- Merneptah: [crushing a roach] So, this is the measure of your God's mercy?
- Moses: It is the measure of a Pharoah's soul. Let my people go.
- Merneptah: I would shake them like dust from my sandals, but I have come too far.
- Moses: Once step further takes you into the dark.
- [the plague of darkenss falls upon Egypt]
- Moses: The edge of silence.
- Merneptah: Why is the sun god powerless? The darkness depresses... chokes me.
- Moses: Terror is as old as the world Pharoah. But until now it fed on a different people. Gather your own life around you. Merneptah... you have a son.
- Merneptah: No! You will not touch him!
- Moses: Your son, and the first born of all your people. The Lord God chooses life. Chose with him now. Let my people go.
- Merneptah: No. Let them stay and suffer.
- Moses: I was conceived in slavery... and born in the stink of death. Our tribes had multiplied, Ramses saw mutiny striding towards him, and subtracted the psace between birth and death. One swift harvest rid him of our last born sons... and his fear. And who was I after all this dark arithmetic, to be the remainder? A cuckoo, floating in Egypt's nest.
- Merneptah: Haul back the daylight... let them go and take their God with them into the wilderness...
- Moses: My fear, believe me, is greater than yours. It is not pride that stands before you, it is not self seeking; I would much sooner have stayed in the safe wilderness. It is obedience. I do only what I must.
- Aaron: Now we must decide. Shall we listen to Moses? Shall we be obedient?
- Hebrew Elder: I'm not following a man who's half Egyptian.
- Hebrew Worker: You can't deny the voice of the Lord God.
- Hebrew Elder: Or the signs.
- Hebrew Elder: If it was the voice of the Lord God. And what if Moses fails?
- Hebrew Worker: Listen; for years we wait, we pray for this moment, now it comes and we argue. Let him at least try!