Israel Tried to Stone Moses for Coming Down Without Aaron

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The Morning the Order Was Wrong

Moses prayed the whole night and got nothing that would fit in his mouth. God had told him the time had come for his brother to leave the world, and had told him to carry the news himself, and had given him one thing to hold onto while he did it: the soul would not be handed to the angel of death.

Every morning of that wilderness worked the same way. The princes rose early and waited at the door of Eleazar and Ithamar. The elders went and waited on Moses. That morning Moses got up before dawn and went with Eleazar and all the princes and stood outside Aaron's tent, and when Aaron came out he found the whole leadership of Israel standing in front of his door.

"My brother, why have you changed the custom today?"

"Because God has told me something I must say to you."

"Then say it here."

"Not here."

"I am asking you. Speak."

"Not until we have gone out from this place."

The Walk Where Aaron Was Put in the Middle

They always walked in the same formation as well. Moses in the center, Aaron at his right hand, Eleazar at his left, and Israel coming along behind. This time Moses put Aaron in the center and took the right hand himself.

The camp read it instantly and read it wrong. They told each other that the holy spirit had been taken off Moses and given to Aaron, and the news went through the tents and made everybody glad, because they had always loved Aaron more. He was the one who went into other people's quarrels. He went between a man and his neighbor, and between a man and his wife, and came back out with the two of them talking again. So they poured out of the camp and followed the three of them toward the hill, in a good mood, on the way to a promotion.

The Lamp Moses Was Asking For

Halfway up, Moses tried again.

"My brother, give me back what God left in your keeping."

"The tent of meeting? The vessels?"

"Did He hand a light into your care?"

"He did. The lamp with its seven lights. It is burning in the tent now."

Aaron was a hundred and twenty-three years old and he could not hear it, because a brother's mouth was not shaped to say it. Moses went at it from another side. Why did Abraham die, he asked. Because the hour had come for Isaac to take his place. And Isaac? Because it was Jacob's turn. And if a man came to you and asked for twenty years of your life, or ten, or one year, or a single day, and the day came around, would you tell him no?

Aaron stopped walking. "Moses, my hour has come."

Moses did not answer. He had started weeping somewhere inside where it did not show yet. Aaron put both hands on his own head and wept out loud. "What good is a good name to me now, when I am leaving the world. I loved peace. I ran after peace. I put husbands back with their wives."

The Cave With the Bed Already Made

While they were sitting there the ground came apart in front of them and showed them a cave.

Moses looked into it and told his brother that a man does not carry the priestly garments into a place like that, where there may be old graves and the linen would be defiled. Let Eleazar have them, he said, and you put on his. So Aaron stood on the hillside and took off the eight garments of the high priesthood one at a time and dressed his son in them, and Eleazar stood there in his father's clothes while his father put on his.

The two brothers went in. Inside the cave a lamp was burning, and a bed was made, and a table stood ready with food on it, and there were angels waiting at either side of the bed.

"Go up, my brother. Lie down on it. Straighten your legs. Close your eyes. Close your mouth."

Aaron did all four things in order, and his soul went out of him.

Moses stood there and wanted it. He said out loud that a man born to a death like that was a fortunate man, and heard the answer come back: by your life, you will finish your own days the same way. Then he walked out, and the mouth of the cave closed itself behind him.

The Stones in Their Hands

Moses and Eleazar came down the hill. Three men had gone up in front of the whole camp that morning and two were coming back, and the second one was wearing the high priest's garments.

"Where is your brother Aaron?"

"His time came to die. He is not here."

They bent down for stones. The men who had cheered him up the hill an hour earlier stood in front of Moses with rocks in their fists and told him he had killed Aaron, and that he had done it because they loved Aaron more than they loved him. There was no body. There was no grave. There was nothing on that hillside but a closed rock face and the brother who had walked up with him.

Moses lifted his eyes and prayed, and did not defend himself.

Then the ministering angels were told to pick up Aaron's coffin and hold it in the open air above the camp where every man could see it. They did. Israel stood in the sand looking up at their high priest lying in the sky, and put the stones down, and mourned him for thirty days. The angels mourned with them, calling out across the heights, "Wail, you cypresses, because the cedar has fallen."