Original subtitles

[ominous music playing]

[Yahweh] Moses.

My Lord.

Tonight is different from all other nights.

How, my Lord?

All the firstborn in the land of Egypt will die.

From the firstborn of Pharaoh

to the firstborn of the poorest maidservant.

What about the Hebrews?

Listen closely.

Every family is to eat from a sacrificial lamb

prepared with bitter herbs.

Eat it with bread without leaven, for there is no time for it to rise.

Take the lamb's blood and paint it around the doors of your houses

to show where you live as a protection from my vengeance.

I'm looking for the house of Moses.

I'm frightened, Moses.

There must be another way.

[Yahweh] I am the destroyer.

Inside. Quickly.

Quickly.

[narrator] And so the tenth plague begins.

Death of the firstborn.

[epic music playing]

[tense music playing]

[Kang] The last plague is so devastating

because it's saying every firstborn in Egypt,

from the Pharaoh's firstborn to, like, the nobody's firstborn,

to, like, the cattle, they're all gonna die.

For Christianity, this is a foreshadowing of the New Testament and Jesus Christ.

Blood of the Lamb.

Sacrifice of the lamb.

And it's only by his blood that you're gonna be saved.

Exodus only by the blood of this lamb

on the doorpost that you're gonna be saved.

Please. Eat.

Drink.

[Lewter] It was the marking of the Hebrew homes

with the blood of the lamb on the doorpost

that caused the angel to pass over that home.

[Adelman] That's where we get the term Passover from.

Passes over their houses and instead strikes the Egyptians.

[tense music continues]

[chatter and laughter]

[man] This one here. This is delicious.

[objects clatter]

[chatter stops]

Amen?

Amen?

Amen!

[screaming]

[dramatic music playing]

[Egyptians screaming]

[Enns] One way of thinking about it is tit for tat.

What does Pharaoh do at the beginning of Exodus,

but he kills the male children.

And here it's the firstborn who are getting it.

The story is coming full circle.

What you tried to do to mine, I'm now doing to yours.

[sorrowful music playing]

[Egyptians screaming]

Ancient rabbinic tradition does not celebrate the suffering

that the plagues deliver to the people in Egypt.

When we come to the part of the Passover seder

where we chant the ten plagues,

we're instructed to take a drop of wine out of our cups

with our finger and place it on the edge of our plate.

It is wrong to take pleasure in the suffering of others.

Whether they are people who have harmed us

or whether they are innocent people.

And therefore, we symbolically diminish our joy.

[screaming and sobbing]

[panting]

Moses! Moses!

In Chapter 12, you have the destroyer as coming down.

And sometimes that's understood as the Angel of Death.

It doesn't say God.

Moses!

[Enns] But right after that in the story, it does say God did it.

So I don't know if this is trying to put distance

between God and what God is doing.

Moses.

Moses.

[narrator] "And there was a great cry in Egypt."

"For there was not a house where there was not one dead."

Moses!

Please! We must go, please!

[Lewter] I think redactors and biblical authors

have substituted a death angel

to absolve God from some of the more fierce

and some of the more vengeful character

that would be associated with any god

who would take the lives of children and the lives of the innocent.

What have we done?

What God asked you to.

[sorrowful music swells]

[somber music playing]

[Kang] I look at that last plague,

and it is absolutely devastating.

It's all the reasons why you hear, um, these arguments against God.

How could a loving God allow this to happen?

What kind of vengeful God would do this?

You would kill all the firstborn? What kind of merciless God are you?

And I'll be totally honest, there's not a good answer for that.

But just on a humanity level, that is devastating.

Moses.

Where are you, Moses?

Moses!

Moses!

Where are you?

Answer me!

- My brother. - Bolt the door.

- I must go to him. - No!

[Pharaoh] Answer me!

I will.

Moses is not here.

Too ashamed to stand face-to-face with me?

My son is dead!

Our children have died too, at your hands.

You were warned.

No man could stand in the way of God.

Your God is nothing but a murderer.

He is the giver of life.

And the taker.

My son...

My son.

[somber music playing]

Go to the desert.

Go now.

No conditions?

None.

As long as you leave now.

Stay with us.

No.

I must grieve Egypt's loss with him.

His loss.

[rousing music playing]

We must leave. Quickly.

Before he changes his mind.

[grave music playing]

Oh, beloved boy.

You brought this evil into my house.

You pushed Moses to this...

calamity.

And look what happened.

You thought you were invincible.

Invulnerable.

I commune with gods.

Do you?

[tense music playing]

Bow to me.

- I'm begging you to heed me. - Bow!

[tense music swells]

I am Pharaoh!

King of the Nile!

[narrator] "The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country."

"'For otherwise, ' they said, 'we shall all die.'"

[Einhorn] Everything now moves very quickly.

It's as though there sort of is a collapsing of time.

You've been here all these years. How long? Two, ten, four hundred?

They lost track of time. A slave is not in charge of their time.

A slave is told where to be and when.

Now, for the first time, they're told, "Let's go."

They are no longer slaves to time. They will take charge of time.

[foreboding music playing]

[narrator] "They had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver,

articles of gold and clothing."

"And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians

so that they granted them what they requested."

"Thus, they plundered the Egyptians."

"Plundering" is the word that I typically have heard translate the Hebrew.

But let's not mince words. It's the same idea.

"We're gonna get ours now."

Actually, this was such a problem in early Judaism

that the Jewish philosopher Philo,

he argued, "No, no, this was payment for services rendered."

It wasn't really plundering or despoiling.

It's something that we deserved,

and we got because of all that we've gone through.

I just wish the Bible came with footnotes.

Like, "What are you trying to get across by that,

other than the tables have turned?"

[Moses] Is this...

Is this what we are to become?

This?

Moses!

Didn't you give me jewels to wear when we were betrothed?

Today is also a betrothal.

Four hundred years, Moses.

Let them celebrate.

[man] He cannot be happy for us.

The day was foretold long ago.

Our departure for Canaan.

The land of milk and honey.

After 400 years, that day has finally arrived.

We have been besieged by struggles in that time.

By toil, hardship, and suffering.

We had forgotten who we were.

Thank God.

God spoke to me on the mountain.

Now here we are.

Here we are, standing on this beautiful morning

at freedom's gate.

Do we suddenly trust Pharaoh to let us go?

How many times has he changed his plans?

This whole thing might be a trap.

No.

The only trap now is here in our minds.

From this day, our God is our betrothed

and we are his bride.

[Bithiah] Moses!

[solemn music playing]

- [woman 1] Hey! - [woman 2] The princess.

Wherever you go, I will go.

And where you stay, I will stay.

When Moses leads this group back out of Egypt,

Bithiah joins them in his Exodus from Egypt.

And I think that is telling.

And I think that says a whole lot about who Moses had become

and the degree to which he impressed even his own family to follow him.

[Adelman] In the Midrash, there's one poignant version

which says that the daughter of the pharaoh was a firstborn,

and she would have died in the plague of the firstborn.

But God says, "Because you saved Moses, I'm going to save you."

That's the point where she's adopted by God and saved from the final plague.

To many Muslims, when they think about the adopted mother of Moses,

they think of a person who has been oppressed by Pharaoh as well.

And, in fact, in extra Qur'anic literature,

it's said that when Moses comes back,

she is actually one of the first to accept his message.

And it's narrated that Pharaoh then proceeded to torture her,

and that God rescued her from... from the horrendous torture

that... that Pharaoh himself was exerting upon her.

So she becomes, in the Islamic tradition,

an inspiration for women who are caught in domestic violence

who... who need an escape,

and that she can be a figure to look towards.

[uplifting music playing]

Moses, we must waste no time.

My brother has lost his mind.

Israelites!

Let us go!

Let us go!

[cheering]

[triumphant music playing]

[ululating and cheering]

[Einhorn] There's a line from the Passover evening

that we say in our text,

if God had not taken us out of Egypt, we'd still be slaves to Pharaoh.

Doesn't mean we'd still be slaves. It means psychologically.

Psychologically, we still would have been beholden to our master.

It's Stockholm syndrome.

One of the ways to undercut and to heal from Stockholm syndrome

is the minimization of the captor,

where you see they were not people of value.

These are not people who are kind to us. Not good people.

And the minute they see that, that Stockholm syndrome is gone.

And they're free. They're liberated.

[ominous music playing]

[Haman] I made a sacrifice to Amun.

He has finally saved us from this evil.

No, we have misjudged, Haman!

If one tribe of workers leaves, so will others.

The Nubians, the Hittites.

Foundations will crumble.

Prepare the army.

Majesty, I beg you.

Prepare the army.

[dramatic percussive music playing]

[Kang] I think there's a lot to be said in the fact

that it was that tenth plague that personally affects Pharaoh

that was like, that's the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

[Lewter] I think when Pharaoh gets to the point

where he realizes that the son is gone,

his heart is filled with retaliation.

And then Pharaoh changes his mind and chases them.

I sometimes picture like a cat-and-mouse game,

you know, where the cat is chasing the mouse

and has it in his mouth, then lets it go and revives it a bit,

then goes back and starts playing with it some more.

That's the picture I get here of God in this story.

[dramatic music playing]

[Aaron] Canaan is north. This way.

[Moses] We will be crossing through Philistine land.

They could attack us.

[Aaron] Then we'll have to fight.

It's the only way, Moses.

Then north.

Across the desert to the Promised Land!

[wind blowing wildly]

Aaron! Aaron!

He's showing us the way!

No, that way leads us to the sea!

Between Midgol and Baal-zephon!

- I've seen this once before! - But we'll be trapped!

- It led me back to you! - I'm telling you, brother!

It's a sign!

We'll need a fleet of a thousand ships to leave Egypt that way!

[narrator] "When Pharaoh let the people go,

God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country,

though that was shorter."

"For God said, 'If they face war,

they might change their minds and return to Egypt.'"

"So God led the people round by the desert road toward the Red Sea."

[Einhorn] There are many interpretations why God led the people

in a strange and funny direction.

And explanations range from military reasons

or, um, some promise of a deliverance

through the water sources that they would need.

And all of those may have a kernel of truth to it.

But the Torah is meant to be a text which speaks to us to this day.

And therefore, the message that is most relevant from the journey

that God took them on is that the way that you thought you needed to go in life,

God says, "I'm the one who's got you. I know the way that you need. Follow me."

[narrator] "By day, the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud

to guide them on their way."

[dramatic music playing]

"And by night, in a pillar of fire to give them light,

so that they could travel by day or night."

"And the Egyptians pursued."

[tense music playing]

[Aaron] Told you, brother.

There's nothing here but the sea.

We need to go back.

Must have a purpose.

[Egyptians approaching]

[narrator] "The Egyptians,

all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen, and troops,

pursued the Israelites and overtook them

as they camped by the sea near Pi-hahiroth,

opposite Baal-zephon."

[uneasy music playing]

Tell us, Moses, what does God say?

[Dathan] I told you it was a trick.

We camp here.

We camp here!

Pharaoh will slaughter us where we lie.

[Moses] We camp here!

[crashing and rumbling]

No.

Look, he's right.

Moses is right!

[inspiring music playing]

God provides them with this saving grace.

This visual impossible presence

that they also recognize

not only is serving as a compass,

but is also a force of protection.

[dark music playing]

- [men groaning] - [horses neighing]

Tell them to go around it!

We cannot, Majesty.

Every time we try to move, it moves with us.

My Lord, it seems to be alive.

[Pharaoh grunts]

The man who finds a way around that thing

will be my heir.

[dramatic musical flourish]

[baby crying]

[sighs]

You must have had a purpose in leading us here.

So tell me, my Lord. What is it? Show it to me.

[Yahweh] Moses.

Lift up your staff.

[thunder rumbling]

[electrifying music playing]

Stretch out your hand.

[narrator] "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea."

"And the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night."

[Kirsch] Why did the Red Sea part?

Some Bible scholars argue that if it did happen

as it's described in the Bible,

it's because of an earthquake,

and the earthquake opened a fissure,

and all this water drained away from the sea.

And attributing it to an incident of nature.

That was not the intent of the biblical author.

The Bible makes no bones about it.

God empowers Moses

to raise his staff, and it's a miracle.

[epic music playing]

[man 1] What is happening?

- [man 2] We won't survive! - [man 3] We should turn around!

[woman 1] We will be crushed by the sea!

- [man 4] We will all be killed! - [woman 2] Let us go back!

Their God has no limits, Majesty.

[Pharaoh] Ours will not accept that.

[Moses] You see that?

This is God.

You see that? This is God!

You must have faith!

[epic music continues]

As you'll see.

Would you save yourself and leave your children behind?

No. Neither will He.

God needs all of us.

All of His children.

All of us!

Let us go back while there's time.

We'll never make it through that alive.

I would rather drown.

[inspiring music playing]

[Einhorn] There's so many great Midrashic teachings

related to the splitting of the sea.

And one great teaching is the angels looked up and said,

"These are the people you're saving?"

"They worshiped idols, the Egyptians worshiped idols."

"Humans are all garbage. They're all the same."

God said, "You're missing something." They go, "What?" He goes, "Look."

"They're walking together."

That's the key.

Forget whatever they did. Everybody's gonna mess up in life.

But as long as humans can learn to stick together

and to work with each other,

that's what God's waiting for.

[Haman] They'll perish in the sea. It's madness to follow them!

[Pharaoh] No.

Their god flees!

Do you doubt the evidence of your own eyes?

Majesty.

Our children have already been taken.

These are your best warriors.

Prepare my chariot.

Majesty...

[Pharaoh] We will run them down and kill them all.

[narrator] "And so the children of Israel

went into the midst of the sea on the dry ground."

"And the waters were a wall to them

on their right and on their left."

"And the Egyptians pursued."

[dramatic music playing]

[Egyptians soldiers chanting]

[war horns blowing]

Quick!

- Go. - No!

Do as I say.

Go.

[Zipporah] Go! Quick!

Go!

Go!

[dramatic music continues]

[narrator] "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea."

"At daybreak, the sea went back to its place."

"The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horses."

[dramatic music fades]

"The entire army of Pharaoh

that had followed the Israelites into the sea."

"Not one of them survived."

[melancholy music playing]

One of my daughters, when she was ten years old,

came home from Sunday school, and this was a story they read.

The... The Red Sea story, and where they all die in the Red Sea.

And, um, she was very distraught.

She said... "Why would God do that?"

"Aren't they God's children too?"

And I thought to myself, "Dang, girl. That's a really good insight right there."

You know, why would God do that?

[Ibrahim] So the story, where it's told in the Qur'an,

ends with the drowning of Pharaoh.

When the story is told,

he does say that, you know, "I believe in the god of Aaron and Moses."

But it's too late at that point.

[Nasser] There's actually an interesting story.

Gabriel, one of the great, right, angels,

he tells Muhammad that, "There are two people I hate the most."

"Satan and Pharaoh."

Gabriel says that, "I was so scared that Pharaoh would convert to Islam

right before his death,

I started putting mud in his mouth

so that he wouldn't convert to become Muslim or to believe in God."

[Miriam singing in Hebrew]

[Meyers] There are among the Dead Sea Scrolls

a short piece that's a scroll

that's representing part of the Book of Exodus.

It's a damaged fragment, but there clearly was a long song, uh,

attributed to Miriam.

[continues singing]

[Meyers] This is a victory song.

The people have escaped,

and God is the warrior that defeated the Egyptians

and saved the people.

[continues singing]

It says, "Who is like unto you, Yahweh, among the gods?"

In other words, "You're the greatest god of all."

This is the first important theological message

of Jewish, Christian, Muslim tradition.

And it comes attributed to the mouth of a woman.

[continues singing in Hebrew]

Adonai.

[Enns] Moses has saved the world like Noah has.

With Noah, there's the water that recedes,

and then landing on dry land to start over again.

And then you have the Red Sea incident, which is the water splits,

the dry land is in there, and that is life for them.

So they get to the other side,

so they can start their new life as a nation.

But they're connected.

And I think the connection is that when God saves,

creation gets involved.

My brother...

we are free.

We are?

[triumphant music playing]

[sniffles]

[narrator] "Then Moses led the people of Israel

from the Red Sea,

and they went into the Desert of Shur."

[solemn music playing]

"For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water."

[Harris] Here's this shocked, traumatized people

that are now in the wilderness

and have every reason to be confused,

frightened, uncertain.

They very literally don't know where they are.

They've got plenty of experiences demonstrating clearly to them

that their God is real and that their God has rescued them.

But they're being asked to imagine forward

into something that is beyond what they can picture.

[woman 1] My children haven't eaten in three days.

[Harris] And they're following Moses,

but they also know that Moses can't picture it either.

[Moses] Give me a sign, my Lord.

[man 1] Has he led us out here to die?

- [woman 2] This is madness! - [man 2] We should have stayed in Egypt.

[Einhorn] They've been slaves and just got free.

Just when they thought it was over, it's not over.

And right there it captures it.

That's life.

You passed one test and... and you learn something from it,

but you're not there yet.

And the message of the Torah is that you never arrive.

It's more about the journey than the destination.

My Lord, where are you?

My people are thirsty and starving.

You will speak to me!

[solemn music swells]

The people are afraid, Moses.

He no longer speaks to me.

Who?

God.

He is gone.

[uneasy music playing]

Perhaps not.

Perhaps He tests you here.

This time is too much.

No.

No.

No.

[music distorts]

[Yahweh] Show them the way.

God's will we will find water today.

We turn south.

- Canaan is north, brother. - I know.

We're going south to Midian.

To Midian?

To the mountain where He first spoke to me.

We're going to the Promised Land.

We will get there.

How will we survive?

What will we tell our people?

He will provide.

[narrator] "In the desert,

the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron."

"The Israelites said to them,

'If only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt!'"

"'There, we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted.'"

"'You have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.'"

[Einhorn] The road is long. The challenges are many.

And you see this tiredness that happens with the people

where they get snappy, and you wonder, "How could they be so ungrateful?"

"Didn't they see everything that happened?"

You're saying that when you walked out of this air-conditioning room.

These people have been suffering, being saved,

suffering and being saved.

They were broken at so many points,

and it'd be stranger if they didn't complain.

[exciting music playing]

[narrator] "In the morning

there was a layer of dew around the camp."

"When the dew was gone,

thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor."

"The Lord said, 'I will rain down bread from heaven for you.'"

[Kirsch] The Israelites complain that they're hungry,

and God performs a miracle by sending down manna from heaven.

Scientists have told us

that there is a species of plant lice

that feed on the tamarisk tree,

which is present in Sinai.

And they exude a resinous substance

that's sweet to the taste and white in appearance.

It's on the plants.

It can be gathered, dried, made into bread.

He has spoken.

In the Sinai experience, or the wilderness experience,

uh... [chuckles]

...I think we see the maternal side of God

because women were the ones who changed agricultural materials

into edible form.

See, brother? A sign.

We have God the warrior in the signs and wonders,

and fighting the Pharaoh's armies.

And now, um, metaphorically, at least, we have God the mother, providing.

[man] Stop!

[people clamoring angrily]

[Zipporah] I said, stop! This is not the way!

- [man] Let it go! Stop! - [Zipporah] Stop!

[clamor continues]

[man 2] Selfish. Selfish man.

[Zipporah] Back!

Stop it!

[woman] How dare you?

David and Amram have been hoarding. Now there's not enough to go around.

Took it to barter.

It's good for two days, no more.

God blessed us with His bounty, and this is how you repay Him?

Throw them out. Let them fend for themselves.

No, stop! Stop. Stop. Stop.

Do as I say.

[Zipporah sighing]

Anger has undone you before.

God has been compassionate.

Let us be too.

She's right, brother.

What would He want from us?

How can you ask me that,

when it's all my heart has ever sought?

Then let your mind seek it too.

[Einhorn] You cannot learn

until you nullify everything you've learned before.

So to me, the wilderness is not about a place of predatory animals.

It's a space of nil.

It's... It's nothing. There's nothing there.

Are there enemies? Are there threats? Yes, there's gonna be all that.

But that's not the point.

The point is that the lesson and values of what I need to teach you,

it cannot happen in Egypt.

Too much history there.

Can't happen in Israel. Too much to build.

And I think that's what the wilderness is.

Children of Israel.

For five days, we gather food every morning.

Only what we need for that day.

And on the sixth day...

on the sixth day we gather enough so we can rest on the seventh.

We were made in God's image.

And on the seventh day, we rest. Yes?

Yes.

Yes.

A holy day.

A day...

to remind ourselves of how much we owe Him.

Let this be law.

The Sabbath is a really interesting institution,

as we think about the ancient Israelites and the biblical world.

As far as we know, there is nothing like it

in any of the other cultures around ancient Israel.

So in that sense, I guess we could call it an Israelite invention.

[Enns] The first reference to Sabbath is in Exodus 16,

with the "Gathering of the manna."

Like on the day... the sixth day, gather twice as much.

And rest on the seventh day just like God did.

[Einhorn] There's a phrase we use.

"More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews."

This is exactly what the people needed at that point.

God, through Moses, needed to declare a point where he says,

"Just stop. No more labor."

"Take stock of what you have, count your blessings."

"If you'd be present and realize there's nothing wrong in the moment,

we can make it."

[dramatic music playing]

[narrator] Having survived starvation and the wrath of Pharaoh,

the Israelites soon face a new enemy on the journey south to Mount Sinai.

We're not alone.

[distant horses neighing]

Desert people.

This is their land.

Many of the people of the ancient Near East were not Israelites,

and were enemies of the Israelites.

A good example is the Amalekites.

[screaming]

Go! Go! Go! Moses!

Bandits!

They crept up on us in the dark.

We fought them off, but there were too many of them.

Women and children were taken.

I need more men.

Amalekites. Slave traders.

We camp here. Give the order.

Let's get our people back.

[thunder rumbling]

[women exclaiming faintly]

[tense music playing]

[Joshua softly] Quickly. Quickly into position.

[Enns] So the Israelites, did they leave with swords and shields and arrows,

and like, how could they wage war against the Amalekites?

This is actually a very ancient Jewish midrash

that says basically they picked clean

the Egyptian soldiers who died in the Red Sea,

and their bodies were washed up on the shore,

and they pilfered their stuff.

Which is a great answer. It's not what the Bible says.

The Bible says nothing, but you wonder, "How did this happen?"

[dramatic music playing]

My Lord...

lead your children to victory.

[thunder cracks]

[Adelman] God says, "I brought you out of Egypt

with an outstretched arm and a strong hand."

[men shouting]

And Moses' arms are doing exactly that.

[high-pitched ringing]

[shouting]

[Adelman] He functions as a symbol.

As a conduit.

[woman] Joshua!

We're over here.

They're here!

And as long as their eyes are cast towards heaven,

then they succeed in battle.

[Joshua] Hurry, stay close to me.

[Adelman] And if they don't, then they fail.

Quickly!

[narrator] Moses grows weary.

[music ends abruptly]

[men shouting in distance]

But his arms remain steady.

[cheering]

[triumphant music playing]

[ululating]

The Israelites emerge victorious from the fight.

[upbeat music playing]

[clamoring]

- Aaron, what is it? - They're fighting over spoils.

Enough! Enough! Enough!

The next man who strikes a blow dies!

Dies!

[solemn music rising]

Remember who we are!

A nation!

A nation of the faithful!

Move!

[sighing]

How do I lead such a people?

Walk with them in love.

And if I don't find it?

Then the fault lies with you.

Love was torn from us as children, remember?

[Miriam scoffs]

Love alone would have never taken us out of Egypt.

[solemn music playing]

The wandering in the wilderness story is basically about this ragtag group of...

deeply traumatized and scarred and dysfunctional freed slaves,

uh, stumbling through.

[rousing music playing]

[Kang] Part of the lesson is, God may give you a vision.

God may give you a dream.

More often than not, it's not gonna actually materialize

the way that you want it to,

but it'll be something better.

People of God were expecting the Promised Land,

and they thought they got an express ticket.

But no.

There are things that need to be worked on the inside, uh,

before I take you to the outside places.

Israel moves from one form of servitude to another form of servitude,

which is to Yahweh.

The goal of the Exodus story is not, "Be free."

It's, "Go to the mountain to worship God."

"Get the Commandments to get the law

so you know how to act and so you know how to worship."

They still have the spiritual struggle to endure.

Even though they've been politically liberated,

they still have the task of being spiritually liberated.

[excited chatter]

I've come to speak with Him. To find Him again.

[Jethro] I have seen you this way before.

I cannot lead my people without God.

How do I walk with them and search for Him at one and the same time?

Many years ago,

you took my sheep to pasture

so I could be free and attend to my people.

[soothing music playing]

You were a good servant.

You have servants too.

Choose them wisely. Use them.

And then you may go to Him in good conscience

and ask for his help.

[Harris] Jethro shows up again.

And then he watches Moses conducting business

and receiving all of these different people who have disputes,

and Moses is the only judge and jury.

And Jethro sees him doing this, and Jethro tells him,

"You can't carry on like this."

"You're going to burn yourself out."

And then Jethro says to him, "Here's what you need to do."

And he describes to him how to set up a system of courts.

Jethro is, in my view,

this wonderful example

of how somebody who is not Jewish

brings the best ideas

and insights of his religious traditions to help.

And Moses is smart enough to accept the wisdom,

even though it comes from a different culture.

[Moses] It's still here.

The story of our life.

[sighs heavily]

How does it end, I wonder?

[thunder rumbling]

I must go and seek his help.

You will.

Tell the story to our children so they understand.

Go.

[narrator] Once again, Moses ascends the great mountain to speak with God.

[thunder rumbling]

"There was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain."

"Mount Sinai was covered with smoke

because the Lord descended on him in fire."

"The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace,

and the whole mountain trembled violently."

[wind howling]

[thunder cracking]

Where are you?

I came all this way to find you!

Speak to me!

Are you finished with me?

I'm not finished with you!

Do you hear me?

I don't know what to do, God.

I don't know where to go.

I'm lost without you.

[Yahweh] I bore you on eagles' wings

and brought you to myself.

If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant,

then you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.

[narrator] Weeks pass.

The Israelites wait in the shadow of Mount Sinai for Moses' return.

[uneasy music playing]

For 40 days and nights he has been gone.

He will return.

[Einhorn] These are a people who live with so much uncertainty.

For the first time, their leader is not in front of their face.

The person who's taken them out,

who has served really as the father of the nation,

he's not there.

And they look up, and there's this experience

that is so awesome and... and so scary.

When you don't know where tomorrow... or how you're gonna survive,

or what's gonna happen going forward,

that's when you could do a lot of bad stuff.

[unsettling music playing]

[Aaron] What's this?

We need a god who others recognize.

A god like other gods.

We have Egyptian gold.

Before we leave, we will melt it down and make a god that will protect us.

Moses has protected us.

Do you truly believe your brother is still alive?

Do you?

You are the firstborn brother.

It is time to reclaim your position.

[music swells]

[Moses hammering chisel]

[narrator] "And Aaron said to them,

'Break off the golden earrings which are in the ears of your wives,

your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.'"

"And he received the gold from their hand,

and he fashioned it with an engraving tool

and made a molded calf."

Remember, it is the disobedience that causes the plagues back in Egypt.

But it's the disobedience of the people on the other side of the wilderness

where they construct this god...

It's that disobedience that caused them to take a journey

that should not have been any more than ten days

to last 40 years.

[Kirsch] Aaron, who is Moses' own brother and the high priest of Israel,

he's the one who makes the golden calf

because he feels, uh, threatened

by the uproar among the Israelites.

So just to calm them down, he makes them this god.

[men hammering]

[grunts]

[dramatic music playing]

Famously, Moses descends from Sinai

at the very moment they're offering worship to the golden calf.

It's heartbreaking.

[panting]

It's Moses.

[Israelites murmuring]

[music swells]

- Moses! - Moses!

Moses!

Moses!

[Miriam] Moses.

Nothing.

All for nothing.

Moses, he's so appalled and so outraged,

he takes the two tablets on which the Ten Commandments have been written

and smashes them.

Anger control issues.

That is a theme that you see throughout Moses' life.

[Harris] This struggle with anger is something that we can learn a lot from.

Moses is somebody who loses his cool, lashes out,

and then has to figure out how to pick up the pieces again.

Help me.

What are they?

[Moses] The answer.

He answered my call.

And he gave me his greatest gift.

His laws.

And you...

all of you broke my heart.

So I broke them too.

To change days past...

one needs forgiveness.

Remember?

Leave me.

Now.

[whispering] What have I done, my Lord?

Go away.

My Lord.

I have failed you, my Lord.

[Yahweh] It is time.

I let loose a flood once and spared only Noah.

I could let loose fire this time and spare only you.

To burn them? Burn them all?

But my Lord,

we might have gone to the Promised Land if you had not led me this way.

- None of this would have happened. - What point in reaching the Promised Land

if you do not know how to live there?

You may have freedom, but you cannot keep it without truth.

We will begin anew.

No!

Forgive them. Forgive us. Forgive me.

Forgive.

[Enns] Once again, God's had it.

"I'm gonna kill everybody, and I'll just start over with you."

And Moses talks him out of it.

Like, that's rash. Think about this. What will the Egyptians say?

You brought us out into the desert just to kill us?

[grave music playing]

Let him go.

They rebelled against you.

Against God.

Let them go.

They deserve to die.

We should make them an example to the others.

You should not commit murder.

This is the law.

What law?

The one I destroyed. Let him go.

Recite the laws to us, Moses.

Let us recite them to one another

until we no longer need to.

Because the laws will be written in us.

You should not make any graven images.

You should not have another God before me.

You should not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

You shall not covet.

You should not...

What really alienated the children of Israel in the wilderness

was the lack of covenant.

And the reason they remained in the wilderness as long as they did

was to seal the covenant.

God could have taken them to Canaan land at any point, but they were not ready.

[Moses] Remember the Sabbath day

and keep it holy.

Honor your father and mother.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not bear false witness.

[Meyers] The Bible never uses the word "commandments."

It does say ten, but there are ten things,

ten d'varim, ten issues, ten precepts.

The first five deal with the human relationship to God.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You should not take the name of God in vain.

The last five commandments are social.

They're about people getting along with each other,

doing right by each other.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house or anything that is your neighbor's.

[Einhorn] God says, "You cannot be left without structure."

"That's not the point. I didn't take you out to become nothing."

"I took you out to become something."

"And therefore these laws are the beginning of a moral code

that is going to revolutionize the entire world."

[ethereal music rising]

[Moses] Mother?

[echoing] Why are you sad, Moses?

For all I've done wrong.

For all I still have left to do.

You have done well.

[women ululating]

You brought them out of Egypt as God asked you to.

You gave them laws to live by.

You gave them life.

What more

would you ask of yourself?

I must lead them to the Promised Land.

They will get there on their own.

Without you.

[Enns] The three big players in this story,

Moses, Aaron, and Miriam,

um, they don't make it to the Promised Land.

Come.

[Kirsch] The single most poignant and tragic moment, I would argue,

in all of the Bible is that Moses,

who has been charged with God

to perform this difficult, dangerous task,

led the Israelites through the desert for 40 years

and faithfully performs that task to completion,

but is not allowed to join the children of Israel in the Promised Land.

It's heartbreaking.

Look, Moses.

There it is.

The denial of Moses to enter the Promised Land

resonates with me in a contemporary fashion

in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The night before he died, he echoed the sentiments of Moses.

He said, "I've been to the mountaintop."

"I've seen the Promised Land."

"I may not get there with you, but I'm here to tell you,

you will get to the Promised Land."

It is almost as though he was channeling Moses in that moment.

And if the Moses story means anything,

and that is that even once you reach Canaan,

even once you have freedom in name,

it still requires a struggle.

What it takes to get free

is different than what it takes to stay free.

[epic music rising]

Promised Land.

And I will never get there.

No.

But your children will.

[Zipporah] Moses?

Come inside now.

Come.

[narrator] "And Moses, the servant of the Lord,

died there in Moab, as the Lord had said."

"Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses,

who the Lord knew face-to-face...

who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt,

to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to his whole land."

"For no one has ever shown the mighty power

or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did

in the sight of all Israel."

[solemn music playing]

[dramatic music playing]

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