The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Artaxerxes, king of Persia, almost laughs. “Jew, you are a wonder!” He reaches for his cup of wine, raises it to his lips, closes his eyes, and drinks the entire draught.

  “It is a delicious spring, don’t you think so, Damaspia?” He takes the queen’s hand and lays it against his cheek, then to his cupbearer he says, “Wash your face, Nehemiah. Go. Save your city and govern your province with my blessing.”

  II

  NEHEMIAH HAS BEEN in Jerusalem for three days. On the first day he visited his brother Hanani. On the second he honored the sepulchers of the ancestors. Though he arrived with a Persian retinue over whom he has clear authority, he’s told no one what he plans to do for Jerusalem. There is good reason for secrecy and for haste.

  Now it is the night of the third day. The moon is full, the air chilly. Nehemiah, wrapped in a woolen robe, has ridden a mule to the ruins of the Valley Gate on the southwestern corner of Jerusalem. There he sits outside the gate above the valley of the Son of Hinnom, gazing at broken stone and old char, murmuring softly to himself. He’s calculating the job before him.

  Two men walk through the fallen gate and join him. “I looked at the north side when I arrived,” Nehemiah says. “We’ll begin construction there, with the Sheep Gate westward to the Tower of the Hundred and the Tower of Hananel. Then we’ll work in a circle against the sun. But this,” Nehemiah sighs into the cold night wind. “This.”

  He urges the mule eastward on the rough ground outside the city—stones cracked and shaggy with weed, sudden falls of loose rock down into the valley on his right—until the columns of another old gate appear in the moonlight.

  Nehemiah stops. “The Potsherd Gate,” he whispers. “One hundred and seventy-five years ago the prophet stood here and said, O kings of Judah, I am bringing such evil upon this place that the ears of every one who hears of it will tingle. Ah, Jeremiah!”

  Nehemiah dismounts and whispers again calculations of weight and materials, workers and times, then moves slowly onward.

  It is midnight. Nehemiah has inspected the broken wall from the Potsherd Gate to the Fountain Gate, both burned by fire, and now he sees Gihon. Down below in the Kidron Valley is the spring and the long well-tunnel by which David sent his general Joab up into the city to storm it from within, terrifying the inhabitants, destroying their will in a single maneuver. Nehemiah heaves a deep sigh. So much happened between the young, joyful days of David and the lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah.

  But Nehemiah can’t continue reminiscing. He has a job to do. Besides, they’ve come to a point where the Kidron Valley drops straight down. The path disappears. Nehemiah whispers to the men behind him, “Enough,” then backs his mule to a broader place and returns the way he came.

  III

  SANBALLAT, GOVERNOR OF THE PROVINCE of Samaria, is furious. He strides through the rooms of his administration, throwing his arms up and shouting.

  “It’s bad enough that Judah should be snatched from me. I can’t dispute the laws of the Medes and the Persians. But I should be able to control this lisping fool, this upstart in Jerusalem. What did you say he’s gotten the Jews to do?”

  Tobiah the Ammonite, a rich man from an old and prominent family, is following the governor from room to room, puffing because of his weight. “They’re trying to build the walls of the city.”

  “How long have they been at it?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “With success?”

  “Well, the family of Eliashib the high priest has reconstructed the Sheep Gate. It’s already been consecrated—”

  “Ohhh!” Sanballat cries.

  “—and the sons of Hassenaah have laid the beams of the Fish Gate and set its doors, its bolts, its bars—”

  “This is too much!”

  “Between the gates, the fortress protecting the north side of the temple is right now being—”

  “What’s the man’s name?”

  “Nehemiah.”

  Sanballat strides down the hall and out of his house, to an open yard where the captains of his troops are waiting. There, too, certain allies have gathered from territories surrounding Judah.

  “What are these feeble Jews doing!” Sanballat bellows. “Can anyone estimate?—will they be able to restore things? Do they plan only to sacrifice? Will they finish this dream in a day? Will they revive the stones from heaps of rubbish? Can they make a wall of burned materials?”

  Tobiah follows Sanballat into the yard, chuckling to himself. “Don’t worry, my lord!” he calls. “What they are building—if a fox bumps the new wall, he’ll break it down.”

  The captains laugh.

  Sanballat, not laughing, turns to Tobiah. “Did you actually talk with this man Nehemiah?”

  “I did,” Tobiah says. “Geshem the Arab and I went together to Jerusalem. We met Nehemiah in a dirty marketplace. A beardless fellow. Scented and coiffed like a courtier. We said, ‘What is this thing you’re doing? Are you rebelling against the king?’ He answered with religious haughtiness: ‘God will make us prosper, but you have no portion in Jerusalem.’ I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. The stinking marketplace, this Persian Jewish foppish eunuch surrounded by grim citizens of no country. Oh, I was tickled by the irony. But the fellow turned white and raised his voice and cursed me. O God, he cried, turn their taunt back on their own heads.”

  “That’s it!” Sanballat shouts. “Let’s send the eunuch home!” All at once the governor of Samaria is raining commands upon his allies: “Geshem and the Arabians, attack from the south. Tobiah, go up with your forces from the northeast. Men of Ashdod, cut straight in from the west. I’m going to hit the city at the north. I swear to burn the Sheep Gate and the Fish Gate and make a smoke of new timber. Move! Move, while there’s no wall to stop us!”

  IN JERUSALEM THE burden-bearers have begun to fail. For fifty-two days they’ve carried dressed stone to workers on the wall, and now they stagger beneath their loads. The wall is only half built—a low girdling of stone around the city. They can’t stop now, not even for a rest.

  But all in one day alone seven reports have come from villages near the cities of Samaria that the enemies of Jerusalem are preparing for a military action. It is evening. Jews are watching the hills for the least movement. “They’re coming to kill us,” the weary people whisper, “and we have nothing to stop them. Nothing.”

  Suddenly a trumpet cuts the air above the city, and there stands the little governor from Susa at the top of the Tower of the Hundred, a torch in his right hand, his face bright with flame.

  “Do not be afraid of them,” Nehemiah cries to Jerusalem. “Remember the Lord, who is great and terrible, and fight for your brothers, your sons and daughters, your wives, and your homes!”

  The citizens are not persuaded. “We have never fought before!” they yell. “And you are no captain!”

  “But the Lord is! And I am his servant. Listen,” cries Nehemiah, having measured the enemy and calculated the potential of his own people: “Here are our stratagems. First, let all the Jews of villages nearby stay in the city night and day. We’ll fill Jerusalem. Second, dig a ditch behind the wall, then station yourselves according to families in that trench with swords and spears and bows. Third, since you will be spread out from one another, listen for the trumpet, then rally to the place where the trumpet is. That’s where the enemy will be attacking. Fourth, know this and believe it and let your hearts be fortified by it: Our God will fight for us!”

  Whether the people trust Nehemiah or not, at least they have jobs for the evening and plans for tomorrow. This is new. In Judah there is purpose and encouragement. Yes, and hope. All night long the Jews dig a fine trench. In the morning, Nehemiah divides the working crew into two shifts, one to work and one to watch as long as work on the wall continues. Both day and night, then, there is always a show of force, spears moving back and forth within the city, men crying commands and salutations one to another.

  SANBALLAT THE GOVERNOR of Samaria is wr
iting a letter. This is his fifth to Nehemiah in Jerusalem. His first letter said, “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono.”

  There is good reason why he humbled himself to write that first invitation. Neither he nor his allies had been able to assault Jerusalem because their troops—unused to any real conflict in the peace of Persia—perceived better troops inside the city, troops perpetually alert, hosts of weapons bristling above a growing wall. They refused to attack.

  So Sanballat and Tobiah sought to draw this groomed little governor out of the city in order to kill him.

  But Nehemiah answered the first letter with a letter of his own:

  “I am doing a great work and cannot interrupt it in order to visit you.”

  Sanballat wrote a second letter, a third, and a fourth. But the eunuch answered each one exactly as he had the first. So Sanballat is writing a fifth letter. He knows what “great work” Nehemiah is referring to. Sanballat knows that all the old breaches in the walls of Jerusalem have been healed. He also knows (by spies in the hills east of the city) that the gates themselves have not yet been built or set in their sockets.

  So his fifth letter he dispenses with civility.

  “It is reported among the nations,” writes Sanballat, “that you and the Jews are building a wall for the sake of rebellion. You wish to be king in Judah. Either you come and speak with me or I will report you to Artaxerxes, the king of Persia.” Sanballat rolls the scroll tight and seals it with his seal. He hands it to another man waiting in the room. A Jew. He winks at the Jew and nods vigorously.

  “Shemaiah, do this first. And the second thing second. You understand? You know what you are to do?”

  Shemaiah says, “Yes.”

  Sanballat smiles and spills into Shemaiah’s hand a pouch of Persian coins, gold, each with the figure of Artaxerxes kneeling, holding a spear in his right hand, a bow in his left.

  “You, Shemaiah, prophet of God, are wise to broaden your loyalties. Now you carry a king in your pocket!”

  SHEMAIAH LIVES IN JERUSALEM. Now, at his insistence, Nehemiah enters with him a small back room of his house.

  Once in darkness and in private, Shemaiah grabs the governor’s arm and says, “We’ve got to meet at the temple, you and I.”

  “Why?” says Nehemiah.

  “To take refuge there.”

  “Refuge? For me or for you?”

  “For you, my lord. For you. Even in Jerusalem there are people who do not love you. They are coming to kill you.”

  Nehemiah strikes a light in the dark room and peers at Shemaiah. “How do you know this?” he says.

  “Am I not a prophet of God?” says Shemaiah.

  “God spoke to you, then?”

  “To me, my lord. Look, here’s a letter the governor of Samaria gave me to give you. Read it and see whether we shouldn’t rush for protection in the temple.”

  Nehemiah takes the scroll, breaks the seal and reads the letter slowly. “Lies,” he sneers.

  “Even so, you see how much he hates you.”

  Nehemiah douses the light and leaves Shemaiah’s house. The prophet hurries to keep up with him. They are ascending the hill to the temple.

  “Yes,” Shemaiah says, growing moist with perspiration, “yes, we’d better go right into the temple, and close the doors behind us. They are coming this very night to kill you—”

  Nehemiah stops. Shemaiah takes three more steps before he realizes that he walks alone. When he turns it is a cold eye he finds, glittering and serpentine, gazing dead level into his own.

  In a low articulate fury, Nehemiah says, “This is a flat deception, Shemaiah! God did not send you to me. You were paid to make this prophecy.”

  “No, my lord!” Shemaiah cries. “Oh, no, but I have only the greatest respect—”

  Nehemiah slaps him. “Don’t your own words terrify you, man?” He slaps Shemaiah a second time, and a third. “Prophet, prophet, don’t you fear your God? Tobiah and Sanballat hired you! I know—because the Lord would never ask a man such as I am to enter the temple. It is for priests alone. I am a eunuch, Shemaiah! I would profane the place of God!”

  Hearing Nehemiah’s anger and his language, people are gathering in the street. Shemaiah wishes there were some way for escape, but the people hem him in.

  “Sanballat tries to make me sin!” cries Nehemiah. “Tobiah the Ammonite wants me to flee in fear. They plan to give me an evil name, to destroy my authority and to taunt me.”

  Suddenly Nehemiah grabs the prophet by the beard and yanks his face down until he is on his knees. “Shemaiah, prophet of God, carry this curse to your benefactors. Hiss it in their ears. Say, ‘This is what Nehemiah the builder of walls, the governor of Judah, says: Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, according to all the evil things they have done. Do not cover their guilt nor let their sin be blotted from thy sight!’”

  IV

  AND NOW A NEW DAY DAWNS, cloudless, blue, and beautiful. There has not been such a day in Judah for more than two hundred years. Jerusalem is filled with people from the countryside, even from as far as the plains of the Jordan. They have all dressed with care, but some stand out like white lilies in a field of darker colors. These are wearing clean linen and carrying the instruments of gladness and thanksgiving and singing.

  The Levites are here, mingling among Jews, the children of Judah. They’ve brought their cymbals, their harps, and their lyres.

  And the sons of the singers are here.

  The city is alive with motion and laughter. Those still arriving pause to touch the new gates, each one of shining wood, a sure protection for Zion against her enemies, calm glory, jewels in the crown around Jerusalem. Who can express what consolation the completion of the wall has caused in Jewish hearts?

  A trumpet unfurls its bright sound across the sky. People turn this way and that to find its source, and then they begin to stream toward the southwest, to the Valley Gate where priests await them in the yard before the gate, and the governor stands on the ramparts above it.

  As the crowd swells all in that one place, the priests shake over them a mist of blood. The blood of sacrifice settles like a red breath on the heads of the people. The priests themselves and the Levites have spent the last three days fasting for their personal purification. At the same time they offered sacrifices for the purification of the wall and the gates and the people. Now they are about to dedicate this new thing to the Lord.

  “Sing!” cries Nehemiah—whose garments glitter with an orient glory. Dapper Nehemiah, cupbearer to a king—he has built a wall with faith and ferocity!

  “Sing!” he cries. “Here at this gate we will divide into two great companies, each to walk the city wall in opposite directions. You praise-singing choirs, split and go first, half to the right, toward the Potsherd Gate, and half with me to the left. Let each half be followed by the leaders of Judah, then seven priests, then eight Levites. And sing! Let there be music from two sides as we walk the wall around, begging the protection of the Lord, giving thanks unto our God!”

  And so the people of Judah rise up and walk on the fresh walls of Jerusalem. It is as if a fire has been ignited at the Valley Gate. From there the burning goes in two directions—each with the clashing of cymbals and the sharp strumming of taut string, with full-throated human song and individual shouts of praise: the people process on the top of the wall like bright flame, until the city is surrounded and all the women and the children are clapping and laughing along.

  In this way the dedication is accomplished.

  Then the two companies descend the wall, one at the Horse Gate south of the temple, one at the Sheep Gate north of it. So they meet again in the courts of the Lord, and there they offer sacrifices, Judah celebrating with a meal of union—for the Lord God has granted them a very great joy. Even at night the celebrations continue in Jerusalem with such gladness that their voices are heard north and south, in Samaria and in Edom. God is with the children of Judah. God is with Jac
ob again.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ezra

  I

  NEHEMIAH HAS NO illusions concerning his accomplishments in Jerusalem—what he can and what he cannot do.

  A wall is good and necessary, a weapon protecting the city against enemies from without. A wall lends courage to its citizens, strength to its warriors, peace to its merchants and priests and scholars. But it does not make a people righteous. It cannot protect against the enemy from within.

  Nehemiah knows: faithlessness and disobedience destroy a nation at its root. And though a governor may build walls and organize administrations and punish misbehavior, he cannot control the heart. He cannot persuade a people to repent. The Law of God must do that.

  But in Jerusalem there are no scribes who love the Law enough. And the priests lack moral force. They are as corrupt as the people. Both neglect the Sabbath with impunity.

  In people such as this, a wall breeds pride and a false contentment.

  So Nehemiah has written to his benefactor, Artaxerxes of Persia, with one more urgent request: “For the sake of Judah and Jerusalem, send from Babylon Ezra the priest, scribe of the Law of God. The temple here is impoverished. The Jews scarcely know their heritage or their God.”

  II

  EIGHT MONTHS AFTER he begged for Ezra’s presence; five months after the king agreed and the priest organized a grand caravan of the most respected Jews in Babylon; three days after their journey’s end, when the caravan disbanded in the countryside outside Jerusalem, on the morning of that day, Nehemiah stands in a fresh city gate and watches as Ezra himself approaches.

  A slow, lank man with pouches under his eyes, deliberate in all his movement, Ezra walks in front of a procession of camels, all of them burdened. The priest is very tall, gazing forward like one of his camels. The nearer he comes, the more Nehemiah must tilt his head up in order to look in Ezra’s face.