Exodus 11: In writing

There will come a time

when I’ll see your face

when our eyes will meet

and the hard space between

will rain in bitter-sharp shards

where we stand

hands open

Would I be I without you?

Exodus: Chapter 11

The end from the beginning

Intimacy of conflict
locked together

friend and face

differentiate
and close


Divorce


We cried
now you will cry








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An interlude. A strange, abrupt chapter, in which nothing actually happens. Rather it serves as a bookend, closing Moses' protracted interaction with Pharaoh, in preparation for the final blow (to be be delivered by God Himself). There is a chiastic closing to the story of Moses' mission. If God appointed Moses in response to Israel's "scream," now, at this final plague, Egypt will "scream." In this final warning, we return to Moses initial declaration to Pharaoh:  "My firstborn son, Israel. I say to you, send forth My son that he may serve Me, and if you refuse to let him go, I will kill your firstborn son."
What stands out here, in this final confrontation before the "complete" (11:1) severance,  is a strange intimacy between Israel and Egypt, the oppressors and the oppressed. Moses and Pharaoh fight each other in an exchange that--in contrast to their earlier, formal, conversations--is personal, with Moses storming out. God says: "he will send you out complete (kalla)" which can also mean "bride"--a connotation that is reenforced by the language garesh ye-garesh: "he will divorce you."   Moses, we now learn, "is great in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of Pharaoh's servants and in the eyes of the people." Israel finds "favor" in the eyes of Egypt, in an echo of the earlier intimacy between Joseph and Pharaoh. Suddenly, the children of Israel can ask of their Egyptian "friends" for silver and gold. Friendship and favor enter a relationship that seemed to consist only of blood, murder and slavery.
At this final parting of ways, the full divorce that will "separate the children of Israel", there is a bittersweet awareness of how intertwined the two nations are]

Exodus 10: In Writing

cover your eyes

block your ears

annihilate answer

but upswells 

the  rasp that haunts 

the dark that seeps

till your eyes swarm

your ears burst

an open deathhead scream

Exodus: Chapter 8

Within your borders

Your deepest fears

The swarming hoards
of Otherness

you,
alienated from your earth















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Consequence continues to become incarnate, as the basis of slavery is exposed, and given literal form. The stinking Nile now swarms the very hoards the Egyptians feared. If the "children of Israel" were described as "swarming (ve-yishretzu) and increased abundantly," frogs and lice now truly swarm (ve-yishretuzu) the earth. Pharaoh's fear that Israel would  "rise" (va-yaalu) and threaten the integrity of his boarders now takes literal form, as the frogs "rise" and spread throughout "your borders." This is no exodus, but rather an invasion of every inner space.

The "stench" of the children of Israel ("You have made us stink before Pharaoh, to give him a sword to destroy us"), becomes the "stench" of the dead Nile, which now spreads to the entire earth (va-tivash ha-aretz--"the earth rotted"). And the rotting earth also swarms, the very dust turning to lice.Self and non-self are mixed as the arov, the "mixed multitude," invades the Egyptian "homes." 

Pharaoh's original desire to separate Israel as an alien element, now becomes reversed,  as God "sets apart the land of Goshen" for protection: "I will put a division between your people and my people," not for slavery, but for care.]

Exodus 7: In Writing

Rising, welling between the reeds

the rocks

the trees

Blood will have blood

all you buried in the deeps

a gaping maw

from which you cannot drink

it gushes

at toe-touch

pressed by the weight

fruit burst at your heart

a stench

of cries unheard

eyes unopened

decaying death

 of fish fed on the formless

flung to the water

before they could swim

what was stillborn

beneath the waves

swells between the stones

we are the ghosts that

laden the air

a sibilant smell

Exodus: Chapter 7

There will be blood
When all the hidden
Wells to the surface





















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Transformations and marks, as reality becomes permeable, changeable.
Moses will be a 'god/power' to Pharaoh, Aaron will be his prophet, in this multi-layered world where God taken on multiple names. A chain of speech, from God, to Moses, to Aaron.
The staff "changes" things from one thing to another, as Moses returns to the liminal banks of the river where he was found as a child. The baby who was "hidden" now exposes the loss of the generation of drowned children. The waters of Egypt become blood in a graphic literal image of the genocidal crime. The very stones and trees drip blood.
If the foremen of Israel had feared that Moses "had spoiled (hevashta) our smell with Pharaoh, to give him a sword to kill us," the very waters of Egypt now rot (va-yivash), as the moral rot rises to the surface]

Exodus 6: In Writing

Short of breath

deaf

soul whistling past

crushed by the carried

dark fist in our back

spring us from beneath

the pounding weight

cradle us in your arms

Break me open

break me out

sudden sight

heard and hear

know and be known

say your name

call me

from the formless faceless masses

These are they

these are I

in all the stumbling earth within

I seek you

cry a name in the wilderness

the name we choose

Exodus: Chapter 6

What's in a name?
say my name and know
I call you by name

See and will see
hear and will be heard

I will raise the burden
and draw you out

Take and give













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Round one in the battle against Egypt. First, the chapter returns to the thematic linkage between sight, hearing, and knowledge, restoring the connection to knowledge broken by Pharaoh's "I do not know God":  Though God did not initially make himself known by Name, " You will know that I am God".
Pharaoh's plan to crush Israel's resistance through the sheer burden of work is successful. Israel "do not listen" because of "short breath and hard work." Yet God promises to "take them out from under the burden of Egypt," removing the soul-crushing pressure that Pharaoh so consciously applied.
The most important theme is that of names. The chapter opens with God naming Himself repeatedly in a dizzying schizophrenic hall of mirrors: "I showed Myself known as El Shaddai, and with my Name I did not make Myself known to them..."The chapter closes by returning that that initial anonymous mass of the children of Israel, who had been reduced to animals, swarming across the land, this time calling them by name. Moses and Aaron must now be seen not as the children of  "a man of Levi" who married "a daughter of Levi" but as the children of Amram, who married his aunt, Yocheved. They are redefined in this context:  "These are the Aaron and Moses to whom God spoke" "these are those who spoke to Pharaoh." Redemption will begin again, now that the exhausted masses of Israel have been recalled and called by name]

Exodus 5: In Writing

Press hard

and faith pops

slow sad moan

of a deflating balloon

sudden clout

and baby spews

warm curdled

milk vomit

slippering down

Till there are no voices

no wilderness

no closeness

no desire

only the stale stench of flaccid flesh

and splattered dreams

Exodus: Chapter 5

If it eases
Crush down

Till smell
turns tangible
as sight



I come towards you
we come towards them













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Last chapter closed with the integration of faith, hearing, sight--an upsurge of hope. "They heard that God gad accounted (pakod)...and seen their affliction".
This chapter opens with the fall.The intimate personal name of God is undermined--"Who is God, that I should listen? I know not God, and I will not let Israel go." We are back to the original link between sight and sound and knowledge, only in the negative: no hearing and no knowledge.
God returns to being impersonal  the "power (elohei) of the Hebrews".
Slavery is openly revealed as psychological warfare. It is not the results that are desired, but the crushing of the human spirit, the "pressure" (lahatz) that God had seen. "Nirpim atem, nirpim--you are idle, idle (lit. letting go, easing. The opposite of lahatz, to hold on, apply pressure). That is why you say 'let me go and sacrifice to God.'" Work is there to squeeze away any thoughts of the divine. Life is to be reduced to the daily grind of quota (yom be-yomo)]