Fishers of Men

by Gerald N. Lund

  Beelzebub, which is one of the names given to Satan in the New Testament, is actually Beelzebul in almost all of the original manuscripts. Beelzebub was the Philistine god of the flies. Some scholars believe the Israelites, making a play on words, changed that to Beelzebul, the god of the dung heap (see Fallows, 1:255–56). It is a fitting title for him who presides over all moral corruption and filthiness.

  The account of Jesus with the children is recorded by three of the Gospel writers (Matthew 18:1–6; 19:13–15; Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:15–17).

  Chapter 23

  Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

  —John 3:5

  I

  30 May, a.d. 30

  “Your brow seems weighted with the troubles of eternity tonight, Simeon.”

  Simeon’s head came up in surprise.

  Shana smiled softly. “Is my company so burdensome?”

  They were sitting on a stone bench beside the watchtower that overlooked the family’s olive groves in Beth Neelah. Daniel and Yehuda were working a short distance away. They were close enough to serve as chaperones but far enough away that the two of them could have some privacy. Even though Simeon and Shana were now betrothed, it would be highly improper for them to be alone together until after the formal wedding.

  Simeon reached out and took her hand, holding it in both of his. “Your presence is like a spring of water in the desert, Shana. It soothes my spirit and brings me peace.”

  Her eyes, black in the last light of evening, warmed with pleasure, but her countenance did not brighten. “I fear that your face does not support what your tongue is telling me.”

  He exhaled slowly, wearily. “I’m sorry. As you have probably guessed, Yehuda and I bring back a troublesome problem from Jerusalem.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “And then there are the thoughts of what awaits me when I return to Capernaum in the morning.”

  She was instantly contrite, even though she had only been teasing him. “Oh, Simeon. It will be all right. Your mother will have told your father by now about what happened when you saw the centurion. You can make peace with him. He has such a good heart.”

  “It is not my father’s heart that is the problem.”

  She squeezed his hand back. “Does the fact that you have different feelings about the Romans require that you do not speak to each other?”

  “No, but I—”

  “Then put the differences aside. Be reconciled with him. I know he will welcome that.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then began to nod slowly. “Yes, you are right.”

  “Your mother will help. Before she returned to Capernaum, she told me that she is greatly concerned about the two of you.”

  “I will do it,” he said, a touch of hope returning to his voice. “Thank you.”

  She smiled shyly. “What is a wife for if not to be strong when her husband needs it?”

  “You will make a wonderful partner, Shana. I wish I could say the same for your betrothed.”

  “I shall make do,” she teased.

  He didn’t smile. “The paths that lie ahead will not always be easy for you either, Shana. There is much to do. There will be danger for Yehuda and Daniel.”

  “And yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I shall stand with you in that danger. That is what your mother did with her mother and father. It is what my mother did with my father. Would that we could always choose the paths we follow.”

  “I know, but the Law of Moses excused a man from battle if he was betrothed or during the first year of his marriage so his bride did not have to risk becoming a widow. Unfortunately, as Ha’keedohn, I can hardly ask others to go where I do not lead them.”

  She touched his cheek briefly. “If it is concern for me that darkens your brow, then I feel I have failed you. You know I am with you in what has to happen. If it will free our country at last, then let it come. The wife of the Javelin will gladly be a full part of whatever is required.”

  He looked at her in wonder. These were not simply empty words borne of a desire to please him. She felt the Zealot spirit to the very core. His mother had been right. Shana might worry when her husband and brothers went off to battle, but she would hand them their bows and their swords without adding guilt to their quivers.

  He let go of her hand and stood up, suddenly filled with passion. “This is the time we have been waiting for, Shana. The Lord has put into our hands an opportunity to bring about the thing we have dreamed about for all these years. This is the answer. I know it! I can feel it like fire in my bones. Within the next few weeks, we shall see great things come to pass.”

  “Then my heart is filled with joy that I stand beside you while history is made.”

  They heard a sound to one side, and they both turned to see Yehuda walking toward them. He came up, smiling ruefully. “This is a time for courtship, Simeon. You look as though you are preaching a sermon about hellfire and the perils of Gehenna to my sister.”

  Simeon was still looking at Shana. He smiled softly. “Your sister needs no sermons from me,” he said. “It is I who would be taught of her.”

  “She has taught me many things as well,” Yehuda said gruffly, laying a hand on Shana’s shoulder in a gesture of simple affection.

  “I am sorry that I must go down to Capernaum, Yehuda,” Simeon said, changing the subject. “There is much to do, and it is not right that I leave you and Daniel to do it alone.”

  “Daniel and I will be fine. We will leave in the morning and begin to gather up the men.” Shana looked up at her brother in surprise. He ignored her questioning look. “You have to settle this with your father. We will be ready when you return.”

  “We have neglected our duty,” Simeon said with some remorse. “Other than our little clash with Moshe Ya’abin a few weeks back, our little band of brothers has had little to do. I have not set the proper example in maintaining the sharpest edge. But I shall return the day after the Sabbath. Then we shall work them hard to get them ready.”

  “What is happening?” Shana asked, her eyes wide.

  “I’ll tell you all about it later,” Yehuda said. “Now it is time for Simeon to sleep. He must leave before the sun lightens the eastern hills.” Then to Simeon he added, “Old Mordechai, the cunning and shrewd one, thinks he has worked this all out to his satisfaction, but he has opened a door that not even the Great Council of Jerusalem will be able to shut again.”

  “That’s just what I was saying to Shana,” Simeon exclaimed. “The day for which we have prepared all these years is finally near at hand.”

  “Yes. Go down to your father,” Yehuda urged. “Let the feelings between you die. When the victory is won in a few weeks, what will Sextus Rubrius matter any longer?”

  Simeon smiled fully for the first time. “You are right, my friend. In a few weeks, what will it matter at all?”

  II

  31 May, a.d. 30

  David ben Joseph walked quickly, trying to keep up with his youngest son.

  “When did Simeon return?” David asked again, even though that had been his first question when Joseph burst into his office at the storehouses.

  Joseph turned, trotting backwards as he faced his father. “I came immediately. He’s not been home for a quarter of an hour yet.”

  “And he asked specifically for me?”

  Joseph frowned. That was a question he had already answered as well. “Yes. Mama was going to come find you, but Simeon said I could run faster.”

  “How is he?”

  Even though he was only ten, Joseph understood the deeper meaning behind that question. “He’s fine, Papa. He doesn’t seem angry.”

  “Good.”

  David didn’t ask more questions but only increased his pace to stay up with his son.

  III

  “I’m sorry, Father,” Simeon whispered as they held each other in an embrace. “I’m sorry I let my anger carry me away to
blindness.”

  “It is I who am sorry.”

  Simeon released his father and stepped back, glancing at Deborah. “Mother has explained what happened. I understand now that you had no choice but to respond. The Roman was asking for help for one of our own people.”

  David was watching his son’s eyes closely, scarcely believing that what he had been dreading for days now was so easily resolved. “I did not seek him out, nor do I have any plans of maintaining any kind of relationship with Sextus. We both understand that it is better this way.”

  “I appreciate that, but it is all right, Father. I was in the wrong.” Simeon gave a sardonic smile. “Sometimes my temper burns more fiercely than a jar of pitch. You have warned me before that if I am not careful, it may consume me someday.”

  Deborah was watching her son as intently as was her husband. Was this the same man who just a few days before had so utterly rejected her attempts to help him understand what had happened and why? What had occurred in Jerusalem that wrought such a change of heart? In one far corner of her mind, she felt a tiny flicker of suspicion, but she was so relieved to have this moment over with and so easily that she pushed it aside.

  Leah got to her feet and came to her brother. She threw her arms around him. “Welcome home, Simeon. I missed you.”

  He looked at her in surprise and tipped her chin up so he could see her face. “You’re not still angry that I didn’t come that day after I promised I would?”

  “But you did come,” she said. “Or at least you started to.” She blushed slightly. “I must admit, I was somewhat upset with you when you didn’t appear that day.”

  “You will have to tell me about everything that happened. I think I am finally ready to listen.”

  Leah’s eyes were suddenly shining. “Oh, Simeon, it was an incredible day. I’m bursting to tell you all about it.”

  Deborah stood as well. She went to her son and slipped an arm around his waist. “There is much we all have to tell you, Simeon,” she said softly. “Much has happened in the family since you went to Beth Neelah and then on to Jerusalem.”

  He smiled, having no idea what she was referring to. “I’m ready to hear it all,” he said gallantly.

  Strangely, his mother seemed saddened by that. “Ephraim and Rachel are part of this too. We shall have an early supper; then we can talk.”

  IV

  It was well into the third watch of the night, perhaps an hour past midnight. The courtyard was dark, lit only by the light of the stars overhead. Simeon lay on the wooden bench, his hands beneath his head, staring up at the sky above him, though his eyes did not see. He had risen from his bed more than an hour before, far too troubled to sleep, and slipped quietly outside to try to sort through the tumble of his thoughts.

  It was as though he had stood at the foot of one of the steep cliffs in the wilderness of Judea, hoping for a cooling rain shower, and had been struck by an avalanche of rocks and earth instead. That his father had come to accept Jesus as the Messiah was no surprise whatsoever. Simeon had expected nothing less. After Leah’s passionate plea that he come and see Jesus for himself on that “day of miracles,” as she called it, neither was it a great shock when she announced that she stood fully with their father in this matter.

  Then the avalanche had started to rumble. Rachel had started it, jumping in immediately after Leah finished. When Simeon realized that she was telling him that she too had come to believe in Jesus of Nazareth, he got his first real shock. He was still reeling when Ephraim began his story. While Simeon was trying to assimilate that and all it meant—Ephraim had been as skeptical as Simeon when he had left the storehouses!—his mother began. She spoke of Esther and the marketplace and of a powerful change of heart.

  Simeon blew out his breath, starting to get angry all over again. Tomorrow the family was going down to the seashore. There they would be baptized and officially become disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. He could hardly believe what he was hearing and could not, no matter how hard he tried, bring himself to do anything more than stare at them when they asked if he would come with them, not to be baptized, of course, but to share in their hour of joy.

  He grunted and stood up, the tiredness seeping deep into his body. Yet he knew there would be little sleep this night. He could handle the change that had happened. He could even reconcile himself to the idea that he stood alone now in the family. What he could not shake out of his mind were the other things he had heard last night. This was what troubled him the most.

  Leah called it the “day of miracles.” As she began to describe all that had happened that day when she had come to try to persuade Simeon and Ephraim to go with her, Simeon remembered what he had said. He had brushed it all aside with the analogy of Elisha. Jesus might be a great prophet, but that didn’t make him the Messiah. Now he wished he could really believe that Jesus was only one more in the long list of great prophets.

  They had talked for almost an hour, each one recounting this aspect or that of what Jesus had done. These were not tales from strangers or the latest gossip from women doing their washing at the water’s edge. This was his family, and they had seen these things with their own eyes.

  Further, these things had not happened in some far-off place to people no one had ever heard of. Simeon knew the widow named Ruth, wife of Yohanan the weaver. For years it had been common knowledge in Capernaum about her “condition,” as everyone called it. You could tell just by looking at her that she was gravely ill. As a boy, Simeon had asked his mother what “issue of blood” meant. Only later did he come to understand the concept of a gradual but relentless hemorrhaging that sapped her energy, drained her color, stole her life one drop at a time. He could still remember clearly how Ruth had frightened him as a young boy. Her face was so gray, so pale. For twelve years she had lived with that terrible condition, spending every extra shekel she could eke out on doctors who could not even offer her much comfort, let alone a cure. Simeon’s mother told him that she had spent the day with Ruth just two days before. She was whole, filled with life, still rejoicing in the miraculous change that had come upon her. And all of this after simply touching the hem of Jesus’ robe.

  Simeon had been to the home of Elah ben Reuben in just the last six months. He had gone with Leah and his mother to take a loaf of bread to Elah’s wife. They had just learned that Elah had been struck down in the prime of his adult life. First had come a raging fever, then the loss of all power in his limbs. The palsy had left him totally unable to stand. Simeon had stood by awkwardly, trying not to stare in horror at what life had handed to Elah ben Reuben. Now Elah was back in his shop, working every day from sunup to sundown. How could Simeon possibly doubt the story Leah told, as she described watching Elah stand up in response to the command of Jesus, pick up the bed on which he had been carried into the house, and walk out into the street with it?

  It went on and on. Jesus had stilled a raging storm with a single word. He had commanded a dead maiden to rise from her “sleep,” and she had come back, much to the embarrassment of the professional mourners. Water was poured into pots and came out as the finest wine. Joachin the leper was now living back in his home, the home that he had been forced to leave four years before when the dreaded disease came on and he was pronounced unclean. Jabez the beggar, who had been blinded as a young boy, had started work in a wheelwright’s shop as a new apprentice. In a few years, he would become a master wheelwright.

  What manner of man was this? That was what kept sleep from coming to Simeon, son of David, this night.

  And what of his father’s Bethlehem experience? David had quietly told Simeon last night that he had finally gone to Jesus and asked him about his birth. He had been born in Bethlehem exactly thirty years ago this spring. He had been born in a stable and cradled in a manger. How many could say that! And yes, his mother had told him about the shepherds that had come to pay homage to his birth that night. How did you dismiss that out of hand?

  He groaned softly and
dropped his head in his hands. But if Jesus was the Messiah, the Anointed One of which the prophets spoke so clearly, why wasn’t he acting like it? Why did he speak of loving your enemies and turning the other cheek? Simeon had never accepted his father’s explanation of the “suffering servant” Messiah. On this matter, Simeon’s heart was with his Uncle Aaron. The Messiah was the Deliverer. God would send a king to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. It had to be! Their people had suffered long enough.

  Absently he began to rub at his chin, feeling the stubble there. It had been two days now since he had last shaved. He would have to shave again soon. It was possible in the days that were coming that he might have to pass himself off as a Roman, or at least pass through their lines without arousing suspicion, as he had done on more than one occasion in the past.

  Suddenly he slapped his leg. He was staring into the night, his eyes wide and astonished. He shot to his feet. Simeon had deliberately chosen to go clean-shaven some time ago, with his mother’s encouragement—even though most of his countrymen let their beards grow full and rich. He had made that choice so he could pass among the enemy undetected, though he had to admit that he now preferred it, especially in the summer’s heat. Was that his answer? What if Jesus was the Messiah but was not ready to reveal himself publicly as such? What if he were hiding his true intentions until the time was right?

  Simeon spun around, looking up at the darkened window where his father and mother slept. What was it his father had said when he told him the story of Jesus changing water to wine in Cana? When Jesus’ mother asked him to help, he had told her, “My hour is not yet come.”

  Simeon almost felt dizzy as the pieces began to fall into place. Jesus was no ordinary man. That could no longer be denied. He was remarkable in such a way that the very word could not describe him. Not even the greatest of the prophets had ever done what he was doing. And because of that, he was building himself a tremendous following. Simeon had seen for himself the crowds in the streets, the multitudes on the mount who had come out to hear him preach. Normally such crowds would have drawn the Romans like a carcass drew vultures in the desert. If there was the slightest talk of rebellion, of resistance, Rome would respond with brutal efficiency, and that would be the end of the matter.