The Seventh Plague - Robert Halsey

A great darkness swept over the land of Egypt. It fell like a blanket that smothered the sun. From the southern frontier of Egypt to the Nile delta a darkness darker than the darkest night ever known to man held the hearts and minds of men and women in a numbing fear. The day had only just begun to bloom when cries of fear and panic swept throughout Egypt, from the palace of the mighty Pharaoh, god-man and First Lord of all Egypt, to the humblest peasant and nomadic hapiru who tended their herds along the eastern and northern frontiers.
There was a wailing and gnashing of teeth in every abode. In the dark of the land everything fell unnaturally still and silent as if people were afraid to move about in case they fell or crashed into people, horses or chariots. The dogs too were silent in the beginning till one or two dared to howl. The others emboldened took up the wailing and barking. Men who had left to work in their fields or slave in warehouses and docks along the river crept about with extended hands groping to know their fear as they made their way home. Wives and mothers quivered and called to their gods for protection and to their sons, fathers and husbands for protection. They felt very vulnerable and naked to their fears that grew by the hour till they joined the dogs and now also the camels in a mad cacophany of incoherent intercessions to all their gods and to Osiris in particular, to defeat the Lords of Darkness. They pleaded to know why they had been so brutally punished. What had they done? They cried out in fear and anger. What with the frogs, flies and locusts now there was this eighth plague. They had heard of the magicians and their interfering with the gods and defying them in insane games of sorts. But in the farthest reaches of Empire the poor had nothing to do with palace life and the stupid games going on in high places. The hapiru hadn’t been seen so far south and east so they had nothing to do with them. Why were they having to pay for such evil deeds? Why did they have to suffer?
Some of the husbands, sons and fathers who desperately tried to reach home never got there, because some fell into the river and drowned, whilst others fell off cliffs and were killed. Others wandered off like blind men into regions unknown and were heard from any more. That day of universal darkness claimed lives in the tens of thousands.
In the Palace in Thebes torches flamed out their defiant light that flickered on the royal walls and on the walls of the temple. All the priests and court magicians had gathered. There seemed nothing they had been able to do could defeat this foreign god. Now they were to witness a strange meeting of the gods. There was the great war god of the hapiru, Jehovah himself, hair flying like red streamers and his eyes blazing orbs of fire. Facing him out of a mist of incense rose the majestic figures of the River deities, Osiris and Horus.
Jehovah roared like a mountain lion. “That cowering and craven coward of a crawling Emperor who dares to still hold my people in thrall shall be punished .He and all his people will die unless my people are allowed to leave forthwith.”
Osiris spoke in a growling voice, “If you have dominion over all the earth and all that is in it, dominion over kingdoms and their priests, warriors, kings, princes and their gods, as you claim, then why is it not a simple matter of touching the heart of Ramses so that the Israelites find favour in his heart and he sends them all to wherever you would have them go? What is it that keeps you from doing something so simple as that? Why must there have been all these many plagues, death and suffering of men and animals, in the first instance? There really was no need for even one plague let alone eight, was there? No, of course not, but your heart needs the tears of your lesser subjects, our innocent people of the Nile. Your vanity needs the broken bodies of mortal wretches to satisfy your lusts. In you there is no mercy and there can be no such thing as love, but only the craving to be feared and adored. Your evil escapes understanding.”
“ Love? What’s that? I am who I am. I will have glory, power and honour. I cannot be understood. I am beyond understanding and reason. The lords, princes and kings of the desert kingdoms of the Hittites, Jebusites and Canaanites, the Phillistines and the farthest coastal traders must all hear of the havoc I can wrack in the world so that they will know of me and kneel at my name and offer me the glory that my might and power and holiness demand. They shall go weak at the knees as my Chosen People, my children of Israel, approach the lands that I intend giving them as part of my covenant,” said Jehovah.
“And what about the people who already live there and whose lands it has always hitherto been? They have done nothing to deserve this fate. They have no idea what is to befall them. They have every right to their land, land you want to give these herders of goats and cattle. What you are doing is called theft in our lands. And you, oh mighty Jehovah, are a holy thief. What you intend to do gives man moral superiority over God.”
Jehovah laughed out, and it sounded as loud as thunder and earth-shattering explosions.