Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  “We live under a quaint rule,” said Shebua.

  He then conducted the guests into the magnificent dining room for a rich and subtly elegant feast, for he had an Egyptian cook of great talent.

  The women’s quarters were not luxurious nor very handsome. They had the austerity of old Rome about them and there were few ornaments and only the statues of Clodia’s family gods and her lares and penates. There were no murals here and the lamps were plain and unscented and the curtains over the uncolored Alexandrine glass of the windows were of coarse wool striped in the red, black and white hues of the Tribe of Levi, to which Shebua ben Abraham belonged. Sephorah thought it amusing, but not incongruous nor discordant, to find here a mixture of both Roman and Jewish customs and furnishing, for there was a curious resemblance and harmony between them. She realized at once that they were also anachronistic in this modern age of Hellenistic Jews and opulent Romans and degenerate Greeks.

  Clodia was seated within her own portico in an oaken chair with no cushions nor fringes, and she was like Demeter in her repose and dignity. About her, her women were not idle; they were sewing or spinning or embroidering, though it was night and the lamps were not many. Clodia, herself, held a heap of linen on her broad knees and she was apparently mending it. She raised her calm brown eyes to Sephorah’s face, scrutinized her sharply and briefly, saw all, smiled with reserve and held out her hand to the girl. Sephorah kissed it With a fine affectation of humility, and Clodia’s eyes suddenly twinkled. She rose, embraced Sephorah. She smelled of fresh bread and clean strong flesh and warmth.

  “Greetings, my child,” she said, in Latin, “My son, Ezekiel, is greatly honored and blessed in you.”

  Her coarse brown hair was partly covered with the same plain cloth as her stola, and they were both of a dull deep red. Her hands were the hands of a woman who was not ashamed to use them in labor or in the soil, and were dark and short. She was not so tall as Sephorah. She was, indeed, however, the terror of her household which she ruled in the fashion of an “old” Roman, and her sons and her daughters feared her with excellent reason. Though her daughters were married, as were all her sons but Ezekiel, her youngest, they observed the most meticulous and deferential deportment in their mother’s presence. Her features were large and coarse and firm, but when she smiled her expression was truly kind and benevolent. Sephorah loved her at once, for here was all sincerity and truth.

  Clodia and Sephorah dined together in Clodia’s austere dining room, which was small and dimly lighted. But the curtains were drawn back for the warm night wind and Sephorah saw the mingled red and white illumination of Jerusalem and heard the dull thunder of the unsleeping city. She also heard fountains, plangent and soothing, and distant laughter and music and the rumble of chariots. She could smell rich gardens and fruit. The crescent new moon stood on tiptoe on a dark mountain. Though Sephorah was tired, she was filled with excitement and anticipation, for henceforth this would be her home.

  They dined very simply on broiled fish, hot breads and stewed beans with garlic and cheese and a very ordinary wine, which Clodia favored. The gentlemen’s dinner was quite different, which Sephorah suspected, but Clodia preferred a plain life for herself and her women. There was a rustic basket of fruit on the table, which was covered by a yellowish cloth, and the perfume of it mingled with the flower scents from the gardens and the pervading peppery and aromatic odor of the city.

  She is dressed and gemmed finely, thought Clodia, and is of delicate structure and proud bearing, but she is one like myself and I am pleased. She inquired politely of Sephorah’s journey, offered her condolences for the death of the girl’s mother, and conveyed her unbending and formidable serenity to Sephorah who did not find it intimidating. In truth, the girl’s weariness relaxed and she found herself confiding in Clodia as if she were her mother, and some of her remarks were so witty that Clodia laughed abruptly a few times. Sephorah’s composure and ease, her charming face, her smiles, gratified the Roman lady. The girl was not impudent as were the majority of maidens in these deplorable days, and there was no impertinence in her voice, nor was she affected or brazen.

  They drank wine in warm comfort together and ate of the luscious fruit. Sephorah began to speak of her brother and her anxious love for him shone in her golden eyes. She told Clodia of the strangeness which had come to him in the past year, and the fixity and gloom which nothing could shake. “Ah,” said Clodia, “I saw him from my portico, in the light of the lamps at the entrance to the atrium. He stood apart. That is very unusual for a youth, for the young are always chattering. Does he love no one?”

  “None but God and my father,” said Sephorah with some melancholy. “Once he loved me. But no more. He repudiates me and thinks me trivial. I cannot touch him.”

  Clodia reflected. She held a handful of sweet ripe dates in her hand and she munched on them thoughtfully. Then she said, “I have seen a few young men like your brother, Saul ben Hillel, but very few. He recalls my own brothers to me. We, too, were stringent before our gods and loved our country with fervor. At times,” and now she suddenly looked at Sephorah and the usually unrelenting brown eyes were amazingly merry, “I found it tiresome. Of a certainty, I never implied this to my father and my brothers, nor to my husband, David ben Shebua, but women have more humor than men.”

  Sephorah was freshly delighted by this Roman lady. The two I women drew more comfortably together. “Virtue,” said Clodia, “is most necessary, and discipline cannot be overpraised. We must learn I this, my child, or we cannot endure in a world of men. We must be sleeplessly controlled and firm and guide them ruthlessly, or this world will surely revert to chaos. We must be veritable Penelopes on this gross, masculine earth, veritable Junos—or our men will become barbarians. It is their nature, though they pretend, in these days, to be excessive refinements and daintiness. Alas, modern women, striving to be as corrupt as men, as vicious as men, as free as men, are fastening us all to destruction. There are few virtuous women alive these evil times, and only they can delay the inevitable hour of death, blood and confusion.”

  She sighed, studied a pomegranate in its basket, then took up a lea globe. She regarded Sephorah with interest. The girl’s face was somewhat disturbed. Clodia said, “Do not be sad, my daughter. Civilizations come, and they go. The seed of their death lies in them at their birth. It is inexorable fate, ordained by the gods. Still,” she added, “I often yearn for what I have not had.” She gave a grim chortle. Sephorah gazed at her, waiting.

  “Shebua ben Abraham mentioned to me, with amusement, that the Pharisee Jews believe in reincarnation,” said Clodia Flavius, rubbing the pomegranate frankly on her knee. “If I were to be given a choice, in the event there is truth in that theory, I should like to be a courtesan.”

  “A courtesan!” exclaimed Sephorah, and her face came alight with dimples.

  “Then I would not have to be virtuous,” said Clodia. “I am like a weary soldier on guard.”

  Sephorah laughed, but for some reason unknown even to her, she felt tears in her eyes. She rose quickly to her feet and approached Clodia and fell on her neck and kissed her, and then did not know why she cried. And Clodia held her in her stout arms and soothed her as she had never soothed her own daughters, and murmured wordlessly in her ear and kissed her cheek. Sephorah sat on her knee like a child and wound her arms about Clodia, and the servant girls looked in upon them and were astonished.

  It was midnight and Saul lay in sweating exhaustion in his fine bedroom in the house of Shebua ben Abraham, and his spirit was in darkness and in pain. He had recited his prayers with fervor, this first night in the land of his fathers, but they had brought him no comfort. So he rose from his heated bed, covered his head with a cloth, bent over as if in agony, and murmured aloud in the words of David:

  “O Lord, rebuke me not in Your wrath, neither chasten me in Your hot displeasure! For Your arrows stick fast in me and Your hand presses me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your a
nger, neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. My iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long. For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and sore broken; I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You, and my groaning is not hid from You. My heart pants, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes, it is also gone from me—Forsake me not, O Lord! O my God, be not far from me!”

  On so many endless nights before he had prayed thus in despair and in fever, and in utter faith. Yet never had he been comforted, never had he felt forgiven, never had he felt the imminence of God as once he had felt it. Something obstinately cold and dark had fallen between him and God. He believed it was his sin, for which he could not forgive himself.

  Once, during his interlude with Dacyl, he had loved all mankind, for it had reflected his love, and she was one with it and it was one with her. Now that he believed he loathed Dacyl and hated her, so those somber emotions lay on all the world of men, emanating from himself. As he had repudiated Dacyl, so he repudiated his fellows and despised them, for were they not depraved and corrupt as Dacyl—and as himself? He could not forgive himself. Therefore, he could not forgive nor endure mankind. Could not God, blessed be His Name, read his heart, know his contrition and sorrow and disgust? Why then, did silence answer in him, and long loneliness and emptiness, as if in reproach? It was said that the Lord did not reject the repentant, but hastened to meet them in lovingkindness. But though Saul had repented, the portals of communion with God had closed and he was left in barrenness and dryness among evil men, and there was muteness and despair in his soul.

  In broken exhaustion, he fell on his hot bed again and was instantly asleep. He did not dream. But suddenly, as he slept and the crescent moon fell behind the mountains and a new breeze chattered amid the palms, he heard a great and tremendous voice:

  “Saul! Saul of Tarshish!”

  He sprang up in bed, sweat dripping from him, his eyes wild and staring in the darkness. He cried, “Yes, yes! Who is it? Who calls?”

  The very walls were still ringing with the sound of that unearthly voice, that commanding voice, that terrible and masculine voice. A fierce pain ran through the young man’s head, and he panted. He listened with all his power. He heard, now, only the light dry wind and the call of a lonely bird and the distant howl of a jackal, and the trumpet challenge of a guard.

  I was dreaming, he told himself at last. But it was dawn before he slept again. Then he thought, “Though He reject me and will not forgive me, though His rage shall flow over me like the billows of the sea, still will I love and serve Him with all my soul, and at the last He may receive me again.”

  He wept and said in the words of Job, “Oh, that I but knew where I might find Him!”

  Chapter 9

  SAUL went with his father and his kinsmen to the Temple on the Holy Days, and Sephorah went to the Court of the Women for her religious duties.

  The youth had a tremendous imagination and he had listened to his father discourse on the Temple, on its golden dome, its spires, its many courts, its gardens and walls and corridors, its vast halls where learned men walked and contemplated and conversed of sacred matters, its cypresses and palms and fountains, its quiet colonnades. He knew that the first Temple of Solomon had employed over seventy thousand men in the building of it, and that it had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and that it had been restored by Zerubbabel seventy years later, and that even later it had been enhanced and enlarged by King Herod. He had heard of the marvelous yellow and white stones of its walls, its mighty bronze doors, its great columns pale and polished like marble, its huge capitals embossed with pomegranates, buds of flowers, lilies, wreaths, its arches leading to long vistas, its quiet porticoes, its wide low steps, and the cloud of incense which hovered everywhere, brightened by sun or moon. He had heard of the altar and the Holy of Holies, the Tabernacle, the veiled Torah, the scrolls wrapped around the silver rods, the hushed and solemn air, the shining floors, the silences, the dim rolling echoes. Hillel had told him of the holy maidens, widows and men who had their being in the Temple and never left it, and were seen only at a distance. There had long been a tradition that the Mother of the Messias would spend her early years in this sanctuary, in the Presence of God.

  Saul had been prepared for glory and splendor and sacred precincts, but he saw now that what he had imagined was nothing compared with the awesome grandeur of the reality. Here was the heart of his people, the Tabernacle of their God, the soul of their being, their fortitude, their faith, their stubborn devotion, their pride, their honor and their dignity. Who could prevail against a people who had raised this House to the Lord their God, and who had kept it holy and immaculate and glowing, and who turned their eyes to it at dawn and at sunset? Hillel had said, “So shall it live in the spirits of the People of God, though it be thrown one stone from another, its walls shattered, its dome splintered, its columns fallen, as it has been prophesied. Let the rage of the Gentiles, as David has said, prevail against its mere being in time. But ever shall it live, loved, revered, I yearned for, desired with a terrible desiring, by all Jews through the I ages, though they lose their faith and are scattered. For it is our heart, and here God dwells and shall never depart from His holy place, the Invisible worshiped in invisibility—until the Messias arrive, blessed be His Name, triumphant and invincible, Father of the world to come, and He shall raise the Temple again in the twinkling of an eye for the awe of nations, to be a sanctuary for all men.”

  But Saul did not believe that this edifice, this worship in stone raised to God, would ever be lost to the sight of humanity, nor could he believe, though it had been prophesied, that it would be mankind’s sanctuary, Jew and Gentile, heathen and barbarian. The very thought appeared blasphemous to him. And it seemed even more blasphemous that he, the defiled and the corrupt and the sinful, dared enter here, his hood over his face for fear that God might smite him for his presumption. He found himself numb of lip and soul as he stood with the multitude of hooded men before the altar in the greatest of the Courts: in the blue dimness of incense and shadow he could hear the rustle of low voices as they repeated the prayers until the vastness of the place seemed invaded by a deep and unearthly wind that did not come from human throats. It was the movement of Hosts, invisible though clothed in white fire. Saul watched the priests and saw their upraised hands and eyes and their long beards and their sacramental garments and heard their intonations and the echo of their intonations and a terror seized him and a cold ecstasy, and when the crowds of men prostrated themselves and he with them he found it impossible to rise again and his father, with an expression of concern, helped him to his feet.

  Hillel, even in those holy moments, was appalled by his son’s face, so awful was the light of his eyes, so fixed and stretched his features. There was a line of foam on his white mouth. He appeared dazed, at once stricken and lost, yet exalted. Hillel had heard of the transports of men touched by the Finger of God, and he was frightened. It was said that such men were frequently driven mad by that rapture. Hillel desired that his son love God, but he also desired that God not love him too much. There was a terribleness in the Love of God, and wise men, though desiring to be loved by their Almighty Father, rarely prayed for favors and commands that could be devastating and destroying. It was all very well for transports, provided that they did not transport men beyond the reach of other men, and did not consume poor human flesh in the flame. The vessel of flesh was entirely too frail to hold the fiery essence of the Being of God, and Saul was Hillel’s only son and even for God he did not wish him to be consumed.

  Saul was trembling. His breath came hard and fast. He stared at the Tabernacle; he shook as if in a gale. Hillel held Saul’s arm against his own body and pressed it as
if he would protect his son from God, Himself.

  Saul was crying in himself, “I weep by day, my God, and You are silent! I cry by night, and you permit me!” The words of David rang through his soul, imploring, worshiping, yearning. “Whither shall I go from Your Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Your Presence? If I ascend up into Heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in Hell, behold! You are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea—Even there shall Your Hand lead me, and Your right Hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,’ even the night shall be light about me. The darkness and the light are both alike to You, O my God and my Redeemer!”

  The fearful estrangement he had felt for so long, the estrangement of God from him, was lifted in one flash for a brief moment, and it seemed to him that he was on the verge of some transcendent discovery and knowledge, some revelation which was most necessary to him if he should live, and without which he would surely die. His whole being urged toward that revealment; it reached like a hand for it, craving, hungry, desperate, and he did not know where he was or who upheld him.

  And then it was gone. I am unworthy, he thought. I am guilty. I saw the trailing garment of Glory for one instant, and then It withdrew. Tears ran down his face and there was a groaning in his throat which only his father, mercifully, heard. Then tears came to Hillel’s eyes also and he prayed, “Depart from my poor son, lest he die.”

  It was then that in this fragrant blue gloom, amid the echoing wind of men’s prayers, Hillel saw that his kinsmen had now observed Saul and himself. He saw the bored incurious face of Shebua ben Abraham, pale under the shadow of his hood, the superb, and knowing smiles exchanged between Simon and Joseph—their cheeks were sleek—and the elegant amusement of David ben Shebua slight but discernible. And Hillel was ashamed of his own fear, remorseful to the heart that he had asked God not to touch his son, and angered, even in those holy moments, that the family of Shebua should mock the passionate communion of his son, they who knew not God, blessed be His Name, and had never desired to know Him. Hillel could have wept with his anger and his self-reproach and his desire to cover his son with his own cloak, hiding him from the eyes of these profane men who profaned the Holy of Holies by their presence, and found it a cause for silent mirth that a youth should be so transported and exalted, and should believe even to the edge of fainting or death.