My failed Labor Day entry

I tried to write an entry for Labor Day yesterday, but I failed – I was too hotheaded and tendentious. I’m so madly FOR workers and AGAINST bosses and owners, that everything I say comes off like a self-righteous sermon.

I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? . . . Do not I know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side . . . ?

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.

—Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

Additionally, because I think its subject is in the spirit of Labor Day, I wanted to share the account of the ancient Israelites in Egypt, from the fifth chapter of Exodus in the Bible; but I couldn’t find a good place to start and stop the story. Almost every detail of the text provokes in the reader further questions, which lure one back to earlier developments.

And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, “Thus saith Yahweh God of Israel: ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness’.”

That’s the first verse of Exodus chapter 5. It necessitates explaining who Moses and Aaron are, and why Pharaoh has possession of Yahweh’s people. Also, my wish is that readers would allow the tale to illuminate the life of the working class in the contemporary USA; but, in order to do so, we would need to update the idea of “holding a feast unto Yahweh in the wilderness” – What would be the modern American equivalent of this: Having a barbecue at the park?

Plus, the struggle of the working class of Israel never altogether concludes; its breaking-off point is neither a sad nor happy ending: it’s simply ongoing, even to this very moment. For the people who are treated harshly by the taskmasters of Egypt eventually flee the country (hence the title Exodus), but then they wander in the wilderness so long that future generations are left to try to find a place to settle down (the “Promised Land”); and yet the people never actually finish occupying the country before they’re taken into captivity by other nations (see the rest of the Hebrew Bible). No plan ever quite pans out.

My point is that if you’re going to excerpt the story of Exodus, you must decide whether you’ll end with the Israelites’ successful escape, which leaves the reader thinking “Hooray, now they can have their barbecue!” while keener minds will be haunted by the thought: “Yet they’re now stuck in the desert until they die” – OR, on the other hand, you could stop the story as the Authorized Scripture does: for Exodus chapter 5 officially ends with Moses voicing a question to God – note that anyone in modern times could pose this inquiry as well, with the same emphasis, because it STILL hangs unanswered:

Moses returned unto Yahweh, and said, “Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.”