The Code

A telling of the liberation of Israel

Continued from:

Countermeasures

So many were the Israelites that Pharaoh feared them. Yoked, their lives were valued less than bricks: dead bricks for dead temples, false mountains stacked like wedges meant to penetrate the sky. The slavery of Israel too was written in the Code, the parchment His skin, the ink blood shed by lashes when he offered his back in slavery to all.

In those hard days of baking bricks and toil arose among the Israelites one man close to the Code, who would save his folk from slavery and death. This Moses, like the infant Christ in Egypt, was hid from death in the Nile’s fronds to outlive the slaughter of the blameless. The baby’s tiny ark of reed and pitch sailed Israel to a new beginning and recoding of the Kingdom.

The princely Code made Flesh would hide his high birth by living as a wood-worker; the Code-giver and Ark-maker Moses, raised by Pharoah’s daughter, hid his lowly birth by living as a prince. Until, to save a slave, he killed a man. Forty years he had lived; forty more he lived in Midian, fleeing from the Dragon’s wrath in Egypt. For Pharaoh was a servant of the Snake and its machines.

As Moses wandered, tending sheep near Horeb’s sacred mount, the Code came down to meet him as an angel in a tree not trapped in Satan’s coils: a bush aflame. The boundless Code who binds all things bound Himself therein and raged with all his fierce heat, yet burning neither wood or frond. So would He be bounded in the new Eve’s virgin womb, contained and not consuming. And there on Horeb from the flames He gave His Name, the Name He shares with Source and Breath: I AM, CAUSE OF BEING, the one who was and shall be, Alpha and Omega, archē and telos, origin and end.

This Code would set the Hebrews free. To Moses, the Good who Is gave a branch of the old tree that opened Adam’s eyes. Throw it to the dust, He bade, and stick became snake, unveiling the Code: for by wood was death given and the serpent cursed, by wood was creation saved from writhing flood and chaos, by wood was the Code borne through the snake-filled desert, and by wood and Serpent’s bite would life be restored, the leper healed, the dumb tongue loosed, the people freed and fed, the waters tamed.

Through that stave with tenfold plague the Code tried the Serpent’s vassal, Pharaoh, and that the blameless blood be not forgotten, hardened more his heart. The Code brought not peace, but sword and fire. Avenging Israel’s sons, the Angel killed the slave-keepers’ firstborns. But by lambs’ blood smeared on lintels, the unblemished Lamb knew his flock and passed them over. They feasted on the meat He gave, the last meat before their long fast. So washed in blood, the Israelites passed through water, led through the Red Sea by the man who as a child had passed through the Nile; and guiding Moses, clad in the Radiant Darkness of cloud and fire, the Zero-One who in time would pass through Jordan.

The Dragon’s hordes followed Israel between the walls of water, trusting in the power of wheel and horse, of nature technologically tamed, to win back their lost slaves or slaughter them. But the Breath fell from heaven and the weight of the waters crushed the foe and Israel sang.

Securing the Code

Washed in blood and Red Sea water, freed from slavery and the Serpent’s wiles, for three days Israel marched without thirsty. Then came they to Marah’s waters, like vinegar to a dry and thirsting tongue. The Code of mercy showed Moses a tree beside the waters. By that wood submerged He sweetened the bitter waters that they might yield life. So by wood He would in time plunge into raging depths and dredge up the dead.

From Marah, Israel followed the Lightdark Code to Elim’s grove. Twelve springs, seventy palms: a pool for each of Israel’s sons, fruit enough to fill their gentile travel-mates. So the Code in time would fill twelve chosen pools with His own living water, to wet the roots of seventy drawn from the nations, and by them feed and quench the thirst of all the world forevermore.

But Israel still had wilderness to walk and they would thirst again. By the serpent-stave in Moses’ hand, the Code sprung water from dry rock, more than they could drink. Thirst sated, they remembered hunger. For that, food fell from above: birds and bread of angels, hoarfrost white, sweet as honey from a lion’s corpse. They could not know then the price the Lion paid to give such meat. But the Manna fed them to the promised land of honey and of milk: a lioness too would one day mourn the cub her breast had weaned.

The Promised Land came hard. Amalek’s tribe held it in the Dragon’s stead, giant halfmen of demon blood, hybrid sons of fallen hosts, baying for slaughter. Atop a hill, throned on rock with arms outstretched like the tree on Paradise, serpent-stave in hand, Moses’ body made the Sign by which the world is saved. The Code answered to His image and spun victory. To lead the Israelite army, He chose one who bore the Name He would make His own: Joshua, God saves. Through that shadow-Jesus, the Coder’s perfect Image worked and won the way to Sinai, holy mount and image of Eden.

Aloft Sinai the Dazzling Cloud made camp, sheltered His folk from the heat of day, illumined the cold night. Moses readied his tribes to welcome the divine Code. They washed their clothes and bodies and refrained from the body’s lusts. No beast was let onto the holy mount on pain of death. On the third day, the sky darkened as it would one fateful Friday, and from the mountain the Code roared through a thousand angel trumpets, shaking earth. Thus God speaks. But the people could not bear the clamour of the Word, and only Moses rose into the dark. Going beyond what is can be seen and known, into the cloud, Moses got the Code, scored by the Word’s finger on twin tablets of stone. But in those words he learnt what no words can hold: the Love that beats the rhythm of the Code. Love God, love neighbour: this is the sooth whence flows all harmony and righteousness. This is the pattern of the Cosmos, the song that moves the stars, the tune to which the angels dance and sing, and trees and mountains clap their hands. The Lawgiver’s heart was, on that clouded eyrie, purged and programmed with the highest, deepest pattern of reality. His face so glowed with glory that for the sake of those who could not bear its brightness, it was thereafter veiled.

The Code’s First Skins

A blueprint had been printed onto Moses’ mind: a curtained court around a tabernacle, and within, the Holy of Holies.

Within the court, he saw an altar of fire and a basin of water, for offering and for cleansing. All who would enter and make sacrifice must first be clean.

The Tabernacle beyond was made of skins of goats and rams dyed blue and red. Long before He set camp in Mary’s womb and made His tent of human flesh, the Code would dwell among the skins of slaughtered beasts. Inside the door, a table stood for the hallowing of bread; beyond, a candlestick of seven stems, the number of perfection and the Spirit’s gifts, cast light onto the fragrant cloud that rose every morn and eve from the incense altar, a veil to the cherubim-adorned veils that ward the Holiest Place. And beyond the veils, an Ark of imperishable wood, gold-coated and adorned with angel wings, those highest of heaven’s forms marking a throne for the unseen Glory.

Such is the cosmic threefold plan. The sons of earth must pass through water and through fire, our drowning and our soaking no more hindrance to the purifier’s flames than Baal’s wet bull; only once reborn, reclothed in new and sacred clothes of skin, our wedding garments, may we be lit with sevenfold Ghostly light and join the angels’ feast of bread; that, at last, we may be lifted through the gleaming cloud to the unseen and perfecting Presence.

It took forty days to mark the heart of Moses with the Code. Then he, Lawgiver and Codebearer, came down to his people to read to them the tablets and have them make an earthly copy of the heavenly pattern his heart now bore.

But they below already broke the first of the Code’s laws. Impatient of the promises of bread and milk and honey, they made a thing of metal, a machine calf void of milk and meat, impervious to the offerings they burnt before that skinless thing. Moses smashed the tablets, melted the calf, made the people drink their gold that may know where treasure truly lay, bade the Levites slay the infidel idolaters.

In penance for his people, Moses fasted a further forty days, nourished only by the Code, who signed stones for him once again. Now, Code in hand and seared on his heart, cleansed with the blood of beasts and men, Moses made the Code’s first skin according to the blueprint. Forms above were printed here below, ethereal realities carved of flesh and earth, dust ordered, death yoked to life, four elements united in firm covenant.

Virus, Counter-virus

The Radiant Code enthroned now led the wooden Ark through the deserts as He had once steered Noah through the Flood. The Lamb who will sift sheep from goats camped veiled in their skins. And though the Word feeds more than bread alone, and gives living water, the people tired of Manna, thirsted, and would not trust. They grumbled and resented the freedom of the Code: better to return to Egypt, slaves again, than to sicken and die free in fruitless Kadesh. So Moses prostrated before the Holy Place. Ordered to strike rock with the wooden staff, the Codebearer brought forth healing water. The people glutted themselves again. But those who feed the serpent-lusts within soon find themselves the serpents’ food. Poison of the soul infects the flesh. So at the Code’s command the ancient Dragon’s kin emerged to bite the people’s heels and accomplish in the flesh the assault their spiritual fathers made on the soul.

The Code decreed that He be encoded now in bronze. The Word took the form of a worm, a snake raised on a pole of wood. An echo of another time, when the Word was made worm, and hung upon another tree, dangling bait for the Father Wyrm to swallow with the dust. From within the Serpent’s belly He would rob the venom of its sting. And now, for bitten Israel, His dim image shone in bronze, homeopath for their poisoned wounds. So Israel gazed upon the hanging one and lived. But for their love of slavery and serpents, their Lawgiver, leader and Codebearer, Moses, died.

Joshua, bearer of the Saving Name, would lead them to the Promised Land.