The Chronicles of the Kings Collection

by Lynn Austin

  “I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant.’ I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

  “All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish. Though you search for your enemies, you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all. For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.”

  As quickly as it came, the presence vanished. Joshua felt desolate when it did. He looked up, surprised to find himself seated on a stone wall by an ancient well in Egypt, surrounded by a swirl of activity and noise. The sun lay low in the sky.

  Joshua returned the scroll to its bag and lifted it to his shoulder. Then he set out across the desert, like Jacob, to wrestle with his God.

  17

  King Manasseh stood on the royal platform after the evening sacrifice, surveying the latest changes that Zerah had made to the Temple precincts. Sculptures and artwork from the finest artisans adorned the new shrines and altars until the Temple Mount bore little resemblance to the stark, unadorned site the king remembered from his youth.

  “Does everything meet with your approval, Your Majesty?” Zerah asked.

  “It’s magnificent. I can’t understand why the Levites forbid us to express our natural creativity. I won’t tolerate artistic censorship as long as I am king.”

  He stepped off the platform and strode across the courtyard with Zerah. His four bodyguards moved like hulking shadows, surrounding him. Manasseh passed the four-faced image that stood at the center of the courtyard, designed to depict the four faces on the throne of God. They looked in four directions, so that whichever entrance the people used, a face confronted them, reminding them that this Temple was God’s earthly throne.

  Manasseh rounded the corner near the Temple side chambers and stopped. “This is new. What is this roped-off section for and all these booths?”

  “This is Asherah’s sacred precinct,” Zerah told him. “Every woman, married or not, must show her devotion to the goddess by coming here once in her life, to offer herself for service. She must sit within the sacred precinct, wearing a garland of string on her head as a symbol of sacrifice, while the male worshipers pass through the roped-off pathways to make their choice. Once a woman is seated, she cannot go home until a stranger throws a piece of silver into her lap and takes her into one of the booths for the ritual. The silver is her sacred offering to Asherah, along with any product of conception that may result. Afterward, she—What is it, Your Majesty? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” But Manasseh knew that his face had betrayed his disgust. Not only did this ritual contradict everything the priests had taught him about adultery and fornication, but it raised a very disturbing question that he wasn’t certain he wanted answered. “My mother worshiped Asherah,” he finally said. “Did she participate in this?”

  Zerah hesitated, studying Manasseh’s face. “I don’t see how she could have, Your Majesty. The priests forbade it during your father’s reign.”

  Manasseh told himself that the desolation he felt was only a remnant of the false guilt imposed on him by his upbringing. He must shed it once and for all. Even if his mother had lain with a stranger, she had been an adult, free to make her own decisions. The religious fanatics had no right to dictate morality or to condemn people for their choices. But he turned his back on Asherah’s sacred precinct and headed down the royal walkway to his palace. His bodyguards and Zerah kept pace with him.

  “Everything is ready for tonight’s celebration, Your Majesty,” Zerah told him. “We’ll begin with a procession through the city to the Temple.”

  Against his will, a stab of superstitious fear knifed Manasseh in the gut. “Do we have to hold the ceremony in Yahweh’s Temple?” he asked.

  “What better place to meet with our God? I promise it will be the most awe-inspiring ritual you will ever witness.”

  Manasseh halted and turned on Zerah, suddenly angry. “You said the same thing about the sacrifice of the firstborn!”

  Zerah folded his arms across his chest and met the king’s gaze evenly. “And it was, Your Majesty. But the ritual of the spring equinox is the most important festival of the year, celebrated by our forefathers since before the time of Abraham.”

  A faint memory stirred in Manasseh’s mind. “Didn’t God tell Abraham to leave Ur of the Chaldeans and forsake the pagan rites of his ancestors?”

  Zerah shook his head in disgust. “That’s a lie. I can show you Torah passages to prove that Abraham celebrated this festival, just as we will tonight.”

  “I’d like to see them.” Manasseh glanced around to make sure that his bodyguards were alert, then started walking again.

  “On this night, God will preside over the council of heavenly beings,” Zerah continued. “They will fix the destinies of mortals for the coming year, and once these are written on tablets, they cannot be changed. But at tonight’s celebration, we’ll have the opportunity to influence those decisions. As the stars come into alignment this sacred night, it is possible to coax the heavens to serve our wishes on earth. If we offer the proper sacrifices, we can win divine favor and sway the hand of God to our advantage.”

  “What kind of sacrifices?” Manasseh said, remembering his son.

  “That depends on what you wish to ask of God. Libations of wine and oil bring bountiful harvests. A young bull assures virility. A ram, one year old, brings prosperity. A ram is an especially powerful offering, Your Majesty, since the sun will rise tomorrow morning in the sign of the ram.”

  “Isn’t that the constellation that guides my enemy, Joshua?”

  “Yes, but will your enemy pay homage to the heavenly hosts tonight?”

  Manasseh gave a short laugh. “Not likely.” He waited for his guards to open the palace doors and secure the hallways before going inside.

  “Your Majesty, tonight we will also perform a special curse ceremony to break your enemy’s power. Remember, his destiny will also be fixed tonight. We will direct his fate as well as our own.”

  “Then let’s choose his destruction.”

  They walked in silence until they reached Manasseh’s chambers. Zerah stopped him outside the door. “Your Majesty, our celebration will be a pale shadow of the revelry enjoyed in heaven as the new year is ushered in. I’ve tried many times to convince you that your Temple rituals have become stunted imitations of what they should be. Tonight I will prove it. God intended for us to celebrate with joy and revelry, with eating and drinking and dance.”

  “And orgies?”

  “Of course. Wasn’t God’s first commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply’? Performing ritual union at the spring equinox will grant you great blessings and guarantee your nation bountiful crops. It will empower you. Why else do you think your priests forbid it?”

  Manasseh smiled slightly, remembering the strict purity and harsh denial his teachers demanded.

  “Don’t forget, Your Majesty, you are the sovereign king of this nation. You have the absolute right to do whatever you please. You are accountable to no one.”

  Jagged rocks studded the desert floor in the place where Joshua stopped for the night. He spent several minutes clearing away the stones so he could lie down. A scorpion ran from beneath one rock and skittered out of sight across the sand. Joshua disturbed a sand viper beneath another.

  As soon as the sun set, the desert temperature plummeted. Joshua pulled his outer cloak from his bundle of meager possessions and wrapped it around himself. The robe was made of fine lamb’s wool, one of the few possessions he still owned from his former life in Jerusalem. He had been wearing it the night Maki rescued him. A royal design once decorated the hem and sleeves, but Joshua had plucked out the gold threads months ago
and traded them for grain and olive oil in Moab.

  Even wrapped in his warmest robe, Joshua felt the numbing cold. When he heard the distant cry of jackals, he decided to build a fire. He gathered an armful of brush and dry sticks and soon had a small fire kindled. A year ago he wouldn’t have known how to start one without calling a servant to help him. His stomach growled with hunger, but Joshua had determined to fast and pray until Yahweh filled his inner hunger, until the darkness in his soul blazed with God’s light.

  Why have you allowed all this to happen, Yahweh? Why didn’t you step in and prevent Abba’s death? Or your prophets’ deaths? I need to know why.

  For a long time Joshua’s mind was too cluttered to pray for more than a few minutes at a time. As his thoughts wandered, he remembered Rabbi Gershom’s words: Manasseh also wanted to know why Yahweh had allowed his father to die after all the good things King Hezekiah had done. Joshua stared into the flames, remembering the day he’d learned that King Hezekiah was dead. But the memory that stood out in Joshua’s mind was his own father’s deep grief, not Manasseh’s. His father had been the most important person in Joshua’s life, and he had witnessed the events surrounding King Hezekiah’s death through Eliakim’s eyes, eyes that saw God’s purpose and plan, by faith, in every circumstance of life. Joshua hadn’t questioned King Hezekiah’s death. But now he realized that his friend Manasseh certainly must have.

  Manasseh had looked so young as he’d stood all alone on the royal platform, wearing his father’s crown for the first time. Joshua remembered watching him with restless envy, knowing that one day he would stand beside Manasseh and they would rule the nation together. King Hezekiah’s death meant that Joshua was closer to the day when all of his studies and preparations would end, and he could begin his life’s work at last. But what had Manasseh felt as the high priest poured the anointing oil over his head? Fear? Anger?

  Joshua had no idea. He was the young king’s closest friend, yet Manasseh had never confided his feelings. He probably hadn’t confided them to anyone or expressed the rage and doubt that Joshua now felt after his own father’s death. In the past months, feeling abandoned by God, Joshua knew he had come perilously close to rejecting Yahweh forever. Is that what Manasseh had done?

  Joshua stared up at the starry sky, then closed his eyes. Only two possibilities existed: light or the absence of light. If Manasseh rejected the Source of all light, then his sole alternative was to live in darkness. Joshua shuddered and stirred the fire, adding a few more sticks.

  Manasseh now practiced divination and sorcery. He had erected an Asherah pole and altars to idols. He had sacrificed his firstborn son. But how had the darkness taken control of him and of their nation so quickly? The evil must have always been present, hidden in men’s hearts as they’d merely pretended to worship God.

  Joshua recalled one night during the spring equinox, years earlier, when King Hezekiah’s soldiers interrupted an orgy on a high place used for Baal worship. All of the people involved had been refugees from the north. They had brought the pagan practices of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel with them as they’d fled from the Assyrians. Joshua and Manasseh learned of the arrests by accident, overhearing the soldiers’ conversation in the courtyard one morning when they went for their military training. Perhaps their fathers shouldn’t have sheltered them from the knowledge of such evils.

  But those evildoers had been caught and punished. Justice had been served. If God was still in control, why did evil triumph now? Why had Yahweh allowed Joshua’s father and Rabbi Isaiah to die? Why had the priests and Levites died for defending them? And what about Joshua’s grandfather and sister Dinah? Their only crime had been trying to protect Joshua. Why hadn’t God heard their prayers and saved them?

  I need to know, Yahweh. I need to know why. Why don’t you judge evil? Why did you make scorpions and deserts and stones when you could have easily made this a fertile place with palm trees and streams? Is there a purpose in evil? I need to know!

  But God remained silent, as cold and distant as the stars that blinked in the darkened sky. The tiny pinpoints of light would disappear, mocking Joshua if he stared at them for too long.

  After many hours, many unanswered questions, Joshua’s eyes grew heavy. He closed them for a moment and fell into a restless sleep.

  King Manasseh stepped from his sedan chair when the royal procession reached the Temple Mount and accepted the goblet of wine Zerah thrust into his hand. The Temple courtyards already pulsed with activity. Manasseh smelled the aroma of roasting meat and heard the sound of lively music and clapping nearby. He raised the cup and drank deeply, hoping it would lighten his mood.

  Zerah studied him as he drank. “What’s wrong, Your Majesty?”

  “I had another argument with my brother. He refused to join me tonight.”

  “You were wise not to compel him. Amariah’s unbelief would have disrupted the spiritual forces.”

  “First thing tomorrow I’m transferring him to an outpost in the Judean desert,” Manasseh said. He drained his cup and handed it to his servant.

  “Be patient with him, Your Majesty. Prince Amariah is young and of very weak character. Guilt still controls him.”

  “I don’t care! I don’t want him as my secretary anymore!”

  “Listen to me.” Zerah’s voice was low, his dark eyes piercing, hypnotic. “Until you have a son to replace you, Amariah is the only heir to your throne. You need to keep him here where we can watch him. And where your enemies can never reach him.”

  Manasseh knew Zerah was right. He also knew he had to put aside his anger for tonight. He accepted the refilled goblet and began walking toward the music.

  The night was cool and clear, the Temple Mount dimly illuminated by a few scattered torches so that the stars were clearly visible. Manasseh scanned the skies as he walked, but his guiding star in the constellation of the lion hadn’t risen yet. Night was a much better time to worship, he decided, a powerful time. The sun felt too hot, too bright and searing, at Yahweh’s sacrifices, making Manasseh feel naked and exposed beneath God’s angry gaze.

  The crowd parted to make way for him, giving him a front-row view of the musicians and the young women dancing provocatively before them. At first the sight shocked Manasseh. Men and women danced separately at Yahweh’s festivals. But he forced himself to watch and found the spectacle both disturbing and arousing. When the song ended, Zerah steered him away.

  “Come. This is the night to savor all of the sensory delights given to us by our Maker. But first, I have something for you.”

  Manasseh surveyed the priests’ faces as he followed Zerah. None of them were from Yahweh’s Temple. The musicians hadn’t been Levites, either. “Did you banish Yahweh’s priests and Levites from tonight’s celebration?” he asked.

  “Of course not. They were invited, but only a few of the younger ones chose to come.” He led Manasseh into one of the side chambers used by the priests to change from their everyday clothes into sacred garments. Inside, a plain wooden box lay on the table. “Open it, Your Majesty.”

  Manasseh unlatched the fastenings and removed the lid. The high priest’s breastpiece lay on a lining of purple cloth. It wasn’t large, but even in the dim lamplight the twelve stones sparkled with rainbows of color. The embroidery work of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet seemed to breathe like a living thing.

  “Magnificent, isn’t it, Your Majesty?”

  Manasseh had never seen it this close before, only from a distance when the high priest wore it over his ephod on holy days and festivals. He was afraid to touch it. The breastpiece’s pocket contained the mysterious Urim and Thummim, used by his ancestors for divination. “Why are you showing this to me?” he asked.

  “Because you must wear it tonight.”

  “But only the high priest may wear this.”

  Zerah’s face darkened with anger. Manasseh recognized its source as passion, not malice. “The king should be the high priest to his own nation! This breastp
iece is rightfully yours! The Torah says that King David danced in an ephod when he moved the ark to Jerusalem and he wore this breastpiece, as well. He wore it every time he sought guidance, but of course the Levites deleted those facts from the record. David is your ancestor. You have a right to wear it, too.”

  Zerah lifted it from the case and slipped the golden chains over Manasseh’s head. He felt the weight of it settle against his chest. After a moment, he fingered the twelve precious stones. “Magnificent,” he murmured.

  “Can you feel their power, Your Majesty?”

  Manasseh watched the breastpiece pulse as it rested above his pounding heart. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “It is radiating energy into your body. The Levites know the mysterious power of each of these stones and crystals—ruby, topaz, amethyst, and all the rest. Their power belongs to you.”

  Manasseh’s mouth felt dry. He took the goblet of wine from his servant and swallowed its contents in three gulps.

  “Come, Your Majesty. A night of revelry awaits you, a night of new experiences and delights.”

  Outside, the fire in the bronze altar mesmerized Manasseh as he stared into its dancing flames. It was time for the priests to slay his offerings of year-old bulls and rams. The animals had been conceived during the fertility rites a year before; now he would offer back to Mother Earth the firstfruits of what she had given him.

  While the offerings roasted, the priests began a frenzied dance around the altar to the pounding beat of drums and chants. They whirled faster and faster, moaning, screaming, their eyes rolling back in their heads, until they reached a near-lunatic state. Then Manasseh watched in horror as they drew knives and cut themselves, spilling their blood on the ground around the altar, splattering droplets of it on his own clothes and face as they whirled past him. He backed away.