by Lynn Austin
“Malkijah ben Recab asked me to relay a message to you. Meshullam ben Berekiah and a group of other nobles asked him to join a conspiracy against you. Several officials are involved, including Shecaniah ben Arah—which means that Tobiah the Ammonite is behind this.”
Nehemiah fought the urge to groan out loud. Would the opposition and intrigue ever stop? He had feared from the very beginning that he couldn’t trust some of men on his council, but to learn of an active conspiracy among his noblemen shook him. He glanced at his entourage, wondering if any of these men were involved.
“Malkijah wants you to know that he is loyal to you,” Chana continued. “But he’s allowing the conspirators to believe that he’s on their side so he can find out who the others are and what they’re planning.”
“A spy?”
Chana nodded. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t he tell me himself?”
“Because he doesn’t know if he can trust the men surrounding you. Any one of them might be a traitor in disguise. Malkijah asked me to relay the message to you, thinking they wouldn’t suspect a woman to be involved.”
“I see.”
“He also wanted me to warn you to be on your guard. He thinks the conspirators plan to assassinate you and replace you with Tobiah the Ammonite. You need to be very careful.”
Would they kill his brothers, too? Nehemiah glanced over at Hanani and Ephraim and knew he needed to distance himself from them for their own good. “Please thank Malkijah for me.”
“I will. He’s meeting with the group again, and as soon as he has more information, he’ll pass it on to you through me.”
Nehemiah nodded. “I’m going to walk away now and pretend we were talking about the wall or your father or anything else but this.”
“I understand.”
But Nehemiah didn’t move. There was something else he needed to say. “My opinion about you working on the wall hasn’t changed,” he said. “I still want you to go back inside and let someone else finish. But I do admire your courage, Chana.”
He strode back to the others, trying to pretend that what Chana had just told him hadn’t shaken him to his soul. Any of the men with him, even the young man who carried the signal trumpet, could be an enemy, not a friend. And the wall was so close to being finished.
“What did she want?” Hanani asked.
Nehemiah shook his head, waving his hand as if exasperated with her. “She’s determined to defy me and continue building the wall. At least she has a bodyguard now.”
Nehemiah returned to his headquarters then, but his mind could only focus on his brothers. He had kept them nearby, thinking they would be safe with him, but that was no longer true. There was a plot against his life, and he didn’t want them to become innocent victims. “From now on we need to pour all of our effort in finishing the doors,” he told them. “Ephraim, you need to concentrate on securing the timber we need. Hanani, I need you to work with Ephraim from now on. Take guards with you wherever you go. Finishing the gates is our most important task.”
“Are you all right?” Hanani asked.
For the space of a heartbeat, Nehemiah remembered huddling with Hanani and Ephraim behind the wooden chest as his parents were being slaughtered. He cleared his throat. “Of course I am. Go get started.”
He couldn’t deny that the day’s events had shaken him. But he would finish building Jerusalem’s walls, God helping him. And then he would try to figure out if it was the Almighty One’s will for him to reign as Judah’s king.
Chapter
44
SANBALLAT’S PALACE, SAMARIA
Tobiah tried to maintain a serene façade, masking his frustration and anger as he took his seat in Sanballat’s private meeting room. His allies, Sanballat and Geshem, weren’t as successful in hiding their anxiety. Sanballat fidgeted on his throne, his round face flushed and sweating. Geshem sat in a chair for once instead of pacing, perched straight-backed and rigid on his seat, his arms folded inside the sleeves of his robes. Nothing was going right for any of them.
By Tobiah’s own calculations, he should be sitting in the governor’s residence in Jerusalem at this moment, ruling in Nehemiah’s place. The fact that he wasn’t continued to astound and anger him. His network of faithful men reported Nehemiah’s every move and worked to undermine him. He and Sanballat and Geshem had thrown numerous obstacles in Nehemiah’s path, and had even attacked his workers. Yet nothing shook Nehemiah’s firm resolve or halted the construction for very long.
“I heard that Jerusalem’s wall has now been rebuilt,” Sanballat said. “Is it true, Tobiah? Have you seen it?”
“It’s true. The doors haven’t been set in place yet, but no gaps remain in the wall.” His allies murmured their unease and disbelief.
“How much longer will it take to complete the gates?” Geshem asked.
“Unless we stop them, they’ll probably finish in time for the fall feasts.”
“How is that possible?” Sanballat shouted. “The work began not even two months ago. I saw that crumbling, ruined wall myself and it’s . . . it’s just not possible to rebuild miles of walls in such a short time!”
“Especially with all the disruptions we’ve thrown at them,” Geshem added.
“We greatly underestimated our enemy,” Tobiah said, although it galled him to admit it. “Nehemiah not only refuses to quit, he shows no sign of fear. Somehow he has kept the people motivated and the work moving forward.”
Sanballat shook his head in disbelief, his face turning redder still. “If he can accomplish this in a matter of months, who knows what he’ll do next—and equally fast.”
“That’s what worries me,” Geshem said. “How swiftly he moves! We never even heard of the man two months ago. He has become an extremely dangerous enemy.”
“The way I see it, we have one last chance to halt the fortification of Jerusalem,” Sanballat said. “Once he installs the doors of the gates, the city will be impregnable. It will take an army bigger than any of ours to defeat him.”
“The only way to stop him is to kill him,” Geshem said. His eyes bored into Tobiah.
“I’ve searched for opportunities to kill him,” Tobiah said, “but Nehemiah is exceedingly cautious and always keenly aware of the security surrounding him. He has armed bodyguards. No one can get near him.”
“We never should have let him get this far,” Geshem said. “He created a fortress for himself, and even if we do manage to kill him, any future Judean leader will also benefit from it.”
Tobiah secretly hoped to be that next leader, governing behind Jerusalem’s newly secure walls. “What concerns me,” he said, “is that Nehemiah might grow even stronger and take over the entire region. And if the Persian king sees him as a threat, he will retaliate against all of us.”
“What are we currently doing to stop him?” Geshem asked. “The sneak attacks backfired. Every Judean is now armed. Nehemiah has everything he needs to start a rebellion and assume control—the backing of the people, his own army, a fortified city . . .”
“Not everyone supports him,” Tobiah said. “I’ve organized a group of Judean noblemen who are on our side, and they’re conspiring against him behind the scenes. They’ll never let Nehemiah grab total power. The prophets we hired have been at work, too, proclaiming Nehemiah as Judah’s king and infuriating these leaders. They want control over their people again. He’s a threat to them. They’re working to undermine him from within and topple him.” Tobiah didn’t add that he was poised to take Nehemiah’s place after that happened.
Sanballat shifted in his seat, tugging at the neck of his robe. “What about the common people, Tobiah? I hear they’ll do anything for him. He’s their Savior. Is there any way to discredit him in their eyes so they’ll turn against him?”
Tobiah smiled to himself, noticing the subtle shift in this meeting. Sanballat and the other leaders asked him all these questions and looked to him for answers. They would be indebted to him once he solve
d the problem of Nehemiah, making it inevitable for him to take his place as Judah’s governor. “I’ve been working on a plan that will reveal Nehemiah as a coward in front of all the people and even their religious leaders like Rebbe Ezra. All I have to do is get him to violate the Torah in a very public way.”
Sanballat gave an uneasy shrug. “Anything is worth a try, I suppose. But is it enough?”
“We must do more,” Geshem said. “I say we lure him out of the city so we can assassinate him along the way. He can’t bring his entire civilian army with him if the gates are unfinished and the city is still vulnerable to attack. Nehemiah will have no choice but to leave most of his men behind. And as governor, he’s obligated to meet with us if Sanballat, the regional governor, summons him.”
“Yes. That’s a very good plan,” Sanballat said. “The people will lose heart if they lose their leader. They’ll never complete all the gates.”
Tobiah didn’t say so out loud, but he wondered if Nehemiah might become an even more powerful figure as a martyr. “Let’s do it,” he agreed. “I’ll keep working behind the scenes, conspiring with Judah’s nobles and trying to turn the people and priests against him. You work on luring him out of Jerusalem and attacking him along the way. Nehemiah can’t possibly survive all of these plans.”
And then Tobiah’s own plans would finally fall into place.
From the top of the wall near the citadel, Nehemiah saw the official diplomatic messengers as they approached Jerusalem and arrived at the Yeshana Gate. But he returned to his work, unwilling to spare a moment of his time for them. Eliashib and the other priests who worked on the citadel seemed surprised that Nehemiah didn’t immediately go down to meet the delegation.
“If you need to leave and respond to the messengers, Governor,” Eliashib said, “we can finish this without you.”
“The messengers can wait.”
“But they’re flying the banners of the Samaritan capitol.”
“I don’t care if they’re flying Persian banners. Finishing this gate is much more important.”
When Nehemiah finally did return to his residence later that afternoon, he found a group of Judean nobles waiting impatiently for him. “We’re very concerned about this message from Samaria,” they told him. “We’ve been waiting to see what it’s about.” Nehemiah had no idea if these noblemen supported him or were part of the conspiracy, but he took his personal bodyguards into the council chamber with him, just in case. He broke the clay seal bearing Governor Sanballat’s official stamp and glanced over the document before speaking.
“It’s a summons, signed by Sanballat, Tobiah the Ammonite, Geshem the Arab, and the Edomite leader—all of our neighbors. They’re holding a conference to discuss matters of common interest among the provinces of The Land Beyond the River. The message says, ‘Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.’”
“The plain of Ono?” one of the nobles asked. “That’s northwest of here near the Great Sea. Why make it so far away?”
“They deliberately chose a remote area on the farthest limits of Judean territory,” Nehemiah said.
“When will this conference take place?” another nobleman asked. “We must follow diplomatic protocol and attend. We’ve always tried to maintain good relations with the other provinces that make up The Land Beyond the River.”
“Go if you’d like,” Nehemiah said, rolling up the scroll, “but I won’t be attending. They’re scheming to harm me. This isn’t an innocent invitation, it’s a trap.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“It reminds me of Cain’s seemingly innocent invitation to Abel: ‘Let’s go out to the field’—away from witnesses, away from help.”
“We could take soldiers with us,” the leader of Mizpah said.
Nehemiah shook his head. “We don’t have professional soldiers. If our enemies attacked us along the way, I would be putting innocent people at risk—fathers, husbands, sons. Besides, I won’t leave Jerusalem undefended. I need every available man to stand guard until the gates are finished. Our enemies probably know that, which is why they’re asking to meet now and not a few weeks from now when the gates are completed.”
“If you’re the only leader who refuses to come, Governor, they could accuse you of treason,” a nobleman insisted. “The Persian government expects us to cooperate with area leaders. It will look like an act of rebellion if you refuse.”
“Or an act of cowardice,” another nobleman added.
“I don’t care how it looks,” Nehemiah said. “Let people think whatever they want to. I’m not foolish enough to walk into their trap. Nor will I halt construction to attend a phony conference.”
“How would you like me to respond to the message?” his scribe asked.
“Send this reply back with the messenger: ‘I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?’”
“That’s all?”
“That’s more than sufficient.”
Chapter
45
JERUSALEM
Chana returned home from working on the wall shortly before the evening sacrifice and went straight to her father’s bedside. “Is he any better?” she asked her sisters. But even in the darkened room she could see Abba’s pale, swollen face, hear his tortured breathing. Yudit led her out to the courtyard, with Sarah following.
“Miryam says his illness is at its worst. Abba can’t swallow, he can’t eat, can’t talk. He can barely breathe.”
“And one side of his body is becoming paralyzed,” Sarah added. “Including the arm that the scorpion stung.”
“We need to go up to the temple together and pray,” Chana decided. “All three of us. Right now.” Neither of her sisters had left Abba’s side for days, and Chana knew they all needed to be reminded of God’s power and sovereignty.
“But we can’t leave Abba—” Sarah protested.
“Miryam will stay with him. Come on.” Chana had spent hours praying for her father, believing that the Almighty One had the power to heal him—yet aware that He might not. When God hadn’t healed Yitzhak, grief and anger had overwhelmed her, but she couldn’t afford to let that happen this time. She had to be strong for Yudit’s and Sarah’s sakes. “We’d better hurry or we’ll be late.”
Chana practically dragged her sisters out of the house and up the hill to the temple. She hoped that as they stood listening to the Levite choir, inhaling the fragrant aroma of the sacrifice, and seeing the pillar of smoke ascending to heaven, they would find God’s peace, His presence. Maybe their hope would be renewed, too.
They arrived just as the Levites began to sing the liturgy, and the words of the psalm led Chana into prayer. “I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble.” When the song ended, one of the priests sacrificed the lamb, and the Levites helped prepare it for the altar. “We know the Almighty One is able to heal Abba,” Chana whispered to her sisters, “but we have to accept His will no matter what happens.”
“Not if He takes Abba!” Sarah said.
Chana thought of the moment when Yitzhak had died and said, “Yes. Even then. We have to trust God, even when we don’t understand what He’s doing.”
“I don’t think I can bear it,” Yudit whispered.
“You know what Abba told me?” Chana asked. “He told me that he’s praying for each of us while he lies there in bed. He’s praying that we’ll remain strong.” She watched another priest enter the sanctuary to light the incense as the Levites sang, “I cry to you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.’”
“What if he dies?” Sarah asked in a tiny voice.
“We can’t stop believing in God’s goodness, even if Abba dies. He wouldn’t want us to turn away from the Almighty One. He encouraged me to keep trusting after Yitzhak died, and he would tell us to do the same thing now.”
“Why would God take Abba?” Yudit asked. “Everyone needs him. We need him.”
Chana wrapped her arm around Yudit and pulled her close. “All our lives, we’ve believed that Abba’s decisions were for our own good. We have to trust our heavenly Father the same way. Everything He does is for our good and for His purposes, even if we don’t understand it.”
By the time the service ended, Chana’s faith did seem renewed. She hoped her sisters were encouraged, too. As they left the temple together, throngs of people gathered around them to ask about their father. These were people Abba had helped over the years, offering them advice, meting out justice, mourning with them when they grieved, praying for their needs, celebrating their joys. Many of them wept when Chana told them about his condition, and they promised to continue praying for him. “May we celebrate his recovery very soon,” the last of the well-wishers said. Chana saw all the good her father had done, how both rich and poor held him in high regard. She remembered his words to her as she had sat by his bedside, and she shared them with her sisters.
“When Abba could still speak, he said that if he died, we shouldn’t ask God ‘Why?’—we should ask ‘How?’ How can we make the world a better place and show His love? And I just realized that Abba did that very thing after Mama died. He used his grief to become more compassionate, more giving. All these people who received Abba’s care knew that God loved them because of him.”
Sarah clung tighter to her, resting her head on Chana’s shoulder as they walked. “Do you think Abba is going to die?”
“I honestly don’t know.” But either way, Chana knew that she wanted to follow her father’s example, becoming a more compassionate person, no longer wrapped up in her own selfish interests but serving others the way he had.
Later that evening, Malkijah came to the house. Chana took him up to the rooftop to talk in private. Lamplight flickered in the windows of the houses below them, but it seemed a pale imitation of the vast expanse of twinkling stars above their heads revealing the greatness of God, the frailty of men. “I told Governor Nehemiah about the conspiracy,” she said, “and how you only pretended to join it.”
