
that the Jewish philosopher Philo,
he argued, "No, no, this was payment
for services rendered."
It wasn't really plundering or despoiling.
It's something that we deserved,
and we got because of all
that we've gone through.
I just wish the Bible came with footnotes.
Like, "What are you trying
to get across by that,
other than the tables have turned?"
[Moses] Is this
Is this what we are to become?
This?
Moses!
Didn't you give me jewels to wear
when we were betrothed?
Today is also a betrothal.
Four hundred years, Moses.
Let them celebrate.
[man] He cannot be happy for us.
The day was foretold long ago.
Our departure for Canaan.
The land of milk and honey.
After 400 years,
that day has finally arrived.
We have been besieged
by struggles in that time.
By toil, hardship, and suffering.
We had forgotten who we were.
Thank God.
God spoke to me on the mountain.
Now here we are.
Here we are,
standing on this beautiful morning
at freedom's gate.
Do we suddenly trust Pharaoh to let us go?
How many times has he changed his plans?
This whole thing might be a trap.
No.
The only trap now is here in our minds.
From this day, our God is our betrothed
and we are his bride.
[Bithiah] Moses!
[solemn music playing]
- [woman 1] Hey!
- [woman 2] The princess.
Wherever you go, I will go.
And where you stay, I will stay.
When Moses leads this group
back out of Egypt,
Bithiah joins them
in his Exodus from Egypt.
And I think that is telling.
And I think that says a whole lot
about who Moses had become
and the degree to which he impressed
even his own family to follow him.
[Adelman] In the Midrash,
there's one poignant version
which says that the daughter
of the pharaoh was a firstborn,
and she would have died
in the plague of the firstborn.
But God says, "Because you saved Moses,
I'm going to save you."
That's the point where she's adopted
by God and saved from the final plague.
To many Muslims, when they think
about the adopted mother of Moses,
they think of a person who has been
oppressed by Pharaoh as well.
And, in fact,
in extra Qur'anic literature,
it's said that when Moses comes back,
she is actually one of the first
to accept his message.
And it's narrated that Pharaoh
then proceeded to torture her,
and that God rescued her
from from the horrendous torture
that that Pharaoh himself
was exerting upon her.
So she becomes, in the Islamic tradition,
an inspiration for women
who are caught in domestic violence
who who need an escape,
and that she can be
a figure to look towards.
[uplifting music playing]
Moses, we must waste no time.
My brother has lost his mind.
Israelites!
Let us go!
Let us go!
[cheering]
[triumphant music playing]
[ululating and cheering]
[Einhorn] There's a line
from the Passover evening
that we say in our text,
if God had not taken us out of Egypt,
we'd still be slaves to Pharaoh.
Doesn't mean we'd still be slaves.
It means psychologically.
Psychologically, we still would have
been beholden to our master.
It's Stockholm syndrome.
One of the ways to undercut
and to heal from Stockholm syndrome
is the minimization of the captor,
where you see
they were not people of value.
These are not people who are kind to us.
Not good people.
And the minute they see that,
that Stockholm syndrome is gone.
And they're free. They're liberated.
[ominous music playing]
[Haman] I made a sacrifice to Amun.
He has finally saved us from this evil.
No, we have misjudged, Haman!
If one tribe of workers leaves,
so will others.
The Nubians, the Hittites.
Foundations will crumble.
Prepare the army.
Majesty, I beg you.
Prepare the army.
[dramatic percussive music playing]
[Kang] I think there's a lot
to be said in the fact
that it was that tenth plague
that personally affects Pharaoh
that was like, that's the straw
that broke the camel's back, so to speak.
[Lewter] I think
when Pharaoh gets to the point
where he realizes that the son is gone,
his heart is filled with retaliation.
And then Pharaoh changes his mind
and chases them.
I sometimes picture
like a cat-and-mouse game,
you know, where the cat
is chasing the mouse
and has it in his mouth,
then lets it go and revives it a bit,
then goes back and starts
playing with it some more.
That's the picture I get here
of God in this story.
[dramatic music playing]
[Aaron] Canaan is north. This way.
[Moses] We will be crossing
through Philistine land.
They could attack us.
[Aaron] Then we'll have to fight.
It's the only way, Moses.
Then north.
Across the desert to the Promised Land!
[wind blowing wildly]
Aaron! Aaron!
He's showing us the way!
No, that way leads us to the sea!
Between Midgol and Baal-zephon!
- I've seen this once before!
- But we'll be trapped!
- It led me back to you!
- I'm telling you, brother!
It's a sign!
We'll need a fleet of a thousand ships
to leave Egypt that way!
[narrator] "When Pharaoh
let the people go,
God did not lead them on the road
through the Philistine country,
though that was shorter."
"For God said, 'If they face war,
they might change their minds
and return to Egypt.'"
"So God led the people round
by the desert road toward the Red Sea."
[Einhorn] There are many interpretations
why God led the people
in a strange and funny direction.
And explanations range
from military reasons
or, um, some promise of a deliverance
through the water sources
that they would need.
And all of those
may have a kernel of truth to it.
But the Torah is meant to be a text
which speaks to us to this day.
And therefore, the message
that is most relevant from the journey
that God took them on is that the way
that you thought you needed to go in life,
God says, "I'm the one who's got you.
I know the way that you need. Follow me."
[narrator] "By day, the Lord went
ahead of them in a pillar of cloud
to guide them on their way."
[dramatic music playing]
"And by night,
in a pillar of fire to give them light,
so that they could travel
by day or night."
"And the Egyptians pursued."
[tense music playing]
[Aaron] Told you, brother.
There's nothing here but the sea.
We need to go back.
Must have a purpose.
[Egyptians approaching]
[narrator] "The Egyptians,
all Pharaoh's horses and chariots,
horsemen, and troops,
pursued the Israelites and overtook them
as they camped
by the sea near Pi-hahiroth,
opposite Baal-zephon."
[uneasy music playing]
Tell us, Moses, what does God say?
[Dathan] I told you it was a trick.
We camp here.
We camp here!
Pharaoh will slaughter us where we lie.
[Moses] We camp here!
[crashing and rumbling]
No.
Look, he's right.
Moses is right!
[inspiring music playing]
God provides them with this saving grace.
This visual impossible presence
that they also recognize
not only is serving as a compass,
but is also a force of protection.
[dark music playing]
- [men groaning]
- [horses neighing]
Tell them to go around it!
We cannot, Majesty.
Every time we try to move,
it moves with us.
My Lord, it seems to be alive.
[Pharaoh grunts]
The man who finds a way around that thing
will be my heir.
[dramatic musical flourish]
[baby crying]
[sighs]
You must have had a purpose
in leading us here.
So tell me, my Lord.
What is it? Show it to me.
[Yahweh] Moses.
Lift up your staff.
[thunder rumbling]
[electrifying music playing]
Stretch out your hand.
[narrator] "Then Moses
stretched out his hand over the sea."
"And the Lord caused the sea to go back
by a strong east wind all that night."
[Kirsch] Why did the Red Sea part?
Some Bible scholars argue
that if it did happen
as it's described in the Bible,
it's because of an earthquake,
and the earthquake opened a fissure,
and all this water
drained away from the sea.
And attributing it
to an incident of nature.
That was not the intent
of the biblical author.
The Bible makes no bones about it.
God empowers Moses
to raise his staff, and it's a miracle.
[epic music playing]
[man 1] What is happening?
- [man 2] We won't survive!
- [man 3] We should turn around!
[woman 1] We will be crushed by the sea!
- [man 4] We will all be killed!
- [woman 2] Let us go back!
Their God has no limits, Majesty.
[Pharaoh] Ours will not accept that.
[Moses] You see that?
This is God.
You see that? This is God!
You must have faith!
[epic music continues]
As you'll see.
Would you save yourself
and leave your children behind?
No. Neither will He.
God needs all of us.
All of His children.
All of us!
Let us go back while there's time.
We'll never make it through that alive.
I would rather drown.
[inspiring music playing]
[Einhorn] There's so many
great Midrashic teachings
related to the splitting of the sea.
And one great teaching
is the angels looked up and said,
"These are the people you're saving?"
"They worshiped idols,
the Egyptians worshiped idols."
"Humans are all garbage.
They're all the same."
God said, "You're missing something."
They go, "What?" He goes, "Look."
"They're walking together."
That's the key.
Forget whatever they did.
Everybody's gonna mess up in life.
But as long as humans
can learn to stick together
and to work with each other,
that's what God's waiting for.
[Haman] They'll perish in the sea.
It's madness to follow them!
[Pharaoh] No.
Their god flees!
Do you doubt the evidence
of your own eyes?
Majesty.
Our children have already been taken.
These are your best warriors.
Prepare my chariot.
Majesty
[Pharaoh] We will run them down
and kill them all.
[narrator] "And so the children of Israel
went into the midst of the sea
on the dry ground."
"And the waters were a wall to them
on their right and on their left."
"And the Egyptians pursued."
[dramatic music playing]
[Egyptians soldiers chanting]
[war horns blowing]
Quick!
- Go.
- No!
Do as I say.
Go.
[Zipporah] Go! Quick!
Go!
Go!
[dramatic music continues]
[narrator] "Moses stretched out his hand
over the sea."
"At daybreak,
the sea went back to its place."
"The water flowed back
and covered the chariots and horses."
[dramatic music fades]
"The entire army of Pharaoh
that had followed
the Israelites into the sea."
"Not one of them survived."
[melancholy music playing]
One of my daughters,
when she was ten years old,
came home from Sunday school,
and this was a story they read.
The The Red Sea story,
and where they all die in the Red Sea.
And, um, she was very distraught.
She said "Why would God do that?"
"Aren't they God's children too?"
And I thought to myself, "Dang, girl.
That's a really good insight right there."
You know, why would God do that?
[Ibrahim] So the story,
where it's told in the Qur'an,
ends with the drowning of Pharaoh.
When the story is told,
he does say that, you know,
"I believe in the god of Aaron and Moses."
But it's too late at that point.
[Nasser] There's actually
an interesting story.
Gabriel, one of the great, right, angels,
he tells Muhammad that,
"There are two people I hate the most."
"Satan and Pharaoh."
Gabriel says that, "I was so scared
that Pharaoh would convert to Islam
right before his death,
I started putting mud in his mouth
so that he wouldn't convert
to become Muslim or to believe in God."
[Miriam singing in Hebrew]
[Meyers] There are
among the Dead Sea Scrolls
a short piece that's a scroll
that's representing
part of the Book of Exodus.
It's a damaged fragment,
but there clearly was a long song, uh,
attributed to Miriam.
[continues singing]
[Meyers] This is a victory song.
The people have escaped,
and God is the warrior
that defeated the Egyptians
and saved the people.
[continues singing]
It says, "Who is like unto you, Yahweh,
among the gods?"
In other words,
"You're the greatest god of all."
This is the first
important theological message
of Jewish, Christian, Muslim tradition.
And it comes attributed
to the mouth of a woman.
[continues singing in Hebrew]
Adonai.
[Enns] Moses has saved the world
like Noah has.
With Noah, there's the water that recedes,
and then landing on dry land
to start over again.
And then you have the Red Sea incident,
which is the water splits,
the dry land is in there,
and that is life for them.
So they get to the other side,
so they can start
their new life as a nation.
But they're connected.
And I think the connection
is that when God saves,
creation gets involved.
My brother
we are free.
We are?
[triumphant music playing]
[sniffles]
[narrator] "Then Moses
led the people of Israel
from the Red Sea,
and they went into the Desert of Shur."
[solemn music playing]
"For three days they traveled
in the desert without finding water."
[Harris] Here's this shocked,
traumatized people
that are now in the wilderness
and have every reason to be confused,
frightened, uncertain.
They very literally
don't know where they are.
They've got plenty of experiences
demonstrating clearly to them
that their God is real
and that their God has rescued them.
But they're being asked to imagine forward
into something that is beyond
what they can picture.
[woman 1] My children haven't eaten
in three days.
[Harris] And they're following Moses,
but they also know
that Moses can't picture it either.
[Moses] Give me a sign, my Lord.
[man 1] Has he led us out here to die?
- [woman 2] This is madness!
- [man 2] We should have stayed in Egypt.
[Einhorn] They've been slaves
and just got free.
Just when they thought it was over,
it's not over.
And right there it captures it.
That's life.
You passed one test
and and you learn something from it,
but you're not there yet.
And the message of the Torah
is that you never arrive.
It's more about the journey
than the destination.
My Lord, where are you?
My people are thirsty and starving.
You will speak to me!
[solemn music swells]
The people are afraid, Moses.
He no longer speaks to me.
Who?
God.
He is gone.
[uneasy music playing]
Perhaps not.
Perhaps He tests you here.
This time is too much.
No.
No.
No.
[music distorts]
[Yahweh] Show them the way.
God's will we will find water today.
We turn south.
- Canaan is north, brother.
- I know.
We're going south to Midian.
To Midian?
To the mountain
where He first spoke to me.
We're going to the Promised Land.
We will get there.
How will we survive?
What will we tell our people?
He will provide.
[narrator] "In the desert,
the whole community
grumbled against Moses and Aaron."
"The Israelites said to them,
'If only we had died
by the Lord's hand in Egypt!'"
"'There, we sat around pots of meat
and ate all the food we wanted.'"
"'You have brought us out into this desert
to starve this entire assembly to death.'"
[Einhorn] The road is long.
The challenges are many.
And you see this tiredness
that happens with the people
where they get snappy, and you wonder,
"How could they be so ungrateful?"
"Didn't they see
everything that happened?"
You're saying that when you walked out
of this air-conditioning room.
These people
have been suffering, being saved,
suffering and being saved.
They were broken at so many points,
and it'd be stranger
if they didn't complain.
[exciting music playing]
[narrator] "In the morning
there was a layer of dew around the camp."
"When the dew was gone,
thin flakes like frost on the ground
appeared on the desert floor."
"The Lord said, 'I will rain down bread
from heaven for you.'"
[Kirsch] The Israelites complain
that they're hungry,
and God performs a miracle
by sending down manna from heaven.
Scientists have told us
that there is a species of plant lice
that feed on the tamarisk tree,
which is present in Sinai.
And they exude a resinous substance
that's sweet to the taste
and white in appearance.
It's on the plants.
It can be gathered, dried,
made into bread.
He has spoken.
In the Sinai experience,
or the wilderness experience,
uh [chuckles]
I think we see the maternal side of God
because women were the ones
who changed agricultural materials
into edible form.
See, brother? A sign.
We have God the warrior
in the signs and wonders,
and fighting the Pharaoh's armies.
And now, um, metaphorically, at least,
we have God the mother, providing.
[man] Stop!
[people clamoring angrily]
[Zipporah] I said, stop!
This is not the way!
- [man] Let it go! Stop!
- [Zipporah] Stop!
[clamor continues]
[man 2] Selfish. Selfish man.
[Zipporah] Back!
Stop it!
[woman] How dare you?
David and Amram have been hoarding.
Now there's not enough to go around.
Took it to barter.
It's good for two days, no more.
God blessed us with His bounty,
and this is how you repay Him?
Throw them out.
Let them fend for themselves.
No, stop! Stop. Stop. Stop.
Do as I say.
[Zipporah sighing]
Anger has undone you before.
God has been compassionate.
Let us be too.
She's right, brother.
What would He want from us?
How can you ask me that,
when it's all my heart has ever sought?
Then let your mind seek it too.
[Einhorn] You cannot learn
until you nullify
everything you've learned before.
So to me, the wilderness is not
about a place of predatory animals.
It's a space of nil.
It's It's nothing.
There's nothing there.
Are there enemies? Are there threats?
Yes, there's gonna be all that.
But that's not the point.
The point is that the lesson and values
of what I need to teach you,
it cannot happen in Egypt.
Too much history there.
Can't happen in Israel. Too much to build.
And I think that's what the wilderness is.
Children of Israel.
For five days,
we gather food every morning.
Only what we need for that day.
And on the sixth day
on the sixth day we gather enough
so we can rest on the seventh.
We were made in God's image.
And on the seventh day, we rest. Yes?
Yes.
Yes.
A holy day.
A day
to remind ourselves
of how much we owe Him.
Let this be law.
The Sabbath is
a really interesting institution,
as we think about the ancient
Israelites and the biblical world.
As far as we know,
there is nothing like it
in any of the other cultures
around ancient Israel.
So in that sense, I guess we could
call it an Israelite invention.
[Enns] The first reference to Sabbath
is in Exodus 16,
with the "Gathering of the manna."
Like on the day the sixth day,
gather twice as much.
And rest on the seventh day
just like God did.
[Einhorn] There's a phrase we use.
"More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath,
the Sabbath has kept the Jews."
This is exactly
what the people needed at that point.
God, through Moses,
needed to declare a point where he says,
"Just stop. No more labor."
"Take stock of what you have,
count your blessings."
"If you'd be present and realize
there's nothing wrong in the moment,
we can make it."
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Having survived starvation
and the wrath of Pharaoh,
the Israelites soon face a new enemy
on the journey south to Mount Sinai.
We're not alone.
[distant horses neighing]
Desert people.
This is their land.
Many of the people of the ancient
Near East were not Israelites,
and were enemies of the Israelites.
A good example is the Amalekites.
[screaming]
Go! Go! Go! Moses!
Bandits!
They crept up on us in the dark.
We fought them off,
but there were too many of them.
Women and children were taken.
I need more men.
Amalekites. Slave traders.
We camp here. Give the order.
Let's get our people back.
[thunder rumbling]
[women exclaiming faintly]
[tense music playing]
[Joshua softly] Quickly.
Quickly into position.
[Enns] So the Israelites, did they leave
with swords and shields and arrows,
and like, how could they wage war
against the Amalekites?
This is actually
a very ancient Jewish midrash
that says basically they picked clean
the Egyptian soldiers
who died in the Red Sea,
and their bodies
were washed up on the shore,
and they pilfered their stuff.
Which is a great answer.
It's not what the Bible says.
The Bible says nothing,
but you wonder, "How did this happen?"
[dramatic music playing]
My Lord
lead your children to victory.
[thunder cracks]
[Adelman] God says,
"I brought you out of Egypt
with an outstretched arm
and a strong hand."
[men shouting]
And Moses' arms are doing exactly that.
[high-pitched ringing]
[shouting]
[Adelman] He functions as a symbol.
As a conduit.
[woman] Joshua!
We're over here.
They're here!
And as long as their eyes
are cast towards heaven,
then they succeed in battle.
[Joshua] Hurry, stay close to me.
[Adelman] And if they don't,
then they fail.
Quickly!
[narrator] Moses grows weary.
[music ends abruptly]
[men shouting in distance]
But his arms remain steady.
[cheering]
[triumphant music playing]
[ululating]
The Israelites
emerge victorious from the fight.
[upbeat music playing]
[clamoring]
- Aaron, what is it?
- They're fighting over spoils.
Enough! Enough! Enough!
The next man who strikes a blow dies!
Dies!
[solemn music rising]
Remember who we are!
A nation!
A nation of the faithful!
Move!
[sighing]
How do I lead such a people?
Walk with them in love.
And if I don't find it?
Then the fault lies with you.
Love was torn from us
as children, remember?
[Miriam scoffs]
Love alone would have never taken us
out of Egypt.
[solemn music playing]
The wandering in the wilderness story
is basically about this ragtag group of
deeply traumatized and scarred
and dysfunctional freed slaves,
uh, stumbling through.
[rousing music playing]
[Kang] Part of the lesson is,
God may give you a vision.
God may give you a dream.
More often than not,
it's not gonna actually materialize
the way that you want it to,
but it'll be something better.
People of God
were expecting the Promised Land,
and they thought
they got an express ticket.
But no.
There are things that need
to be worked on the inside, uh,
before I take you to the outside places.
Israel moves from one form of servitude
to another form of servitude,
which is to Yahweh.
The goal of the Exodus story
is not, "Be free."
It's, "Go to the mountain to worship God."
"Get the Commandments to get the law
so you know how to act
and so you know how to worship."
They still have
the spiritual struggle to endure.
Even though they've been
politically liberated,
they still have the task
of being spiritually liberated.
[excited chatter]
I've come to speak with Him.
To find Him again.
[Jethro] I have seen you this way before.
I cannot lead my people without God.
How do I walk with them and search for Him
at one and the same time?
Many years ago,
you took my sheep to pasture
so I could be free
and attend to my people.
[soothing music playing]
You were a good servant.
You have servants too.
Choose them wisely. Use them.
And then you may go to Him
in good conscience
and ask for his help.
[Harris] Jethro shows up again.
And then he watches Moses
conducting business
and receiving all of these
different people who have disputes,
and Moses is the only judge and jury.
And Jethro sees him doing this,
and Jethro tells him,
"You can't carry on like this."
"You're going to burn yourself out."
And then Jethro says to him,
"Here's what you need to do."
And he describes to him
how to set up a system of courts.
Jethro is, in my view,
this wonderful example
of how somebody who is not Jewish
brings the best ideas
and insights of his religious
traditions to help.
And Moses is smart enough
to accept the wisdom,
even though it comes
from a different culture.
[Moses] It's still here.
The story of our life.
[sighs heavily]
How does it end, I wonder?
[thunder rumbling]
I must go and seek his help.
You will.
Tell the story to our children
so they understand.
Go.
[narrator] Once again, Moses ascends
the great mountain to speak with God.
[thunder rumbling]
"There was thunder and lightning
with a thick cloud over the mountain."
"Mount Sinai was covered with smoke
because the Lord
descended on him in fire."
"The smoke billowed up from it
like smoke from a furnace,
and the whole mountain
trembled violently."
[wind howling]
[thunder cracking]
Where are you?
I came all this way to find you!
Speak to me!
Are you finished with me?
I'm not finished with you!
Do you hear me?
I don't know what to do, God.
I don't know where to go.
I'm lost without you.
[Yahweh] I bore you on eagles' wings
and brought you to myself.
If you will obey my voice
and keep my covenant,
then you shall be to me
a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
These are the words which
you shall speak to the children of Israel.
[narrator] Weeks pass.
The Israelites wait in the shadow
of Mount Sinai for Moses' return.
[uneasy music playing]
For 40 days and nights he has been gone.
He will return.
[Einhorn] These are a people
who live with so much uncertainty.
For the first time, their leader
is not in front of their face.
The person who's taken them out,
who has served really
as the father of the nation,
he's not there.
And they look up,
and there's this experience
that is so awesome and and so scary.
When you don't know where tomorrow
or how you're gonna survive,
or what's gonna happen going forward,
that's when you could do
a lot of bad stuff.
[unsettling music playing]
[Aaron] What's this?
We need a god who others recognize.
A god like other gods.
We have Egyptian gold.
Before we leave, we will melt it down
and make a god that will protect us.
Moses has protected us.
Do you truly believe
your brother is still alive?
Do you?
You are the firstborn brother.
It is time to reclaim your position.
[music swells]
[Moses hammering chisel]
[narrator] "And Aaron said to them,
'Break off the golden earrings
which are in the ears of your wives,
your sons, and your daughters,
and bring them to me.'"
"And he received the gold from their hand,
and he fashioned it with an engraving tool
and made a molded calf."
Remember, it is the disobedience
that causes the plagues back in Egypt.
But it's the disobedience of the people
on the other side of the wilderness
where they construct this god
It's that disobedience
that caused them to take a journey
that should not have been
any more than ten days
to last 40 years.
[Kirsch] Aaron, who is Moses' own brother
and the high priest of Israel,
he's the one who makes the golden calf
because he feels, uh, threatened
by the uproar among the Israelites.
So just to calm them down,
he makes them this god.
[men hammering]
[grunts]
[dramatic music playing]
Famously, Moses descends from Sinai
at the very moment they're offering
worship to the golden calf.
It's heartbreaking.
[panting]
It's Moses.
[Israelites murmuring]
[music swells]
- Moses!
- Moses!
Moses!
Moses!
[Miriam] Moses.
Nothing.
All for nothing.
Moses, he's so appalled and so outraged,
he takes the two tablets on which
the Ten Commandments have been written
and smashes them.
Anger control issues.
That is a theme
that you see throughout Moses' life.
[Harris] This struggle with anger
is something that we can learn a lot from.
Moses is somebody
who loses his cool, lashes out,
and then has to figure out
how to pick up the pieces again.
Help me.
What are they?
[Moses] The answer.
He answered my call.
And he gave me his greatest gift.
His laws.
And you
all of you broke my heart.
So I broke them too.
To change days past
one needs forgiveness.
Remember?
Leave me.
Now.
[whispering] What have I done, my Lord?
Go away.
My Lord.
I have failed you, my Lord.
[Yahweh] It is time.
I let loose a flood once
and spared only Noah.
I could let loose fire this time
and spare only you.
To burn them? Burn them all?
But my Lord,
we might have gone to the Promised Land
if you had not led me this way.
- None of this would have happened.
- What point in reaching the Promised Land
if you do not know how to live there?
You may have freedom,
but you cannot keep it without truth.
We will begin anew.
No!
Forgive them. Forgive us. Forgive me.
Forgive.
[Enns] Once again, God's had it.
"I'm gonna kill everybody,
and I'll just start over with you."
And Moses talks him out of it.
Like, that's rash. Think about this.
What will the Egyptians say?
You brought us out
into the desert just to kill us?
[grave music playing]
Let him go.
They rebelled against you.
Against God.
Let them go.
They deserve to die.
We should make them
an example to the others.
You should not commit murder.
This is the law.
What law?
The one I destroyed. Let him go.
Recite the laws to us, Moses.
Let us recite them to one another
until we no longer need to.
Because the laws will be written in us.
You should not make any graven images.
You should not have another God before me.
You should not take the name
of the Lord thy God in vain.
You shall not covet.
You should not
What really alienated
the children of Israel in the wilderness
was the lack of covenant.
And the reason they remained
in the wilderness as long as they did
was to seal the covenant.
God could have taken them to Canaan land
at any point, but they were not ready.
[Moses] Remember the Sabbath day
and keep it holy.
Honor your father and mother.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not bear false witness.
[Meyers] The Bible never uses
the word "commandments."
It does say ten, but there are ten things,
ten d'varim, ten issues, ten precepts.
The first five deal with
the human relationship to God.
You shall have no other gods before me.
You should not take
the name of God in vain.
The last five commandments are social.
They're about people
getting along with each other,
doing right by each other.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house
or anything that is your neighbor's.
[Einhorn] God says,
"You cannot be left without structure."
"That's not the point.
I didn't take you out to become nothing."
"I took you out to become something."
"And therefore these laws
are the beginning of a moral code
that is going to revolutionize
the entire world."
[ethereal music rising]
[Moses] Mother?
[echoing] Why are you sad, Moses?
For all I've done wrong.
For all I still have left to do.
You have done well.
[women ululating]
You brought them out of Egypt
as God asked you to.
You gave them laws to live by.
You gave them life.
What more
would you ask of yourself?
I must lead them to the Promised Land.
They will get there on their own.
Without you.
[Enns] The three big players
in this story,
Moses, Aaron, and Miriam,
um, they don't make it
to the Promised Land.
Come.
[Kirsch] The single most poignant
and tragic moment, I would argue,
in all of the Bible is that Moses,
who has been charged with God
to perform this difficult, dangerous task,
led the Israelites
through the desert for 40 years
and faithfully performs
that task to completion,
but is not allowed to join the children
of Israel in the Promised Land.
It's heartbreaking.
Look, Moses.
There it is.
The denial of Moses
to enter the Promised Land
resonates with me
in a contemporary fashion
in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The night before he died,
he echoed the sentiments of Moses.
He said, "I've been to the mountaintop."
"I've seen the Promised Land."
"I may not get there with you,
but I'm here to tell you,
you will get to the Promised Land."
It is almost as though he was channeling
Moses in that moment.
And if the Moses story means anything,
and that is that even once
you reach Canaan,
even once you have freedom in name,
it still requires a struggle.
What it takes to get free
is different than what it takes
to stay free.
[epic music rising]
Promised Land.
And I will never get there.
No.
But your children will.
[Zipporah] Moses?
Come inside now.
Come.
[narrator] "And Moses,
the servant of the Lord,
died there in Moab, as the Lord had said."
"Since then, no prophet
has risen in Israel like Moses,
who the Lord knew face-to-face
who did all those signs and wonders
the Lord sent him to do in Egypt,
to Pharaoh, to all his officials,
and to his whole land."
"For no one has ever shown
the mighty power
or performed the awesome deeds
that Moses did
in the sight of all Israel."
[solemn music playing]
[dramatic music playing]