by Lynn Austin
Joshua finally agreed to let the elders escort them to the palace, unable to see any danger. But he remained alert for trouble, his dagger ready by his side.
When he reached the top of the hill, Joshua got his first glimpse of Manasseh’s palace—they hadn’t dared approach it since their return. The once-familiar structure now resembled a fortress with thick barricades surrounding it. Even if an enemy had breached the city walls, Manasseh would have been safe inside. Joshua smiled, aware that no barricade in the world could have shielded the king from God’s judgment.
The guard booth beside the door stood vacant. Joshua and the others climbed the broad steps to the main doors and walked, unchallenged, into the palace. He wasn’t prepared for the sudden swell of emotion that flooded through him. His dream of restoring his homeland was being fulfilled at last. He choked back the knot of emotion that filled his throat, praying that he wouldn’t be required to speak.
An elderly chamberlain hurried toward them, his fearful gaze not on the strangers but on the chief elder. The old man looked tattered, unkempt, and vaguely familiar to Joshua.
Before the elders had a chance to speak, Amariah pushed forward to greet the man. “Ephraim! Is it really you?”
The chamberlain gaped at the prince for a moment, then recognition lit his face. He fell at Amariah’s feet. “Your Majesty! … Prince Amariah! Oh, you’ve come back to us!”
“Here, stand up, Ephraim, and let me have a look at you.”
As Amariah helped the chamberlain to his feet again, Joshua suddenly remembered him as one of their favorite palace servants from childhood. He felt another rush of emotion, but a tidal wave of anger quickly consumed it, for if Ephraim was still alive, then he must have stood idly by years ago when Manasseh condemned Abba to death. He would have to pay for his cowardice. Joshua was imagining Ephraim’s trial, the satisfaction of sentencing him to death, when Prince Amariah interrupted his thoughts.
“Ephraim, you remember Joshua, Lord Eliakim’s son, don’t you?”
Ephraim’s eyes met Joshua’s, but the hatred the old man must have seen in Joshua’s expression made him back away. “Yes, of course,” he said. “But you’ve changed, my lord, much more than Prince Amariah has.”
“Will you show us around?” Amariah asked. “It’s been so long, I’m not certain I can find my way anymore.”
“I would be honored, Your Majesty,” he said shakily. “I should warn you, though, that the Assyrians looted everything of value. We tried to fix things up and keep everything functioning in case King Manasseh returned, but …”
“It’s all right, Ephraim. I’m sure you did your best.”
They began a slow tour of the palace, beginning with the lower hallways, chambers, and council room. The palace administrator’s office was so changed that Joshua had a difficult time believing it was the same room his father had used. When they entered the throne room, Joshua stared for a long time at his father’s seat beside the king’s throne, but he was unable to picture him there. This room was Manasseh’s judgment hall—Abba had been unjustly condemned to death in this room.
Joshua wandered through the rest of the palace as if in a dream. Some rooms were still vaguely familiar, but most of it seemed so changed that he felt lost. Amariah grew more and more somber as they walked. Joshua recognized the prince’s emotion as grief.
The hardest rooms for Joshua to view were the private living quarters—the king’s chambers, where Manasseh had lived after Hezekiah died; the palace nursery where they had played together as children; the classroom where he’d spent so many hours with Manasseh and Rabbi Gershom. Joshua could only glimpse them briefly before turning away.
Throughout the tour, Ephraim eyed Prince Amariah nervously, as if fearful of displeasing him. “Tell me which rooms you would like, Your Majesty, and I’ll prepare them for you right away. The king’s chambers are the most comfortable—”
“No, Ephraim, I’m not the king. My nephew is. I’m sorry, but I don’t even know what his name is.”
“It’s Amon, Your Majesty.”
“Amon?” Joshua repeated. “Like the Egyptian god?”
“Yes, my lord. But the boy isn’t living here.”
“I know,” Amariah said. “When Amon returns, the king’s chambers will be his. For now, the rooms I lived in before I left will suit me just fine.”
“Which rooms would you like, my lord?” It took Joshua a moment to realize that the chamberlain was talking to him.
“I … I can’t … I won’t be living in the palace,” he managed to say.
The prince turned to him in surprise. “Joshua, why not?”
“I can’t live here…. Miriam and I will stay where we are for now.”
“I understand,” he said. “This is difficult for me, too. It’s not my home anymore. I thought it would be, but it isn’t. Most of my life has been lived on Elephantine Island.”
“Maybe things will change once our families arrive,” Joel said quietly.
Amariah shook his head. “I can’t ask Dinah to live here. I don’t even know if I can stand it myself. Manasseh is everywhere.”
“I know,” Joshua said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” The tour ended near the door to the royal walkway, leading up to the Temple. None of them had gone up to see it since their return. “Does anyone feel like taking a look?” Joshua asked.
Joel sighed. “All right. The first time will be the hardest, no matter how long I avoid it.”
When they reached the top of the hill, the three men could only stand outside the gate and stare in horror. Except for the sanctuary, the Temple Mount was unrecognizable. “God of Abraham,” Joshua murmured. He had never witnessed such a sight. The courtyards were crammed with forbidden images. The royal sorcerers, astrologers, and shrine prostitutes all continued to practice their idolatry, going about their rituals as if the king had never left Jerusalem. The scene was so vile that none of them could bear to walk through the gate.
“Let’s get out of here,” Amariah said.
The triumph Joshua felt earlier as he’d climbed the palace steps had all faded, leaving sorrow and emptiness in its place. He wondered, as they walked down the hill again, if the task they faced would prove too great for them. “We have so much work ahead of us,” he said. “We may as well accept the fact that it’s going to take a long time—probably the rest of our lives.”
Joel wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I hardly know where to begin.”
“I know what you mean,” Amariah said. “I wonder if this is how my father felt when he began to reform the nation after King Ahaz died.”
“This has to be worse,” Joshua said, “much worse. Manasseh has reigned for a long time. If any man ever deserved God’s wrath, it’s him.” He walked in silence for a moment, then said, “Ironic, isn’t it? My father’s first job for your father was repairing the Temple.”
He had been chasing memories of Abba all day, but they had eluded him, darting out of sight every time he tried to picture his face. There were two more places he wanted to visit, but he needed to confront them alone. “I’ll meet you later tonight,” he told the others. “I want some time to look around the city by myself.”
Joshua threaded his way through the jostling crowds, following the street that led to the Damascus Gate. Jerusalem seemed noisy and strident, the people he passed rushed and ill-tempered. He was surprised to find himself longing for the peace of Elephantine Island and the gentle sound of lapping water. When he reached the gate he paused, drawing a deep breath for courage. Then he hurried through it to face the king’s execution pit.
The site was unchanged, a well-used testimony to the brutality of Manasseh’s reign. Joshua stared at the scourging posts and the deadly stones that littered the ground, picturing them splattered with innocent blood. If he walked through the pit, he imagined that the earth itself would be soaked with it. Abba had suffered here, died here. Joshua didn’t even know where he was buried. He found it difficult to live with the fact that
he might never know. He hoped that Manasseh’s suffering was ten times greater than what he had inflicted here.
The last place Joshua visited proved to be the most painful of all. He reentered the city and wandered through the broad streets of elegant houses that stood below the palace until he found his boyhood home. Like the execution pit, it seemed unchanged, except that someone else now lived there. He gazed at the front door for a long time, the ache in his throat so large he couldn’t swallow. He thought of his mother’s words: “I will thank God for all that He has given me, not curse Him for all that I’ve lost.”
He would remember the good times, the happy memories: Mama sitting beneath the tree in their tiny garden, teaching him to count as they shelled dried beans; Abba crouching to greet his children after work, Joshua and Jerimoth both talking at once, Tirza and Dinah clamoring for his kisses. He imagined Grandpa Hilkiah returning home from the Temple in his prayer shawl, pausing to reverently kiss the mezuzah on the front door, his fingers caressing the box that contained the sacred law. Joshua peered at the doorframe, but the mezuzah, like his grandfather, was gone. He slid his fingers beneath his eye patch to wipe his eyes, then finally turned and hurried away.
As he made his way through the jumble of streets to his rented house near the marketplace, he silently thanked God for all that He had given him—for his peaceful life on Elephantine, for his infant grandson, for Nathan and for Miriam. Then he thanked God for Miriam’s stubbornness. Because of it, he would find her waiting for him in their tiny home, ready to comfort him.
Manasseh’s peace proved elusive; the warmth of God’s presence, fleeting. As he sat in his prison cell day after day, sifting through the refuse of his life, condemnation and guilt continually buried him beneath their weight, leaving him alone with his devastating doubts. God couldn’t possibly forgive him. His grace would never reach as far as this wretched pit. Despair forced Manasseh to sing the words of his mother’s favorite psalm over and over until he believed them once again. “‘He does not treat us as our sins deserve….’”
His mother had worshiped Asherah for a time. Rabbi Isaiah had admitted it was true. At last Manasseh understood why this psalm had been so important to her. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us….”
The only other measure of comfort Manasseh found was in prayer. It was through prayer that he eventually accepted the fact that he would live the rest of his life in this cell and probably die here. His life sentence no longer brought terror but quiet resignation. Even though God had forgiven him for all that he’d done, Manasseh still had to suffer the consequences of his sins. And that seemed right to him.
Slowly the months passed. Soon it would be a year since his arrest. As the nights grew colder and summer faded into fall, he begged the guard for a blanket against the chill. He lay huddled in the corner one morning, trying to keep warm, when he heard two sets of footsteps descending the stairs. Manasseh sat up in surprise, listening. He was astonished when the guards started prying the bar loose from the cell door, as they had when they’d removed Zerah’s body. They must be giving him the blanket he had asked for. They must be removing the bar to shove it inside. He heard the bar fall to the floor with a loud crash, and he crouched near the door, ready to take the blanket.
“You may come out,” a voice said.
Manasseh didn’t understand. Did they want him to come out for the blanket? He couldn’t seem to move.
“I said, you may come out, King Manasseh.”
No. He remembered the taunting games the guards had played once before and refused to believe it. He waited for the joke to end, for his food and water to slide through the hole as they always did. But the hand that reached into his cell was empty.
“Come … take my hand. Let me help you.”
The door to his cell stood open. The guard was telling him he could crawl through it. Manasseh had dreamt of doing it so many times that this seemed unreal, another dream. Slowly, he lay down on his stomach and inched forward, his eyes clamped tightly closed against disappointment. As soon as his shoulders emerged, two strong sets of hands gripped him beneath his arms and pulled him the rest of the way. Manasseh cried out in terror.
“It’s all right, we’re not going to hurt you,” one of the guards said as they hauled him to his feet. Manasseh’s knees wouldn’t support his trembling legs. The men propelled him down the passageway toward the stairs against his will, away from the safety of his cell.
“Stop…. What are you doing to me? Where are you taking me?”
“We’re setting you free.”
“No … no …” he moaned. He refused to believe it, refused to trade his quiet acceptance and resignation for false hope and then despair.
When they reached the room at the top of the stairs, the huge, open space terrified Manasseh after being enclosed for so long. He felt as if he were shrinking. Strange, elongated shapes floated past him, and several moments passed before he realized that he was seeing people. He clapped his hands over his ears to escape the deafening sounds that clamored all around him. When one of the guards tried to pull his hands down, he resisted.
“Please,” the guard said. “Give me your hands, King Manasseh. I want to take your shackles off.”
He hesitated, afraid to believe him, then finally held out his trembling hands. The guard removed the heavy bronze fetters from his wrists, then his ankles, for the first time in nearly a year. Manasseh felt naked without them, his body so light he was afraid he might float. He rubbed his arms in disbelief, staring at the bands of skin that had remained cleaner beneath his bonds.
Someone took his arm and gently guided him into a smaller room close by. So much time had passed since Manasseh had felt another person’s touch that the warmth of it brought tears to his eyes. Three servants waited for him beside a plastered mikveh large enough to immerse himself in; a fragrant scent he couldn’t identify filled the room. As they stripped off his filthy rags and helped him into the hot bath, he wept. God’s grace and forgiveness had stripped and cleansed him this same way. “Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow….”
Manasseh clung to his blue tassel, moving it from hand to hand as the servants scrubbed him clean. The water became so murky that he could no longer see the bottom. Afterward, they trimmed his hair and beard. He stared at the long strands that dropped to the floor, astonished to see that they were white. Finally, the servants made him lie down as they carefully filed off the bronze hook and removed it from his nose.
When Manasseh stood before a mirror, dressed in new robes, he didn’t recognize the very old man facing him. He lifted a shaking hand to touch his sunken cheeks, his grizzled beard, and the man in the mirror did the same. “That’s not me…. It can’t be me,” he murmured. He saw a dead man, pulled from his grave, with gray skin and black-rimmed eyes. Most terrifying of all was the glimpse of hell he saw in those eyes.
Someone took his arm again, and he floated, dreamlike, out of the building for the first time. How beautiful the world was! Manasseh wept aloud when he saw the azure sky, the billowing clouds, the radiant sun. And birds! He had forgotten about birds—how they sang, how they soared through the air. He stood in awe to watch a palm tree swaying in the wind, its long, graceful branches waving like green arms. Beautiful … oh, so beautiful! He lifted his face and the breeze caressed it like fingers, then ruffled through his hair. Everything he gazed at or touched seemed graced by the hand of God, a gift just for him.
They led him into another building, into a room with walls painted white and blue and ocher. Thick woven rugs covered the floor, and he stopped to kneel, to trace their swirling, multicolored patterns. He had to touch everything, feeling the nubby texture of the plastered walls, the fine weave of the linen tablecloth, the cool smoothness of the bronze lavers. He had nearly forgotten what colors were, but now they exploded all around him: pulsing crimsons, cool greens, dancing yellows. A woman entered with a tray of food, and he stared at her,
transfixed. How astonishing a human face was! So soft, so delicate and perfect!
Then he smelled the food. When they seated him at the table laden with delicacies, he could only stare at it and weep, afraid that everything would disappear if he touched it, like the food always did in his dreams. He ate a few bites of each item they served him, but his shrunken stomach and starved palate were unable to tolerate more. One sip of wine made his head reel, and he pushed the cup aside, his senses already overburdened.
After the meal, Manasseh was reunited with the half-dozen of his nobles who had survived. They looked like walking skeletons, and he was terrified of them at first. His secretary was an ancient, crippled man, barely able to walk or speak. Together, they stood before the Assyrian rabshekeh.
“You’re free to return home, King Manasseh,” the rabshekeh told him. “Our investigation has found you innocent of all charges of conspiracy. Your record has been cleared. We will provide you with transportation so you can return to your homeland.”
Manasseh couldn’t understand what was happening to him. Experiencing God’s forgiveness in his prison cell had been a far greater gift than he had expected or deserved. To be pardoned by the emperor, set free, allowed to return home, was beyond his comprehension. He fell at the Assyrian’s feet, weeping at Yahweh’s goodness.
That night he slept in a room with two tall windows and shutters that opened to the starry night sky. Manasseh stared in wonder at the heavens until the air grew too cold and he had to close the latches. He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Instead, he traveled back in time on his final memory journey.
Abba had held his hand as they’d walked through the palace treasure house. The vessels of silver and gold, the caskets of precious stones and jewels left Manasseh awestruck. “All of this will be yours someday,” Abba had told him, “but listen carefully, son. Don’t let worldly goods or the praises of men fill you with pride. That’s what happened to me. I did nothing to deserve all this wealth. Everything you see is a gift from God.”
