20
War Brother
A final roll of the waves slid up the sand, steadily gaining distance but slowing, finally dissipating and then lapping at the soles of my sandals in a gentle nudge.
The sea was calming again. The surface smoothed over and became very still.
I fell to my knees. My astonishment at the act of Yahweh was there, yes, and yet I also grieved all of those men lost.
But where I was grieving, the people behind me sent up a tremendous cheer, their voices raised as one, shouting so loudly that I had to cover my ears. Tambourines banged together, hands clapped, the women trilled, and this sound was magnified by the thousands and thousands, so loud that I thought the water might part again.
Camp that night was on the seashore. In all the years to come, the long, brutal years in the Sinai, where so much heartache and sorrow had been endured, I never saw a happier sight.
I was lying on my side near the shore, alone. Not far away was a young family, sitting up late around their fire. The sky was clear and sparkled above us. The smell of the driftwood smoke was sweet.
The father was holding his hands up and gesturing wildly. I could not hear what he was saying, but it was clear he was enacting the events of the day. Two young children stared at him with wide eyes and wider smiles. The wife went about cleaning up after their meal, her own face full of contentment.
I watched them late into the night, eventually pulling out a sheet of papyrus and my sketching sticks and drawing the scene.
It soothed my mind, so I turned the papyrus over and sketched another image. I took careful time with it. It was the symbol of a journey. The conclusion of my old life. The symbols of who I had been.
The sketch was my Egyptian clothing and armor being left in the sand as I had left it that afternoon. With them, for it had no use to me anymore, was my Gold of Honor. My footprints led away from these objects, wandering into the wild and unknown lands.
The next morning we broke camp. It was simple enough for me, because I only had what I could carry. I noticed that was true for the others too. At the most, people had mule carts or handcarts. I made my way over to the father of the family I had seen the night before as he prepared his family to depart with the others who were streaming off in a line through the rocky hills.
He eyed me warily as I approached, so I held my hands up in a gesture of submission. “Please, I long to go with you and only wish to ask you some things.”
The man’s eyes grew cold. “Egyptians cannot come with us.”
“That is not what I heard. I heard that your god allows others to come if they desire.”
“You heard wrongly.”
“Moses himself told me this.”
“Nonsense!” the man scoffed. “No one speaks to Moses who is not an elder!”
By this time the wife had finished packing up their belongings and was standing behind her husband, watching us. Their children stopped playing and watched as well.
I could not be angry at the man for treating me this way. His face and arms bore terrible scars from his lifetime of bondage, as did his wife’s and children’s. They had been fed to be kept alive, but that was the extent of any luxury they had known.
I bowed my head. “I will leave you alone. I only had some questions that I pray you would answer for me. And . . .” I let this draw out a moment. “I am not an Egyptian. Not anymore.”
The wife had moved up close to her husband and, shockingly, placed her hand on his elbow while he was still engaging with me.
He turned on her, too surprised to be angry. She leaned in and whispered in his ear, then bowed respectfully.
He looked back at me, his face less hostile. “My wife tells me that she has seen you before. With Moses. Now that I look at you longer, I recognize you as well. How do you know him?”
“May I have the honor of knowing your name, and that of your father?”
The man glared at me. “No Egyptian has ever cared to know my name.”
“As I said, I am not an Egyptian. And I do care. I have no friends in this new land.”
“Perhaps I will share it later. You will soon learn among my people that a name is all a man has to offer. How do you know Moses?”
“I was in the palace guard of the king of Egypt. I saw them perform your god’s wonders. And I met them on the road from Goshen when the curse of darkness came. They were kind to me.”
The man appeared to be at a loss as to what to make of me. I was not posturing arrogantly like an Egyptian is prone to do, and yet I was dressed like one. I was being courteous to him, and it appeared to help him relax.
“What are your questions?”
Grateful, I asked, “Why does everyone pack so lightly for such an unknown journey?”
“We were told to pack lightly the night the Destroyer came. We painted the doorposts of our homes with lamb’s blood to make him pass over us. We had a meal made with unleavened bread, because we were told that the Lord required it of us to be able to leave to symbolize how he had delivered us. We were told to pack only what we could carry.”
I did not understand what he meant by any of that, of course, but this made me think about the night of the final terror and how the shadow seemed to have come from the north. From Goshen. As though the figure I saw devouring the moon and stars had indeed come for Egypt like a rampaging lion.
“How will you . . . how will we survive out there? I have been a soldier on the frontier. There is nothing that could possibly sustain us.”
For the first time, the man smiled. “After all you witnessed, after all of the signs and wonders, you ask how Yahweh could provide something as simple as water and bread?”
“Perhaps we could pitch our fire together,” I said.
The man tilted his head. “Do you have a woman?”
His eyes flickered down at my chest. I realized I still wore the Gold of Honor.
“You say you were a warrior.”
“I said I was a soldier. The two are different.”
He pointed at my neck. “I know that chain. It is the Gold of Honor. It tells me you were more than a mere soldier.”
I nodded, convinced now that an Egyptian soldier would never be welcomed in these ranks. I started to turn away from him.
But I was wrong.
“We will have need of warriors in the days ahead. You have shown humility. Far more than a winner of the Gold of Honor could be expected to show. We have nothing promised to us but our inheritance. We must go and fight for it. Are you prepared?”
I began to notice more things about this man. He had a firm confidence, a quality great leaders carried that could not be taught or explained well. Men were simply drawn to such leaders, prepared to follow them wherever they might go. The wife looked at him with eagerness and admiration, not fear. His children crawled around on his legs, and he did not swat them away as most other fathers would have.
“I am prepared,” I answered. “I will fight for whatever life your god delivers to me.”
The man smiled. It was his true self, I could tell immediately.
“If you are to win victories, he must become your God as well.”
I had nothing else to say. I waited patiently for his decision. If he said no, that I could not pitch my fire with him, then I would move on alone. But I did not wish for that.
“You may pitch your tent with us,” he said finally. “I will take you to Moses and Aaron once we have left the sea behind us. Perhaps they can appoint you to some needed task. Forgive me for being rude earlier.”
“No forgiveness is necessary. You have every right to be suspicious of my kind.”
I walked back to retrieve my pack and sword, which were lying in the sand. The man’s family was already heading toward the mass of others, hundreds of thousands slowly shifting away from the shoreline, forming a long line as they walked through a craggy pass leading to the east.
“Wait,” I called out. The man turned and looked at me curiously.
I hurried back to the edge of the water. Lifting the Gold of Honor from my neck, I looked at it one more time. All-powerful where I had been. Powerless where I was going. I threw it as far as I could and watched it splash way out into the sea, where it sank to the depths and was beyond my reach forever. It would remain buried there, along with my lost comrades.
I watched the waves a moment more before returning to where the man stood waiting for me. He studied me as I approached, respect and slight amusement on his face.
We were not friends yet, but as we turned and followed the others into the desert, the beginning of a long exile of difficulty and war and suffering we could not possibly grasp at the time, I sensed that we would be.
Indeed, this man became my truest war brother.
I would shed blood for him, and he for me. We would grow old together, sharply disputing at times, as two strong-willed men are prone to do, but sharing a brotherhood that would never be broken. We would grow old and gray together and spend our lives threatening the enemy.
I heard a song, a chant rising up from the crowd. Countless voices took it up. The melody was difficult to place, and the people were too overjoyed to sing the right notes, but I had the feeling the song had been made up in this very moment. I listened for the words.
“Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name!”
“Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his name!”
Yes, I thought to myself. This Yahweh is indeed a warrior. I now know his name.
I fell into step next to the man I had been conversing with, my new companion.
“Would you do me the honor of sharing your name?” I asked again as we were swallowed up by the desert, the distant pillar of fire guiding us on.
“Joshua,” he replied, “the son of my father Nun.”