The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  After the earthquake, fire spouted from the holes that had opened in Sinai. Red flame shot from its hollows, a black smoke boiled upward, ash went up as high as heaven, and the prophet cried out in terror. But the Lord was not in the fire.

  Then after the fire came the very sound of stillness, a calm so vast and quiet that Elijah could hear it. When he heard the voice of the daughter of silences, he bowed and hid his face in his mantle, weeping.

  For the voice said, Elijah, what are you doing here?

  Elijah whispered, “I told you, Lord. I have been zealous for you—”

  But the Lord said to him, Elijah, I will always keep a remnant in Israel, seven thousand people who have not bent their knees to Ba’al and seven thousand mouths who will not kiss him.

  Elijah, desiccated, tired, filled from his skull to his loins with pain and trouble, sobbed like an infant.

  And the Lord said, Go to Damascus and anoint Hazael king over Syria. Then anoint Jehu king over Israel in Ahab’s place. Then find Elisha and anoint him prophet in your place. Those who escape the sword of Hazael shall Jehu slay, and those who escape the sword of Jehu shall Elisha slay.

  And it seemed to Elijah that a promise arose from the daughter of the voice of God, a gentle benediction to wipe his tears away:

  And when all is done, come home. Come home.

  SIX MONTHS AFTER the drought had ended in Israel, a young man named Elisha went out to plow the fields of his father. His was a wealthy family with large landholdings in the region of Abel-meholah, near Tishbe in Gilead.

  On this particular day Elisha was supervising twelve teams of oxen, all moving in a long indented row, each team touching the furrows of those in front. Elisha was driving the twelfth team, watching the plowmen ahead of him.

  Then he became aware of a man walking beside him, an older man of rocky features, wild hair, and stern gestures.

  The man removed the mantle that was draped over his shoulder, shook it open, and cast it over Elisha.

  Immediately Elisha knew who the man was: Elijah from Tishbe, the prophet of the Lord, mighty against every ba’al, and death to Ba’al Melqart whom the queen had brought from Tyre.

  And Elisha knew yet more: that the camel hair mantle bore prophetic power; that it fell on his person with promise—and though Elijah had said nothing at all, Elisha heard a holy command: Follow me.

  Right away the young man left his team of oxen and went after the older man.

  “My lord,” he said, “my lord, can I kiss my father and my mother good-bye?”

  The old man said, “Go. Nothing I have done prevents you. Go.”

  In high delight, Elisha rushed back to the team of oxen. He led them home, slaughtered them, butchered them, boiled them with fire from the wooden yokes they had been wearing, then served them to his mother and his father and to his entire household. When he had completed his farewell, Elisha rose up and went after the prophet Elijah and ministered to him.

  V

  IN THE DAYS when Ahab was the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah, these two kingdoms ended their long wars and concluded a treaty together.

  Ahab and Jezebel gave their daughter Athaliah in marriage to Jehoshaphat’s son Jehoram. Blood bound them now. And Ahab soon took advantage of this alliance. He invited Jehoshaphat to join him in a campaign against the king of Damascus.

  “If we can control the king’s highway east of the Jordan,” he argued, “we will control all the trade that goes north from Sheba and Arabia to the seaports in the cities of my father-in-law, Tyre and Sidon. But the key to the king’s highway is Ramoth Gilead.”

  The king of Damascus held Ramoth Gilead as his own.

  Ahab proposed to attack the Syrian king there. Jehoshaphat, who was strengthening the economy of Judah, agreed.

  So the armies of Israel and Judah marched over Jordan under direct command of their kings. They advanced through a narrow valley that cut between the towns of Tishbe and Abel-meholah, and then in glittering military display they encamped in the fields west of Ramoth Gilead.

  The king of Damascus himself arrived with thirty-two Syrian captains and established opposing battle lines.

  But Ahab’s nerve began to fail. A certain prophet had prophesied, “I saw Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep without a shepherd, and the Lord said, These have no master.’’’’ The king had ordered the prophet thrown into prison; but before the dawn of the battle day, he came to Jehoshaphat’s pavilion and asked him to wear the insignia of the king of Israel, while he, Ahab, wore the plain armor of a charioteer.

  At sunrise, then, it was Jehoshaphat who commanded Israel and Judah to charge, and Jehoshaphat who rode in the midst of the brave assailing foot soldiers, their soul and their center.

  But the king of Damascus had prepared his captains for a more cunning war than frontal slaughter. “Fight neither the small nor the great,” he said, “but seek the king only.”

  The engagement of the battle lines created an odd confusion among the warriors. Damascus seemed to retreat, but only feigned withdrawal, doubled back, and ran in another direction—always looking for the colors of the king.

  Frustration made the hosts of Israel and Judah tingle in their sinews. They lost concentration and grew merely angry.

  But then a Syrian archer drew his bow and shot blindly into the thick of his enemy and happened to hit King Ahab. The arrow struck between the chain mail and his breastplate, piercing through his abdomen.

  The king fell forward on the dashboard of his chariot. “Turn around,” he growled to the driver. “Carry me from the field. I’m wounded.”

  Jehoshaphat rode with dexterity through the mêlée crying encouragement, never staying in one place, always dashing for another. Damascus could never come near him. The battle continued into the afternoon, and Ahab watched from the western hills, propped up in his chariot.

  By nightfall, when a servant came to speak to him, it was discovered that he was dead. The blood from his wound had filled the bottom of the chariot.

  So the cry went up: “Every man to his city! Every man to his country! The king is dead!”

  Israel and Judah retreated.

  King Ahab’s body was brought back to Samaria, where he was buried. Soldiers washed his chariot out by the pool of Samaria, and in the night the dogs came and licked up his blood.

  VI

  ALL THROUGH A winter’s night at the height of the rainy season, young Elisha heard his master stirring in the cottage where they slept. Old Elijah shuffled back and forth in the darkness, back and forth slowly, painfully, like a fox crippled and caged.

  Dawn came cold and indistinct. It lay on Elisha like a grey weight. Suddenly he realized that Elijah’s shuffling had ceased: it was the silence that felt so heavy.

  Elisha jumped up and dashed outside. Little Gilgal still was sleeping.

  The young man ran to the gates and out of town, and there he saw his master, nearly a mile away, toiling south over the hills of Ephraim. Elisha hurried to catch up.

  Elijah’s hair, as defiant as ever, had become a smoke of white, his beard a briar of white. He was angular at every joint. His face, rough, impenetrable, was a little Sinai. He did not glance at Elisha when the young man came beside him, but he said, “Go back to Gilgal. The Lord has sent me on to Bethel.”

  Elisha said, “It’s too cold to travel.”

  “I have my mantle.”

  “You are too old.”

  “I have always been old.”

  Elisha said, “It’s going to rain.”

  But Elijah didn’t answer, so they walked in silence for the next three hours.

  When they were passing through Bethel, a small band of prophets took Elisha aside while the old man walked on. Elisha was anxious to follow.

  But the band of prophets said, “Don’t you know that the Lord will take your master away from you today?”

  “Yes, I know,” Elisha said, and he ran after Elijah.

  “Stay here,” Elijah said. �
�The Lord has sent me to Jericho.”

  Elisha said, “I will not leave you.”

  So they walked in silence on a downward grade to Jericho. The prophets from Bethel followed at a distance. It began to rain.

  More prophets met them in Jericho. They whispered to Elisha, “Don’t you know…?”

  But Elisha would not leave the side of his master, and these prophets joined the others, like a flock of timorous creatures creeping behind.

  Old Elijah’s hair shook raindrops. His face streamed water, but he did not cover his head with the camel hair mantle. He said, “Elisha, stay in Jericho!”

  Elisha said, “No!”

  They descended in silence to the Jordan.

  Now a cold evening wind was blowing, driving the rain like ice against the land. The river churned and raced through its channels, a treacherous thing, an impossible crossing.

  But Elijah rolled his mantle into a stout rope, and struck the waters with it, and the Jordan parted to one side and to the other, and the master and his student walked over on the riverbed, but the river roared back into its course behind them, and the prophets who followed them were blocked and helpless.

  As he toiled up out of the valley of the Jordan, Elijah called through the violent weather: “Ask what I shall do for you before I am taken from you!”

  Elisha cried back: “Sir, let me inherit a double portion of your spirit!”

  For a moment Elijah paused and turned to the young man. They were dark figures in a darker storm. The old prophet put his hand on Elisha’s shoulder. “You talk like my firstborn,” he said. “My son, if you can see the hosts of heaven, it shall be done for you.”

  Elijah walked away. Elisha did not move. He watched his master go, the old man’s body flashing in the sudden white of lightning, his mantle whipped by the wind. Thunder rolled all down the Jordan.

  And then it was not lightning at all, but vermilion flames in heaven, a blazing mass descending. Elisha looked and saw a chariot of fire and horses of fire. They rushed the earth. They separated him from Elijah. They gathered the old man up, and Elisha saw him ascended by a whirlwind, living, into heaven.

  “My father! My father!” he cried. “The chariots of Israel and the horsemen!”

  The fires vanished. The howling night was black again. Elisha seized his robe and began to tear it in two—when he saw the mantle of his master sailing down from heaven to earth. He caught it and buried his face in the rough camel hair.

  When he came again to the east side of the Jordan, Elisha rolled the mantle and struck the waters exactly as he had seen Elijah do it; but the river roared on, unabated.

  Elisha cried out at the top of his lungs: “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” and he struck the water again.

  This time the Jordan parted, and the young prophet walked over on the solid riverbed.

  TWENTY

  Amos, Hosea

  I

  AFTER HER HUSBAND DIED, Queen Jezebel took control of the kingdom of Israel.

  Her eldest son perished within a year of his own coronation. Her second son Joram was a man given to luxury and pleasant pursuits. When he ascended the throne, then, he was grateful for his mother’s counsel—and she was glad for the power.

  She maintained the rich connection with her father’s city, Tyre, importing the best of the world’s trade. While Judah preserved the old ways, living a poorer, more isolated existence, Israel enjoyed commerce with all the nations and changed. It was in these days that Jezebel’s sister Dido became the queen of Carthage on the coast of northern Africa. Likewise, her daughter Athaliah was queen mother in Judah. They formed a family of powerful women. Jezebel liked her life. She felt equal to the contests of kingdoms.

  “JORAM,” QUEEN JEZEBEL SAID, “I think you should do as David did when he ruled from Egypt to the Euphrates.”

  “More than a hundred years ago,” said her son. “What did David do?”

  They were sitting in the queen’s apartments in the palace of Samaria. Damascus had a new king who was marching to regain possession of Ramoth Gilead, the city that had taken Ahab’s life.

  The new king of Damascus was Hazael. He had been an officer in the old king’s bodyguard—until he suffocated the king in his sleep and by a savvy manipulation rose to the throne himself.

  Go to Damascus and anoint Hazael king over Syria.

  Jezebel said, “He let another man fight his wars, and he lived to a very old age. Joram, I think you should appoint a commander-in-chief over all your armies, someone strong and dogged, but without imagination. Stand back in safety until victory is assured, then as king ride to triumph in the final engagement.”

  Joram said, “There is an officer who came up through the ranks, a soldier since he was fourteen, completely fearless.”

  “Can he take command?”

  “He’s the sort that the hardened troops will follow.”

  “But will he obey you, Joram? Can this leader also follow?”

  “He fights the way other men plow fields, dutifully, routinely. I doubt he’s ever suffered an original thought.”

  “Do I know him?” Jezebel asked.

  Joram said, “Do you know Jehu of the house of Nimshi?”

  Jezebel knew everyone of any rank in Israel. She said, “A true Israelite. A grim and sober man, isn’t he? Small-minded. Unlettered.”

  Joram smiled. “Exactly,” he said.

  So Jehu the son of Nimshi was appointed commander-in-chief of the armies of Israel, and Jezebel sent him to fight the Syrians at Ramoth Gilead.

  Those who escape the sword of Huznel shall Jehu slay.

  AGAIN, JEZEBEL AND JORAM were in the queen’s apartments, eating delicate roasts of African monkey and drinking the famous wines of Syria, skins from Helbon and from Uzal, both.

  In the midst of this meal, a watchman asked to speak with King Joram.

  He was admitted to the room.

  “My lord,” he said, but his eyes kept straying toward the presence of a genuine force, Jezebel. “While I was watching from the tower by the gate, I saw a company of soldiers riding at great speed from the east. They are armed. They are not messengers.”

  Joram said, “Send a horseman out to meet them. Ask if they come in peace.”

  The watchman bowed and left. But within the hour he returned, anxious and perplexed.

  “I sent the horseman as you commanded, sir,” he said. “But when he reached them, and when they had spoken together, he joined them! He drew his sword and is riding this way with them!”

  Jezebel said, “Send a second man. Send a captain and an equal company of horsemen. Arm them.”

  “I will,” the watchman said. He hurried from the room.

  Neither the queen nor the king ate now. Jezebel had risen to her feet and was striding about the room. “From the east,” she said. “There is no close enemy in the east. Except—”

  The watchman burst in without asking leave.

  “Madam! Sir! The captain and his company have joined the warriors, too! They’re coming with a hard determination. They are walking their mounts!”

  Jezebel said, “Can you identify these people? Do you know their tribe or race?”

  The watchman lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  “Then who are they?” Jezebel’s eyes flashed. Her beauty was a deadly thing.

  “Israelites,” said the watchman.

  “What? Our own forces?” The queen snapped erect. “Answer me, watchman: could you tell who leads them?”

  The watchman whispered, “Jehu the son of Nimshi, commander of your armies.”

  Jezebel spoke in a low, honeyed voice: “Joram, go out yourself. He is your subordinate.”

  The king was not dressed for combat. But he went, and Jezebel went out of the palace after him. When Joram rode out of the city gates, she mounted the wall and watched him go, he and a bodyguard of three.

  When the coming company saw King Joram approach from the city, the men halted in a semicircle, Jehu in fro
nt of all.

  Joram cried, “Jehu! Jehu son of Nimshi, is it peace?”

  The grim commander said, “What peace, when the whores of Jezebel fill the land?”

  He had not yelled the words, but Jezebel heard them. It was the very language of that wilderness lizard, Elijah.

  The scene in the distance took on a dream-like quality. Everything moved slowly, now, detached from Jezebel’s immediate attention—though she felt she knew exactly what was going to happen.

  Jehu the Israelite drew an arrow from his quiver. Joram her son wheeled his mount around and whipped it toward Samaria, crying, “Treachery! Treachery!”

  Jehu took a thousand years to draw the arrow taut in his bow, and the arrow sailed in a beautiful arc, like a rainbow. It sank into her son’s back between the shoulder blades. He spread his arms and soared from his horse, higher and higher. Jezebel closed her eyes, and the whole scene vanished.

  She returned to her palace and ascended to her apartments above the central entrance.

  In a private room Jezebel sat down at a table where ointments and powders were arranged, and she began to groom herself. She anointed her flesh with oil. She coiled her long hair on her head in oriental fashion. She drew black lines of antimony along the edges of her eyelids, so that the whites became a blaze of beauty. She covered herself in purple raiment and gold embroidery at the bosom, and then she walked to the window and threw open the lattice and stood there, while Jehu, the commander of the armies of her son, rode into Samaria.

  Jezebel stood like a cedar tree, majestic and immovable.

  She said, “Is it peace?”

  Jehu leaped to the ground, looking around for the source of the question. It had fallen upon him from on high.

  “Is it peace?” Jezebel repeated, and Jehu saw her. So she made her voice a thick run of honey: “Do you come to my city in peace, you murderer of your master?”

  Jehu did not answer her. He was a lout, unmannered, unlettered, undistinguished in anything except killing. Royalty confounds rude boors. In the presence of a noble soul, they are reduced to brutality.