The Source

by James A. Michener

  To this question El-Shaddai did not reply, for he knew that when the battle was over, Zadok would no longer be the leader of his clan and the decisions which tormented him tonight would not be his to make. But more important, there were some matters which a man must decide for himself, outside the reference to any external agency, even his god; and the killing of one’s own daughter and her husband was such a matter. In this hallowed silence El-Shaddai departed, never again to speak to his trusted, his timorous, his obstinate servant, Zadok son of Zebul.

  Captain Epher’s plan of battle required daring from all the Hebrews and soul-testing courage from a few. Men and women alike were divided into four groups—mob, gate, waterwell, stables—and success required a day when the wind swept down from the north. For such a day they waited, and in the interval each morning the mob-group massed in apparent stupidity before the walls so that Governor Uriel would grow accustomed to unleashing his chariots at them. On each calm day one or two Hebrews were killed and all feigned terror as the scythe-wheeled engines of the Hittites coursed among them. But in an unseen part of the olive grove the other three groups practiced their plan of battle and waited for the wind.

  Late in the month of vintage the days of desert heat arrived—those searing days when there was no wind but only a superheated air from the southern desert hanging over the land and suffocating even the beasts. These days were called “the fifty,” for fifty were expected each year, and in later centuries it would be a law that any husband who murdered his wife after three days of “the fifty” could go free, for under such circumstances no man should be held accountable for his behavior toward a nagging woman. In the stifling heat Epher sent his mob-group before the wall once or twice, but Governor Uriel was wise enough not to dispatch his chariots; the horses could not have galloped long. So a kind of truce settled over the town, a blazing desuetude, while all waited for “the fifty” to pass.

  At dusk on the eighth day a Hebrew watchman came sweating into camp to tell Zadok, “A slight breeze is moving down the wadi.” Zadok called for Epher and the two circled the town and found the watchman to be correct. A tantalizing breeze had begun to move from the north, not yet strong enough to stir the branches but enough to make leaves quiver on the olive trees. The strategists returned to camp and prayed.

  By the next day there were clear signs that “the fifty” was passing. Birds that had lain dormant began chasing bees through the olive grove and donkeys grew restive where before they had been content to hide in shade, not caring whether they ate or not. On the Damascus road a spiral of dust formed, hurrying along like an old woman with a basket of eggs, and from the town came sounds of activity. “Tomorrow morning,” Epher predicted, “the Canaanites will be willing to use their chariots again.” At sunset Zadok predicted, “Tomorrow, a strong wind.”

  That night Epher’s four groups of Hebrews gathered before the tabernacle, where the patriarch blessed them: “Our fate is in the hands of El-Shaddai, the god of hosts, and from old he has led us into battle. You men of unusual courage who go to the gate, El-Shaddai goes with you. When you run to the battle, he runs with you, clearing the way.” The god of the Hebrews was not an indifferent deity who remained above the contest; he sweated with his warriors, determined to bring them victory. “As you go to sleep this night,” Zadok added, “remember that in the past we have known worse days. When we struggled through the desert east of Damascus, perishing of thirst, El-Shaddai saved us. Tonight let us think upon those days and take courage.” And at the command of El-Shaddai the wind rose, and inside the walls of Makor the Canaanites felt refreshed and grew eager to throw their chariots once more against the stupid Hebrews, who did not understand that they must not gather in masses before the gate.

  In the long history of the Hebrews there would come many crises when only a miracle could save them, times when the ordinary courage of men would not suffice, and the unprejudiced observer, looking back upon a series of such moments culled from three dozen centuries, would find it difficult to explain what had supported these miracles. Was it destiny or accident or the intervention of a god like El-Shaddai? No event would be more difficult to explain than the one which took place on a windy morning during the summer of 1419 B.C.E. Inside a town that had withstood mighty sieges, protected by a wall and a glacis that had thrown back even Egyptians and Amorites, waited fourteen hundred well-fed, well-armed Canaanites fortified by five hundred farmers called in from the surrounding countryside. At their disposal they had metal instruments of war, horses and chariots against which the Hebrews were practically powerless. Opposed to them were less than seven hundred ill-armed Hebrews led by a long-bearded old man who was afraid of war, and who on his arrival had signified his willingness to accept peace on almost any terms.

  When the wind was strong the four groups of Hebrews moved into action. The largest mass of people gathered in front of the city walls, making futile attempts to scale the glacis, but among them were hidden the second group, forty determined young men prepared to die, knowing that if only five of their number broke into the town their sacrifice would have been justified. In the segment of the waterwall controlled by the Hebrews waited the third group, twenty men aware that they faced heavy odds when they tried to force the postern gate. And crouched in the steep wadi north of the town hid the fourth group, composed of Epher and thirty hypnotized young men prepared to scale the glacis and climb the wall while bearing lighted fire pots. The plan was insane, and only a miracle could bring it success.

  Govenor Uriel, looking down upon the part that he was intended to see, realized that the Hebrews were doing precisely what he had wanted. “They still mass before the gate,” he commented in disbelief. “Summon the Hittites!” The chariots were wheeled into position and armed men climbed aboard bearing swords and maces. The gates were swung open and the dreadful chariots thundered down the ramp, the Hittites flailing at the disorganized enemy, but as the last chariot left the gate the second group of Hebrews leaped onto the ramp and dashed into the zigzag gateway, where they were trapped by the chains and subjected to arrows from the towers.

  “To the main gate!” the Canaanite captains shouted through the streets, as they saw the trapped Hebrews start to throw lighted brands into the town. The fighting was desperate. From the doorway leading to the governor’s house young Zibeon appeared, slashing with a sword and killing a brother of his wife. From the towers other Canaanites put new arrows into their bows and fired with shuddering force. It looked as if this second part of the operation would fail, for no Hebrew had yet broken into the town and many fell at the gate to be consumed by their own burning torches.

  However, their diversion accomplished its main purpose, for guards were drawn away from other parts of town, so that when the third Hebrew unit started forcing its way through the tunnel it met a weaker opposition than expected, and these Hebrews edged forward, two abreast, with others crawling over them as they fell, and in the end nine men reached the postern gate, which they tore from its hinges, placing four men with ropes inside the town before the startled Canaanites could summon helpers from the fight at the main gate. By this time three additional Hebrews were dashing from the postern to the stables, where horses too old for chariots began to whinny.

  From the walls the invaders signaled to Epher, waiting in the wadi, and the red-headed captain was first to climb up the ropes, lugging a fire pot with him. He was joined by others, and at this moment three heroic Hebrews who had survived the spears at the main gate forced their way into the town, also bearing fire, which they spread upon the rush roofs in that part of town. Into the stables filled with hay Epher advanced, killing a one-legged Hittite guard and setting fire to the horses’ bedding. Other Hebrews threw their pots along the stable walls, and soon the wind whipped them into a tall blaze that fanned out over the town into which Governor Uriel had crowded as many horses as possible. Old horses left in the stalls whinnied pitifully, and townsmen ran to the cisterns, prepared to throw drinking water on
the soaring flames.

  Within moments the wind of El-Shaddai drove the various fires across the doomed town, producing a conflagration so powerful that it turned mud bricks to an angry red, as if a mightier Melak were consuming the whole city. Limestone lintels were transformed into powder and unfinished pottery was baked into those blistering shapes that would be recognized twenty-six hundred years later as the products of a holocaust. As the flames raced across the dried roofs of the town they formed at first a giant suction which absorbed all breathing air, and women perished unscarred as they ran to lift babies from their cradles. They died without anguish and with a certain beauty, as if some gentle god had halted them in a timeless moment, but soon fire followed and the dry empty space exploded into flame, and the beautiful women vanished. Cloth, water, stores of grain, food for that day’s hunger and all human life were burned away.

  Some Canaanites managed to escape through the ruptured postern gate, their faces black and swollen, and a few fought their way past the pile of dead Hebrew bodies blocking the main gate, but as they stumbled chokingly from the flames they ran into the spears of Captain Epher’s men, who butchered them before they could rub their eyes clear of the smoke. By midday, when the wind-streaked sun stood over the ruins, the town of Makor and its people no longer existed. The wall remained and the towers at the gate. The tunnel to the well still stood, its roof burned away, its walls naked and humiliated, and the well itself continued to send forth sweet water to the conquerors. But over the silent mound rested a thick deposit of blackened ash, which as long as the earth existed men would be able to read as the death mark of Canaanite Makor.

  One group survived intact. The Hittite charioteers had been ranging far outside the town when the fire started, and now they wheeled their horses homeward, returning in triumph to a town that no longer existed. They studied the desolation for a moment, made sharp calculations, and then like practical mercenaries turned their chariots around and galloped off to the east, down the Damascus road, their bloody scythes revolving in the sunlight. And they were seen no more.

  For Zadok the Righteous, who had wanted peace, the hours of triumph brought only pain. His thinking life had started with the sack of Timri, fifty-seven years before, and it was ending in a repetition, with the hands of his clan smeared in blood. Those few Canaanites who escaped the holocaust by climbing over the wall were dragged before him, their faces half-burned away, and in vain he tried to save their lives. “This one says he will accept El-Shaddai,” he pleaded, but Epher had seen too many of his brothers killed that day, and now he commanded the clan, On this day of burning, his thirst for revenge was strong. His spear would flash past his father’s eyes and the charred prisoner would die.

  “Stop this killing!” Zadok ordered. “El-Shaddai commands you.” Epher looked at his father with contempt, for he knew that El-Shaddai had ordered the Canaanites to be slain, so he killed them, man after man who might have helped rebuild the town.

  Finally his brothers dragged forth Governor Uriel and his son Zibeon, who were forced to crawl on their knees to Zadok. “These must be saved,” the patriarch ordered, but Epher prepared to kill them. The patriarch threw himself across their bodies, crying, “These two El-Shaddai gave to me.”

  For a moment Epher interpreted this to mean that his father wished the two prisoners set aside for special tortures, and he released the Canaanites, whereupon the old man in an act of humility kissed Governor Uriel’s hands and said, “I plead with you, accept El-Shaddai.”

  The governor, whose indecision had brought this smoldering ruin upon the town, looked at Zadok and at last understood the fires he had seen in the old man’s eyes. “I live with Baal and Astarte,” he said, and Epher slew him.

  Zadok, stunned by his son’s insolence, cried, “El-Shaddai wanted the life of that man!”

  In the heat of the killing Epher dropped his tired arm, stared at his father and uttered the fearful, forbidden words: “You are a liar.” The old man gasped, and Epher said, “Last night when you were asleep El-Shaddai came to me. I know the truth.” And in accordance with El-Shaddai’s will he prepared to kill his brother-in-law, but Zadok protected the young man with his own body.

  “Do you accept El-Shaddai?” the patriarch asked.

  “I accept the one god,” Zibeon declared.

  “Where is Leah?”

  “Slain.” And the old man’s grief was so pitiful that Epher allowed him the life of Zibeon, through whose later children the great Family of Ur would survive.

  Of the nearly nineteen hundred Canaanites only nine men escaped the slaughter, plus fifty women and some two dozen children. To each, old Zadok went as if he were still leader of the clan, exacting promises that they would worship El-Shaddai, and after the women had been distributed among the Hebrew farmers he gathered the Canaanite males and personally circumcised all who had not undergone the rite. At the end of his labors he sat before the tabernacle and wept, a tired old man from whose eyes the fires of zealotry were fled; but he was not missed, for Epher was giving commands.

  Unnoticed, Zadok betook his age-bent shoulders, his untrimmed beard and his staff up to the high place where the monoliths had stood, and there he looked back upon the town that his people had been forced to destroy, and he lamented:

  “Gone are the granaries of yellow corn,

  Emptied are the reservoirs.

  The streets are ashes

  And the homes are black with soot.”

  He was ashamed of his part in this day’s sorrow and cried, “El-Shaddai, why was I chosen to author this destruction?” That day he had lost nine more of his cherished sons; his slave girl had been cut down by the chariots, and his daughter by her brothers; but at dusk he thought principally of the Canaanites slain needlessly, and since he could not accept what his people had done he openly defied his god: “You are without mercy, to kill so many.” And El-Shaddai grew impatient with his patriarch, and after enveloping the mountain in a cloud of light, appeared before him face-to-face. And the old man was dead.

  It was night before his wives found him, fallen across the spot where Baal had once reigned, and his sons came to bear him down from the mountain, chanting that he was the hero who had destroyed Makor, the patriarch who had triumphed over Baal. And as they placed his almost weightless body before the altar and closed his wonder-struck eyes, they speculated among themselves as to which of them El-Shaddai would talk with now, delivering his commandments for them to follow. There was extended discussion, for of the old man’s four surviving sons three were more than forty years old and each was devout, and it puzzled the Hebrews as to which El-Shaddai would choose as his servant for rebuilding the town. But that night as the Hebrews celebrated victory and mourned the death of their patriarch, their god spoke directly to red-headed Epher, and all saw the young captain tremble and draw back from the nomination. But the older sons acknowledged the principality of their brother, whereupon El-Shaddai said to Epher: “Zadok the Righteous have I taken this day because he disobeyed me, but he was a great man on whom I relied for many years. He was a man with whom I walked and now you shall serve me in the same way, for this is the promised land that I have brought you to inherit.”

  But as the years passed, with old Zadok long buried under the oak trees, Epher heard rumors which disturbed him and he climbed to the high place. There he found that his people, aided by Canaanite survivors, had once more set up the monolith to Baal and the accompanying monument to El-Shaddai, and he wrestled with the stones and would have thrown them down, but he was alone and was not powerful enough to do so.

  LEVEL

  XII

  Psalm of the Hoopoe Bird

  Horned altar cut from one piece of basalt rock using iron tools. Makor, 1116 B.C.E. Bull’s head carved in low relief. Aperture for blood of animal sacrifices. Religious significance of the four corners known as “horns” not clear, but on consecrating a new altar the blood of animal victims was rubbed on each of the horns, according to the directio
ns given by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus 29:12. “And thou shalt take of the blood of the bullock, and put it upon the horns of the altar with thy finger, and pour all the blood beside the bottom of the altar.” Fugitives seeking sanctuary, even from the king, were secure so long as they grasped the horns of the altar, as explained in I Kings 1:50: “And Adonijah feared because of Solomon, and arose, and went, and caught hold on the horns of the altar.” Deposited at Makor in late spring, 963 B.C.E.

  It was morning in Makor. Birds chattered on rooftops and children played noisily in the crowded streets below. As the little town nestled securely within its girdle of newly built stone walls, the door of the governor’s quarters opened for the departure of a chubby man who wore a dark scowl on his fat bearded face and a host of freckles on his bald head. Obviously disappointed over some adverse decision handed down by the governor, he entered upon the curving main street of the town and walked disconsolately homeward, but he had gone only a short distance when he was joined by a group of children who began chanting, “Hoopoe, Hoopoe, Hoopoe!”

  He stopped. His worried face lost its scowl and he began to smile until his features formed a great half-moon, reaching from the back of his bald head to his chin, all wrinkled in laughter. Catching up a little girl, he tossed her in the air and caught her with a kiss as she fell back to his arms. “Sweets, sweets!” she squealed, so he put her down and began gravely searching his pockets as if he did not know where the treats were hidden. Other children ran up and danced on nervous toes as he continued feeling his robe, from which he finally produced a cloth bag filled with sweetmeats. Distributing them to the children, he continued homeward as the crowd at his heels cried happily, “Hoopoe, Hoopoe!”

  For as long as men had existed upon the land of Israel they had been accompanied by a curious bird, the hoopoe, who had given them more amusement than any other living thing. He was a stubby creature, about eight inches long, with a black and white body and a pinkish head, and was remarkable in that he walked more than he flew. He was always busy, hurrying from one spot on the ground to another, like a messenger responsible for an important mission whose details he had forgotten. The laughable bird seemed to go around in circles, trying to recall what he was supposed to be doing.