The Hebrews came nearer and nearer, and many of the young combatants
hastened to meet them. These were not the joyous bands, who had joined
triumphantly in Miriam’s song of praise, no, they tottered toward the
mountain slowly, with drooping heads. They were obliged to scale the
pass from the steeper side, and how the bearers sighed; how piteously
the women and children wailed, how fiercely the drivers swore as they
urged the beasts of burden up the narrow, rugged path; how hoarsely
sounded the voices of the half fainting men as they braced their
shoulders against the carts to aid the beasts of burden.
These thousands who, but a few short days before, had so gratefully felt
the saving mercy of the Lord, seemed to Joshua, who stood watching their
approach, like a defeated army.
But the path they had followed from their last encampment, the harbor by
the Red Sea, was rugged, arid, and to them, who had grown up among the
fruitful plains of Lower Egypt, toilsome and full of terror.
It had led through the midst of the bare rocky landscape, and their
eyes, accustomed to distant horizons and luxuriant green foliage, met
narrow boundaries and a barren wilderness.
Since passing through the Gate of Baba, they had beheld on their way
through the valley of the same name and their subsequent pilgrimage
through the wilderness of Sin, nothing save valleys with steep
precipices on either side. A lofty mountain of the hue of death had
towered, black and terrible, above the reddish-brown slopes, which
seemed to the wanderers like the work of human hands, for the strata of
stones rose at regular intervals. One might have supposed that the giant
builders whose hands had toiled here in the service of the Sculptor of
the world had been summoned away ere they had completed the task, which
in this wilderness had no searching eye to fear and seemed destined for
the service of no living creature. Grey and brown granite cliffs and
ridges rose on both sides of the path, and in the sand which covered
it lay heaps of small bits of red porphyry and coal-black stones that
seemed as if they had been broken by the blows of a hammer and resembled
the dross from which metal had been melted. Greenish masses of rock,
most peculiar in form, surrounded the narrow, cliff circled mountain
valleys, which opened into one another. The ascending path pierced them;
and often the Hebrews, as they entered, feared that the lofty cliffs in
the distance would compel them to return. Then murmurs and lamentations
arose, but the mode of egress soon appeared and led to another
rock-valley.
On departing from the harbor at the Red Sea they had often found thorny
gum acacias and an aromatic desert plant, which the animals relished;
but the farther they entered the rocky wilderness, the more scorching
and arid the sand became, and at last the eye sought in vain for herbs
and trees.
At Elim fresh springs and shade-giving palms were found, and at the
Red Sea there were well-filled cisterns; but here at the camp in the
wilderness of Sin nothing had been discovered to quench the thirst,
and at noon it seemed as though an army of spiteful demons had banished
every inch of shade cast by the cliffs; for every part of the valleys
and ravines blazed and glowed, and nowhere was there the slightest
protection from the scorching sun.
The last water brought with them had been distributed among the human
beings and animals, and when the procession started in the morning not a
drop could be found to quench their increasing thirst.
Then the old doubting rancor and rebelliousness took possession of the
multitude. Curses directed against Moses and the elders, who had led
them from the comfort of well-watered Egypt to this misery, never
ceased; but when they climbed the pass of the “Swordpoint” their parched
throats had become too dry for oaths and invectives.
Messengers from old Nun, Ephraim, and Hur had already informed the
approaching throngs that the young men had gained a victory and
liberated Joshua and the other captives; but their discouragement had
become so great that even this good news made little change, and only a
flitting smile on the bearded lips of the men, or a sudden flash of the
old light in the dark eyes of the women appeared.
Miriam, accompanied by melancholy Milcah, had remained with her
companions instead of, as usual, calling upon the women to thank the
Most High.
Reuben, the husband of her sorrowful ward whom fear of disappointment
still deterred from yielding to his newly-awakened hopes, was a quiet,
reticent man, so the first messenger did not know whether he was among
the liberated prisoners. But great excitement overpowered Milcah and,
when Miriam bade her be patient, she hurried from one playmate to
another assailing them with urgent questions. When even the last could
give her no information concerning the husband she had loved and lost,
she burst into loud sobs and fled back to the prophetess. But she
received little consolation, for the woman who was expecting to greet
her own husband as a conqueror and see the rescued friend of her
childhood, was absent-minded and troubled, as if some heavy burden
oppressed her soul.
Moses had left the tribes as soon as he learned that the attack upon
the mines had succeeded and Joshua was rescued; for it had been reported
that the warlike Amalekites, who dwelt in the oasis at the foot of
Mt. Sinai, were preparing to resist the Hebrews’ passage through
their well-watered tract in the wilderness with its wealth of palms.
Accompanied by a few picked men he set off across the mountains in quest
of tidings, expecting to join his people between Alush and Rephidim in
the valley before the oasis.
Abidan, the head of the tribe of Benjamin, with Hur and Nun, the
princes of Judah and Ephraim after their return from the mines--were to
represent him and his companions.
As the people approached the steep pass Hur, with more of the rescued
prisoners, came to meet them, and hurrying in advance of all the rest
was young Reuben, Milcah’s lost husband. She had recognized him in the
distance as he rushed down the mountain and, spite of Miriam’s protest,
darted into the midst of the tribe of Simeon which marched in front of
hers.
The sight of their meeting cheered many a troubled spirit and when at
last, clinging closely to each other, they hurried to Miriam and the
latter beheld the face of her charge, it seemed as though a miracle had
been wrought; for the pale lily had become in the hue of her cheeks
a blooming rose. Her lips, too, which she had but rarely and timidly
opened for a question or an answer, were in constant motion; for how
much she desired to know, how many questions she had to ask the silent
husband who had endured such terrible suffering.
They were a handsome, happy pair, and it seemed to them as if, instead
of passing naked rocks over barren desert paths, they were journeying
through a vernal landscape where springs were gushing and birds
carolling their songs.
Miriam, who had done everything in her power to sustain the grieving
wife, was also cheered by the sight of her happiness. But every trace
of joyous sympathy soon vanished from her features; for while Reuben and
Milcah, as if borne on wings, seemed scarcely to touch the soil of
the wilderness, she moved forward with drooping head, oppressed by the
thought that it was her own fault that no like happiness could bloom for
her in this hour.
She told herself that she had made a sore sacrifice, worthy of the
highest reward and pleasing in the sight of God, when she refused to
obey the voice of her heart, yet she could not banish from her memory
the dying Egyptian who had denied her right to be numbered among those
who loved Hosea, the woman who for his sake had met so early a death.
She, Miriam, lived, yet she had killed the most fervent desire of her
soul; duty forbade her thinking with ardent longing of him who lingered
up yonder, devoted to the cause of his people and the God of his
fathers, a free, noble man, perhaps the future leader of the warriors of
her race, and if Moses so appointed, next to him the first and greatest
of all the Hebrews, but lost, forever lost to her.
Had she on that fateful night obeyed the yearning of her woman’s heart
and not the demands of the vocation which placed her far above all other
women, he would long since have clasped her in his arms, as quiet Reuben
embraced his poor, feeble Milcah, now so joyous as she walked stoutly at
his side.
What thoughts were these?
She must drive them back to the inmost recesses of her heart, seek
to crush them; for it was a sin for her to long so ardently to meet
another. She wished for her husband’s presence, as a saviour from
herself and the forbidden desires of this terrible hour.
Hur, the prince of the tribe of Judah, was her husband, not the
former Egyptian, the liberated captive. What had she to ask from the
Ephraimite, whom she had forever refused?
Why should it hurt her that the liberated prisoner did not seek her; why
did she secretly cherish the foolish hope that momentous duties detained
him?
She scarcely saw or heard what was passing around her, and Milcah’s
grateful greeting to her husband first informed her that Hur was
approaching.
He had waved his hand to her while still afar, but he came alone,
without Hosea or Joshua, she cared not what the rescued man called
himself; and it angered her to feel that this hurt her, nay, pierced
her to the heart. Yet she esteemed her elderly husband and it was not
difficult for her to give him a cordial welcome.
He answered her greeting joyously and tenderly; but when she pointed to
the re-united pair and extolled him as victor and deliverer of Reuben
and so many hapless men, he frankly owned that he had no right to this
praise, it was the due of “Joshua,” whom she herself had summoned in the
name of the Most High to command the warriors of the people.
Miriam turned pale and, in spite of the steepness of the road, pressed
her husband with questions. When she heard that Joshua was resting on
the heights with his father and the young men and refreshing themselves
with wine, and that Hur had promised to resign voluntarily, if Moses
desired to entrust the command to him, her heavy eye-brows contracted in
a gloomy frown beneath her broad forehead and, with curt severity, she
exclaimed:
“You are my lord, and it is not seemly for me to oppose you, not even if
you forget your own wife so far that you give place to the man who once
ventured to raise his eyes to her.”
“He no longer cares for you,” Hur eagerly interrupted; “nay, were I to
give you a letter of divorce, he would no longer desire to possess you.”
“Would he not?” asked Miriam with a forced smile. “Do you owe this
information to him?”
“He has devoted himself, body and soul, to the welfare of the people and
renounces the love of woman,” replied Hur. But his wife exclaimed:
“Renunciation is easy, where desire would bring nothing save fresh
rejection and shame. Not to him who, in the hour of the utmost peril,
sought aid from the Egyptians is the honor of the chief command of the
warriors due, but rather to you, who led the tribes to the first victory
at the store-house in Succoth and to whom the Lord Himself, through
Moses His servant, confided the command.”
Hur looked anxiously at the woman for whom a late, fervent love had
fired his heart, and seeing her glowing cheeks and hurried breathing,
knew not whether to attribute these symptoms to the steep ascent or to
the passionate ambition of her aspiring soul, which she now transferred
to him, her husband.
That she held him in so much higher esteem than the younger hero, whose
return he had dreaded, pleased him, but he had grown grey in the strict
fulfilment of duty, and would not deviate from what he considered right.
His mere hints had been commands to the wife of his youth whom he had
borne to the grave a few years before, and as yet he had encountered
no opposition from Miriam. That Joshua was best fitted to command the
fighting-men of the people was unquestionable, so he answered, with
panting breath, for the ascent taxed his strength also:
“Your good opinion is an honor and a pleasure to me; but even should
Moses and the elders confer the chief command upon me, remember the heap
of stones at Succoth and my vow. I have ever been mindful of and shall
keep it.”
Miriam looked angrily aside, and said nothing more till they had reached
the summit of the pass.
The victorious youths were greeting their approaching kindred with loud
shouts.
The joy of meeting, the provisions captured, and the drink which, though
sparingly distributed, was divided among the greatest sufferers, raised
the drooping courage of the exhausted wayfarers; and the thirsting
Hebrews shortened the rest at the summit of the pass in order to reach
Dophkah more quickly. They had heard from Joshua that they would find
there not only ruined cisterns, but also a hidden spring whose existence
had been revealed to him by the ex-captain of the prisoners’ guards.
The way led down the mountain. “Haste” was the watchword of the fainting
Hebrews on their way to a well; and thus, soon after sunset, they
reached the valley of the turquoise mines, where they encamped around
the hill crowned by the ruined fortress and burned store-houses of
Dophkah.
The spring in an acacia grove dedicated to the goddess Hathor was
speedily found, and fire after fire was quickly lighted. The wavering
hearts which, in the desert of Sin, had been on the verge of despair
were again filled with the anticipation of life, hope, and grateful
faith. The beautiful acacias, it is true, had been felled to afford
easier access to the spring whose refreshing waters had effected this
wonderful change.
At the summit of the pass Joshua and Miriam had met again, but found
time only for a hasty greeting. In the camp they were brought into
closer relations.
Joshua had appeared among the people with his father. The heir of
the princely old man who was held in such high esteem received joyous
greetings from all sides, and his counsel to form a vanguard of the
youthful warriors, a rear-guard of the older ones, and send out chosen
bands of the former on reconnoitering expeditions was readily adopted.
He had a right to say that he was familiar with everything pertaining to
the guidance and defence of a large army. God Himself had entrusted him
with the chief command, and Moses, by sending him the monition to
be strong and steadfast, had confirmed the office. Hur, too, who now
possessed it, was willing to transfer it to him, and this man’s promise
was inviolable, though he had omitted to repeat it in the presence of
the elders. Joshua was treated as if he held the chief command, and he
himself felt his own authority supreme.
After the assembly dispersed, Hur had invited him, spite of the late
hour, to go to his tent and the warrior accompanied him, for he desired
to talk with Miriam. He would show her, in her husband’s presence, that
he had found the path which she had so zealously pointed out to him.
In the presence of another’s wife the tender emotions of a Hebrew were
silent. Hur’s consort must be made aware that he, Joshua, no longer
cherished any love for her. Even in his solitary hours, he had wholly
ceased to think of her.
He confessed that she was a noble, a majestic woman, but the very memory
of this grandeur now sent a chill through his veins.
Her actions, too, appeared in a new light. Nay, when at the summit of
the pass she had greeted him with a cold smile, he felt convinced that
they were utterly estranged from one another, and this feeling grew
stronger and stronger beside the blazing fire in the stately tent of the
chief, where they met a second time.
The rescued Reuben and his wife Milcah had deserted Miriam long before
and, during her lonely waiting, many thoughts had passed through her
mind which she meant to impress upon the man to whom she had granted so
much that its memory now weighed on her heart like a crime.
We are most ready to be angry with those to whom we have been unjust,
and this woman regarded the gift of her love as something so great, so
precious, that it behooved even the man whom she had rejected never to
cease to remember it with gratitude. But Joshua had boasted that he no
longer desired, even were she offered to him, the woman whom he had once
so fervently loved and clasped in his embrace. Nay, he had confirmed
this assertion by leisurely waiting, without seeking her.
At last he came, and in company with her husband, who was ready to cede
his place to him.
But she was present, ready to watch with open eyes for the welfare of
the too generous Hur.
The elderly man, to whose fate she had linked her own, and whose
faithful devotion touched her, should be defrauded by no rival of the
position which was his due, and which he must retain, if only because
she rebelled against being the wife of a man who could no longer claim
next to her brothers the highest rank in the tribes.
Never before had the much-courted woman, who had full faith in her gift
of prophesy, felt so bitter, sore, and irritated. She did not admit it
even to herself, yet it seemed as if the hatred of the Egyptians with
which Moses had inspired her, and which was now futile, had found a new
purpose and was directed against the only man whom she had ever loved.
But a true woman can always show kindness to everyone whom she does not
scorn, so though she blushed deeply at the sight of the man whose kiss
she had returned, she received him cordially, and with sympathetic
questions.
Meanwhile, however, she addressed him by his former name Hosea, and when
he perceived it was intentional, he asked if she had forgotten that it
was she herself who, as the confidante of the Most High, had commanded
him henceforward to call himself “Joshua.”
Her features grew sharper with anxiety as she replied that her memory
was good but he reminded her of a time which she would prefer to forget.
He had himself forfeited the name the Lord had given him by preferring
the favor of the Egyptians to the help which God had promised. Faithful
to the old custom, she would continue to call him “Hosea.”
The honest-hearted soldier had not expected such hostility, but he
maintained a tolerable degree of composure and answered quietly that
he would rarely afford her an opportunity to address him by this or any
other name. Those who were his friends readily adopted that of Joshua.
Miriam replied that she, too, would be ready to do so if her husband
approved and he himself insisted upon it; for the name was only a
garment. Of course offices and honors were another matter.
When Joshua then declared that he still believed God Himself had
summoned him, through the lips of His prophetess, to command the Hebrew
soldiers and that he would admit the right of no one save Moses to
deprive him of his claim to this office, Hur assented and held out his
hand to him.
Then Miriam dropped the restraint she had hitherto imposed on herself
and, with defiant eagerness, continued:
“There I am of a different opinion. You did not obey the summons of the
Most High. Can you deny this? And when the Omnipresent One found you at
the feet of Pharaoh, instead of at the head of His people, He deprived
you of the office with which He had entrusted you. He, the mightiest of
generals, summoned the tempest and the waves, and they swallowed up the
foe. So perished those who were your friends till their heavy fetters
made you realize their true disposition toward you and your race. But
I, meanwhile, was extolling the mercy of the Most High, and the people
joined in my hymn of praise. On that very day the Lord summoned another
to command the fighting-men in your stead, and that other, as you know,
is my husband. If Hur has never learned the art of war, God will surely
guide his arm, and it is He and none other who bestows victory.
“My husband--hear it again--is the sole commander of the hosts and if,
in the abundance of his generosity, he has forgotten it, he will retain
his office when he remembers whose hand chose him, and when I, his wife,
raise my voice and recall it to his memory.”
Joshua turned to go, in order to end the painful discussion, but Hur
detained him, protesting that he was deeply incensed by his wife’s
unseemly interference in the affairs of men, and that he insisted on his
promise. “A woman’s disapproving words were blown away by the wind.
It would be Moses’ duty to declare whom Jehovah had chosen to be
commander.”
While making this reply Hur had gazed at his wife with stern dignity,
as if admonishing discretion, and the look seemed to have effected its
purpose; for Miriam had alternately flushed and paled as she listened;
nay, she even detained the guest by beckoning him with a trembling hand
to approach, as though she desired to soothe him.
“Let me say one thing more,” she began, drawing a long breath, “that you
may not misunderstand my meaning. I call everyone our friend who devotes
himself to the cause of the people, and how self-sacrificingly you
intend to do this, Hur has informed me. It was your confidence in
Pharaoh’s favor that parted us--therefore I know how to prize your firm
and decisive breach with the Egyptians, but I did not correctly estimate
the full grandeur of this deed until I learned that not only long
custom, but other bonds, united you to the foe.”
“What is the meaning of these words?” replied Joshua, convinced that she
had just fitted to the bowstring another shaft intended to wound him.
But Miriam, unheeding the question, calmly continued with a defiant
keenness of glance that contradicted her measured speech:
“After the Lord’s guidance had delivered us from the enemy, the Red Sea
washed ashore the most beautiful woman we have seen for a long time. I
bandaged the wound a Hebrew woman dealt her and she acknowledged that
her heart was filled with love for you, and that on her dying bed she
regarded you as the idol of her soul.”
Joshua, thoroughly incensed, exclaimed: “If this is the whole truth,
wife of Hur, my father has given me a false report; for according to
what I heard from him, the hapless woman made her last confession only
in the presence of those who love me; not in yours. And she was right to
shun you--you would never have understood her.”
Here he saw a smile of superiority hover around Miriam’s lips; but he
repelled it, as he went on:
“Ah, your intellect is tenfold keener than poor Kasana’s ever was. But
your heart, which was open to the Most High, had no room for love. It
will grow old and cease to beat without having learned the feeling. And,
spite of your flashing eyes, I will tell you you are more than a woman,
you are a prophetess. I cannot boast of gifts so lofty. I am merely
a plain man, who understands the art of fighting better than that of
foretelling the future. Yet I can see what is to come. You will foster
the hatred of me that glows in your breast, and will also implant it in
your husband’s heart and zealously strive to fan it there. And I know
why. The fiery ambition which consumes you will not suffer you to be the
wife of a man who is second to any other. You refuse to call me by the
name I owe to you. But if hatred and arrogance do not stifle in your
breast the one feeling that still unites us--love for our people, the
day will come when you will voluntarily approach and, unasked, by the
free impulse of your heart, call me ‘Joshua.’”
With these words he took leave of Miriam and her husband by a short wave
of the hand, and vanished in the darkness of the night.
Hur gazed gloomily after him in silence until the footsteps of the
belated guest had died away in the sleeping camp; then the ill-repressed
wrath of the grave man, who had hitherto regarded his young wife with
tender admiration, knew no bounds.
With two long strides he stood directly before her as she gazed with a
troubled look into the fire, her face even paler than his own. His
voice had lost its metallic harmony, and sounded shrill and sharp as he
exclaimed:
“I had the courage to woo a maiden who supposed herself to be nearer to
God than other women, and now that she has become my wife she makes me
atone for such presumption.”
“Atone?” escaped Miriam’s livid lips, and a defiant glance blazed at him
from her black eyes. But, undismayed, he continued, grasping her hand
with so firm a pressure that it hurt her:
“Aye, you make me atone for it!--Shame on me, if I permit this
disgraceful hour to be followed by similar ones.”
Miriam strove to wrest her hand from his clasp, but he would not release
it, and went on:
“I sought you, that you might be the pride of my house. I expected to
sow honor, and I reap disgrace; for what could be more humiliating to
a man than to have a wife who rules him, who presumes to wound with
hostile words the heart of the friend who is protected by the laws of
hospitality? A woman of different mould, a simple-hearted, upright
wife, who looked at her husband’s past life, instead of planning how to
increase his greatness, that she might share it with him, need not have
had me shout into her ears that Hur has garnered honors and dignities
enough, during his long existence, to be able to spare a portion of
them without any loss of esteem. It is not the man who holds the chief
command, but the one who shows the most self-sacrificing love for the
people that is greatest in the eyes of Jehovah. You desire a high place,
you seek to be honored by the multitude as one who is summoned by the
Lord. I shall not forbid it, so long as you do not forget what the duty
of a wife commands. You owe me love also; for you vowed to give it
on your marriage day; but the human heart can bestow only what it
possesses, and Hosea is right when he says that love, which is warm
itself and warms others, is a feeling alien to your cold nature.”
With these words he turned his back upon her and went to the dark
portion of the tent, while Miriam remained standing by the fire, whose
flickering light illumined her beautiful, pallid face.
With clenched teeth and hands pressed on her heaving bosom, she stood
gazing at the spot where he had disappeared.
Her grey-haired husband had confronted her in the full consciousness of
his dignity, a noble man worthy of reverence, a true, princely chief of
his tribe, and infinitely her superior. His every word had pierced her
bosom like the thrust of a lance. The power of truth had given each its
full emphasis and held up to Miriam a mirror that showed her an image
from which she shrank.
Now she longed to rush after him and beg him to restore the love with
which he had hitherto surrounded her--and which the lonely woman had
gratefully felt.
She knew that she could reciprocate his costly gift; for how ardently
she longed to have one kind, forgiving word from his lips.
Her soul seemed withered, parched, torpid, like a corn-field on which a
poisonous mildew has fallen; yet it had once been green and blooming.
She thought of the tilled fields in Goshen which, after having borne an
abundant harvest, remained arid and bare till the moisture of the river
came to soften the soil and quicken the seed which it had received. So
it had been with her soul, only she had flung the ripening grain
into the fire and, with blasphemous hand, erected a dam between the
fructifying moisture and the dry earth.
But there was still time!
She knew that he erred in one respect; she knew she was like all other
women, capable of yearning with ardent passion for the man she loved. It
depended solely on herself to make him feel this in her arms.
Now, it is true, he was justified in thinking her harsh and unfeeling,
for where love had once blossomed in her soul, a spring of bitterness
now gushed forth poisoning all it touched.
Was this the vengeance of the heart whose ardent wishes she had
heroically slain?
God had disdained her sorest sacrifice; this it was impossible to doubt;
for His majesty was no longer revealed to her in visions that exalted
the heart, and she was scarcely entitled to call herself His prophetess.
This sacrifice had led her, the truth-loving woman, into falsehood and
plunged her who, in the consciousness of seeking the right path lived
at peace with herself, into torturing unrest. Since that great and
difficult deed she, who had once been full of hope, had obtained nothing
for which she longed. She, who recognized no woman as her superior, had
been obliged to yield in shame her place to a poor dying Egyptian. She
had been kindly disposed toward all who were of her blood, and
were devoted to the sacred cause of her people, and now her hostile
bitterness had wounded one of the best and noblest. The poorest
bondman’s wife rejoiced to bind more and more closely the husband who
had once loved her--she had wickedly estranged hers.
Seeking protection she had approached his hearthstone shivering, but she
had found it warmer than she had hoped, and his generosity and love fell
upon her wounded soul like balm. True, he could not restore what she had
lost, but he could give a welcome compensation.
Ah, he no longer believed her capable of a tender emotion, yet she
needed love in order to live, and no sacrifice seemed to her too hard
to regain his. But pride was also a condition of her very existence, and
whenever she prepared to humbly open her heart to her husband, the
fear of humiliating herself overpowered her, and she stood as though
spell-bound till the blazing wood at her feet fell into smoking embers
and darkness surrounded her.
Then a strange anxiety stole over her.
Two bats, which had come from the mines and circled round the fire
darted past her like ghosts. Everything urged her back to the tent, to
her husband, and with hasty resolution she entered the spacious room
lighted by a lamp. But it was empty, and the female slave who received
her said that Hur would spend the time until the departure of the people
with his son and grandson.
A keen pang pierced her heart, and she lay down to rest with a sense of
helplessness and shame which she had not felt since her childhood.
A few hours after the camp was astir and when her husband, in the grey
dawn of morning, entered the tent with a curt greeting, pride again
raised its head and her reply sounded cold and formal.
He did not come alone; his son Uri was with him.
But he looked graver than was his wont; for the men of Judah had
assembled early and adjured him not to give up the chief command to any
man who belonged to another tribe.
This had been unexpected. He had referred them to Moses’ decision, and
his desire that it might be adverse to him was intensified, as his young
wife’s self-reliant glance stirred fresh wrath in his soul.