THE CHOSEN : The Prophet: Historical Fiction (The Chosen Trilogy Book 2)

by Shlomo Kalo

  “And as for you,” – he looked up at him, his eyes still troubled – “I’m sure you realised that that small community, the community of Jahanur, is distinct from all others, differing from its neighbours in an unbridgeable sense, not like, let us say, the difference between the Chaldean people and the Jewish people or any people you care to name. And the past of the community of Jahanur is shrouded in mystery, and other peoples have a strong interest in this past remaining hidden and shrouded in mystery. For if the past of the Jahanurians were ever to come into the light of day and be revealed before the eyes of all – then all wars and conquests and pomp and glory and lucre would cease to exist! And it is the opinion of these peoples, and of the leaders and chieftains they have chosen for themselves, that without these things their lives would be utterly pointless. Anyway, these peoples worship their gods, any gods, out of fear and hatred, and cannot bring themselves to believe that there is a God who is real and all-powerful, who will defend those whom He chooses to defend, and no one can do any harm to the one who is defended by the hand of God!

  “The true God, oh yes!” cried Denur-Shag. “The true God!” he sighed and gave him a long look, a faint glow of distant hope beginning to take the place of the fear and unease. “We saw him in the fire of the furnace! I fall to my knees in fear and reverence and bow down to him!” and Denur-Shag knelt and raised joined hands towards the ceiling, crying “How good it is to know that You, the one God, the creator and the all-powerful – are real!”

  Denur-Shag stood up from his kneeling posture, returned to his seat, gave him a sharp and uncharacteristically earnest look, and went on to say:

  “And He, the true God, has taught me a lesson. He has proved to all of us, simpletons that we are, floundering around in all kinds of superstition and calling it ‘faith’ – that He is reality itself, the one and the only. And it is well that it happened the way it happened, and well that we were witnesses to the miracle, and well that our King, His Majesty, Nebuchadnezzar the valiant and the wise, at once acknowledged the true God, and repented of his anger, and declared the God of Meshach, Shadrach and Abed-Nego to be this God, and anyone daring to cast the slightest shadow of a doubt on this – his flesh shall be ‘cut to pieces’ and his home destroyed. A right royal decree indeed! And now, I’m ready to accept a cup of honey-water!”

  That very evening he met Mishael, Hananiah and Azariah, sitting in Hananiah’s spacious house. They had just finished their prayers. Their faces, which seemed to have matured almost beyond recognition, glowed. They held out their hands to him and took turns embracing him warmly, and weeping on one another’s shoulder, shedding tears that were pure and purged of any hint of self-pity, like the spring rain that cleanses the fields and the plain.

  And then the four of them sat and spent a long time looking into one another’s eyes, inspecting one another, their looks expressing by turns wonder, reverence and joy, all the stronger for being held in check.

  “The most marvellous thing of all,” Hananiah began in a calm, controlled voice, welling up from the depths and not his own voice at all, “was that figure that descended into the furnace and was with us in the fire, untouched by the flames and driving them back!”

  It was then he noticed that Hananiah’s hair, including his beard and eyebrows, had turned completely white, like bleached wool.

  He turned to look at Azariah and Mishael. Their hair too was streaked with grey, but was not like Hananiah’s.

  “You are wondering,” Hananiah noted his expression and interpreted it correctly – “why my hair is all white, and the hair of Mishael and Azariah is merely turning grey. Listen then,” Hananiah leaned towards him, pronouncing every word with emphasis. “My hair has turned white, because I am the one who spoke with him!”

  “With whom?” he asked, taken aback.

  “With the being in human form who came down into the furnace and rescued us from the fire. A figure of wondrous beauty, radiating love, speaking wisdom and bestowing freedom. We were so astonished at the sight we forgot where we were and all that we wanted – was to be with him until the end of all days. And he turned to me, and in that moment as we stood face to face, the light of his eyes sinking into mine, I was suddenly seized by an overwhelming sense of perplexity, wracked by shudders and spasms such as I never knew before, such as I never experienced nor ever will again! In fact, this wasn’t so much perplexity as awe, and blended with it a feeling of joy from an unknown source, and a sensation of flying and soaring beyond the highest Heavens and becoming nothing, as insubstantial as the dust, and all of this – at one and the same time! And then I knew for sure that my hair had turned white and would never return to its former colour, though that was the least of my concerns! This divine figure, for it surely was divine, turned to me and asked me:

  “Do you know me, Hananiah?” – and his voice was deep and clear, and keen, and painful.

  “No, Master,” I answered him sadly, for then I would have paid any price, given up my life even, if only I could have answered him gladly with words such as: “Yes, Master! I have always known you, and you I have served, serve and shall serve all the days of my life, in this world and the next!

  “So,” Hananiah continued – “my answer was ‘No, Master’. And in spite of the grief that this answer caused me, or perhaps because of it, I asked: ‘Who are you, Master?’ And the answer was not slow in coming:

  ‘I am the one who will be known in the fullness of time as the Son of God, and I shall be the touchstone for your people and for all other peoples! A tiny minority of your people will believe in me and be saved, and the majority that has neither purity nor truth, that will reject me, hate me and persecute me, slay me in the flesh and deny me – the majority shall not know salvation. And you, Hananiah, do you believe in the Son of the living God?’

  “And I fell to my knees and said to him: ‘I believe in the son of the living God with all my heart, as do my companions!’ And he turned to Azariah and Mishael with his glorious light and they knelt at his feet and said to him: ‘We believe!’”

  He glanced at Azariah and Mishael and they nodded their heads as if in confirmation, their faces still aglow.

  “And finally,” Hananiah went on to say, “the Son of God revealed to us that the afflictions of the Children of Israel and of Judah will not come to an end until they believe in Him and accept Him. And at that moment the door of the furnace opened and King Nebuchadnezzar stood there staring at us, his whole body trembling as he declared: ‘There is no God on the earth beneath or in the Heavens above other than the God of Meshach, Shadrach and Abed-Nego’.”

  Hananiah’s story was told, and silence reigned in the room. Then Hananiah turned to him and asked:

  “And you Daniel, do you believe in the Son of the living God?”

  And without any hesitation he replied:

  “With all my heart and soul!” – and only then did he remember the strange cry of Avarnam, the chief councillor of Jahanur: “Accept the Son of the living God!”

  “Who do you think he is, this Son of God?” Azariah asked him.

  “The future saviour of mankind.”

  “So how is he related to our God, who is one and one alone?” asked Mishael.

  And he answered him, knowing it was the voice of another speaking through his lips:

  “He is His embodiment!”

  The Rebellion

  A year later, King Zedekiah rebelled. The Chaldean tax-collectors, coming to Jerusalem as they did every year, were sent away empty-handed.

  The royal palace of Babylon was in uproar. Preparations were made for the dispatching of a punitive expedition, to be led, so it was rumoured, by none other than King Nebuchadnezzar himself.

  Contacts between Babylon and the homeland were disrupted, and finally broken off altogether. In spite of this, there were still Jews arriving from Jerusalem. They saw themselves as refugees in the full sense of the word rather than exiles, and they told of what was happening there.

&nbs
p; And so it was that he heard how the prophet Jeremiah had been assaulted by Zedekiah’s minions, and had narrowly escaped stoning to death by the mob. Some of the elders and sages of the people had stood up and spoken out on his behalf, drawing attention to the similarities between his prophecies and those of his predecessors, and saying it should not be doubted it was God speaking through him; he was not to be persecuted or imprisoned lest the King and his ministers and the populace of Judah find themselves at war with God. But the words of the elders and the sages were to no avail, and there were instances when the inflamed mob turned its anger against them and attacked them, and some of them did as the prophet advised, packing a few possessions and leaving the rebellious city of Jerusalem, making their way, after many vicissitudes, to Babylon. After giving their reports to the King’s representatives, who questioned them closely about the mood in Jerusalem, the activities of Zedekiah and his ministers and the common people, and the prophecies of Jeremiah, to which no one was listening – they recognised them as refugees and settled them in huts outside the walls. Those who had experience of agriculture were given plots of land to farm, skilled craftsmen were employed in the royal workshops, and scholars and intellectuals became clerks in the palace.

  The newcomers were satisfied with their reception and grateful for everything, saying that all Jeremiah’s predictions were coming true before their eyes, in spirit and in letter, including his assertion that anyone not rising in revolt against the Chaldeans would retain life and property intact; they had no reason to complain and nothing more to say – except to give praise and thanks to the King of Babylon – the envoy of God, according to Jeremiah.

  And so it was that the four of them – Mishael, Hananiah, Azariah and he – happened to be together in Hananiah’s office, listening to the report of one of the refugees, a clerk in the royal treasuries. He told them of the activities of an officer named Irijah, son of Shelemiah son of Hananiah, who detained Jeremiah at the Benjamin Gate as he was leaving the city, meaning to go to the land of Benjamin and hide there from the anger of the crowd and the machinations of the King’s courtiers, and from the King himself, that unpredictable youth forever changing his mind and his policies.

  And this man, Irijah son of Shelemiah son of Hananiah, raised a commotion in the marketplace and denounced Jeremiah as a traitor saying: “You mean to defect to the Chaldeans!” and Jeremiah replied: “That is a lie! I have no intention of defecting to the Chaldeans!” And the man did not believe him, nor did most of the crowd gathered there in the market-place, and they manhandled Jeremiah the prophet and put him in chains and brought him before the King. And the King disowned him, telling the ministers and the commoners: “Do with him as you see fit!”

  And they threw Jeremiah into a pit in the prison yard. And there was no water in the pit, only mud, and Jeremiah began sinking into the mud.

  King Zedekiah had a Negro servant, a eunuch, who well knew his master’s mind, and how changeable it was. He was also, secretly, a supporter and a disciple of the prophet. And when the King’s Negro servant heard that Jeremiah had been thrown into the pit in the prison yard, and was sinking into the mud, and did not have long to live, he approached the King and appealed to his compassion, saying: “My Lord the King, these men have done wrong in their dealings with Jeremiah the prophet, throwing him into a pit where he will sink and die!”

  And the King commanded his Negro servant: “Take thirty men with you and haul Jeremiah the prophet out of the pit before he dies.” And the servant assembled the men and went to the store-room of the palace under the treasury and took from there some cast-off clothing which he threw down to Jeremiah, with a rope. And the King’s Negro servant said to Jeremiah: “Put these rags under your armpits, to ease the chafing of the ropes,” and the prophet followed his advice. So they pulled Jeremiah out of the pit with ropes, and he stayed in the prison yard.

  Then King Zedekiah had Jeremiah the prophet brought to him by the third entrance of the House of the Lord, and the King said to Jeremiah: “I have a question to ask you – speak and hide nothing from me!” And Jeremiah said to Zedekiah: “If I speak out you will kill me, and if I give you advice, you will ignore it!” And King Zedekiah swore a secret oath to Jeremiah: “As the Lord lives who gave us our lives, I shall not kill you, or hand you over to those men who seek your life!”

  And Jeremiah said to Zedekiah: “This is the word of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel. If you go out and surrender to the officers of the King of Babylon, your life will be spared and this city will not be set on fire, you and your family shall live. And if you do not go out and surrender to the officers of the King of Babylon, this city will fall into the hands of the Chaldeans who will burn it to the ground – and there will be no escape for you!”

  And here the story was suspended, as the refugee-narrator had urgent duties to attend to in his new post.

  The four young men exchanged glances, all of them utterly perplexed and deeply worried by what they had heard.

  “I suppose,” said Mishael, “there is a chance that reason may prevail, when a ruler seeks to know what is the will of God, and God does not withhold His word from him, but informs him through His prophet what he must do if he is to live. And the ruler holds his fate in his own hands, his fate and the fate of his family and the fate of his people. All that is then required of the wise ruler is that he comply with the word of God and put an end to all his troubles and come out from darkness into a great light. Yet in this case, he does the opposite. The first step is sensible and gives grounds for hope – and yet without the second step it is worthless! It is an undeniable fact that the first step does not invariably lead to the second!”

  “And why do those who take the first step not go on to take the second, which according to logic should follow from it?” Azariah queried.

  He looked up at the ceiling and stared at it for a while, before lowering his eyes and saying, without addressing anyone in particular:

  “Lack of faith.”

  And Mishael asked him:

  “And is there no way to increase their faith and strengthen it?”

  “There is,” he declared, and added – “It’s a question of repentance. This was an option that was offered to Zedekiah the King of Judah, and he rejected it out of hand.”

  “And what are we to do in these perilous times – and how can we help our compatriots and our families in Judah, and the unfortunate King, who is astray and leading others astray?”

  “We must remain firm in our own faith, and strengthen it, and trust in Him, the Blessed One, and love Him with all our hearts and minds, our spirits and our might!”

  “And this strengthening of faith and love of Him – will that help our compatriots and the hapless King Zedekiah, and our families in Judah?” asked Azariah.

  “Increase of our faith and our love of Him will set out before every man, inasmuch as he is a man, the path to repentance, which leads on to salvation.”

  “So it is pointless, turning to God and asking for His guidance, if the one who turns and asks for guidance is lacking in faith!”

  “As pointless as lighting a way in the darkness for one who has been blind from birth!”

  They left Hananiah’s office and went their separate ways – all of them in a mood of the most profound gloom.

  Or-Nego sat facing him. It seemed that he had changed somewhat, having grown older and more circumspect. This was no longer the army commander who had boasted of punishing rebellious peasants and burning down their homes. Sitting there before him was a restrained man in the prime of life, who knew what lay before him and was determined to do the right thing, who was loyal to whatever seemed to him worthy of his loyalty. He remembered Adelain’s story of the vows which Or-Nego made to his wife before she died – vows which he had kept. Truly, Nebuchadnezzar knew how to choose his men! If his army had a dozen more officers like Or-Nego, that army would be invincible.

  The passage of the years had left their mark on his face and
his body as well. This body had lost some of its litheness while gaining solidity. Two deep furrows scored his cheeks, as if to underline his firmness, while his gentle eyes had receded further into their sockets, their look of serenity, courage and congenial intelligence unimpaired.

  Or-Nego had asked for this interview, in his capacity as a senior officer, but had insisted on waiting for his turn. As it turned out, the meeting was taking place a week after the original approach was made. They sat for a while in companionable silence, while he looked into those eyes that reminded him of Adelain’s eyes – a little dry, and their lustre restrained – and made mental note of the more obvious changes that had come about since last he saw him. It was Or-Nego who eventually broke the silence:

  “I’m supposed to be joining the King’s army for the campaign against Judah, and I thought it right to come and see you beforehand and perhaps bid you farewell, even though the expedition won’t be setting out for some time yet. And above all, the main purpose of my visit is to ask if you have any particular requests regarding your native city and your homeland.”

  “What do you mean, Or-Nego?” he asked him, sensing a faint awkwardness in the other, in that deep, benevolent look that reminded him so vividly of Adelain.

  “If you like…” he hesitated momentarily, before continuing in a clear, steady voice: “I could use my discretion where your relatives are concerned. Tell me where they live – and I can deploy my troops in such a way that they’re not harmed, they and their neighbours! I shall be glad to be of service – and Adelain will be glad too. This idea, of coming to you and offering my modest services appealed to her very strongly and perhaps,” Or-Nego paused and pondered briefly, before revealing something that surprised him – though not the most shattering of surprises – “it was she who suggested it in the first place, knowing that nothing would give me greater pleasure… so, do you have any favours to ask of me, anything that’s within my power to grant?” The soldier looked up and regarded him steadily.