Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/286

264 And on the second night, Moses and Aaron went forth to Pharaoh's palace. Now the palace had four hundred doors, a hundred on each side, and each door was guarded by sixty thousand fighting men. The angel Gabriel came to them and led them into the palace, but not by the doors.

When they appeared before Pharaoh, they said: "God hath sent us unto thee to bid thee let the Hebrews go, that they may hold a feast in the wilderness."

But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go."

Tabari tells a different story. Moses and Aaron sought admittance during two years. Now Pharaoh gave himself out to be a god.

But Moses and Aaron, when they spake at the door with the porters, said, "He is no god." One day the jester of Pharaoh heard his master read the history of his own life, and when he came to the passage which asserted he was a god, the jester exclaimed, "Now this is strange! For two years there have been two strangers at thy gate denying thy divinity."

When Pharaoh heard this, he was in a fury, and he sent and had Moses and Aaron brought before him.

But to return to the Rabbinic tale. Moses and Aaron were driven out from the presence of Pharaoh; and he said, "Who admitted these men?" And some of the porters he slew, and some he scourged.

Then two lionesses were placed before the palace, to protect it, and the beasts suffered no man to enter unless Pharaoh gave the word.

And the Lord spake to Moses and Aaron, saying, "When Pharaoh talketh with you, saying, Give us a miracle, thou shalt say to Aaron, Take thy rod and cast it down, and it shall became a basilisk serpent; for all the inhabitants of the earth shall hear the voice of the shriek of Egypt when I destroy it, as all creatures heard the shriek of the serpent when I stripped it, and took from it its legs and made it lick the dust after the Fall."

On the morrow, Moses and Aaron came again to the king's palace, and the lionesses would have devoured them. Then