To his mother

Background
This poem is spoken by Moses on Mount Nebo just before he dies (Deuteronomy, chapter 34).

An absent parent can an instigation for a child’s belief in God. My poem suggests that Moses's search for God was a search for his mother. Moses has gone to the top of Mount Nebo to look at the land to which he has led his god’s people, but to which his god has said he can never enter. It is not clear what Moses did to warrant this prohibition. In stanza 4 of the poem I allude to the suggestion (in Numbers 20) that Moses did not trust God to be holy or to provide water at a place called Meribah. Other relevant Biblical passages include Exodus 4:24-26 and Numbers 31:1-20.

Stanza 1
The story of Moses’s abandonment as a baby is told in Exodus chapter 2.

Stanza 2.
The biblical references for this stanza are Exodus, chapter 3, verses 1-5 (the fire that did not consume a bush); Exodus chapter 13, verse 21 (a cloud with direction); Exodus, chapter 19, verse 16 (a thunderstorm like trumpets).

Stanza 3.
Sometimes the scriptures call the mountain on which Moses meets with God "Horeb" and sometimes it is called Sinai. The Tent of meeting is described in Exodus, chapter 33.

Stanza 4.
Exodus, chapter 14, verse 21 to chapter 15, verse 21, describes the parting and closing of the sea (“the tides”). Numbers, chapter 16, verses 25 to 35 describes Moses’s prediction of an earthquake ("the fault-lines"). Manna (which appeared with the dew and looked like the resin, bdellium) and quails are described in Exodus, chapter 16 and Numbers, chapter 11. This stanza suggests that the sin at Meribah (Numbers 31:1-20) was ecological.

Stanza 5
Aaron’s magical staff is described at various places in Exodus. Exodus, chapter 7 relates to the blood on a river and chapters 8 and 9 describe the plagues, including flies, frogs, maggots and the sighs that followed the death of Egypt’s first-born. Chapter 7, verses 10-13 describes the staff becoming a snake that ate up other snakes.

Stanza 6.
The Law is given to Moses in Exodus, chapter 20. The Israelites are instructed to write the law on their door-posts in Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 9 and chapter 9, verse 20.
The defeat and slaughter of the Midianites is reported in Numbers, chapter 31, verses 1 to 20. After the victory and the plundering of towns, Moses tells his military commanders to kill every male Midianite child and all the Midianite women who are not virgins (“you may spare for yourselves the virgins”). The poem suggests that Moses felt guilty for this sin - although this suggestion is not found anywhere in the Bible.

Stanza 8
That Satan contended for Moses's body is mentioned in Jude 1:19. The story originated in Jewish apocryphal literature.

In Deuteronomy, chapter 34 we are told that when Moses died he was one hundred and twenty years old, yet his sight was undimmed and his vigour unimpaired.