Moses' Offense

*** Revised Common Lectionary *** Lectionary Reading: Exodus 17:1-7 CLASSIC POEM: A Soliloquy of One of the Spies Left in the Wilderness Gerard Manley Hopkins He feeds me with His manna every day: My soul does loathe it and my spirit fails. A press of winged things comes down this way: The gross flock call them quails. Into my hand he gives a host for prey, Come up, Arise and slay. Sicken’d and thicken’d by the glare and sand, Who would drink water from a stony rock? Are all the manna-bushes in the land A shelter for this flock? Behold at Elim wells on every hand! And seventy palms there stand. Egypt, the valley of our pleasance, there! Most wide ye are who call this gust Simoom. Your parched nostrils snuff Egyptian air. The comfortable gloom After the sandfield and the unreined glare! Goshen is green and fair. Not Goshen. Wasteful wide huge-girthed Nile Unbakes my pores, and streams, and makes all fresh. I gather points of lote-flower from an isle Of leaves of greenest flesh. Ye sandblind! Slabs of water many a mile Blaze for him all this while. In beds, in gardens, in thick plots I stand. Handle the fig, suck the full-sapp’d vine-shoot. From easy runnels the rich-pieced land I water with my foot. Must you be gorged with proof? Did ever sand So trickle from your hand? Strike timbrels, sing, eat, drink, be full of mirth. Forget the waking trumpet, the long law. Spread o’er the swart face of this prodigal earth. Bring in the glistery straw. Here are sweet messes without price or worth, And never thirst or dearth. Give us the tale of bricks as heretofore; To plash with cool feet the clay juicy soil. Who tread the grapes are splay’d with stripes of gore. And they who crush the oil Are spatter’d. We desire the yoke we bore, The easy burden of yore. Who is this Moses? Who made him, we say, To be a judge and ruler over us? He slew the Egyptian yesterday. To-day In hot sands perilous He hides our corpses dropping by the way Wherein he makes us stray. Your hands have borne the tent-poles: on you plod: The trumpet waxes loud: tired are your feet. Come by the flesh-pots: you shall sit unshod And have your fill of meat; Bring wheat-ears from the loamy stintless sod, To a more grateful god. *** This poem is in the public domain, and may be read in a live-streamed worship service. CONTEMPORARY POEM: Moses David R. Slavitt SNIPPET: His offense was striking the rock? But where does it say that to strike a rock is forbidden? And what harm did he do … [ READ THE FULL POEM ]