Exodus

by Cliff Graham

  He ran into several of his men as they tried to enter the tent and knocked them backward out of the entrance with his force.

  Outside, he tore his cloak in grief and stripped it away, baring his chest, until he stood in the rain wearing only a loincloth. His skin was wrinkled with age, but in this moment his muscles were taut and strong.

  “May the Lord strike me down if I do not kill every one of them!” he cried out. He whirled around and saw Othniel.

  “Come with me and bring fifty men. Where is Abnedeb?”

  “Here, my lord,” the commander of one of his divisions shouted while pushing his way from the back.

  Caleb ran to the nearby watch fire and knelt down, using a stick to draw out his plan. Screams and cries were heard all down the ridge.

  “General! They are killing our people!” someone said.

  Caleb did not look up. “They will kill even more if we attack them without a strategy. Abnedeb!”

  “Here, my lord.”

  Caleb pointed to a route on his rough map that led down the ridge and ended below the walls of Hebron. “Take your men down this way and cut off their retreat. We will chase them along the ridgetop. They are only here to kill our women, so they will not want to engage too many of our soldiers.”

  “But, lord, they are enormous,” Abnedeb said, his voice shaking.

  Caleb glared up at him, and then he saw the same fear in everyone else’s eyes. His temper flared, but he forced himself to speak calmly. “Yes, they are enormous. But I have killed two of them by myself this very night, and I will kill many more, and so will you. The Lord is our strength and salvation, and he will deliver them into our hands.” He looked back down at his map. “Abnedeb, do you know what you are to do?”

  The general swallowed hard. “I . . . I am to take my men down this ridge and stop their retreat.”

  Caleb looked up at him. He stared hard into his eyes. “Get moving then.”

  Abnedeb departed. Caleb was back on his feet instantly. “Kill all of them,” he said to the group, and they all rushed into the night to their tasks.

  Othniel fell in behind Caleb as they ran through the tangled undergrowth in the direction of the rampaging Anakites. Caleb stopped to listen for the screams and, hearing them, adjusted his direction. Soon the attackers would be reaching the other side of the camp and bursting through the perimeter with their captives under arm.

  Tents appeared everywhere around them. This was the encampment, deep inside the lines where it was thought to be safe to have serving women, but the shrieks and cries Caleb heard echoing through the night proved that thinking had been futile.

  “Go left!” Caleb shouted to Othniel, and his nephew gestured for the men with him to bank left through the tents while another squad followed Caleb.

  Caleb caught a glimpse of the fleeing forms of the Anakites as they sought the concealment of the woods. The Israelite archers had finally found their nerve. Caleb raced past the arrow-riddled corpse of one giant, who had been brought down by them, and sent the others into flight with deadly, consistent releases. Regardless of how big a man is, Caleb thought, he is not too big for our barbed arrows.

  He still could not understand their numbers, had no idea how many were cutting through his perimeter, vowed to deal harshly with the commander of the night’s watch.

  Shouts, clashes on the right. He slowed, holding his hand up to stop the men behind him. What was it? Where were they? He strained his eyes and ears.

  Only the rain. A rumble of thunder. Clanking, clashing to his left.

  There. Fifty paces away. An Anakite fighting with Othniel’s men. At least that was what he thought he saw, but it was dark and confusing. Where were his men? Abnedeb, where was he? Cutting off the retreat, he remembered.

  What are we supposed to be doing? Caleb asked himself. Abnedeb sent to the flank . . . but what was his own assignment?

  He wiped his face, cursing the confusion of battle. Attack the Anakite with Othniel now?

  No, keep pursuing.

  “On me!” he shouted, and ran forward again, leaving Othniel to handle the straggler.

  “Lord God of the heavens, great Yahweh who delivered us from the Egyptians, please hear my prayer,” Caleb said as he stumbled in the direction the Anakites might have gone. He cursed them bitterly again. Attackers had every advantage. They had the plan, had knowledge of their objectives.

  Caleb and his men passed several wounded and dead, a few more women, some of them elderly. They had been hacked or clubbed to death, their bodies twisted and contorted from the power of the blows. A fleeting thought, gone as soon as it came, that perhaps his army was doomed if it was facing an entire city of these monsters.

  They passed where he knew the perimeter line had been, and he saw the dead body of a sentry, vowing again to punish the commander of the watch. From behind, more men in the camp were running after them, terrified and desperate for vengeance at the same time.

  Over the rain they could hear more screams. Lightning flared. Ahead through the woods, Caleb saw six great figures illuminated.

  “How many did you see?” he shouted over his shoulder.

  “Five,” answered his shield bearer.

  “Four,” answered another warrior.

  “Six,” the shield bearer said, changing his mind.

  “I saw six,” Caleb confirmed. “Stay concentrated together! We have to take them down one at a time!”

  The Anakites were tall and massive, and they were carrying captives, making it hard for them to navigate through the thickets of the hillside. Caleb and his men were able to gain ground on them quickly. The one in the back of the group, carrying a screaming young woman in each arm, looked back and saw them pursuing. He soon realized he could not outrun them, so he threw the two women to the ground and turned to face them.

  By this time Caleb’s men had shed their rain-sodden cloaks and were down to loincloths. Caleb called for a wedge, and they closed on the Anakite in the formation with their swords up. Caleb’s shield bearer held a long spear up, ready to jab with it when the giant was off-balance after an attack at them.

  The Anakite had a tangled mass of long hair tied in braids that flowed down his back. The muscles in his shoulders and chest were impossibly large, and he attacked silently, fast and with skill, and Caleb moved aside as the Anakite pulled the sword from his belt and lunged at him.

  Caleb parried the blow but only slightly. The force would have knocked him over with direct contact. As he did, the shield bearer moved in with a spear jab, which the giant saw coming but was too slow to avoid. The spear tip hit the arm and bit deep. The giant howled and wrenched his arm away, and Caleb and his shield bearer crouched side by side for the next attack.

  The giant glared at them, saying something in the tongue of his race.

  “I do not understand the language of dung,” Caleb spat at him.

  “You have fought my kind before,” the giant said in the Canaanite tongue, which Caleb did understand.

  “I have killed many of your brothers, yes. I will not go down to Sheol until I have brought you all with me. Now hurry up and attack so that I may take your head off and then run down the others.”

  The other Hebrews had circled the Anakite, weapons raised. The giant realized he would not make it past fifty men alive, with more rushing down the hillside from the camp, and he decided to attack through them to kill as many as possible in the hope that he could penetrate the circle.

  The giant whirled to his left and lowered his head to charge the ranks. He knocked down three men with his rush and absorbed the full strikes of three clubs without effect. He cut his blade across the bare chests of two men, nearly cleaving them in half.

  “Remember your training! Fight them in teams! No clubs!” Caleb shouted, angry that his men had so quickly forgotten all that he had taught them about this race. But he did not have time to think anything else because the Anakite had turned on him, knowing that he was their leader, and if he was killed, t
he others would likely scatter. Caleb cursed the ground again, because the giant knew that these men had no experience battling his kind.

  The Anakite rushed him, but Caleb’s shield bearer feinted an attack low, giving the temptation to strike him first. The giant took it, kicking at the shield bearer, allowing Caleb time to make one stab with his blade. But the Anakite had anticipated him, set his own trap for them. His fist swatted the blade aside, and he kicked the shield bearer full in the chest, sending the young man sprawling into the mud.

  “Attack him! Attack him!” Caleb shouted at the others, but the Hebrews only crouched and watched, waiting for an opportunity to strike that would never come.

  “Attack from behind while he is facing us!” Caleb ordered. “Do it now or you all are dead men!”

  Finally one of the Hebrews ran forward in spite of his terror and tried to cut the back of the Anakite’s legs, but the giant saw him coming in his peripheral vision and swatted his blade away as well.

  “You cannot cut! You have to stab! Get the point buried into his flesh!”

  Every lesson he had taught them, forgotten! Caleb’s fury was unending. He would replace all of the training masters, make them all carry rocks up the mountain until they . . .

  The giant moved to face him again, then rushed forward. Caleb was bending low to counter the attack when his knee gave out, biting sharply in pain as he forced himself into a crouch. He pleaded for Yahweh to strengthen his wretched body.

  The giant drew closer, raising his arms over his head. Caleb held the sword up, desperate to get enough of an angle to intercept the blow.

  The shield bearer had gained his feet and dove at the giant’s legs with enough force to cause the Anakite to buckle. The giant caught himself, threw enough into his next punch to crush the Hebrew’s ribs and send the man flying once more.

  “Attack him, you fools! Attack!” Caleb shouted, and finally another Hebrew found his nerve and ran a spear into the giant’s thigh, which made him cry out in pain.

  The Anakite seized the spear shaft and pulled the broadhead out, then spotting a gap in the lines, decided that he would eventually die if he remained where he was. He ran for the gap, using the spear he pulled out of his leg to pierce the skull of a Hebrew soldier who was scrambling to get out of his way.

  Caleb gained his feet, his eyes burning with tears at the foolish loss of life, the deaths caused by green troops, cursing himself louder than any of them. “Yahweh, if there is any favor left for me in your great heart, give me the strength to run this man down!”

  The blood in his veins grew hot, the pain dimmed, and he felt himself flying through the rain, through the brush, closing in on the fleeing giant, who looked behind him just in time to see Caleb leaping up with his bronze sword and aiming the blow between the shoulder blades.

  The Anakite tried to dodge it, but his foot caught in the bramble, causing him to stumble. Caleb landed with his full weight against the blade and drove it between the shoulder blades, severing the spine of the giant. They crashed together to the ground, then Caleb had to duck another wild swing. The giant was paralyzed below the waist and would be dead soon, but his arms still flailed, and he hit Caleb so hard that he nearly passed out, feeling something crack in his ribs. Immediately his lungs began to burn.

  Move . . . the . . . weapon . . .

  He lurched. The sword arced up and over and down on the giant’s neck, but the giant caught it and pulled it away, grabbed Caleb’s throat with one of his hands and started choking him.

  Caleb gagged, bile rising in his gut as he lost his breath. He flailed at the giant’s head, his face bent skyward as he was being strangled. Water flooded his eyes so that he could not see anything.

  Eyes . . .

  His fingers groped along the giant’s face until they found the soft bulbs of flesh, and he pressed as hard as he could.

  The Anakite yelled and tried to bite his fingers, succeeding in getting one of Caleb’s fingers in his teeth. He bit down hard and tore away at Caleb’s skin.

  They were locked together, Caleb’s fingers in the Anakite’s eyes, the paralyzed Anakite choking Caleb with both hands and tearing his finger to shreds with his teeth.

  Press . . . harder . . .

  Caleb extended the tips of his fingers deeper into the sockets, praying the pain would be so great that the Anakite would finally yield.

  What finally ended it was the blade, which had been buried deep between the giant’s shoulders. Caleb felt the struggle from the giant start to ebb as he bled out from his heart getting slashed to pieces by the blade, his damaged lungs collapsing.

  Moment by moment the giant weakened, though his jaw remained locked tight on Caleb’s finger. The chokehold on Caleb’s neck loosened enough to allow Caleb to break free, and he used the opportunity to seize the hilt of the sword and jerk it back and forth inside the giant’s chest.

  The Anakite gave one more death shudder, then fell still. Caleb gasped for air, realized that the jaws were still clamped shut on the tip of his little finger. He rolled away and tried to tug the finger free, but it would not budge. The jaw muscles had locked in their death struggle.

  His men gathered around. He gestured for them to help him, and they tried to pull the finger loose.

  Caleb cried out in agony. “Cut it off! They are getting away! Cut it off!”

  It was Othniel whose face appeared above him. “Uncle, I am sorry we are so late. The Anakite killed five of my men before we could bring him down.”

  Caleb nodded, then closed his eyes and said more quietly, “Cut the tip off. He only bit the tip. I don’t need it. It’s not my weapon hand. Cut it off. They are getting away!”

  Othniel hesitated only a moment before he motioned for one of his men to bring him a war axe, which he lined up and swung down on Caleb’s finger. Caleb felt a pierce of pain, and then it was only a dull ache. He glanced at the bloody stub of his finger, grateful that it was less than he thought. Only the top joint was missing. More than enough to be useful to him still.

  “Wrap it, quickly.”

  “Uncle, should I send the men?”

  “No, they are all cowards. I have failed them; they are not prepared. We have to do it. They have more of our women, and we have to stop them. Please, wrap the finger.”

  Othniel hastily cut a piece of cloth and went to work dressing Caleb’s finger to staunch the bleeding.

  Seconds later, Caleb stood and pulled his blade from the Anakite’s corpse. “Abnedeb will be cutting them off near the city. We can meet him down there.”

  More men streamed into the clearing. The alarm had been sounded all over their camp.

  Caleb approached one of his senior commanders and said, “Tell the others to stay near their tents. We don’t need everyone, and if the Anakites send others to raid again while we are chasing them, it will be disastrous.”

  The commander bowed, pivoted on his heel and began shouting orders to the men gathered around them. Caleb motioned for Othniel, and each of them led their detachments down the hillside through the thick forest.

  All Caleb could think about was the state of his army. They had been capable troops up to this point, brave in the face of Canaanite arrows. But the presence of the giant Anakim had robbed them of their courage. He knew they would be shocked at their first encounter, though he had not expected the disastrous results of today.

  At the bottom of the hill, they moved fast to cross the flooded wadi at a place spied out earlier, then began climbing the hill on the other side. Caleb searched for Abnedeb and his men in the clearing below the walls.

  “Do you see them?” he called to Othniel.

  “No, I do not.”

  Frustrated, Caleb increased his speed until he was within an arrow’s flight of the walls. The gate of the city stood in front of him. He turned in a circle looking for his men. “Abnedeb!” he called.

  “Uncle, please pull back,” Othniel said as he searched the walls above them. “If they see you, they will send
arrows.”

  Caleb ignored him and stared at the tree line, willing Abnedeb to appear. Where was the man? He had never let him down before—

  Something struck the ground nearby, sending a spray of mud and water at them. Caleb whirled around and saw it was a body, thrown from the top of the wall. It did not move. He felt a heavy sensation in his gut as he knelt beside the crumpled form.

  Abnedeb.

  Tied to the corpse with a string was a long lock of black hair. It had been cut from a female scalp, for there was a beauty clasp fastened to it.

  Caleb clenched his fists and glared up at the wall. He knew the message well. They had killed his men and had enslaved his women. Despite the rage in his heart, he fought to keep control of himself. He bent over and put his forehead in the mud to calm his spirit.

  The rain increased again, as did the wind. The next wave of storms from the Great Sea had entered the hill country.

  “Yahweh, what would you have me do?” he whispered. “What is your will?”

  His blood coursed hot. His body ached. But he waited.

  Soon, in his spirit:

  They will have a man, and you will meet him in battle, and all who are present will know that I am the Lord.

  Caleb held silent and prayed again, to be sure.

  The voice said again:

  They will have a man, and you will meet him in battle, and all who are present will know that I am the Lord.

  He would not have been able to explain clearly what he had heard or how he knew what had been said. He simply . . . knew. Caleb rose and fixed his eyes on the top of the gate, where they would be watching him.

  “My name is Caleb, and I am the son of Jephunneh! I am from Kenaz, adopted by the tribe of Judah!” His voice rang out against the city walls, clearly heard by the watch, even in the storm. “Send me down your man! Send me one of your sons of Anak, so that I may cut him to pieces in the name of Yahweh, God of Israel!”

  No one moved on the walls, and Caleb grew angrier at their ignoring him. “I am Caleb, the son of Jephunneh! I was there when Yahweh crushed the Egyptian armies with his fist and buried them in the sea! I will slaughter you all, man, woman, and child! Send me down your man and perhaps there will be mercy for some of you!”