Source

by James A. Michener

  The old man walked across the sand until he could look back and see his entire encampment, all the flickering lights and the shepherds guarding their flocks, and he remembered that night so very long ago when his people had been lost far east of Damascus in the worst desert they had ever traveled, and all were at the point where they must perish, but his father, Zebul, had said, “In the cool of the night we must push on.” The stricken Hebrews had protested, “We can go no farther,” but he had struck the tents and they had moved on till the next dawn, finding nothing. Through that day they had rested, parched and dying, and at night Zebul again said, “In the cool of the night we must march on,” and again they had protested that they were perishing, but they marched and they did this for three nights—wholly incapable of moving another step yet moving nevertheless—and on that last night when they refused to march, saying that they were finished, he went through the tents lashing out at them and shouting in rage, “Do you think, men of faltering faith, that El-Shaddai has brought us to this spot to perish without purpose? Does he not have an enemy waiting at the well to kill us in battle? Or a king to carry us off in slavery? Have we come so far to die inconsequentially? Up! Up! Let us see what terrible thing El-Shaddai has waiting for us.” And he drove his Hebrews, dying as they had threatened, but dying on the way to the well, not in some surrendered heap. And as the last sun rose—the one that none could have survived—Zebul found the well, and there they rested for three years.

  Tonight Zadok did not intend to pray. No further communication between him and El-Shaddai was needed, but he did look with an aching hunger at the desert which he had known for all but seven years of his life, and he wondered if he would ever again find the peace, the consolation he had known amidst its sweep and challenge. He sensed that henceforth his vision would be diminished and his nearness to the stars removed. A way of life was being lost beyond the point of recovery and he was apprehensive about the future, but he felt certain that wherever his Hebrews went they would carry with them memorials of these desert years when they had lived close to their god.

  Now he turned from his study of the tents, as if he wished to stand where none of his people could see him, and when he was hidden he wept, for he alone was conscious of the sin he had committed. “Almighty one, forgive me,” he said, and he spoke to El-Shaddai as if he were a little boy communicating with his father at the end of a day of naughtiness. “Six years ago, when the last of the clans moved south, you came to me in the desert and said, ‘Zadok, it is time for you to leave the desert and occupy the walled town.’ But I was afraid of battle. I was afraid of the town. I wanted to hold on to the security of the desert, and here I procrastinated, offering you this excuse and that. My sons came to me, asking that we move our flocks into the green valleys, but them too I ignored, and for the past six years I have stood against god and man, afraid to move. You were patient with me, El-Shaddai, but last month you spoke to Epher and sent him exploring by himself. Now he has returned with your commands and we shall move, as you ordered me to do six years ago.” He humbled himself in the dust and prayed, “El-Shaddai, forgive me. I was afraid.”

  There was a rustling sound across the sand, as if a fox were running, and the voice of El-Shaddai said to Zadok the Righteous, “As long as you live, old man, you will be free to ignore my commands. But in time I will grow impatient and will speak to others, as I have spoken to Epher.”

  “My home is the desert,” Zadok said in self-justification, “and I was afraid to leave.”

  “I waited,” El-Shaddai said, “because I knew that if you did not love your home in the desert you would not love me either. I am glad that you are now ready.”

  “El-Shaddai!” the patriarch cried in anguish, laying bare the real fear that had held him immobilized. “In the town will we know you as we have known you in the desert?”

  “Inside the walls it will not be easy for me to speak with you,” the deity answered, “but I shall be there.”

  With this eternal promise to his Hebrews, El-Shaddai departed, and when dawn came Zadok was at last prepared to order the small red tent to be dismantled.

  In those centuries when the Hebrews dwelt in the desert, each clan maintained a sacred tent constructed of three layers of skin: upon a wooden frame so small that two men could not have crawled inside, goatskins were stretched and upon them were laid skins of rams dyed red with expensive colors brought from Damascus, and over the whole were thrown strips of soft badger fur, so that the tent was clearly a thing apart. Whenever Zadok indicated that his clan was to halt in a given place, the small red tent was erected first, signifying that this was their home, and on days like this, when the Hebrews were permanently abandoning an area, the last tent to be struck was always the red one, and it came down as the elders stood in prayer.

  “We have lived in the desert as you commanded,” Zadok prayed, “and if we are now to occupy green fields, it is because you wish it so.”

  When the tent was dismantled only a carefully chosen few were allowed to see what it contained. Zadok’s tabernacle held a curiously shaped piece of wood with which Zebul had killed a coward who had tried to convince the Hebrews to die in the desert rather than attempt the three-day march to the oasis east of Damascus. There was a string of beads whose history no one knew and a ram’s horn which had been used nearly a thousand years ago to usher in a memorable new year. There was a piece of cloth from Persia, and that was all. Most particularly El-Shaddai was not in the tent, nor was there anything representing El-Shaddai. He lived elsewhere, on the mountain that did not exist.

  “Our god is not in these shreds of leather,” Zadok reminded his Hebrews. “He does not live in this tabernacle. He is not a god held prisoner in our tents, but we are held prisoner in his.” As the assistants packed the tabernacle prior to the march inland, the old man added a fifth item which would henceforth ride with the clan of Zadok wherever it went, in memory of the beneficence El-Shaddai had showered upon them in the desert. From the arid waste he picked a rock of no significant shape; it was just a rock from the desert which they would see no more but which they would remember whenever they saw the stone of Zadok.

  At the head of the seven hundred Hebrews as they started forth walked a little donkey bearing the red tent, and behind the beast came old Zadok, sandals on his feet, coarse woolen breeches tied at his waist, a light woolen robe slung over his shoulders, and a long staff in his left hand to steady himself on the rocky path. Sometimes his beard flowed back over his left shoulder and his age-dimmed eyes were squinted as he tried to pick out the way ahead, but in this task his sons helped him. At his side walked the young slave girl bearing a waterskin, and behind him came his wives, his eighteen sons, his dozen daughters, their husbands and wives, their cousins, grandchildren, uncles and all who had attached themselves to this sprawling unit. The goats, the sheep, the few cattle and the dogs came along, but mostly the donkeys did the work, for on their backs rode the tents, the food and the babies. At a rise atop the first hill many of the Hebrews stopped to look back with longing at the great desert which had held them safely for so many generations; but Zadok did not. He had said his farewell in his heart, where the anxiety of this day would live forever.

  Decisions on the westward trip were made by Epher, the red-headed youth who had often waged war against walled towns, and on the nineteenth day this stocky warrior brought his clan and its wandering flocks to the crest of a hill—in later years it would be remembered as a mountain—from which the Hebrews looked down for the first time into the land of Canaan, lying to the west of a beautiful river called even then the Jordan, and it was seen to be a land of extraordinary richness. Never before had the people of Zadok seen so many trees.

  “We shall cross the river there,” Epher explained. “To the right lies a small lake and to the left a large sea shaped like a harp and called Kinnereth.”

  “When we cross the river, which way do we turn?” his father asked.

  “Neither right nor left.
We march through those hills ahead and come at last to the road leading west.”

  As the Hebrews gathered about their patriarch some argued that if the land flanking the river was so rich it would be folly to move past it in search of better, but Epher for once preached caution, warning his brothers, “Not far to the north lies Hazor, a mighty city, and we shall be fortunate if its army allows us to cross the river, much less occupy lands which they call their own.” The men who would have to do the fighting if the Canaanites attacked while they were fording the river looked with apprehension toward the unseen city, but old Zadok looked not at the potential enemy but at the centuries ahead, and El-Shaddai allowed him to foresee men like Joshua and Gideon, and he prophesied: “In some future day Hazor will be humbled and the sons of El-Shaddai will occupy all Canaan, as we now move forward to occupy our small portion.” And he gave thanks that this fair land was to be the heritage of the Hebrews. But it was young Epher who led the clan noiselessly to the banks of the Jordan, where the families crossed the river without being detected and headed westward, eluding the armies of Hazor.

  As the Hebrews skirted the hills that lay between the Jordan and Akka they were free to inspect at first hand the rich valleys of Canaan and were fascinated by the numerous rivers that carried water to vineyards, the slopes where more grass grew than sheep could eat, the olive trees, the fruit orchards, the bees humming by laden with pollen, and the flight of innumerable pigeons waiting to be trapped. As the desert had reached to the horizon in barrenness, so these valleys reached to the hills in fruitfulness, and the Hebrews resolved that if they must fight for this inviting land they were ready to do so. As they drew close to Makor, Epher began forming his people into a more compact unit; the donkey with the red tent continued in front but cattle were moved near the center of the slowly moving mass and children were stopped from ranging too far from their mothers. A sense of excitement pervaded the clan, for all sensed that the moment of trial was at hand. Finally, as the time approached when day and night were of equal length, the first day of spring when the new year began, Epher and Ibsha moved ahead to scout the exact location of the target town, and in the afternoon they ran back to advise their father that early next morning he would reach the town called Makor. That night the timorous old man pitched his camp some miles east of the town and assembled his sons and the leaders of the subsidiary families.

  “We have been marching toward a battle,” he told them, “and tomorrow we shall see the walls you want to assail. But there shall be no battle.” His sons murmured among themselves. “We shall exist in peace among the Canaanites,” Zadok continued, “they with their fields and we with ours, they with their gods and we with ours.”

  The more daring men of the clan opposed this idea, but Zadok was firm. “El-Shaddai has promised us this land, and it will be ours. But not through bloodshed.”

  The idea of a negotiated occupancy disappointed the Hebrews. Was it for this that they had made their flint weapons? And traded with traveling smithies for bronze axe heads and arrow tips? They remonstrated with the patriarch and demanded that in the morning they march in battle array to the walls and assault them.

  “The walls of Makor we shall overcome without the use of force,” he argued.

  “You haven’t seen them,” his younger sons protested.

  “But El-Shaddai has seen them,” he insisted, “and to him all walls are alike. They are captured only when he gives the command.” He warned his sons and the other eager warriors that it was the will of their god that occupation of the fields be peaceful, and his sons said, “Ask him again what we must do,” for they could not visualize obtaining fields without bloodshed; but they trusted their father as a man who spoke directly to his god, and when he walked alone down the Damascus road, coming at last to a valley of red rock, they did not try to follow him, for they knew that the old man was with his god.

  “What are we to do?” the indecisive patriarch asked the face of the rock.

  “As I explained in the desert,” came the patient voice, “you are to occupy the land apportioned to you.”

  “But in the desert you did not tell me whether I should bring war or peace. My impatient sons are eager for war and the death of many people.”

  “Are you still afraid of war, Zadok?”

  “Yes. When I was a boy and we were besieging Timri …”

  “I remember Timri.”

  “You ordered my father Zebul to destroy the town for its abominations, and he forced me to stand beside him as he slaughtered men and women and children. And my ankles were red with blood. And I got sick and wanted never to see a spear again. And I hated you, El-Shaddai, for you were cruel.”

  “I remember that night,” the god said. “You were seven years old, and you cursed me, and was it not then that I spoke to you for the first time? On the morrow of Timri when your father was sleeping near the serpent that would have bitten him?”

  Zadok recalled that remote midday, fifty-seven years ago, when he had first spoken with his god, and not once in the intervening years had it occurred to him that El-Shaddai had chosen him that day precisely because of his opposition the night before to the massacre of Timri. El-Shaddai could have elected older men and wiser as his voice, but he had chosen the child Zadok because even as a boy of seven he had been willing to judge the questions of mercy and humanity with his own conscience.

  “I have not spoken to you of war or peace,” the deity continued, “because these are matters which I alone determine. To you they are of no concern. Occupy the lands, and whether there shall be war or peace I will decide—according to how the children of Canaan receive me.”

  “Then I must approach the town without knowing?”

  “You man of little faith! Did you not live in the desert on those terms? Who can be certain that when he approaches a town the walls will open to his command? Yet I have promised you that the walls of Makor shall do so, and you ask—in war or in peace? Remember your grandmother Rachel, who went to the well of Zaber eight hundred days without event and on the next day she went and was killed by a scorpion. Could she have prevented this by taking precaution? Remember your son Zattu, who passed through the pit where a hundred men had died of serpent stings, and he came out alive. Could he have arranged this by taking thought? I am El-Shaddai, and I have promised you that the walls of Makor shall open to your command. Can you, by taking thought, increase that promise?”

  The old man humbled himself before his god, but when he returned to his sons he interpreted El-Shaddai’s words to his own liking: “Tomorrow there shall be no war.” The Hebrews, content that this was the will of their god, slept that night without fires and in the morning girded themselves for the final march to the walled town.

  … THE TELL

  On one unhappy day three different groups of tourists came demanding to see the Candlestick of Death, and after Cullinane had explained three times that it was on display in Chicago he felt depressed. He locked his office door and sat inside brooding about the problems of the dig. It happens every time, he reflected. You start what looks like a simple dig. Historical fragments hiding in earth. And before you’ve filled the first basket you find yourself digging into your own understanding of the civilization involved. He leaned back and recalled his days in Arizona. He had begun that excavation knowing as much as most experts about the American Indian, but had ended by spending two years of concentrated research into their mental processes, reviewing everything written on the subject and venturing far afield for collateral suggestions from the Ainu in Japan or the Eskimo in Alaska. Now he spent his days digging physically into the earth of Makor and his nights probing the spirit of the Judaism that had been responsible for building so much of the tell.

  When he was satisfied that the last tourists had gone, he unlocked his door and wandered into Eliav’s office. “Have you any new material that I could read about the Jews?”

  “You catch me off guard,” Eliav replied.

  “The nonsens
e I’ve been hearing today. I’m disgusted. I’d like to bite into something solid.”

  “You’ve read De Vaux, Kaufmann, Albright?”

  Cullinane nodded.

  “Maimonides?”

  “He’s the best.”

  “There’s one better.”

  “What?”

  “Read Deuteronomy five times.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No. Deuteronomy. Five times.”

  “What’s your thought?”

  “It’s the great central book of the Jews and if you master it you’ll understand us.”

  “But is it worth five readings?”

  “Yes, because most Gentiles think of the ancient Hebrews as curious relics who reached Israel ten thousand years ago in some kind of archaic mystery.”

  “How do you think it happened?” Cullinane asked.

  “Deuteronomy is so real to me that I feel as if my immediate ancestors—say, my great-grandfather with desert dust still on his clothes—came down that valley with goats and donkeys and stumbled onto this spot.”

  “Will reading Deuteronomy give me such a feeling?”

  “Read it five times and see,” Eliav countered.

  It was in this way that Cullinane renewed his acquaintance with the old Jewish masterpiece which he had first seriously studied at Princeton. Deuteronomy purports to be the farewell address of General Moses to his Jews as they are about to leave the wilderness and enter into the land of Canaan, and at the opening line, “These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan,” Cullinane had the feeling that Deuteronomy resembled General Washington’s farewell address to his colonial soldiers; and the analogy was apt.