“This,” said the priest, “is Ekua.”
My friend stood dumbstruck.
On a dais sat a massive image of Marduk. Above, the roof beams were covered with gold and silver. The walls were sheathed in shining gold. And the great statue of Marduk, the throne on which he sat, the dais itself and the offering table in front of it were all cast in the purest gold. Murashu estimates that there were more than eight hundred talents of precious metal in the room called Ekua.
My family remains miserable in poverty. My wife has begun to cough blood.
Yesterday Murashu came to Tel-abib and asked whether I would permit my eldest son to supervise one of his caravans. It is, he says, a transaction between old friends. My son, at ease in four languages, wants me to accept. His wife, my daughter-in-law, begs me to accept. We would all move to Nippur and live in big houses.
What shall I do? You yourself once wrote that we should make peace with the place where we are. You said that we should seek the welfare of the city where God has exiled us, since in its welfare we would find our own.
Does that advice apply still today?
Well, you must have heard in Egypt that the Babylonian Empire is growing weak. Nebuchadnezzar died ten years ago. The present king is despised by his subjects.
Should we commit our ways to this place, where my son will surely live in luxury and where he may be persuaded by his benefactor to worship Marduk?
Or should we believe the new prophet?
But the prophet’s word is hard to accept. He says that in order to redeem his people, the Lord is anointing a Persian, Cyrus the king of Anshan—a pagan!
I have always believed that the anointed one of God must be a son of David. Is the Lord God changing? Can this prophet speak the truth? Will Babylon fall to Cyrus?
O my father, in whom should I put my faith?
I am confused. This misery is worse than poverty. My wife spits blood when she coughs. I—I bleed in my soul.
Are you living, Jeremiah? Will you answer?
Murashu’s caravan leaves for Egypt in a week. I am sending with that caravan both this letter and my son. Perhaps he will see you face-to-face in Tahpanhes. Perhaps you will disclose to him the will of the Lord as once you did to me.
Perhaps you will send back with him a word also for me?
All peace, prophet of God!
TWENTY-FIVE
Ahikam in Jerusalem
THERE IS NEARLY no joy in homecoming. As soon as we arrived, dry and weary, a priest named Jeshua son of Jozadak built an altar according to the law of Moses, and we sacrificed in thanksgiving. We initiated all over again the burnt offerings morning and evening. We began to keep the appointed feasts of the Lord.
But Jerusalem is desolate and unpopulated. Weeds have cracked the beautiful pavement. And where the temple used to be, wind travels unobstructed. People dragged its old stone away for their own purposes.
So we began to quarry more stone to build a foundation for a new temple. Stonemasons dressed the great blocks and carved them on the temple site itself, fitting them into place.
We have not been able to pay our workers anything besides food and drink and oil. Two years have passed with little rainfall. Our crops failed.
And then the foundation was complete. Priests in vestments led us there, in order to dedicate it. They blew trumpets as they processed. Levites followed with cymbals, praising the Lord: “For he is good, for his steadfast love,” they sang, “endures forever toward Israel.”
And then when we approached the new foundation, a great shout went up—all the young men crying out in gratitude and joy. My own son raised his hands among the others of his generation: a forest of arms.
But I wept. We wept. The people of my generation wept when we saw this foundation; for we remembered the glory of the old temple. This is a plaything next to that.
So loud was our sorrow, that people at a distance could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from that of grieving.
MY FATHER, JEREMIAH, prophet of God: you will not receive this letter. I will not send it. But the bare writing comforts me. I see you when I write to you.
But you see nothing.
You have neither seen nor received my letters for a long time. When my son traveled by caravan to Egypt, he found your servant Baruch in Tahpanhes, but not you. Your bones already lay beneath Egyptian sand, where our father Joseph lay for hundreds of years before the Lord called us out of slavery.
And now the Lord has called us home again.
The prophet was right. King Cyrus of Persia defeated every kingdom east and west, producing an empire greater than any before him. Then he decreed that the Jews were free to return to Judah. When that decree was announced in Tel-abib, my son came into my small room and knelt beside me and wept. We trembled with joy that we had lived long enough to see Jerusalem again.
My son did not accept the offer of my old friend Murashu. His mother, my wife, died suddenly of a bloody hemorrhage, and the sadness drew us close together. In fact, sadness and suffering have drawn us closer to the Lord as well, because the prophet who spoke of comfort also understood sorrow.
The Lord said, Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you.
We believed the prophet. We trusted in the Lord.
Now we are home.
I have shown my son the grave where his grandfather Shaphan is buried. It is there that I wish also to be buried.
Very soon, Jeremiah, prophet of God: two or three days at the most. In three days I will follow you down to darkness.
God be gracious to the handful of Jews who must now rebuild a temple, a city, a life.
PART SEVEN
The Yearning
TWENTY-SIX
My Messenger
I
IHAVE LOVED YOU, says the Lord.
The people answer, “How have you loved us?”
Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? says the Lord. And I have chosen Jacob. I have loved Jacob. Yet you, priests! You despise my name!
The priests who serve in Jerusalem say, “How have we despised your name?”
By offering polluted food on my altar!
“How have we polluted it?”
By your hearts! You offer blind animals. You sacrifice the sick and the lame to me. Oh, that there were one among you who would shut the door of the temple to keep the rest from kindling fire upon my altar in vain!
II
THERE IS A TEMPLE in Jerusalem again. There’s also a priesthood and some measure of sacrifice—but very little holiness.
After the foundation had been laid with shouts both of joy and of sorrow, famine and poverty depleted the people of strength. They were miserable and few, and life was so difficult that no work could proceed on the temple itself. For twenty years the Jews merely existed.
David’s ancient kingdom was carved into a small province within the greater Persian realm. Jerusalem was but a minor city in that province, governed from Samaria by a Samaritan. Jews suffered at the hands of those who did not love them.
Then the Persian king Darius granted permission for building the temple again. It took five long years, and when it was finished the sacred building was small and unbeautiful, but functional.
Years passed. Only in small groups did Jews return from exile to their homeland. Some cleared rubble from the old stone buildings in Tekoa and began to live there again. A few built small houses in Jericho, as well as in the land around Bethel. Jerusalem did not flourish. Its population was poor. The city had no walls nor any new building except the temple. For seventy years Jerusalem remained squalid and discouraged.
But then its citizens took hold and began to rebuild its walls. The Samaritan governor commanded them to stop. They didn’t. They redoubled their efforts. S
o the governor complained to the nobles of the Persian Empire, who sent soldiers into the city with swords and an order from the king himself to desist. They did. The wall remains crumbled and useless, a sign of the spirit of the Jews.
Ten years ago the Edomites were driven from their ancestral land by the Arabs. Now they occupy the good ground around Hebron, just south of Jerusalem. The children of Esau, the brother of Jacob, now are a constant harassment to the children of Jacob. And there is no wall for protection.
The people pray: “Destroy the wise men of Edom!”
But this is almost all they pray. To them it seems that God is gone.
III
IDO NOT CHANGE, children of Jacob, says the Lord. I have loved your father. I love you still. Return to me and I will return to you.
The people say, “How shall we return?”
The Lord answers, Stop robbing me.
“How do we rob you?”
In the failure of your tithes to me.
“No, O Lord! It is the rain of heaven that fails us! Enemies trouble us, north and south. We are tired. Times are hard. And in seventy years the promises of the prophets have come to nothing.”
Children of Judah, you wonder when I shall fulfill my promises?
“We have seen how evildoers prosper. Where is justice in the land? And where is the God of justice?
If justice is absent, the Lord says, it is absent from your own hands and hearts.
Behold, says the Lord of hosts, I send my messenger to prepare the way before me. But who can endure the day of his coming? For he is like a refiner’s fire. He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver until they present right offerings unto me. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to me as in the days of old.
IV
THIS MORNING A man left his house and walked down the crooked streets of Jerusalem to the house of a woman. There, solemnly, he made a covenant with her. Before her father and the Creator, the Father of All, this man promised to be her husband all the days of their lives.
Now they are processing back through the city, his groomsmen, her bridesmaids. There are timbrels and dancing. With joy and a little hope they are returning to the young man’s house.
This evening they will celebrate. People will put away their poverty for a while: a little wine. Much food. Dancing and public joking about private matters—and tonight husband and wife will lie down together in their own dark room.
But who can say what will happen tomorrow?
Perhaps she will spoil his dinner. What will the young man do then? In these times he may very well rise up and divorce her. It is not uncommon to break the marriage covenant that easily.
And then he may marry another. Perhaps he will choose a heathen woman. Perhaps a Samaritan, since Samaritans are richer and more powerful in the scheme of things. A single Samaritan dowry can overcome a generation of poverty—and a Samaritan father-in-law is as good as God for mercy.
V
BUT I AM THE LORD, says the Lord. I change not. Therefore, children of Jacob, you are not consumed.
The temple in Jerusalem is small, not nearly as glorious as the house that Solomon built five hundred years ago. But the Lord remembers the plain temple, and still he utters his word there. Not through the priests, but to them.
For there is also a messenger in the city. A prophet.
But this age neither honors nor recognizes prophets, and there are almost none left in the world.
Therefore, God’s present prophet is anonymous. No one shall recall his name hereafter. He shall be known by his office alone, by the service for which the Lord loves him. By calling him, the Lord God has also named him: My Messenger, which in Hebrew is pronounced, Malachi.
VI
THE DAY COMES burning like an oven, when all the arrogant, all evildoers will be stubble. The day shall burn them so that neither root nor branch is left.
But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go forth leaping like calves. And you shall tread down the wicked. They shall be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Nehemiah
I
THE NAME OF THE CUPBEARER of Artaxerxes I, king of Persia, is Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Nehemiah serves the king at his palace in Susa, two hundred miles east of Babylon. He is the king’s intimate, both guarding and administering the royal apartments. He rose to such high office not by false arrogance and flattery, but by a talent for pragmatism and a faith in his own convictions.
Nehemiah is a eunuch. As cupbearer, he is completely committed to the king and reliable.
He is also a Jew, a worshiper of the great and terrible God. Nehemiah may have lived his whole life in the capital city of Persia. He may serve the Persian government as righteously as any citizen. Certainly, he is respected by the king of Persia himself. But Nehemiah is not Persian.
This is becoming more and more apparent to the king, because his cupbearer is growing disheveled.
It’s spring. The rainy season is over. Artaxerxes has just returned from his winter palace in Babylon, specifically to enjoy the luxuriant flowering of Susa, soft in the mornings, pleasant in green evenings. And now the king has finished a satisfying meal. “Wine,” he calls. Artaxerxes is sitting on a private terrace with the queen, Damaspia. When he looks up to greet his cupbearer bringing the wine, he sees a man unkempt and distracted. But Nehemiah has always been fastidious in his personal grooming.
“Nehemiah, what’s the matter with you?” the king says. “Are you sick?”
Damaspia also looks up.
“No.”
“You didn’t wash! Damaspia, our good friend is filthy! Have you ever known him to fail his person or his office before?”
But the queen touches the king’s wrist. “Softly,” she says, gazing at Nehemiah. “This isn’t a trespass. This is sadness of the heart.”
Artaxerxes frowns at the cupbearer. “Are you sad, Nehemiah?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Damaspia, do you know why he’s sad?”
The queen holds her peace. Nehemiah stands still for a moment, then he speaks.
“Let the king live for ever!” he says. “Why shouldn’t my face be sad when the city, the place of my fathers’ graves, lies waste, its walls broken and its gates burned with fire?”
“You mean Jerusalem?”
“Jerusalem. The City of David. Yes.”
“But this isn’t news. Jerusalem was destroyed a hundred and thirty years ago. Why does that depress you now?”
All at once the words pour from Nehemiah. He keeps his body erect, neither shaking nor spilling wine. But passion turns his tongue into a sword.
“Three months ago my brother Hanani came from Judah to Susa, and I asked him concerning the Jews still surviving in Jerusalem. He shook his head. My brother seemed almost to collapse. ‘Trouble,’ he said, ‘great trouble and shame.’ I questioned him all night long until I heard the whole of it, and I learned that my kin had tried to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. They are harassed by Edomites and Samaritans and nomads and Arabians. They tried to protect themselves with a wall. A wall, my lord! What city of the least value can exist without a wall? But the governor of Samaria applied to the satrap above him, and that man received orders from your servants here in Susa commanding in your name that the Jews must stop building their wall. So the nobles of Samaria came and broke down the work my brother and my people had done. Broke the dressed stones. Broke the hope of the Jews who live in Jerusalem. Broke them.”
Nehemiah closes his mouth and remains rigid for a moment, then steps forward and begins to pour the wine.
Softly, King Artaxerxes says, “Cupbearer, make a request of me.”
Nehemiah straightens, glances toward the queen, who nods, then turns his face away and starts to whisper. He is whispering aloud, but in Hebrew. He is rocking slightly back and forth. He is pray
ing.
Then, hawklike, he turns back to the king and says, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I might rebuild it.”
“Send you to Judah?” Artaxerxes says. “Where would I get another cupbearer like—” But Queen Damaspia touches the king’s wrist again, and he falls silent. Finally, he says, “How long will you be gone? When will you return?”
Nehemiah now speaks with pragmatic calculation. “It will take me four years to gather materials and to get there. Would you, my lord, let letters of safe passage be given me for the governors of the satrap beyond the River?—and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, permitting me to take timber for the beams of the gates and the fortress of the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house I will occupy?”
The king nods, but tips his head toward the queen. “Evidently, Damaspia, our good friend has given the matter a great deal of thought. Did he know my answer before I did?”
Neither the queen nor the cupbearer speaks.
“And he is aware, of course,” says the king, narrowing his eyes, “that he’s asking the king of Persia to reverse a regal decree.”
Nehemiah’s face pales. Artaxerxes sees real fear there, but honors the decorum and the courage of the Jew who does not tremble, but continues stout and straight.
Suddenly the king smiles and leans back in his seat. “Four years to get there, Nehemiah? So how long will you be gone? When will you return?”
Though his face is still fixed in fear, Nehemiah swallows and presses forward. “There is one other request,” he says, “that the king designate Judah a province of its own, separate from Samaria, and that he appoint me its first governor. In that case, my lord, I would be gone another twelve years. Sixteen years altogether.”
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 46
