Exodus. Daniel Berrigan
above all, in works and numbers.
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Interesting is the implied comment “from below,” on the machinations of the Olympians. The narrator is a friend of the slaves; indeed he descends from them.
And this friend of the enslaved knows the mind of the slave master as well.
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It could hardly be sensible to relay to drudges the troubled ruminations of the pharaoh and the palace claque. Even less sensible to announce an imminent, awful decree.
No, keep them in ignorance. Is harsh duress about to descend, and if so, what form will it take? Uncertainty regarding personal and social fate is a prime ingredient of bondage.
So the palace to-fro and its conclusions are communicated solely to a few. A decree is formulated, it reaches only those in charge.
And what of those immediately affected, the slaves? Do they sense an atmosphere grown charged, ominous? All to the good.
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Thus early on, in our story the attitude of great prophets vis-à-vis tyrants, is at work. An image of the pharaoh emerges. It diminishes before our eyes. Hardly omnipotent, as claimed. Quite the opposite: a chronic worrier and schemer, small-minded, heartless.
Preposterous even. Under the astringent eye of the chronicler, his power is unmasked, then derided.
How wonderfully unsubdued he is, our historian, as though in a quiet voice admonishing his people; be unsubdued!
From his hand emerges a properly religious history, which is to say, a history favoring, cherishing the victims. Implying—and at times strongly stating—that there exists another Power, in face of which the machinations of the pharaohs are both futile and foolish.
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It is only when one wishes the impossible that one remembers God. To obtain that which is possible, one turns to those like himself.4
—Lev Shestov, Russian philosopher
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According to the author of Exodus, these are the dynamics of imperial power. First (as suggested before), the system absolutely requires slaves. The enslavement must be absolute. Its ingredients: harsh, degrading labor, enforced ignorance and passivity. And finally, (male) births must be limited.
(The Herods, it would seem, have a long ancestry. On occasion, their prospering too demands the killing of the newborn).
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“Who can withstand the beast?” (Rev 13:4). The political and military systems imply omnipotence and immortality. Shows of force abound, public humiliation, trials and executions. Unmistakable examples!
Further, as goes without saying—the “system” lies beyond critique by its victims—let alone beyond challenge. Tight lips make for safe, unutterably wretched lives.
Politically correct images are also crucial, images of invincible power. Historians, poets, architects, visual artists are enlisted, in service of The Invincible Image—judicious, recondite creations, colossal totems, temples and shrines, victory arches, steles and their inscriptions. Thus artists and artisans, chroniclers and poets, magians of hand and eye produce works and pomps of deification.
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With regard to slaves and forced laborers, the images serve another end: they forge the chains anew. They deepen, even spiritualize, the enslavement. Are multitudes stripped of dignity and status? Yes. Will their progeny exist in a like predicament, forever and ever? Yes. Such is simply the will of whatever god.
The idolatrous images tower over; the slaves grow numb and hopeless. Now slavery becomes a sublimely simple and seamless matter: the will of the gods. Injustice has reached from heaven to earth. Validated.
Is the imperial system unjust? Metaphysically so. For its gods are unjust.
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The images, we note, are static and yet superhuman. They infer a definition of time. For the enslaved, time is a stalemate. And for those in command, the images imply conquest over time. The pharaoh is immortal, son of the sun god. His symbols? The great pyramid, brobdingnagian, grand and mysterious in its perfection. And the sphinx, stonewalling, saying nothing. Knowing as she does, everything.
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This word in sum for the slaves; “You are who you are—and you shall be who you are.” This is the iron law announced by the images.
Our tale opens; half a millennium of enslavement has passed. Is this not proof of the perdurance of the slave superstate? The system surpasses time and aborts change.
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The word of God must go counter. Thus one commentator writes (undoubtedly in reference to the Hebrew Bible):
The Bible is not a work of art in the same sense as a poem. It is not meant primarily to make an intellectual demand in memorable language—or like Greek myth to tell an absorbing story, or like Greek tragedy to purge us by pity and terror. It aims to move us to justice and mercy. It is active art, to which people trust their conduct; moral art, which (rightly or wrongly), designates some form of violence as necessary for the conduct of ethical social life.5
—Catherine Madsen, American writer and editor
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Slaves must face squarely the hard truth of their condition. Drumming it in; this is the first subversive act of the “peoples’ history,” the story of Exodus. “No getting used to injustice, no coming to terms with it.” Thus the counter to the law of images.
The second act is more daring, more dangerous. It announces in plain terms that the imperial images are in reality, a clutch of illusions.
Subversion, deflation. The truth goes counter; rumors start. The pharaohs are mortal like ourselves. So is the regime mortal. It will flourish for a while and flaunts its greatness. But it will decline and fall. If not in our lifetime, then after.
Believe it. Help it happen! The system is subject to a law that governs all mortal enterprises—a law of transience and death.
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Thus the pharaonic images are summoned to judgment, condemned as deceitful and destructive. Slaves, note the imperative. The images must be exorcised, banished from the slave community.
And a second imperative. The images must be replaced. Summon other images, stories, lives, possibilities, anodynes, strengths. These two above all; first, the image of a God other than the gods of the overlord. Then, an image of the truly human, those who are neither slaves nor slavemasters. Those who walk free.
A liberating God, and liberated humans. That is it! An image of the God of the ancestors, who intervened on behalf of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Of a God who, though people be guilty of moral setback and sin, never abandoned his own, took their part, reproved, chastened, stood with, walked beside.
The counter-image, drawn from a common wellspring of story recounted and worship enacted—these lighten the burden of life at the bottom.
Someone lifts the yoke! The purport of the redeeming images is irresistible, a liberating God and a command; Freedom Now!
And—a Moses.
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Thus, despite a seeming dead end of exile and bondage, despite the mindless might of the overlords, the overbearing law of the land—powerless as you are, a clutch of slaves seemingly void of recourse—nonetheless believe. Your salvation nears.
Someone. Whisper the name. Moses.
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exodus 2
At hand, a savior? It is all but ludicrous, a mirage in the night. Lately a decree has been issued, commanding the death of male infants. Death, upon this sole offense: having been born.
But the decree, as things turn, has gone too far. The comatose, the near hopeless,