Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Shebua smiled at him as if at an imbecile, and shook, with a pretense of forbearing indulgence, his thin finger at Hillel. “I deny your premises, Hillel ben Borush. To me your syllogism is without validity or truth. For your premise is God. I, therefore, deny your premise. You would ‘define your terms,’ as Socrates has said, but you and I could never agree on the ‘terms.’ Therefore, the argument is futile. But I will repeat that man can transcend what you call his baseness—but which I prefer to call his piteous ignorance—by cultivating his latent powers of mind and will. This the Greeks have said. I see nothing to dispute this. We advance. We progress. Yesterday, we were savages. Today we have the Parthenon. We have the Law of the Romans. We have poetry, and a repugnance for barbarism, which, again, you would call the baseness of men. We have refinements of the mind, a love for beauty. We are inventive. One day, as the Egyptians have said, we shall stride the suns, and nothing shall be closed from us. Part of our being may be animal and we live in our flesh, as do other animals. But they do not advance. They are today what they were yesterday, but our tomorrows are filled with glorious promise.”

  “They are filled with death,” said Hillel. “And ever will they be, until the Messias comes, blessed be His Name, and reveals the hidden to us, and gives our evil absolution in His Love, and makes of mankind—not through human law and human contriving and human conquest—truly of one blood and one flesh and one spirit, and we shall know war and hatred no more.”

  His voice rang with absolute authority and fervor, and his whole face was kindled and exalted, so that even the still smiling Shebua and his sons were disturbed and made uneasy, and they hated him and did not know why they hated. As for Saul, it seemed to him that he was hearing words he had forgotten and he was strangely moved, and filled with pain, and he thought, This once I knew, but now He will permit me to know it no more.

  Hillel was inspired. He could no longer control his unaccustomed passion, for he saw the derision and scorn of his kinsmen, and the affront against God. He shook his fist at them, and could not refrain.

  “You Sadducees!” he cried. “You have taken bread from men and have given them husks! You have taken the morning from them, and given them the darkness of hell, in which God is lost. You have based your hopes on the world, which will pass away and be known no more among the suns and the Pleiades, nor will Orion know her any longer. On this frail orb that pursues her star you think to establish the golden city of man’s reason and man’s aspiring alone, forever and a day. You believe that it will be by the will and design of man alone that evil will be abolished—yet evil is the very nature of man, and immutable. He is a shadow, and on the shadows you would erect eternal palaces and pleasure—ways and advance urbane conversation arid peace and what you aver are ethics. You know you are mortal, and in your shallow hearts you deny mortality, and speak of the far future as if you will be there, alive and triumphant! You do not know that future, but you have deluded yourselves that you will be there! Or is your vaunted ‘glory of man in the future’ enough for you, who will be dust tomorrow?”

  He was breathing audibly. He searched each man’s coldly derisive face, and he saw the fear in them, and the terror of death. He smiled compassionately.

  “How pathetic you are,” he said. “Your own deaths, in this little time, has not been believed by you. You have really hoped you will be part of the future which to me appears terrible, not beautiful. You believe in pleasure, in the day’s tranquillity and grace and conversation and the meeting of friends. You hold the power of the Temple now, and you have profaned it. You deny the resurrection of the dead, which has been promised, for you believe that when men are dead they are no more than the beasts of the field. It is evil enough that you have betrayed God. You have betrayed your people to the Roman, to his oppressive taxgatherers; you have betrayed their pride and their nation; you have plunged us into despair. You have consorted with the Roman to enslave the helpless; you have helped him gather his taxes for the support of an idle and polyglot Rome, where men live on the earnings of others and who will not toil as we are forced to toil. For peace in your time, and pleasure, and worthless harmonies, and prettinesses, and conversing, and pride, and dainty perversities, and music and Corybantes and dancing girls and money and handsome houses and villas and servants and laughter and strange women and theaters and baths and arenas and gambling and horses and evil little appetites and enjoyments, you have called upon your people not to resist, not to believe in the Promise of the Ages—to obey, to bow down their heads, to submit their necks to the yoke. You have taken God from them, and for that you will not be forgiven!”

  Shebua’s face had become thin and livid, so that it resembled the blade of an ax, and he no longer pretended to conceal his hatred. It glowed in pale fire in his eyes.

  He said, “What would you have us do, we leaders of our people, Hillel ben Borush? Advise them to rise—as the Zealots and the Essenes do, those madmen!—and strike at the omnipotent Roman, and so cause our country to be put to the fire and the sword? Would you urge them not to pay taxes to the Roman? Is life not better than death? Are taxes, however onerous, not better than the grave? Is not even slavery preferable to slaughter? Obedience to a conqueror, to the reasonable man, less terrible than execution, or starvation. As Solomon has said, ‘Better a live dog than a dead lion.’ The Lion of Judah is dead—”

  “And we are alive, like dogs,” said Hillel, with immense bitterness.

  Shebua shrugged. “We are alive,” he said. “What would you have us do?”

  Hillel fixed him with his brilliant eyes. “We are a conquered little country. The Roman is all—powerful. These I admit. I do not desire my people’s death, for in them lives the Spirit of God, and of them will be born the Messias. I would not have them die on miles of crosses. I would not see their wives and their children slaughtered. No. But, it was your duty, you sons of Zadok—and how glorious is that memory!—to sustain your people with the hope of the Messias, to alleviate their hunger with your fortunes, to intercede for them, to nourish their faith in their God, blessed be His Name, to exalt them with patience in their tribulations, to turn their eyes to the sun and to the stars, to repeat to them the Promise that has been given to us, to strengthen their endurance. What man will not suffer in quietude if he knows his Redeemer is nigh, and that God has not abandoned him?

  “But you are taking from your people the only sustenance that will save them! You have darkened their souls! You have delivered them to the Romans like chained slaves and have said to them, ‘This is what is, and there is nothing more, so resign yourselves.’ And why have you asked this resignation? In mercy for your people? No! Only for luxury and peace for yourselves! And you dare prate of the glorious future of mankind, you betrayers of what is noblest in man, you poisoners of wells of the water of life!”

  It was unpardonable to rise before the host, but Hillel could not contain himself, so deep was his pity for his people, his anguish for their oppression, his torment for their poverty and pain and endless labor, his fury at their betrayal by their own, his torture that they had been deprived of hope—and so great was his anger. He struggled to compose himself.

  His voice had become hoarse. He lifted his hands like a prophet and he was not ashamed of the tears on his cheeks, though the hate and derision of his kinsmen were like a deathly fog in the room now.

  He said, in the words of David:

  “‘God is our refuge and strength,

  A very present help in time of trouble.

  Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed,

  And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

  Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,

  Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.’”

  “‘There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God,

  The holy place of the Tabernacles of the Most High.’”

  The silence in the vast room was palpable, as thoug
h a prophet had thundered within it and no sentient thing could make sound.

  Then Hillel turned and began to move from the room, and after a moment Saul followed him and they did not look back.

  In the atrium Hillel, shaken to the heart, was unable to speak for weeping. He put his hands on his son’s shoulders and bowed his head. And Saul put his own hands on the shoulders of his father and despised himself that he had not believed him capable of such passion and such holy anger, and such righteousness, and another woe was added to the woe he carried in his heart.

  They heard a footstep and looked up, half hiding their tears, to see Clodia Flavius and three of her women moving across the atrium on a mission to be certain that the host and his kinsmen were properly served by the servants. Clodia halted and looked keenly into Hillel’s face, but her own remained calm.

  The Roman woman said in a voice of understanding and consolation: “Shalom.”

  It was Hillel, looking into her face who answered, and his voice broke:

  “Shalom, Clodia Flavius.”

  Saul could not understand. He felt affront and bafflement and left his father and went to his bedroom.

  Chapter 10

  HILLEL BEN BOBUSH went to visit his kinswoman, Hannah bas Judah and her beloved husband, Aulus Platonius. Saul refused to accompany him, despite Hillel’s pleas. “I have no desire to converse with Romans, my father,” said Saul. “What are Romans to me? The oppressors and enslavers of my people. Two nights ago you berated my grandfather for his collaboration with the Romans for a shameful peace. Last night you told me that he would not remain unpunished, nor his sons with him, nor his sect. Yet today you visit Aulus Platonius, a Roman oppressor! I am astonished.”

  Hillel sighed. “Aulus, no more than I, loves the imperialism of Rome, for he is an ‘old’ Roman of the stern school. Who can justly blame the Roman soldier, the Roman proconsul, even, God forgive me the Roman bureaucrat and taxgatherer? One, if one is sensible, blames government, not the servers of the government, not those entangled in their governments. Was it not Samuel the Prophet who warned the people not to set a king over them, lest they be enslaved and live in chains and die in chains? Government, it has been said, is a necessary evil, but evils should be kept in weakness. If they become strong it is the fault of ambitious men who hate their people, and the folly of the people that they permitted this enormity, and their soft smiling complacence. Aulus is not of this breed. With me, he deplores the decline of patriotism and virtue and industry and honor in the world. He weeps with me that the world of men have deliberately debased themselves. He is my friend. We love each other. I do not hate him because he is a Roman, as helpless as I am, a Jew, in the machinations of government. We are brothers together. Together, we honor God, blessed be His Name.”

  “Nevertheless, his people have murdered Jews by the countless I thousands, have put them to the sword, have hung them on multitudes I of shameful crosses, have exiled them, have robbed them in taxes, have imprisoned and starved them, have slaughtered them in arenas, I have taken from them their wives and their children and their homes, have flayed them alive. Shall I love such a son of his people?”

  Hillel wearily tried to make him understand, again. “He, too, is a victim of his government. Aulus is no murderer. The individual man is rarely a demon. Aulus is no demon.”

  He looked at the dark and obdurate face of his son and wondered where the old lusty and joyous and exuberantly laughing Saul had gone, and what had caused that exile. Then a strange revelation came to him: Men do not change. This Saul he saw this hour was the Saul once imbedded in the flesh of a passionate youth. The youth had departed; the real man had risen from the discarded chrysalis. What Saul was now so he had been born, and all his boyhood and his youth had been but colorful and evanescent trappings. The man was ere. Hillel remembered the loud cry of the infant Saul in his nursemaid’s arms: It had been a harsh and imperative cry, proud and angry, not the cry of a child. Between the man of today and the babe of yesterday there were no barriers. They had become one.

  “What are you, who are you, Saul, my son?” asked Hillel in bemusement, and passed his hand over his forehead.

  Saul smiled at him grimly, as if he fully understood. “I am Saul ben Hillel, the son of my people, who are great in history and great in war and great in the love of God.”

  “But you know nothing of Him,” said Hillel, and wondered, with fear, why these words had escaped him and from whence they had come.

  Saul turned on his heel and left his father. I weep easily these days, thought Hillel ben Borush. But, do not all men weep for their children? If we feel such grief for those of our loins, how great must be the sorrow of the Lord of Hosts for His children, blessed be His Name! To pity God seemed a unique thought to Hillel. He pondered on it, as he rode in one of Shebua’s gilded litters to Aulus’ house. What presumption it was that man should have compassion on God, for had not David written, “Man lasts no longer than grass, no longer than a wild flower he lives, one gust of wind and he is gone, never to be seen there again?” It was as if a butterfly should feel sorrow for the sun! Yet, the thought remained of the sadness of God, and for some mystic reason Hillel felt again that powerful fire in his heart which is the love of God, and the immediate communion with the Lord of Hosts, and he was comforted and exalted. The Messias might tarry, but He, blessed be His Name, would surely come and console man.

  Saul, bereft, darkly confused, lonely to his very heart, empty of spirit, went on foot to explore the city of his fathers, Jerusalem, avoiding all those whom he knew.

  The day had turned chill and windy, and he pulled his hood far over his head. The feeling of desolation and oppression increased in him as he walked rapidly over the darkly glistening and rounded stones of the poorer quarters of the city. The sky had an ominous appearance, heavy with gray clouds and ridges of darkness. He saw the stony mountains, hard and barren, in the distance, growing more dismal under the somber sky. He reached one of the marketplaces, reeking with a thousand smells. Here was a walled street, arched over with stone, little booths sunken in the walls, the street itself nothing but a series, dropping down, of immensely steep broad steps of rough cobbles, on which the booths fronted. The little shops were so tiny and so crowded with goods, that only one man—or sometimes an old woman— could find space in them. But they were all noisy and clamorous and full of urgent shoutings and gestures. Here were sold meats, fizzling on braziers, rugs made of cheap goat’s hair or an imitation of costly Persian carpets poorly colored, spices, nuts, globed and partly rotting fruit, pottery, pots and pans, wine, silks of a poor quality, swaths of linen and wool in gaudy tints, cheap tunics and headcloths, weapons, hot breads, rough vases, amulets, cheeses that stank, appalling imitations of Greek and Roman statues, replicas of the Temple in plaster and cement, bronze lamps, candlesticks, sandals, ivory figurines of execrable taste, garlic, onions, various limp vegetables, olives in brine, oil, violent perfumes, incense, miserable jewelry set in base metals, cloaks of poor cloth, red, black, white, gray, purple, blue, yellow, dates, pomegranates and citrons, and, occasionally, a very active booth selling Syrian whiskey guaranteed approved and sealed by the Roman customs agents but in fact truly smuggled into Israel by enterprising mountain men and heavily diluted with water. Someone had been clever enough to forge the Roman seal in lead. The Romans were not deceived, but they did not care. Their own soldiers, poorly paid, and unable to afford good whiskey, needed to be served also. Let the Jews smuggle this wretched whiskey and do a massive trade in it. The legionnaires, poor country boys, did not complain. They had no comparisons.

  Some booths sold furniture of miserable taste and quality, but bedizened and painted so that they dazzled the eye.

  And everywhere was the market rabble, shrieking women and shouting men, children, thieves, beggars, the blind and the halt, the hungry abandoned, the cutthroats. Roman soldiers strolled among them, eating hot meat from grape leaves, bargaining loudly for amulets and whiskey and jewelry,
cursing the furiously screaming merchants, laughing, eying the girls, kicking the endless donkeys and dogs and cats, strolling lightly up and down the broad steps, exchanging jests, sucking olive pits, chewing dates, straining pomegranate seeds through their big white teeth, swaggering, laughingly quarreling and pushing each other. In short, they were like young soldiers forever and a day in an alien land, enjoying themselves, inclined to be amiable, drunken, hungry, boisterous, proud of themselves, and anxious to be friendly even with robbers of merchants. Sometimes, with utter good nature, they Would reach across huge heaps of piled goods and tweak the beard of some merchant, who would pretend to wrath and shake his fist at them, cursing them in Aramaic and then swindling them a moment later. It was payday for the Roman soldiers. By nightfall they would not have a drachma left, though they would be happy and surfeited, having slept with a harlot under a bridge or among cypresses or beneath an aqueduct.

  Sometimes a laden camel would appear, lumbering and complaining at the steps, tugged viciously by his owner, who delivered fresh goods to the stalls and added to the clamor with his complaints that he had been robbed by a cursed townsman.

  Colored awnings fluttered in the sharp wind. Men drew their cloaks closer; women held their headcloths against their mouths in protection against the swirling dust. Animal offal strewed the steps. No one strolled, except the soldiers. The avaricious faces of the merchants and market rabble were bent on gain before the sun fell, and as the day advanced the shrill screams and bellows became louder, the pace more frenetic. It was dim under the stone arch except for the fires of the braziers, yet the gray and luminous light heightened the color of garments, the strong reds and blues and yellows and whites, and glimmered on racing feet.