by Shlomo Kalo
“Is there any way other than the way of the Lord?” he saw fit to comment.
“Perhaps!” the guest averted his gaze, blinking and finally said: “Who knows which is the way of the Lord that we should follow?”
He answered him:
“The prophet Jeremiah knows!”
“Oh, yes,” the messenger admitted awkwardly, “the prophet Jeremiah. “He preaches and proclaims the way of the Lord all day long – and no one listens, no one obeys the Lord’s commandments. And yet, people are yearning for something, they long for salvation”
“What kind of salvation?” he asked.
“Salvation of the soul, of course!” Seraiah Ben-Neriah Ben-Mahseiah retorted.
“And that is in the Lord!”
“You are right,” the guest said thoughtfully, “and your words are akin to those of the prophet Jeremiah, the holy one of God! And he is always standing at your side, defending every word that you say and letting no one malign you. And it is well known among the citizens and the defenders of Jerusalem, and in the populace at large, that anyone who stands beside Jeremiah and believes his words, also stands beside you and believes your words!”
“And my family?” he asked, and almost regretted the question.
“They are all on your side, as you might expect. Blood is thicker than water, as they say, and members of your family enjoy all the honour and respect that they are entitled to, and no one dares make any comment about you in their presence. And your relations are convinced that whatever you think, say and do – it is God who puts it in your mind, your mouth, your hand, and this will be for the good of Judah and even, so they say, the good of all peoples wherever they may be, all nations and races and tongues, and in the end – your name will be praised!”
“And how are the stocks of water and food in the city?”
“The situation could not be worse! Food is scarce and water even more so. The kosher animals, young and old alike, were slaughtered long ago and their meat distributed among the people. And the same was done with the fowls and after them it was the turn of the horses – with the exception of a few that the King is keeping for his escape when the wall is breached. But even fodder and straw are in short supply, and what state these horses will be in when the hour of crisis comes, and whether they will have the strength to carry the King and his bodyguards – nobody even wants to know. The King is trying to reassure his people, and at one point, as a gesture of goodwill and a demonstration of obedience to the ordinances of the Torah, he liberated all the slaves and the maidservants held by his ministers and viziers. But immediately after the public ceremony of liberation, the ministers and viziers took them back into servitude, as before! And Zedekiah did not protest but pretended he hadn’t noticed – he hadn’t heard or seen or understood. But God sees the thoughts of all hearts. And He sent Jeremiah to the King, and he told him the words that the Lord put into his mouth:
These are the words of the Lord the God of Israel, I made a covenant with your forefathers on the day that I brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. These were its terms: within seven years each of you shall set free any Hebrew who has sold himself to you as a slave and has served you for six years; you shall set him free. But your forefathers did not listen to me or obey me. And you did what was right in my eyes when you proclaimed an act of freedom for the slaves and made a covenant in my presence, in the house that bears my name. But you too have profaned my name, in that you have taken back the slaves you had set free and you have forced them, both male and female, to be your slaves again. Therefore these are the words of the Lord: You did not obey me when you declared an act of deliverance for your kinsmen and your neighbours, so I shall declare a deliverance for you, says the Lord, a deliverance to the sword, to plague and famine, and I shall make you repugnant to all the kingdoms of the earth!”
The guest sighed, his brow wrinkled, his face fallen:
“It’s all up for the people of Jerusalem and the land of Judah! And I’m sure you know how to conduct your affairs according to the word of the Lord and walk in His ways! And I can only hope that you continue thus until the end of your days on this earth, and then all will profit by your example – Jews and Gentiles alike! As a man sows, so shall he reap!”
The guest’s head slumped forward, and his chin almost touched his chest. Silence descended in the spacious office and he felt no inclination to break it. There was a long and awkward pause.
Seraiah Ben-Neriah looked up again, and his eyes were moist, his face pale and his brows contorted, and when he spoke again, his voice was hoarse and grating:
“The two missions entrusted to me by the prophet Jeremiah, the holy one of God! One of them is for the exiles of Babylon, and the word has already gone out and they will all come when evening falls and gather on the bank of the Euphrates to hear the word of the Lord, and the second mission concerns you, the great minister Daniel, whose Chaldean name is Belteshazzar!”
And the envoy rose to his feet, and with all the vigour that he could muster, delivered his message:
“Thus says the God whose name is the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Be strong and be brave, my servant Daniel! Wherever I have sent you, you have prospered, and I shall send you to more places yet! Do not be afraid of them and do not be anxious, for I am with you to save you. And I have given you to be as a sign and a token to all nations and races and tongues on the face of this earth, and to your people Israel! And I have revealed to you great secrets and awesome mysteries such as no living man has seen before! Be strong and be brave, my servant Daniel, for no harm shall befall you and I am with you, to keep you in all your ways!”
And saying this, the envoy bowed low, retreated backwards to the door and disappeared from the office, leaving him stunned and shaken to the very roots of his soul.
Before sunset, both he and Nejeen went down to the Lugelgira Gate, in the northern sector of the lower wall, and on arriving there they found a great crowd of exiles, also some former acquaintances from the ancient Jewish community of Babylon, standing on the bank of the Euphrates and waiting for whatever was due to happen. Mishael, Hananiah and Azariah were there too, with their wives.
People were grim-faced and taciturn, greeting one another with nothing more than a slight inclination of the head, and no spoken benedictions. When Mishael, Hananiah and Azariah approached them, they said nothing and asked no questions, waiting with the others.
And when the sun began to slip behind the low ridge of the mountains, mustering the last vestiges of its light, and the air, clear and blue-tinted, seemed to underline the tense silence, and evening descended – from somewhere or other that man appeared, none other than Seraiah Ben-Neriah Ben-Mahseiah, holding a parchment scroll, and his whole demeanour expressing dignified indifference to his surroundings. He walked through the crowd and seemed to see no one. And he took up his position on the bank of the broad, smoothly-flowing Euphrates, the bank that sloped down to the edge of the river where water lapped the pebbles.
And then the man’s voice was heard, and it was clear, firm and decisive, not like the voice that he had heard in the morning in his office. The man said:
“Hear, you exiles, the instructions given by the prophet Jeremiah to Seraiah Ben-Neriah Ben-Mahseiah: When you come to Babylon look at this, read it all and say: Lord, you have declared your purpose to destroy this place, and leave it a habitation for neither man nor beast. It shall be a wasteland for ever. And when you have finished reading the scroll, tie a stone to it and throw it into the Euphrates and say, So shall Babylon sink, never to rise again after the disaster that I shall bring upon her!” And Seraiah Ben-Neriah Ben-Mahseiah took a stone, and tied it to the scroll, and threw it into the river Euphrates.
And the scroll sank and the deep waters covered and swallowed it, and it was never seen again.
The Siege
For three years Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, proud capital of Judah. He pitched his tent on the top of a hill overlooki
ng the beleaguered city. At the apex of the tent, the royal standard fluttered, in all its grandeur: three gold recumbent lions, skilfully embroidered on a blue background. The sheets of the tent were azure and purple, inlaid with gold and furnished on the inside with heavy tapestries. At dawn, the gold fittings reflected back the rays of the rising sun, and at sunset they were ablaze – a symbol of awesome power.
The hill on which the tent was pitched was named after the prophet Samuel, who anointed the first two kings of Israel and Judah, Saul of the tribe of Benjamin, who fell on his own sword never to rise again, and David, the highly praised son of Jesse, to whom the people gave the affectionate title, “Sweet singer of Israel”. He it was who laid the solid foundations of the dynasty of kings, enduring from that time until this. Nebuchadnezzar used to sit on a throne of ivory in the doorway of the tent, looking down at the city, where the defenders huddled day and night over the archery embrasures in the wall, poised to repel any attack.
The King was not aware of the passing of the days, nor the changing of the seasons. His anger was not abated; on the contrary, it grew ever more intense, but it was restrained, just as a seething heart may be restrained beneath a thin veneer, only to erupt with terrible force, casting ruin and destruction in all directions.
In the early days of the siege King Zedekiah attempted a number of sudden sorties outside the wall, and some of them succeeded, as his light cavalry took the enemy by surprise and penetrated deep into the Chaldean battle lines, inflicting heavy losses, setting fire to vital equipment and stocks of food, and sowing mayhem and destruction before returning in triumph to their citadel, leaving behind them only a few casualties of their own and a handful of prisoners. The aggressive spirit and warlike qualities of the Jews made a deep impression on the Chaldean troops, and did nothing to boost their morale. The King found it necessary to address his soldiers and inspire them with the same absolute confidence in final victory that beat in his own heart. And having delivered his speech, Nebuchadnezzar proceeded at once to sit in judgment, ordering the execution of three of his senior officers for lack of alertness and failure to foresee events; twelve soldiers were also beheaded for dereliction of duty, and delay in the lighting of the warning beacons. The heads of the defaulters were impaled on spears and prominently displayed in the centre of the camp.
As for the twenty-three Jews captured by the Chaldeans, eleven of them seriously wounded, the King ordered that they be hanged in full view of the walls of the besieged city, and the bound bodies be left there, dangling in the breeze for six nights and seven days, as a grim warning to their fellow citizens that mercy was no longer to be expected and any Jew falling into the hands of the Chaldeans faced certain death.
The bodies of the hanged men wilted in the heat, with a virulent and all-pervading stench, and the ravens, which had pecked out their eyes on the first day, began ripping apart their livid flesh, especially the flesh of their faces, and exposing their skull-bones. It was a fearful sight. After a week the King ordered that the corpses be cut down and thrown to the jackals.
These measures taken by the King all proved their worth, and following the execution of the Chaldean defaulters and the hanging of the prisoners, the sorties mounted by Zedekiah failed, one after the other, and instead of leaving scores of his enemies slain on the battlefield, the King of the Jews paid a heavy price in lives sacrificed on his own side, as well as losing many horses that could not be replaced. While pondering his next move he suspended the sorties, and seldom sent his horsemen outside the walls.
Nebuchadnezzar was also looking for ways to break the deadlock, and he devised, and put into effect, a classic diversionary tactic. Four regiments of Chaldean fighters with wall-scaling equipment attacked the besieged city from four directions. Ladders were raised and put against the walls, and ropes with grappling hooks were thrown, taking hold. The Chaldeans climbed these ladders and ropes like acrobats, were repulsed and climbed up again, in a continuous cycle, and the defenders were in no doubt that this was a genuine attempt to storm the walls and break into the city. Zedekiah summoned all his forces to the places where the walls were under attack, and concentrated them there, with the aim of repelling at any price the persistent attacks of the enemy and preventing the storming of the city. This was what Nebuchadnezzar expected.
At the western end of the wall of besieged Jerusalem, a small gate was inset, neglected perhaps, but apparently secure, consisting of a pair of double doors, locked and bolted, which could be opened only from the inside. And even if the gate were to be opened, this would contribute little to the success of an attack, since two stalwart defenders on the other side would have been sufficient to deny access to the narrow passage. For this reason, little thought had been given to the proper defence of the gate, and in the heat of the battle that Nebuchadnezzar had ignited, even the few men stationed there were called away to take part in a battle that was considered crucial.
Furtively, some half a dozen grappling hooks were thrown over the neglected gate, and trained Chaldean soldiers, agile as monkeys, climbed the ropes and, as the King expected, found on the other side not one single defender. The Chaldeans lost no time pushing back the rusty bolts and opened both doors to their comrades who were waiting outside, clearing the way, narrow as it was, into the besieged city.
The Chaldeans streamed in a thin but constant trickle, one after the other, into the rear fortress of Jewish Jerusalem. More than five hundred warriors had crawled through the aperture and were poised to attack, before one of the Jewish defenders of the wall noticed them. He raised the alarm and ordered the blowing of the horn, pointing with his blood-stained sword at the Chaldean forces, stealing in behind their backs.
Zedekiah, who was trying to rally his troops on the wall and happened to be close by, realised at once the scale of the danger, and the disaster that would engulf the city if this steady infiltration were not stemmed immediately, and calling up the two elite divisions of the palace guard, he threw them into the attack.
The battle was bloody, claiming many lives on both sides. The Chaldeans succeeded in setting fire to a number of huts serving as stores for food and fodder, and Zedekiah’s bewildered soldiers found themselves having to fight the flames as well as the enemy, and their ranks were thrown into confusion. The Jews resisted tenaciously, but it was the Chaldeans who gained the upper hand and Nebuchadnezzar, standing at the door of his tent and watching the progress of the battle, ordered the trumpeter to sound the retreat.
Step by step, not turning their backs on the enemy, the Chaldeans withdrew as victors, inflicting severe losses on the defenders of the city even as they retreated.
The army of Judah had clearly suffered a crippling defeat, one from which it might never recover. In the immediate vicinity of the gate alone, the bodies of more than twelve hundred Jewish fighters were counted, precious food and fodder for horses had gone up in flames, and all of this added to the dejection of the townsfolk, whose numbers were growing ever fewer, and fuelled the sense of despair. The burden of grief was heavy, and bereavement depressed even the most hardened warriors, men renowned for their courage.
Following the success of Nebuchadnezzar’s ingenious stratagem, the King promoted and showed special favour to two of his senior officers, one of whom, Or-Nego, had shown remarkable initiative and valour in that battle; although surrounded by some twenty Jews with drawn swords, and the last man in the retreat, he did not despair but attacked ferociously and carved a path through the tight circle, picking up a wounded commander on the way and carrying him to safety.
At the beginning of the month of Elul, there remained in Jerusalem neither water to drink nor food to eat, besides two dozen horses belonging to Zedekiah, and they too were emaciated for lack of nourishment. People lay down in the alleyways and expired beneath the scorching sun of Elul, and there was even the temptation, resisted only with great difficulty, to eat human flesh – not that this would have been of any avail, since thirst was an even greater scourge
than hunger and it claimed many victims. And those who remained alive crawled like shadows among the silent buildings, their only desire being to find a drop of water or a scrap of food, and since there was neither, they were reduced to licking cold stones in damp cellars, or chewing cloth or leather looted from the bodies of the dead.
Only one man was still on his feet, despite his exhaustion, and he walked among those sprawled helplessly in the alleyways and in the shadow of houses, and he seemed not to be aware of them, his gaze fixed on the clear sky, soon to be masked by the bluish haze of evening, and a gleam in his eye; not the gleam of the insane, but the deep, inner light of one who has detached himself from the vanities of the world and is all obedience to what is beyond them, a living and life-giving light.
Those sprawled in the streets of the city knew the man, but did not try to address him or ask for his help. And yet there was one middle-aged woman, dying on the steps of her house, her clothes covering only a fragile skeleton, and when she saw the man, a strange, living flame was kindled in her eyes, her lips moved, and turning to him she whispered:
“Jeremiah, prophet Jeremiah – where are you going?”
The prophet heard her voice and understood her, and answered her:
“To Zedekiah, to the King!”
Hearing this, a strange kind of peace spread over the woman’s face, and at that moment she gave back her soul to her Creator. And the walking man bent down and closed her eyes, and at the very touch of his fingers her face softened into a faint smile, a smile of the ease that she knew only after her death.
