Moses Drew a Circle on the Ground and Refused to Die

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The Circle in the Dust

When the sentence was finally sealed, Moses stopped eating. He scratched a circle into the ground, stepped inside it, put on sackcloth and poured ashes over his own head, and said he would not move out of that ring until the decree was cancelled.

He prayed. He kept praying. Heaven shifted. The earth shifted. The whole of creation began to move, and the created things asked each other whether God had decided to take the world apart and build it again. A voice came out and settled it. He is not remaking the world. In His hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all flesh.

Shut Every Gate While He Is Still Praying

The prayer was the problem. It went up like a blade, cutting whatever stood in front of it, and nothing slowed it down, because Moses had learned the Name from Zagzagel, the scribe of the heavenly host, the angel with horns of glory who teaches Torah in seventy languages.

So God went ahead of it. A proclamation went out at every gate, in every firmament, at every door of the high court: this man's prayer is not to be received. An angel named Akhzariel was put in charge of the sentence. Then God called to the ministering angels and told them to hurry, get down there, and close every gate in heaven for as long as he keeps praying.

The wheels of the chariot heard the order. The seraphim of fire heard it. Do not receive his prayer, do not show him favor, do not grant him life, do not let him into the land. And they called out from where they burn, blessed be the glory of the Lord from His place, who shows no partiality to the small or to the great.

Inside the circle Moses was still talking. Forty years of work, he said. I asked only to see their good after I had seen their evil. You wrote in Your own law that a man is paid on the day his wages fall due.

Then Let Me Be a Bird

When nothing came back he started bargaining downward.

"If I cannot go into the land, then let me stay in this world and not die."

God answered that if He did not kill him in this world He could not raise him in the next, and that His own law says nobody is delivered out of His hand.

"Then let me be one of the beasts in the field. They eat grass, they drink water, they live and see the world. Let my soul be like one of theirs."

"You ask too much."

"Then a bird. A bird flies to the four corners of the earth every day and comes back to its nest in the evening. Let me be one of those."

"Too much."

"Then take one of my eyes and put it behind a door, and let them shut the door on it three times a year, and let me live and not die."

"It is too much."

"What do You mean, it is too much?"

"You have spoken too much."

All this time Samael had been circling like a guest who arrives early to a wedding and keeps asking when the celebration starts. When will Michael begin to weep, he said, so that I can have my joy? Michael told him he would weep while Samael rejoiced, and that he falls at the death of Moses but rises again at the victories of Joshua.

Samael Drew His Sword and Moses Took the Staff

God sent Gabriel to fetch the soul. Gabriel refused. How do I look at the death of a man worth sixty myriads of creatures, he said, and how do I anger a man who says the things he says?

God sent Michael. Michael refused. I was his teacher. I cannot stand and watch my student die.

So God sent Samael, who dressed himself in anger, buckled on his sword and went out gladly. Then he saw Moses sitting there writing the Name, shining like the sun, and his gladness went out of him. He stood shaking like a woman in labor and could not get a word out.

Moses spoke first. "There is no peace for the wicked. What are you doing here?"

"I have come to take your life."

"You will not take my life. I am the son of Amram. I was born circumcised. On the day I was born I spoke, and I walked, and I would not nurse. At three months old I said I would receive the Law out of the middle of the fire. I went into the king's palace and lifted the crown off the king's head. I split the sea into twelve roads. I made bitter water sweet. I climbed into heaven and walked its floor. I took a law of fire out of a throne of fire. I stopped the sun and the moon in the sky and killed Sihon and Og with the staff in my hand, and at the flood the water never reached their knees. Who else in the world has done this? Get out. You have no permission to stand here. You are not having my soul."

Samael went back empty. God sent him out a second time. This time he pulled his sword and stood over the old man with it, and Moses took the staff with the Name cut into it and beat him with everything he had until Samael ran. Moses ran after him, tore the horn of glory off him, and blinded him.

My Daughter, Come Out

Then a voice: your hour has come.

Moses asked one last thing. Remember the bush. Remember Sinai, forty days and forty nights. Do not hand me over to the angel of death. And the voice said: do not be afraid, I will bury you Myself.

God came down out of the highest heaven with Michael, Gabriel and Zagzagel. Michael made up the bed. Gabriel spread fine linen under his head, Zagzagel laid a rug at his feet, and the two of them stood on either side. Everyone else in the world is buried in cloth cut by human hands and carried on a bier built by human hands and washed by relatives and neighbours. Moses got shrouds from heaven, a bier from heaven, and God and His household attending him.

"Close your eyes," God said, "one and then the other. Gather up your feet." Then He spoke into the body, to the soul. "My daughter. I put you in this man for a hundred and twenty years. The time has come. Go out, and do not delay."

The soul argued. You made me and You placed me here, and no body was ever cleaner than this one. No worm in it, no insect, never once a high opinion of itself. I love him. I do not want to leave him.

God said He would carry her up and set her beneath the throne of glory with the cherubim and the seraphim and the troops of heaven.

She tried once more. Azah and Azazel came down from Your presence and wanted the daughters of the earth and were left hanging between heaven and earth. But from the day of the bush, this man never went back to his wife. Let me stay where I am.

God kissed him, and took her.

Then, like something weeping, He said: who will stand up for Me now against the wicked. The heavens said a good man has gone from the earth. The earth said there is no upright man left. And Joshua went looking for his teacher, and went on looking, and could not find him anywhere.