Paragraph 68

After Him came Moses, He Who held converse with God. The soothsayers of His time warned Pharaoh in these terms: "A star hath risen in the heaven, and lo! it foreshadoweth the conception of a Child Who holdeth your fate and the fate of your people in His hand." In like manner, there appeared a sage who, in the darkness of the night, brought tidings of joy unto the people of Israel, imparting consolation to their souls, and assurance to their hearts. To this testify the records of the sacred books. Were the details to be mentioned, this epistle would swell into a book. Moreover, it is not Our wish to relate the stories of the days that are past. God is Our witness that what We even now mention is due solely to Our tender affection for thee, that haply the poor of the earth may attain the shores of the sea of wealth, the ignorant be led unto the ocean of divine knowledge, and they that thirst for understanding partake of the Salsabil of divine wisdom. Otherwise, this servant regardeth the consideration of such records a grave mistake and a grievous transgression.


And now on to Moses. Baha'u'llah is moving us forward through the various revelations, beginning with Abraham, and now Moses. The main part of this paragraph, of course, deals with the star in heaven and the harbinger on earth, as will all the passages in this section. After all, this is still all about the "sign of the Son of Man in heaven".

For the most part, there is little new. The Jewish records talk about the details that Baha'u'llah mentions, and all He is doing is reminding us of them. Of course, if we do not know this, there is the implicit hint that we should study our own history. But if it is familiar, then He is connecting the dots for us.

Then comes the second half of this paragraph. "Were the details to be mentioned, this epistle would swell into a book." Maybe it's just us, but isn't it already a book?

Anyways, it's this next part that intrigues us.

He says that He doesn't want to talk about the past, and that He is only doing this because of His love for the Uncle of the Bab. And then, in that very last sentence, He says something that intrigues us. He regards "the consideration of such records a grave mistake and a grievous transgression".

It seems that the records He is mentioning are none other than the records of the sacred books He has just mentioned. If so, these are the same sacred books that He has previously, and repeatedly, told us to reflect on and consider. "Consider the past". "Refer ye... to that which hath been recorded in every sacred Book." Over and over He is drawing our attention to these Books. So why here does He regard the consideration of these same Books as a "grave mistake and a grievous transgression"?

We have three ideas about this.

The first is that later, in Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, Baha'u'llah says "We entreat Our loved ones not... to allow references to what they have regarded as miracles and prodigies to debase Our rank and station, or to mar the purity and sanctity of Our name." As we know from going through these various Books of the past, most of them are filled with stories of miracles. Perhaps He is trying to turn our attention away from the stories and towards the teachings. After all, it is the teachings that are important. The stories are just icing on the cake. And too much icing can one's tummy upset.

The second idea is that Baha'u'llah also tells us to "Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements." These stories are all about the past. Perhaps He is telling us not to look at the past, but instead to look towards the future, in this context.

But it is the third idea that really moves us. We think that Baha'u'llah is telling us all of this so that, with luck, "the poor of the earth may attain the shores of the sea of wealth, the ignorant be led unto the ocean of divine knowledge, and they that thirst for understanding partake of the Salsabil of divine wisdom." If the perusal of these sacred Books does not lead to these ends, that is result in true wealth, knowledge and wisdom, then the study of these Texts is a "grave mistake and a grievous transgression". In other words, reading these texts, and not attaining to true knowledge can lead us to great danger and death. It can result in a violation of a law that leads to tremendous grief.

If we look back at paragraph 14, we see that by "having weighed the testimony of God by the standard of their own knowledge... and found it at variance with their limited understanding, they arose to perpetrate such unseemly acts." The people of the day of a Messenger of God did horrible things to Them, based on their misunderstanding. But if they didn't have any understanding of the Book of God to begin with, they would never have done such acts that they would later regret. It all comes back to the very first paragraph of this Book: "No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth."

It's interesting, isn't it, how it always comes back to that very first paragraph? When we can make that connection, then we feel we finally got to the core of it.