The Deliverer by Linda Rios Brook

Author:Linda Rios Brook [Brook, Linda Rios]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Christian, Suspense
ISBN: 9781599794761
Google: kIXwAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1599794764
Publisher: Realms
Published: 2009-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

SATAN ROARED WITH delight when I told him about the golden calf.

“It didn’t take them long to get over the idea of their great deliverer, now did it?” he asked in that sarcastic way I hated. The others laughed along with him as they always did. No one would dare imply by failing to laugh that Satan wasn’t clever.

“Well, to be perfectly accurate,” I said, “it wasn’t the Israelites who came up with the idea of making another god. It was the Egyptians who went with them. They’re the ones who intimidated Aaron to do it; the people just got caught up in fervor.”

“Whatever.” Satan dismissed my comments entirely. “Tell me more, and don’t leave anything out.”

“That’s about it. Moses threw the calf into the fire, and it melted immediately. That’s when he lost all reason and began to behave like a madman. He called the Levites together and led them on a rampage through the camp killing about three thousand people.” I paused, wondering if I should add my opinion; oh, well, why not? “I don’t think God told him to do that. I would have heard it.”

“Are you saying Moses disobeyed God?”

“No, no, I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t hear God tell him to kill so many people. If Moses acted on his own, technically, one could not call it disobedience in the general sense.”

Satan sat back on his haunches as if pondering whether or not this meant anything to him.

“Is Moses still mad?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Satan turned to one of his captains and ordered him to go to the Israelites’ camp.

“Stir Moses up. Whisper in Moses’s ear. Tell him Aaron betrayed him. See if you can incite him to kill more people—Aaron too.”

“Wait, sir,” I interrupted. “I don’t think that will work.” As everyone gasped I realized I had made the very foolish mistake of correcting one of Satan’s ideas.

“What I meant to say, sir … ” I tried to dig myself out of the hole I’d dug myself into. “Moses is a lot more like God than you know, personality-wise, I mean. His anger doesn’t last. He gets aroused in righteous anger and punishes the disobedient, but right after that he always returns to loving them and seeing himself as responsible for them. He doesn’t carry a grudge—nothing like you at all.”

Before the words rolled off my tongue, I realized I should have swallowed them.

“Are you comparing that pseudodeliverer wannabe to me?”

“No, no, absolutely not; cunning, that’s what I meant. Moses is not as cunning as you. Simpleminded really … doesn’t have the … the chutzpah … that’s it. Doesn’t have the chutzpah to conduct a massacre for very long.”

“Chutzpah? Am I supposed to know what that means?”

“You know, the Jews say it all the time when they want to communicate, uh, virility, sort of.” I stopped mid sentence. There was no way to make this better. “Never mind, sir, all I meant is Moses will not stay mad. He’ll feel bad about the people for a little while and then feel bad that he felt bad and punished them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.