Read Online Terrorist by John Updike - Free Book Online Page B

which I have showed among them?" ' Manna from Heaven had been a sign. Water from the rock of Horeb had been a sign. The voice from the burning bush had been a clear sign. The pillars of cloud by day and of fire by night had been signs. Signs, signs around the clock, twenty-four/seven, as the saying is now.
    "Still, the people had no faith. They wanted to go back to Egypt and that friendly Pharaoh. They preferred the devil they knew to the God they didn't. They still had a soft spot for that golden calf. They wouldn't mind going back to being slaves. They wanted to give up their civil rights. They wanted to forget their sorrows in dope and disgraceful behavior on Saturday nights. The good Lord said, 'I can't stand this people.' This tribe of Israel. And he asked Moses and Aaron, as if just for the information, 'How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me?' He doesn't wait for the answer; he answers Himself. The Lord, He slays all the scouts except for Caleb and Joshua. He tells all the others, that evil congregation, 'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness.' He sentences the others, all twenty years old or older, who had murmured against him, to forty years in this wilderness—'and your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness.' Think of it. Forty years, with no time off for good behavior." He repeats, "With no time off for good behavior, because you have been an evil congregation."
    A male voice in the congregation cries out, "Right on, Reverend! Evil!"
    "No time off, because," continues the Christian imam, "you lacked the faith. Faith in the power of the Lord Almighty. That was your iniquity—let me give you the wonderful old word in all four of its syllables, in-ick-qui-tee: 'visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.' Moses tries to soften Him up, the mouthpiece pleading with his client. 'Pardon, I beseech thee,' he says it right here in the Book, 'the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.'
    " 'No way,' the Lord says back. 'I'm tired of all this forgiving I'm supposed to do. I want some glory for a change. I want your carcasses.' "
    The preacher slumps in the pulpit a little wearily, and rests his elbows informally on the massive holy book with gilded edges. "My friends," he confides, "you can see what Moses was driving at. What was so terrible, what was so"— he parts with a smile, pronouncing— u in-ick-qui-tuss, about going into enemy territory, scouting out the situation, coming home and giving an honest, cautious report? 'Things don't look good. These Canaanites and giants have a good tight grip on the milk and honey. We better back off.' It sounds just like good common sense, doesn't it? 'Don't cross the man. He has the stocks and bonds, he has the whip and chains, he controls the means of pro-duc-^ww.' '
    Several voices call out, "That's right. Good sense. Don't cross tbe man."
    "And to drill home his point, the Lord sent down plagues and pestilences, and the people mourned, and decided too late to go up into the mountains and face the Canaanites, who didn't look so bad now, and Moses, that good old mouthpiece, that savvy lawyer, advised them, 'Don't go. You shall not prosper. The Lord is not with you.' But these wrongheaded Israelites, tliey went up anyway, and what do we read, in the last verse of Numbers fourteen? 'Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah.' 'Even unto Hormah'—that's a long way. It's a long way to Hormah.
    "You see, my friends, the Lord had been witli diem. He gave them a chance to go forward witli Him in all of His glory, and what did they do? They hesitated. They betrayed Him witli their hesitations—their caution, their cow-ar-diss