7

Psychic Dynamite

I AM THAT I AM.

YAHWEH TO MOSES, EXODUS 3:14.

One of the most perplexing passages in the Torah occurs early in Exodus. After entrusting him with the most critical of missions, Yahweh the Lord suddenly and violently turns against Moses and tries to kill him! Why would Yahweh seek out the prophet, reveal to him the precious secrets of magic, task him with the sacred job of freeing the Jews, and then determine to kill him? And why would the Architect of the Universe fail in his attempt to dispose of a mere mortal?

We take up the story with Moses and his wife on the road to Egypt: “And it came to pass by the way of the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.”¹

Why did this speedy circumcision of the boy satisfy the enraged “Lord”? Why does Zipporah call Moses “a bloody husband”? And what becomes of her after this frightening episode? These questions have haunted biblical scholars for centuries. In his Commentary on the Torah, the noted American scholar Richard Elliott Friedman wrote, “No one knows what the episode at the lodging place means.”² And the German biblical scholar Martin Noth (1902–1968) wrote that the “obscure” incident provided no adequate reason “why in the face of the threat Zipporah should resort to the act of circumcision.”³

Jewish folklore links Reuel (here using his title “Jethro”) with this story:

On the road to Egypt, Satan appeared to him in the guise of a serpent and swallowed up his body down to his feet, but he was saved by his faithful wife Zipporah. She knew that this was a punishment because their second son had not yet been circumcised, Jethro having made it a condition that one half of the children should be Israelitish and the other Egyptian. Swiftly Zipporah took a sharp flint stone, circumcised their son Eliezer and touched the feet of her husband with the blood of circumcision. Immediately a heavenly voice called out: “Spew him out,” and the serpent obeyed.⁴

We suggest that this anomalous incident provides the key to unlocking our prime suspect’s goal. Far from being an obscure, inexplicable, and baffling incident this story reveals a precise, coherent, secret plan. What was that plan? And how did the circumcision of Moses’s second son expose it?

Why was Moses helpless to defend himself during the attack? Not because he felt powerless before the Creator of the Universe but because he was enveloped by the hypnotic fugue of Reuel. The Egyptian magician was “playing God” again. As we’ve seen in chapter 2, Reuel took on this ultimate role when he was a young man and wrestled with his uncle, Jacob. He received Jacob’s blessing and pronounced that his uncle’s name would thenceforth be changed to Israel. But now Reuel is older and is father-in-law to Moses. He fears that Moses might disappear to Egypt with his wife and his precious grandchild. He must ensure that from now on, he can control the sons of Moses. This, we suggest, is not a tale of supernatural force: it is a story of a grandfather protecting his prized bloodline. It is the story of a breeder of people protecting his investment.

How? Why?

The answer takes us back to Reuel’s own bloodline. Isaac, his paternal grandfather, was the founder of the Jews. Ishmael, his maternal grandfather, was the founder of the Arabs.

Reuel was the first person to carry both Jewish and Arab blood within his veins. Much of the story of the exodus can best be understood from the narcissistic point of view of Reuel as he relentlessly pursues his obsessive goal of preserving and enhancing what he believed to be the noblest bloodline of all: his own.

The marriage between Reuel’s parents had been opposed by Isaac.⁵ Why? The feud had originated generations before—in the time of Isaac’s parents, Abraham and Sarah, Reuel’s great grandparents.

GOD AND HIS ANGELS

Sarah was infertile; considered a shameful state for any woman in those primitive times. To supply Abraham with a son, Sarah gave her Egyptian handmaid Hagar to her husband as a surrogate mother. But when the child, Ishmael, was born Sarah regretted her decision. She told Abraham, “I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes.”⁶ A fierce hatred grew between the two women.

Abraham faces a crisis. He doesn’t want to come between Sarah’s rage and Hagar’s desperate concern for her status. He needs a way out. Conveniently, God soon speaks to Abraham ordering him to “hearken” unto the voice of Sarah. The stressed husband tells his wife of many years that she can deal with Hagar however she wants.

Sarah wastes no time in making life intolerable for her former maid. Hagar is pushed to the breaking point by Sarah’s harsh treatment and flees the camp rather than suffer more indignities. She and her unborn child face death by exposure but miraculously she is chosen to be one of the first biblical characters to encounter an angel. The apparition saves her by supplying water:

And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael; because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.⁷

Hagar is promised that her descendants will form a new nation, the Arabs. Despite being the only witness to the angel’s appearance this event secures both Hagar’s status in camp and her destiny.

Years later, as Ishmael entered puberty, another angel was invoked. At the age of ninety, Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac who could certainly qualify as a miracle baby. We can imagine the rumors spreading through camp as fast as through any twenty-first-century small town about the infant’s true paternity. The gossip burned Sarah as surely as any flare from the campfire. And then her stepson, Ishmael, made the mistake of casting a “mocking” stare in her direction. “And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, which she had born unto Abraham, mocking. Wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.”⁸

Once again Abraham faces a crisis over Hagar and Ishmael. He knows that Sarah wants him to kill Ishmael so that Isaac will be the only heir. But Abraham is fond of his firstborn son. Once again, the Voice of God is conjured; this time instructing him to make a brutal sacrifice. He is commanded to sacrifice the child to God. But, just as in the case of Hagar’s imminent death by thirst, at the last moment an angel appears and stops the killing by replacing the boy with a sacrificial ram. Abraham is the only witness. His son, who didn’t see the angel, is saved.

Hagar’s angel and Abraham’s angel are only visible to them. The belief in the existence of these supernatural creatures is based entirely upon the readers of the Torah accepting the stories that Hagar and Abraham tell about them. Today, most of us require a lot more proof before we’ll accept the existence of angels. We suggest that both Hagar and Abraham invented the angels to fulfill their own needs. Hagar desired respect and got it. Abraham saved his son’s life.

Only Abraham witnessed what really happened on the mountain. But Abraham still had to explain the strange episode to Sarah. Desperate to mollify his wife’s anger when she discovered that he had not gotten rid of her mocking stepson he offered a compromise. He introduced the practice of circumcision to demonstrate to Sarah that he had after all, drawn blood, if not ended (human) life. The biblical scholar Arthur Frederick Ide wrote, “Circumcision was a surrogate sacrifice of their infant males to their gods. The cutting off the penis’ foreskin of the child took the place of an actual murder of the Semitic child which commonly occurred in Palestine.”⁹

To continue to ameliorate his heartsick wife, Abraham had to ensure that his other son, Isaac, was bloodied as well. And so, two separate traditions of circumcision were introduced. The Ishmaelites would undergo the ritual at the time of puberty or marriage, but for Isaac’s descendants, the Jews, another time was prescribed, “And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you.”¹⁰

Circumcision on the eighth day after birth became the custom for the sons of Isaac. It was on this day, we suggest, that Reuel caught up with Moses’s family at the inn. Playing God, Reuel ensured that their second son, Eliezer, was circumcised as a Jew. Reuel then took his daughter and her son back to his homeland. Moses had no choice but to continue to Egypt without his family.

Reuel’s grandfather, Isaac, was rattled by Sarah’s curse against the children of Hagar. It placed Ishmael in danger. And so, when his son, Esau, married Ishmael’s daughter, the founder of the Jews was upset, to put it mildly. Their union violated the curse that Sarah had placed on Ishmael.

Reuel was descended from Abraham through both his mother (Bashemath) and father (Esau).

As we learned in chapter 2, Isaac had twin sons. His favorite was the firstborn, Esau. Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, devised a scheme involving her favorite, the younger twin, Jacob, to trick Isaac into bestowing his final blessing on Jacob by having him impersonate Esau. As a result, Esau was left with nothing. He rebelled and became a warrior—conquering a mountainous region of present-day Jordan (then called Seir), which he renamed Edom. Esau became a king and his wife, Bashemath (the daughter of Ishmael), was mother to Reuel, a prince of Edom who received an elite education as a magician in Egypt.

REUEL’S WIFE

We know the names of Reuel’s parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, his uncle, and thirteen of his cousins. Also, his sons and daughters, his half brothers, and even one of his half brother’s illegitimate sons. But the identity of one major character is conspicuous by her absence. Nowhere in the Torah are we told the name of Reuel’s wife. His daughter married Moses. Her mother’s identity is crucial. Who, then, was she?

Jealous of his noble bloodline, Reuel must have thought long and hard about his choice of wife. We suggest that he decided on his cousin Dinah, known in Midian as “Miriam,” the prophetess.^*24 By marrying Miriam he sealed his alliance with Levi (Aaron) but he nurtured a more long-term aim. While his cousins made a living by breeding sheep and goats, Reuel’s preoccupation was with human bloodlines. By linking his genealogy with Miriam’s, he created children who were genetically linked to Israel, Judah, and Levi, as well as to his own already impressive list of powerful relatives, including Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac.

When Reuel gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses the final piece in the genetic puzzle fell into place with the birth of their sons, Gershom and Eliezer. Reuel had almost perfected his bloodline. His own name, as well as that of Joseph’s, through his son Moses, could now be added to the list of ten patriarchs whose nobility flowed through the veins of Reuel’s grandsons.^†25 Moses’s sons represented a great prize. (It is possible that in the centuries that followed this bloodline remained pure. And it remained a secret: a secret preserved for a thousand years to the present. As we will see in the epilogue, today over a million people carry on Reuel’s pedigree.) But to fulfill the ultimate objective of his secret genetic agenda Reuel had to seize control of the children of Israel.

MOSES IN MIDIAN

The adventure, turmoil, and trouble Moses endured as an Egyptian warrior in Ethiopia was airbrushed from the Torah. Instead, his story jumps abruptly from that of the child we encounter in Exodus 2:10 to full adulthood in the next verse:

And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And, Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian.¹¹

Moses’s destination has caused much consternation among biblical scholars: “We learn nothing about the reason Moses turned to Midian”¹² and “No reason is given for Moses’ choice of the land of Midian as his goal.”¹³ What was there about this place that drew him?

Moses knew the legend of the devastating drought that had forced his father’s people from Egypt before he was born. He also knew that Midian was located at a rare, life-saving oasis ruled by Reuel, cousin to all the children of Israel. For more than two decades while Moses was growing up,^*26 the Israelites had lived in Midian where Levi, reinvented as Aaron, was Reuel’s apprentice in the teachings of the mountain god, Yahweh.^†27

Tales about the fate of his father’s tribe would be carried by traders passing through the Egyptian city of Heliopolis, the capital of the northeastern province of Goshen where the Israelites had once lived. Having been raised in the city as an Egyptian priest he must have been curious about his Jewish relatives in Midian.

The tipping point came when a new pharaoh arose “who knew not Joseph.”¹⁴ During the reign of the pharaoh who knew Joseph, Moses was safe in Heliopolis, thriving under the tutelage of his grandfather, the high priest. But the new pharaoh, reinforcing the bigotry of ages, might well have objected to a man who was half-Jewish practicing within the sacred temple of Heliopolis. Moses, we suggest, didn’t just wander into Midian accidentally. The new homeland of his uncles and cousins would have been a natural destination.

Compared to the colorful sapphire rod folktale, the Torah’s account of Moses’s meeting with his future wife, Zipporah, is brief:

Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.¹⁵

Reuel is portrayed as a generous and wise man who took pity upon an Egyptian fugitive. But knowing Reuel’s obsession with his bloodline it seems improbable that he would marry his precious daughter to the first man who showed her kindness. The story is more complex than the text reveals. Aware that Moses was Joseph’s son—the one honorable son of Israel whose blood was missing from Reuel’s genetic agenda—he was keen to welcome him into the family. It wasn’t Moses’s impressive fighting abilities that persuaded Reuel to marry him to his daughter. It was his genetic inheritance that Reuel coveted.

The account of Moses at the well with Reuel’s daughters assumes he was a formidable fighter. He had just completed a grueling journey across unforgiving mountains and deserts that would have left an ordinary man unfit for any battle. But the contemporary audience through their folktales knew that Moses had been a great warrior in Ethiopia even if the tales of his adventures would later be cut from the Torah. The Israelites knew that simple shepherds were no match for Moses’s experienced sword.

Reuel’s daughter assumed Moses was Egyptian because his face and head were shaven in the manner of the Egyptian priests. The iconic image of Moses, complete with long, flowing hair and generous beard depicts him as decidedly Hebrew but the Moses who first arrived in Midian was clean shaven.

Reuel and Moses broke bread together. The meal represented more than just sustenance. In those distant times, the breaking of bread implied “an unsaid promise of protection.”¹⁶

Moses believed he had found sanctuary. Little did he suspect that he had just fallen into a deadly trap rigged by a mortal enemy.

REUEL AND MOSES

Moses’s conniving father-in-law went by two names in Midian. To his family he was known as Reuel. But the Midianites for whom he acted as high priest knew him as Jethro, meaning “his excellence,”¹⁷ a formal title. But it might have meant something much more. Jethro might well have been the name of Reuel’s larger-than-life persona adopted whenever he assumed the role of spokesman of God to the Midianites. On these occasions he may have even worn a special costume and feature-concealing mask. This was high drama and with his Egyptian training, Reuel knew how to put on a mesmerizing show.

Kirsch writes that “Jethro was a sorcerer and Moses was his apprentice.”¹⁸ We suggest that is was Levi who was Jethro’s actual apprentice. Moses was known as Reuel’s shepherd. At the time, the term shepherd carried a more complex meaning than our modern notion of a solitary man tending a flock of sheep. The “‘shepherds,’ along with the ‘priests,’ were groups of religious personnel . . . they were servants of the temple and its high priest.”¹⁹

Moses was well tutored in the nuances of Reuel’s religion. Reuel taught him how to speak with God using prayer, meditation, and hypnotism—three powerful naturally linked forces. William J. Bryan Jr. in Religious Aspects of Hypnosis wrote, “One best learns to pray from someone who already knows how to pray in the same manner that one best learns hypnosis from someone who already understands it. As with hypnosis, prayer takes practice; and . . . consists of concentrating the mind on one central focus of attention, namely a deity, and relaxing the rest of the voluntary musculature.”²⁰

He continues, “in no state of prayer in any religion in the world is the fist ever clenched . . . the muscles of the body are always relaxed.” Bryan also writes, “Many elements of hypnosis remain in our religion today. The chanting, testimonials, the flickering candles and the cross as a fixation point for our vision; the relaxation of the rest of our body; the bowing of our heads in supplication. . . .”

There is even an element of autosuggestion in the modern prayer; “most praying is done with the eyes closed, and as the prayer ends it is usually brought to a close by the saying of a familiar phrase (e.g. the Amen used in Christian churches), which serves as a wakeup signal and allows the parishioner to then open his eyes. It is exactly the same in hypnosis.”²¹

Prayer, as we understand it today, is a much more recent technique of communicating with God than what was practiced in Reuel and Moses’s time. Their moments of contemplation were more closely related to what we would call meditation. As the two men meditated, clever Reuel likely took the opportunity of using his hypnotic voice to implant suggestions into the mind of his novice. Moses was used to absorbing knowledge from his grandfather at Heliopolis. It was easy for him to transfer this same respect and devotion to his father-in-law in Midian. It is probable that Reuel gave Moses a key word or phrase to trigger an immediate trance. The phrase might have been, “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground;” words that Reuel may have repeated to Moses before their meditation sessions. Such an autosuggestion would prove critical during their extraordinary meeting on the Mountain of God.

On a subterranean level, the relationship between Reuel and Moses dominates the remainder of the Torah. Traces of Reuel’s fingerprints can still be discerned in various scenes despite the persistent attempts of the Priests to erase them from history.

Moses lived the isolated life of a shepherd tending to Reuel’s flocks in the wilderness of Midian. Many a prophet in the Bible would spend time alone with nature. Winston Churchill recognized that “Every prophet has to come from civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.”²²

Every time Moses returned to Midian he spent more time with Reuel. The American writer Jonathan Kirsch in his award-winning biography Moses: A Life wrote of Reuel, “only God enjoyed a more intimate and influential relationship with Moses.”²³

Reuel was even brazen enough to impersonate the Almighty.

THE BURNING BUSH

The day came when Moses “led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God”²⁴ where he experienced the extraordinary vision that stands as one of the most famous passages in the Old Testament. If we look at this exchange without the blinkers of familiarity or religious dogma it strikes the reader that “God” chose a rather bizarre manifestation:

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.²⁵ [Italics added]

The Voice spoke directly to Moses, ordering him to stay away from the burning bush. Why? Did a concealed speaker not wish to be seen? Was this really the Voice of God or was it just a simple act of ventriloquism by a master magician demonstrating his supreme command of hypnotism? Did the words “put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground” place Moses into a hypnotic trance?

Not a god, rather an Egyptian-trained magician spoke to Moses from behind that burning bush. The prophet tried to discover the mysterious deity’s name. “And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM.”²⁶

I AM THAT I AM has been translated as “Yahweh.” Not a name at all. More a refusal to divulge a name. Like the mysterious stranger/god who wrestled with Jacob, the burning bush deity kept his identity secret.

In both cases the powerful, hidden being was none other than the magician Reuel playing the role he intended to master—God.

Moses was terrified to learn that God had chosen him to undertake a holy mission. He protests that he’s not worthy of the task because he is “not eloquent” and is “slow of speech.” At this point Yahweh, the supposed Supreme Creator of the Universe, has a temper tantrum, shouting, “Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well. And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee.”²⁷

This is Aaron’s first appearance in the Bible. Why and how did he suddenly materialize at the Mountain of God? Was he following Moses “to the backside of the desert”²⁸ as the shepherd tended to his sheep? It seems unlikely.

Aaron’s abrupt manifestation suggests a more insidious scenario. His appearance was part of a setup. But for what purpose? Why would Reuel and Aaron go to such extremes to convince Moses to return to Egypt? What was it that they really wanted but couldn’t get their hands on without Moses’s unique help?

The answer, we suggest, is Joseph’s bones.

The last line of Genesis tells us that the Egyptians embalmed Joseph’s body and “he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”²⁹ The normal Egyptian practice was to conceal the location of tombs. Because the Israelites had been expelled from Egypt following Joseph’s death none of them knew the secret location of his tomb. Jewish folklore says, “Moses was greatly perplexed, for he knew not the place where the coffin of Joseph could be discovered.”³⁰ But Moses had the right to know the whereabouts of his father’s grave. The Egyptians could not object to a son safeguarding his father’s bones. It was a normal, even expected, part of their culture. And Moses’s shaved head and face, as well as his Egyptian dress and accent, wouldn’t raise an eyebrow from the authorities. As far as they were concerned, Moses was Egyptian. Undisturbed by the powers-that-be, he could remove Joseph’s coffin from Egypt.

But why would Reuel want to possess Joseph’s bones?

The answer is to be found, once again, in Jewish folklore. We recall how Rachel stole the image that Laban worshipped. This image, called teraphim, a gruesome Jewish folktale tells us, “was really the head of a man, a first born, whom the worshipper had slain, pinched off his head and salted it with salt and balsam. The name of an unclean spirit and incantations were then written upon a plate of gold and placed under the tongue of this head. The head was then placed in the wall, lamps were lit in front of it, and the worshipper, bowing down before the head, asked it to tell him oracles.”³¹

Possessing the skull of a famous man was believed to be a way of contacting and influencing the spirit world. As an Egyptian-trained magician, Reuel believed that possessing Joseph’s skull would help him in his quest to take control of the children of Israel. He knew the Israelites would celebrate the recovery of Joseph’s coffin and that they would willingly follow the coffin to the Promised Land. It was Joseph, after all, who had saved them from starvation in Canaan during the drought, leading them to prosperity in Egypt. For the Israelites, Joseph was a mythic figure. To possess his bones would be a huge asset for Reuel. But a big hurdle lay between him and his goal. He had no authority to demand that the Egyptians release Joseph’s coffin to him.

But one person did—his devoted protégé, Moses.

The mission that Moses was charged with by the deity hiding behind the burning bush could not have been to free his people from Egyptian bondage. The tribe had already been expelled from the land of the Nile and were living without Egyptian restraint in Midian. Instead, Reuel, impersonating Yahweh, ordered the prophet to retrieve Joseph’s bones. Moses eagerly acquiesced because he wanted to fulfill the dying Joseph’s request to be buried in the Promised Land. Little did he suspect that the real purpose of his journey was to deliver Joseph’s remains to Reuel in the aid of black magic.

In his disguise as Yahweh, Reuel taught Moses magic tricks guaranteed to mesmerize the children of Israel. The first was to transform a hypnotized snake into a rod. This was Magic 101 for an Egyptian priest. When the snake was dropped it jolted out of its trance and quickly slithered away. As high priest to the Midians, who were known as “sons of the snake” Reuel would have been familiar with the reptiles—and due to his position—perhaps even an expert snake charmer.

During the second “miracle” Moses shut off the blood flow to his arm, turning his hand white as if it had become leprous. The last trick was to transform water into blood. All three acts were designed to invoke terror. Snakes, leprosy, and the miraculous appearance of blood all evoked great fear in the Israelites. They would want to avoid such terrifying supernatural sights; precisely Reuel’s aim since none of the tricks invited close examination.

Today, only at a religious revival complete with dramatic faith healings, would you be likely to find an audience so impressed by magic that they would believe such displays to be acts of God. Most people would need a more spectacular exhibition to entice them to abandon their homes and follow a stranger—no matter how charismatic—into the wilderness. We’re reminded of Christopher Marlowe’s alleged objections to Moses as a magician, which were touched on in chapter 1, namely that his tricks would only work on the gullible.

Having been given his instructions from Yahweh, Moses returned from the Mountain of God to speak with Reuel, ignorant of the fact that Reuel had been the Voice of the Burning Bush that he had listened to so intently. “And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-inlaw, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. And the LORD [Yahweh] said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life.”³²

It seems that Reuel (Jethro) had no objection to his son-in-law returning to Egypt. But he hadn’t foreseen that Moses would take his wife and child with him. To get them back Reuel was forced to play God at the inn and leave Moses to travel on to Egypt with Aaron. One can only wonder with what glee Levi (acting as Aaron) must have felt at the prospect of retrieving Joseph’s bones. Fully aware of the script written by Reuel he would play his role to the hilt.

Joseph was an unrivaled hero to the Israelites. The return of his bones inspired great loyalty. As Moses solemnly accompanied his coffin as it was carried before the assembly of Israelites,^*28 the people were satisfied that they’d found their new Joseph. A true son of his father. He would lead them to the Promised Land just as Joseph had saved them from starvation during the drought in Canaan.

The first act of Reuel’s coup was complete.