Moses’ Shiny Face
Moses with your face so bright, won't you guide my face tonight.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.
For 40 days and nights Moses rewrites the Ten Commandments. 40 days! It was ten freaking commandments. What the hell was he doing? Inventing the script? Hasn’t he already done this once before? And of course, to add to the myth he did it all without eating or drinking. The chapter says nothing about pissing, or jacking off but I’ll just assume he also felt little need for these mere human requirements. Myself… I would last more than a few days in any of these categories without a help of a deep coma, but then again I’ll never be the legend our friend Moses is.
It came about when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai (and the two tablets of the testimony were in Moses’ hand as he was coming down from the mountain), that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because of his speaking with Him. So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. Then Moses called to them, and Aaron and all the rulers in the congregation returned to him; and Moses spoke to them. Afterward all the sons of Israel came near, and he commanded them to do everything that the Lord had spoken to him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he would take off the veil until he came out; and whenever he came out and spoke to the sons of Israel what he had been commanded, the sons of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would replace the veil over his face until he went in to speak with Him.
Um… yeah. Moses of the shiny face. That’s… cool. I guess.
But…
I could go into the whole shiny face phenomena speaking endlessly (You know me) on the absurdities of that particular manifestation of God, but… no. There is something else that has been pecking at the back of my skull for months now. The shiny face is just a symptom of the underlying problem. You see I’ve become fascinated with how Moses continually has to portray himself as the biggest badass on the planet. The wonders he relates are seldom the miracles of God alone, but rather they are always presented as God’s power shining through Moses making it implicit that Moses is a necessary part of this formula. He is constantly finding it necessary to claim he is more important than anyone at anytime. I know this is hard to understand but in these times, when he’s never satisfied, when he’s constantly looking inflate his own image, is when he seems the most real, the most human. Not that I believe a thing written about his deeds. No. No. Decidedly, no. He remains as full of shit as always, but rather his expression of humanity lay in his need to write such tripe, the need to be superior, the absolute need to somehow matter.
I am not unfamiliar with this idea. Through high school I had a friend who was what I can only classify as a pathological liar. I’ll call him Mike. Any story I heard someone tell in his presence, no matter how embellished, was always topped by one even more outlandish. Nothing was too much for credulity. He told every lie like it happened to him yesterday, every story like his life depended on it. Forced by previous lies and a need to top them, the stories became more and more absurd until nothing of what he said could be believed. There was simply no end. Stories of beating up would be muggers in the neighboring town would be followed up with one of him jumping off the back of a snowmobile and killing a coyote with his bare hands. These are actual examples, but there are hundreds of others equally ridiculous. The odd thing was that no matter how tall the tale, Mike always seemed to believe his own lies. Toward the end of our friendship he was the only one who did. Most friends fell away tired of the lies. My own feelings for him ranged from genuine affection to a churning contempt, but all of mixed with pity. Pity for he felt compelled to present himself as better than everyone at everything. The feelings of inferiority that must lie at the root of such a terrible need must be immense.
All through Exodus, Moses has reminded me strongly of Mike. The difference being one of success. Mike faded as he grew older. Never able to stop lying, the best he could manage was an improved ability to hide it from those he’d just met… For a while, at least. Fired from several jobs, divorced from more than one wife, he has, sadly, dropped off my radar completely. I do not know what he is doing now, but I still feel a great deal of empathy for his plight.
Moses, on the other hand, seems to have done quite well for himself. In a more credulous age with a better ability to lie, he succeeded where Mike failed. He crawled to the top of his people and somehow, through a vast series of improbable historical accidents, managed to survive history’s rampant amnesia.
He’s a bastard. No argument. He’s a liar, conniver and murderer beyond a doubt. He has done terrible things to maintain his eminent position and my feelings toward him range widely throughout the disgust, contempt and hatred category.
But…
But through it all, from time to time, I catch just a glimpse of Mike in Moses, a being wracked by such feelings of inferiority that he’s felt compelled to make up a countering mythology, a legend where he’s God’s right hand man. Feeling worthless in his own eyes, he’s compensated by making himself a virtual god in other’s.
And then I feel pity, a terrible empathy for someone who can never be what he has convinced everyone else he is.
Real.
I wonder if Moses hid his face with a veil and said it was because he was in the Lord’s presence, or had an actual physical anomale. If I cared, I might look up what Hebrew word is being used for shiny. Does it mean reflective or more like bioluminesence?
Cool post KK. Moses the charlatan is a perspective I had not considered before your blog.
Long time listener, first time caller.
I have followed your blog, KK, for a long time now and have finally mustered enough chutzpah to leave a comment. When I first came across it a couple months ago I read it from beginning to end laughing and nodding my head in agreement. I am a preacher’s kid who within the past 18 months gone from a bible thumping youth leader in the evangelical christian world of fantasy camp to full blown baby eater (I prefer mine with a scoop of neapolitan ice cream to help balance the tangy taste). Thank you so much for what you do here. It has helped me tremendously in my struggle of de-programming from 35 years of absolute crazy thinking to seeing things in a real world view.
Now…the veil. Looking back and reading this from an empowered skeptical point of view and assuming that there was any sliver of truth to begin with, I couldn’t help think that Moses must have had one hellll of a sunburn from staying on the mountain for forty days. This was, afterall, a pre-spf 45 sunblock era and in the desert, no less.
A scenario I like to picture is that on his way down Moses noticed Aaron from a distance and gave him a, “psst…Aaron….look behind you.. it’s me.. Moe.”
Aaron turns around and is like, “Holy shit! Your face is freaking fried, dude!”, and quickly rushes him into the nearest tent.
“I know, I know, and it fucking hurts, too! What are we gonna tell the sheeple? They can’t see me with any sort of weakness after all the BS we’ve been shoveling them. We are way too deep into this thing now. They might think Yahweh just friggin’ lit me up for asking too many questions and where would THAT leave me on the popularity scale? Do you have any more of that aloe vera plant we took from….hey…is that a veil?”
Or something along those lines.
PK, it’s great to hear from you. I’d love to hear your complete story sometime. I’m sure it couldn’t have been an easy journey but does seem to have been a fast one. Care to write it up? If you don’t mind.
As for the Shiny Face. I agree. I think the dipwad got drunk and fell asleep in the sun then returns to his people with the special sign of God’s favor. It’s a type of spin like years ago when Microsoft labels several of it’s bugs as features.
You gotta admire his cunning.
Sheeple! I must use that.
I would love to share it with you. It may take a few days to write up, though (stupid job…always getting in the way of fun).
I will say once the ball got rolling it didn’t take long for all the fear to ease and questions to be answered.
The absolute hardest and frustrating part was realizing that I had an equivelant of a second graders education in science and that really pisses me off. Still.
I had been cheated and duped out of this knowledge because of an all too common brainwashing technique. Needless to say, I am so thirsty for “science stuff” that I can absorb and remember things related to it much faster than other topics. I am very excited about it. Not bad for a dumb firefighter, huh?
Being a dumb-assed boilermaker myself, I refuse to assign any labels to groups of people save those who advertise their lack of thought to to the world. I’d love to hear you story. Take your time and make it right. I’ll be out of town for about ten days starting Sunday but should have email access??? I hope anyway. Send it along and if I can get it I’ll throw it up… Ooh wrong way of putting that. Let’s say that I’ll post it when I’m able.
Ooh! Such a joy to find not one but TWO entries today in this blog.
Ever notice how everything in the bible is 40 days? This, Noah’s Ark, Jesus’ zombie days. Why is that? I mean, other than because it’s fiction and reiteration is a storyteller’s tool.
“So when Aaron and all the sons of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone”
My face usually glows when I’ve been sinning.
“But through it all, from time to time, I catch just a glimpse of Mike in Moses, a being wracked by such feelings of inferiority that he’s felt compelled to make up a countering mythology, a legend where he’s God’s right hand man. Feeling worthless in his own eyes, he’s compensated by making himself a virtual god in other’s.”
Moses is a fictional character – no evidence of his existence has ever been found outside the stories in the bible. He’s a horrible fictional character too – as you say, he’s unlikeable, a rare thing in a protagonist. It could be the story was written by someone similar to Mike, someone with an inferiority complex who simply wrote a story in which he made himself the superhero, talking to god, and having followers. Someone who also was a terrible writer, like the kids in high school who write stories in spiral notebooks in which the cute guy/girl they like falls in love with them.
Great post as always KK, thanx!
On the subject of compulsive liars, my partner Dave has a friend like that. Some years ago he was chatting to this guy’s girlfriend when he was’nt around and he was confused by a few things she was saying. After asking a few pertinent questions it turned out that he had been giving this girl an account of his life that was not actually his own but Dave’s. He had actually reversed their stories and told Dave’s life story as his own and vice versa!
I have met him a few times but we aren’t in contact with him anymore. He also tends to lose touch with all his friends whenever he gets a new partner, probably because he doesn’t want to be found out. A pattern has formed over the years whereby he will hang out with his mates (or rather people who will tolerate him) until he gets a serious girlfriend and them he just drops them and disappears until the relationship is over and then he gets in touch wanting hang out again. He has been married twice and yet none of his friends have ever been invited to his weddings or even met his wives! He is quite a pathetic creature really but I do feel sorry for him cos underneath it all he is a nice enough bloke just really boring but I’m sure he would have more real friends if he was just himself instead of trying to steal the persona of others.
I suppose Moses was just better at it, or his followers were more gullible, probably a bit of both.
Here’s looking forward to many more of your brilliant and witty insights!
Dawn.
Nancy B, there are two possible reasons why everything in the bible is 40 days: either God has a favourite number (and if he has a Chosen People I don’t see why he shouldn’t have a favoured number), or the Kabbalists are right and there is a secret code in the book that, if we decipher it correctly, will predict the future and tell us the meaning of life. I’m not yet sure which one of these is true, I may have to ask Mike.
I kind of hang to the idea that most of them were cases where the aural tradition called for a non-specific ‘many’, and when they came to be written up, someone used ‘forty’ in the same way that we’d say ‘hundreds’.
Daz, that’s probably it. Like when we use the word scores to mean many but in the old days it meant 20.
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