The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Each woman gave signs of a solitary existence. They did not acknowledge one another. Perhaps neither knew that the other was there.

  The night wind began to blow from the east to the sea. It was a cold wind. It caught the fresh scent of the mortar now drying in the door of Solomon’s tomb. Both women drew their robes close about their bodies. They covered their faces. Only their eyes showed above the veils. Neither woman wept.

  So Solomon slept with his fathers, and Rehoboam his son reigned in his stead.

  PART FIVE

  Prophets

  EIGHTEEN

  The Man of God from Judah

  I

  IN THE SEVENTH YEAR after the kingdoms of Judah and Israel had split in bitterness, a rawboned man walked the ridge road north, intense and frightened, but unswerving.

  He was young and sunburnt. He walked with the long stride of a farmer, and he came from the hills of Judah. If he worked a plot there, it was small and stony; and if his crop was barley, then his journey was costing him a harvest since this was the eighth month of the year, when barley is cut in the hills.

  The man’s manner was rural, his aspect blunt. But his eyes had a hunted quality, staring straight ahead. He seemed fixed on some terrible task.

  He was muttering aloud: “O altar, altar, men’s bones shall be burned upon you—”

  Bareheaded, barefooted, the man from Judah did not pause to eat or to drink or to rest.

  It was noon when he passed Jerusalem going north.

  A band of soldiers was patrolling the land between Judah and Israel.

  “Turn back!” they cried.

  The young man neither stopped nor answered.

  One of the soldiers ran after him, calling, “Brother, there’s no one in Israel to protect you. Now that they have their own king, Judah is their enemy!”

  The soldier fell in step with the farmer. He looked into his face and, seeing there both dread and youth, pitied him.

  “Why are you so fierce? Are you seeking some vengeance?”

  “No.”

  “Are you angry?”

  “No.”

  “Then turn back. Come back with me.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Where are you going?”

  “To Bethel.”

  “Oh, sir! Not Bethel! Not now!” The soldier grabbed the young man’s garment, but the traveler had the mindless strength of a mule, and the soldier was nearly yanked from his feet.

  “King Jeroboam is holding a feast in Bethel today,” the soldier pleaded. “Jeroboam himself will be offering sacrifices to the golden calves that he has fashioned.”

  The farmer said, “I go to talk to the king.” His voice trembled with dread. He was in anguish. But he never once broke stride. He said, “God has sent me to talk to King Jeroboam.”

  The soldier stopped in the middle of the road and watched the farmer toil north into the land of Israel.

  “They’ll kill him,” he said.

  II

  WHEN SOLOMON DIED, his son Rehoboam was immediately anointed king of Judah. But just as David had been crowned twice, once over Judah and once over the northern tribes of Israel, so Rehoboam knew that he must travel north to receive the coronation of that kingdom, too.

  Israel had loved David, because David loved them as much as he loved his own tribe, Judah.

  But Solomon had distinguished between Israel and Judah, laying on Israel a greater burden, rigor, and taxation.

  Therefore, when Rehoboam came seeking their allegiance, the northern tribes decided to exchange it for promises of equality. Before they would crown him, they began a negotiation with him, under the leadership of Jeroboam the son of Nebat.

  With a formal dignity, Jeroboam said, “Welcome, Rehoboam, King of Judah.”

  Rehoboam said, “Is this the best that Israel can offer, a welcome from one who supervised workers in my father’s kingdom?”

  “It is,” said Jeroboam, “the only welcome the king of Judah can expect.”

  “Didn’t you spend these last years hiding in Egypt? Why do you suddenly appear when I come to receive the crown of Israel?”

  The two men were seated among their advisors on a large platform. People of the northern tribes surrounded the platform listening intently, since their future would be defined by these discussions.

  Jeroboam stood up and walked five paces away from the king of Judah, then turned and said, “King Solomon made our yoke heavy. He did not deal with Israel as gently as he did with Judah. He crushed us with labor as if we were a conquered race. Ifyou, Rehoboam, will lighten the hard service of your father, we will serve you.”

  Rehoboam turned to his advisors.

  In slow, uncertain tones, the old man counseled compromise, encouraging him to accept Israel’s offer. But the young men were adamant: “The weak are eaten,” they said, “but the strong are respected.”

  So Rehoboam rose up on the platform and delivered his answer: “My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. Did he chastise you with whips? Well, I, sir, will chastise you with scorpions. Do not expect me to weaken before you.”

  Jeroboam didn’t hesitate. He lifted his voice to the multitude, crying, “Go home! Go home, Israel. We have nothing to do with the house of David anymore.” Then he pointed a finger at Rehoboam and said, “But you, sir—you had better look after your own house!”

  The northern tribes did not anoint Rehoboam their king.

  He tried to command their obedience, but they murdered the officers he sent to them.

  Israel anointed Jeroboam their king, so the northern tribes divided themselves from the southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah, and though they were rooted in the same history, there were two kingdoms, now, and these kingdoms were at war.

  III

  THE CITY OF BETHEL was crowded with pilgrims. They had gathered for the king’s festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month, and the king himself was there, luminous in the robes of a priest, robes of an Egyptian cut and glory.

  The day was stately, its ceremonies majestic, for Jeroboam had learned the manner of absolute monarchs. In Dan he had built a holy shrine and a golden calf for worship; in Bethel, likewise, there was a shrine and an altar of awful proportions.

  Even now King Jeroboam, having ascended the steps of this altar, was raising a bowl with incense above his royal head, preparing to pour it on burning coals. And the crowd, awaiting the white smoke of the deity, had caught its breath. Bethel was tense and still.

  The bowl began to tip—

  When suddenly a rough, untutored voice cried out at the foot of the altar: “O altar, altar! Thus says the Lord, A son of the house of David shall sacrifice on you the priests who burn incense on you—”

  The crowd fell back from this outrage. It was a fellow in goatskin, a farmer! And like a madman, sweating and fierce, he was addressing the altar.

  “Thus says the Lord, Men’s bones shall be burned on you!”

  King Jeroboam peered down at the solitary figure. “Who are you, sir? Your accent is from Judah?”

  “And this,” cried the young man, “is the sign that the Lord has spoken: The altar shall be torn down, and the ashes upon it shall be poured out—”

  “Seize him,” commanded the king. He stretched out his right hand toward the man from Judah and said, “Someone seize him and—”

  But in that instant the king’s hand dried up. It shrank and cracked like skeletal bones.

  “Man of God!” he cried. The king could not pull his arm back to his body. The crowd drew farther and farther back. Even the young farmer gaped at what had happened. “Man of God, entreat the Lord your God for me, that he would restore my hand.”

  Never blinking, never moving, the young man muttered, “Lord, could you restore it as he said?”

  While everyone watched, the blood crept into the king’s right hand again, pinking the pale color and fattening the flesh until his fingers opened and closed and he put it under his robe and pressed it to himself
r />   The man of God from Judah released a huge sigh.

  King Jeroboam gazed at him a moment, then he said, “Come home with me. Refresh yourself, and I will reward you.”

  The young farmer shook his head. From this moment on he was unable to lift his eyes up to the king’s face again. He said, “No. The Lord commanded me neither to eat bread nor to drink water until I returned home. No.”

  With every sign of simple fear, he glanced around himself, then turned and began to walk through the crowd with great haste, evidently going home.

  But at the same time five other men dashed to their father’s house to tell him what they had seen. He was a prophet of some repute in Bethel. When he heard what another prophet had been able to accomplish in his own territory, he said, “Saddle my donkey! I want to meet this man of God!”

  IV

  IN THE SEVENTH YEAR after he had lost the northern kingdom to Jeroboam, King Rehoboam of Judah died. His son Abijam ascended to his throne and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He permitted male cult prostitutes to practice in Judah.

  So both kingdoms turned from the Lord their God. For Jeroboam had established priests in all the pagan high places. His shrines at Dan, on his northernmost border, and at Bethel, on his southern border, ten miles from Jerusalem, were meant to prevent his people from worshiping at Solomon’s temple. Of the golden calves in those places, he said, “Behold your gods, O Israel—the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

  So evil was the house of Jeroboam, that the Lord determined to wipe it out altogether. King Jeroboam died a natural death; but his son reigned less than two years and then was murdered by an officer of his army, Baasha. This man Baasha proclaimed himself ruler of Israel, and then he tried to ensure his royal authority by slaughtering every member of the house of Jeroboam.

  But the evil done by Jeroboam was repeated by Baasha and by his son Elah. A pattern of evil had developed among the kings of the north, and the Lord—the God who had led Israel on eagle’s wings out of Egypt—restlessly kept seeking a ruler who would remember his covenant and honor him.

  The house of Baasha fell exactly as had Jeroboam’s, and the commander-in-chief of the armies of Israel was elevated to the throne. This was Omri, who ruled with more foresight and a wiser administration than any king before him in the northern kingdom.

  Omri built a new city for his capital. He named it Samaria, and he fortified it with strong walls and soldiers, as he did other cities near his borders. His reputation grew in the nations around him, and when he died, his son ruled in his place: one of the greatest kings of Israel, Ahab.

  V

  THE YOUNG FARMER from Judah was exhausted. As soon as his task had been completed and the terrible force of the Lord had released him, he found that his bones were quivering like reeds in the wind.

  Two miles south of Bethel he turned from his path and collapsed beneath an oak tree. It seemed to him that he dozed, but the sun made a buzzing in his ears.

  Then a voice called, “Ho! Are you the man who came from Judah to speak against the altar?”

  The farmer opened his eyes. He saw an old man climbing from a donkey, white hair, a full white beard.

  “I am,” he said.

  “Come,” said the old man, crinkling his eyes, smiling. “Come home with me and eat my bread.”

  The poor farmer shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “The Lord commanded me neither to eat bread nor to drink water until I am home again.”

  “Yes,” said the old man. “I heard about that command. But I am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you to your house, that he may eat and drink.”

  The young man still shook his head.

  But the old man put out a hand and touched his shoulder. “You have had a difficult task, and you have accomplished it well, and now you are weary. Don’t I know the sacred weariness that comes over prophets?”

  The farmer felt his chin trembling. He was very close to tears.

  “And,” said the white-haired man, “the deed is done, isn’t it? Of course it is. Come. Come home with me.”

  He slipped his hand beneath the farmer’s elbow.

  With tears the young man rose up. The old prophet persuaded him to ride the donkey, and together they returned to Bethel and to the prophet’s house. They ate. They drank. In the dark, they lay down to sleep.

  In the morning the man from Judah, rose up refreshed and prepared to travel the ridge route home again. His host saddled a donkey and gave it to him as a gift.

  But the young farmer never arrived at home. He never harvested his barley.

  VI

  ABIJAM THE KING of Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. He reigned only three years.

  When he died, his brother Asa was anointed king—and this man did what was right. Asa burned the pagan images Abrjam had allowed. Moreover, he removed the idols of his grandfather Solomon, reversing that great king’s policies in order to make the worship of the Lord God exclusive in Judah.

  Asa ruled in Judah forty years.

  When he died, his son Jehoshaphat ruled in his stead. He, too, was a just and faithful king. He ruled during the years when Ahab was king in the north; nevertheless, though Ahab’s foreign wife Jezebel brought priests of Ba’al into Israel, no such priest ever entered Judah so long as Jehoshaphat ruled in the south.

  He initiated judicial reform in Judah by installing objective judges in key cities throughout his realm. At the same time he set up in Jerusalem a court of appeals, in order to root out injustice wherever it might occur. He ruled twenty-four years.

  But when he died, his son Jehoram did what was evil immediately. He ordered the assassination of all his brothers, together with their captains and their followers, so that no one would dispute his rulership. Bloody footprints were left in the halls of Solomon’s glorious palace. Soon pagan practices leaked down from the north. Priests of Ba’al found place in Judah, and leaders in Judah neglected the Lord their God.

  BUT GOD NEVER forgot his people. God never forgot the ten tribes of Israel in the north, or Benjamin and Judah in the south. Passionately the Lord kept calling them to repentance and to faithfulness again. For their own sake he pleaded with them to remember his covenant and to obey his statutes, because they could not survive apart from him. They would lose the land! They would be scattered among the nations, and they would die.

  So said the Lord who had met them at Sinai. So said the mighty God who had chosen to dwell among his people.

  Year after year God uttered his love to them by means of fierce and sacred figures, solitary souls of terrifying eloquence: the prophets.

  VII

  THE SAME DAY in which he had sent the young man back to Judah, news was brought to the old prophet in Bethel. His donkey was seen standing on one side of the ridge route. On the other side stood a lion. Between them lay a corpse with its throat torn open—a bite of the lion, no doubt.

  The old prophet rode out to see this sight.

  Indeed, the donkey was his.

  And the dead man was the young farmer from Judah.

  The white-haired prophet said, “Indeed, this was a man of God. Everything he spoke was the word of the Lord. When he disobeyed and ate bread, he was punished.”

  The old prophet walked past the jaws of the lion and gathered the young man’s body up in his arms.

  “Alas, my brother,” he said. He laid the dead man on the back of the donkey that stood waiting, then he mounted his own beast and rode back to Bethel, mourning: “Alas, my brother!”

  At evening he buried the man from Judah in his own tomb, and he said to his sons, “When I die, bury my bones by the bones of this prophet. For the saying which he cried against the altar in Bethel and against all the pagan places in the cities of Israel—that saying shall surely come to pass.”

  NINETEEN

  Elijah

  I

  THERE WAS A GRAND WEDDING in the city of Samari
a. King Ahab was taking a new wife—a woman of Tyre, the daughter of King Ethbaal: for the two great kingdoms of Israel and Tyre were sealing an alliance. Hereafter they would exchange goods and join military force against common foes in Damascus and Mesopotamia. Tyre would draw food from Israelite farmland for colonial expansion all along the northern coast of Africa. Rich landholders in Israel would gobble tiny farms and grow yet richer. Ahab, having thus strengthened his hand, would have the means to make a similar alliance with Judah to the south—and new blood would enter the family of Omri and Ahab.

  The king’s wife was Jezebel. She was strong and handsome, a woman to the purple born. Ahab’s father had not always been king. Ahab, therefore, continued to feel the constraints of common law. He would grow morose and gloomy when some law denied him his desire. But sunny Jezebel simply broke the laws. They did not exist for royalty. Ahab delighted in the license of his magnificent queen.

  There was a wedding in Samaria.

  The Tyrian bride set her eyes in antimony, drawing black lines at the edges of her eyelids to make of her merest glance a flash of brilliance. She adorned her head in sinuous oriental fashion. She clothed herself in shimmering purple with a gold weave beneath the bosom. She rode through the city on a plush divan, causing the faces of her people to blush and to bow. Behind her walked forty priests of Ba’al Melqart, the god whom she had worshiped in her land, the god she would surely worship in this land, too. Ahead of her waited a powerful husband and a bed, an ebony masterpiece inlaid with ivory. Wealth went with the woman. Wealth preceded her. She would not have married Israel if it had not been said that Ahab had a house of ivory and rooms of precious stone.

  There was a wedding in Samaria.

  There was celebration in this city of new stone and modern fortification; city whose massive walls of salients and recesses were a better defense than any Solomon had built; Samaria, whose wide avenues and fresh houses exploded with the population of Israel. People cheered the progress of their new queen. The king had said: Behold the future! And merchants and soldiers and landholders, vintners, masons, carpenters, smiths, and children all went wild at the declaration. A dull roaring deafened the city, a glad hilarity because of this future.