The Source

by James A. Michener

  All that night she remained hidden under the straw, as if in this way she could escape her god, and in the morning she went to a neighbor’s house and borrowed a water jug, saying, “I will fetch your water for you,” and she went into the tunnel and on the way back from the well she prayed, “Merciful Yahweh, do not break this jug, for it is Rachel’s and she is a needy woman. But let me speak with you.” And she was not thrown to the ground, but the light shone and for the last time the voice addressed her, using tones of deep compassion.

  “Gomer, faithful widow of Jathan, I have heard your plea but there is no escape.”

  She sobbed. “The monolith, the temple, the wall, these things I can tear down. But the final thing, Yahweh, I cannot do.”

  “I am striving for the salvation of a people,” the voice said. “Do you suppose I find joy in ordering these things?”

  She spoke not as a prophet, but as a woman pleading with her god: “When I was dying Mikal saved me. Like a slave she worked in the fields. She is my blood, the eyes of my face, the tongue of my heart, and her I refuse to hurt.”

  “It is required.”

  “No!” In fury Gomer dashed the water jug to the floor, breaking it into many pieces in the presence of Yahweh. “I will not.”

  There was silence. Then patiently the voice said, “Gomer, that was the jug of a poor woman and it is needed,” and at her feet the water jug was made whole again and filled itself with sweet water. “If I consider the jug of this needful woman to make it whole again, do I not consider the people of Israel, to make them whole again? You shall do the things I command and you shall speak of Jerusalem to your son, that he may remember. For in every generation we seek that remnant who know Jerusalem, and in Makor it is to you and your son that remembrance is given.” The light failed and never again did the voice speak to Gomer, but through her it would accomplish the fearful tasks that had to be completed if in this generation Israel were to be saved.

  In a trance Gomer picked up the water jug and lugged it back to Rachel, where she set it down without speaking. She then crossed the street and presented herself before Rimmon and Mikal. There was straw in her hair, betraying where she had spent the night, and deep lines in her face. When she saw that Mikal was wearing the white dress, she tried to run from the house, but she could not. Her finger pointed. Her voice grew harsh, and facing her daughter-in-law as she nursed the boy Ishbaal, she cried, “All the daughters of Canaan shall be cast out. Yea, all the sons of Israel who have whored after the daughters of Canaan shall cast them away.”

  Mikal fell back with a painful gasp. Hiding her bosom as if she were defiled she whispered, “Gomer? What have you done?”

  “Out!” the old woman shrieked. “You are no more! You and the child. Out!” Like a fury hounding the condemned she pressed down upon the stricken girl, screaming at her, “Whore! Corrupt! Daughter of Baal!” And she forced the gentle girl from the house and into the street. For a moment Rimmon tried to intervene, but his mother interposed herself between husband and wife and in the end Mikal had to run sobbing down the Water Street to her father’s house, taking her son with her.

  When she was gone Gomer imprisoned Rimmon in their little home and said, in words that of herself she could not have invoked, “Remember Jerusalem, how it lay nestling in the mists, with the temple of Yahweh within its arms, and you climbed through the slanting sunbeams, whispering praises to the noble city. O let Jerusalem live in your heart, let it be the breath of your life, the kiss of your beloved.”

  Rimmon was appalled at what was happening. His mother had become insane, and he could do nothing to help her. She had humiliated his wife and banished his child, and he was disgusted with himself for even having stayed behind to reason with her, and he made as if to leave, but what she said next transfixed him, and when he heard, he was able for the first time in his life to see the years stretching out before him; even when he had been working in the slave pits of Babylon he had supposed that it would prove temporary, and it had. But now his mother spoke in apocalyptic tones: “You shall suffer in Babylon, O Israel. In Babylon shall you groan in the sweat of slavery. You shall be tempted, yea, you shall be tempted sorely and your strength will fail. You shall curse me, and other gods will offer promises that must seem sweet to you. But among you there will be those who remember Jerusalem, who heard the fall of my foot along the sacred ways, who knew the temple, who saw the fair girls dancing in the moonlight, who saw the pillars Jachin and Boaz, who sang the sweet psalms of David and Gershom. Remember Jerusalem, you who have forgotten so much, and redemption will be upon you.”

  Gomer fell back. Neither she nor her son spoke, and after a while she left the house without him and went into the market place, where she cried in a loud voice, “You children of Israel who wish to prepare yourselves for the long captivity ahead, come with me to the mountain that we may destroy the god Baal, forever and ever from this day forth.” And she led a small group of men and women devoted to Yahweh toward the sacred place. But Governor Jeremoth, knowing that he must not start the defense of Makor with Baal destroyed, dispatched guards to halt the fanatics, and there was struggling, and only Gomer and one old man named Zadok reached the top of the hill, and they were clearly quite inadequate for the knocking down of so great a monolith, deeply rooted in the earth, but when they put their shoulders against the stone, their loose hair flowing in the wind, they toppled it and sent it crashing down the mountainside, where it broke into many pieces. And Baal would not go into captivity with them.

  With the loss of the local god a sense of gloom began to settle over Makor, and those who revered Baal began to mumble against Gomer, and Jeremoth fell into a rage and ordered the old woman to be arrested. She was put into a jail, but people of the town, wherever they were within the walls, heard her piercing voice as she warned them, “Israel will be destroyed, for you have abandoned Yahweh. You, all of you who hear me this day will die in Babylon, using the salt of your tears to savor your food. You are doomed. Surrender to Nebuchadrezzar before he storms your gates. Go out and bend your necks before him, because he serves as the scourge of Yahweh, who commands this servitude upon you. Miserable, miserable men of Makor, you who have whored after Astarte, you are lost forever. Your town, your pretensions are no more.”

  Her dreadful wailing disturbed the night, and when Governor Jeremoth, beset by many problems relating to the defenses, summoned Rimmon and asked him what to do about his mother, the young captain was outside the spell of her incantation and he said, “Her misery has driven her mad and she is speaking treason. We had better silence her.”

  Governor Jeremoth sighed with relief and said, “I’m glad you see it as I do. I was afraid you might …”

  “About Mikal. What my mother did was horrible, and I’ll explain to your daughter.” He volunteered to accompany the governor home, but as he started to do so Gomer, who could not possibly have seen him, screamed from the jail, “Sons of Israel! Do not go back to the evil women of Canaan! Take no foreign women with you to Babylon. Take only the daughters of Israel! If you fail to heed these words, Yahweh will strike you with boils, with plagues, with leprosy. My son Rimmon! Do not slide back to the whore of Canaan!”

  The words hung in the night like a brazen curse, etched from metal and burning into the consciousness of the Hebrews. They had found the daughters of Canaan attractive, and they had married them and many had slipped into the ways of Baal. They were perplexed about the future, and here came this dire voice reminding them that they had done evil in turning their backs on Yahweh and neglecting the daughters of Israel.

  Rimmon was especially struck by the malediction, for of all the Canaanite girls he had picked the fairest, a wife so good that she brought dignity to the term, a girl who was more faithful to the precepts of Yahweh than many of the Hebrew girls he had known. Now he was told to abandon her in preparation for the exile ahead, and he could make no sense of such instruction. But he and Governor Jeremoth were not to worry about this problem to
night, for they had scarcely reached the governor’s home, where Mikal waited, when they were called to the temple area, where a fire was blazing. As if she had the power of Samson, Gomer had broken out of jail and had led a group of her followers to the Astarte temple, and there she had driven away the prostitutes and set fire to the holy place. A small wind kept the flames roaring, and before long the temple lay in ashes.

  This was more than Governor Jeremoth could tolerate, and he caused the insane woman to be chained and led to the bottom of the shaft, where bolts were hammered into the wall and where she was kept prisoner during the critical period required for finishing the defenses. But from the well she cried her message to those who passed and to those who gathered at the lip: “Gird your hearts for the tragedy ahead. Say farewell to the olive groves, to the sweet wine presses, to the children of your neighbors, to the well where you drew the sweet waters. All is desolation. Israel is condemned to wander across the face of the earth. You have been faithless. You have been evil. You have been obstinate and unfaithful to our covenant. O Israel, who will have mercy upon your afflictions? How terrible are the scenes you shall witness with blinded eyes. How you shall choke upon food that is denied you. Desolation, desolation. You shall wander across the earth because you have betrayed me.”

  In his mean quarters by the town gate, Governor Jeremoth finished his plans for the defense of Makor, and as he was doing so a messenger appeared to confirm the anticipated news that Nebuchadrezzar himself was descending upon all the territories formerly held by Egypt. “Riblah has fallen and mighty Damascus. Sidon is raided and Tyre is under siege. He will be upon you within three days.” And the haggard man had staggered on to Megiddo and Ashkelon, which were also doomed.

  Now Jeremoth displayed his fortitude. Placing scouts upon the walls he went personally to every man in Makor and swore him to defend the town till death crashed down upon him. He called the women together and said, “Your men have seen the slave pits of Babylon. They know. In this town we shall fight together, and if need be, die supporting our brothers. This is the honorable way to behave. May Baal protect us.”

  Each day he walked upon the walls, in knee-length battledress and bearing a shield of hides, assuring his men that the town was safe. He pointed often to the water system, reminding them, “In three hundred and fifty years no enemy has forced these walls. Nebuchadrezzar cannot do it either, and when he discovers that fact we shall make a peace with him that will protect us for years.” He assembled his own family—uncles, brothers, five daughters and their husbands—and gave each a task which kept him visible to the ordinary people. To Mikal he said, “Forget what the crazy old woman shouted. Rimmon is a good husband, and when this is over you’ll have many children.”

  “I shall have another soon,” she revealed.

  “Does Rimmon know?”

  “Yes.”

  Then the iron-hearted warrior went to his own command position atop that part of the wall that was most often attacked in the first days of a siege, and here he tested his sword and looked down the fateful road that had brought so many armies from Damascus, and he saw to the south the olive trees that his family had owned for thousands of years. “How sweet this town is,” he muttered to himself. “How worthy it is of our defense.” Then he looked with apprehension at the mountaintop from which Baal had been tumbled, and he wished that the mad old woman had not done that thing, and over the murmurs of the town he heard the cry from the bottom of the shaft, “A few days, a few more hours, O Israel! Then the long torment begins. It is the will of Yahweh that you march forth with yokes upon your necks. Surrender now to Babylon. Go to your destiny and work as slaves through the years of your agony …”

  “Gag her!” Jeremoth ordered, pressing his head in regret that he should have to do such a thing to a poor old woman, but when men started down the steps Rimmon took away the cloths and said, “I will silence my mother,” and when he stood before her in the shadows she looked at him as if she were again his mother—as if she were merely an aging pauper who had lost her head for a while—and she said, “In a few hours the testing will begin. But the battle is unimportant. Yahweh asks only that you remember Jerusalem. It was in there,” and she indicated the place within the tunnel where the theophanies had occurred, “that he told me to take you to Jerusalem. He wanted you to see and to remember.”

  “But why?”

  “So that when you are in slavery and others forget, there will be one who remembers Jerusalem. You are the chosen of the chosen.”

  “And Mikal?”

  “She cannot go with you.”

  “But she’s having another child.”

  The old woman bowed her head, both as the servant of Yahweh and as a mother. Hot tears ran down her wrinkled face and she could not speak. She could only remember the days when Mikal had helped keep the family together by working like a slave in the fields, the long talks they had had, and the child Ishbaal. She would rather have died than say what was required next, but she said, “When you leave for captivity in Babylon it is the will of Yahweh that you take Geula with you as your wife.”

  Rimmon’s shoulders dropped as if the great stones of the olive press had been thrown upon them. He did not look at his mother, but made preparations to gag her. She stopped him by saying, “I am silenced.”

  “You will let us fight?”

  “I am silenced,” she repeated, and he stuffed the offensive cloth in his pocket and climbed out.

  “My mother is gagged,” he reported. “Now we can fight.”

  Nebuchadrezzar had found that since he had almost unlimited manpower it was best to attack a fortified town like Makor with a series of stupendous rushes, and when dawn broke on the day of battle there was no orderly march down the Damascus road. Instead, from every side except the steep north where the wadi lay, thousands of shielded warriors shouting and hurling rocks leaped upon the town as if they were a band of locusts and it a doomed bush.

  But Governor Jeremoth was not terrified by this tactic, daring though it was. He waited until the Babylonians were struggling up the steep flanks that guarded the walls, and then he unloosed a shower of jagged rocks that caused many deaths. The Babylonians were forced to retire without having effected a breach, but before Jeremoth’s men could completely rearm themselves, a fresh wave of Babylonians struck the walls, and then another and another; but Jeremoth coolly directed his men where to run to shore up weak spots, and repeatedly the attackers were thrown back.

  At dusk that day it became apparent that Makor could not be taken by frontal assault, so Nebuchadrezzar ordered his men to mount a siege, even from the wadi, and he demanded to know where the little town got its water. When prisoners from Accho exclaimed, “From a deep well inside the town,” he growled, “Bring up the rams,” and through the night the ponderous engines of war were shoved into position, but when they were ready to strike, Governor Jeremoth found them out and sent expeditions which set them afire, and in the morning Makor was still secure.

  “Who is that one commanding on the walls?” Nebuchadrezzar inquired, and when he was told that it was a Canaanite he said, “Him I want taken alive, for he is a mighty general and we could send him against the Cilicians.”

  These were the days when Jeremoth added luster to the name of Ur, for by his moral determination he held off the armies of Babylon, but on the eighth day a miracle was directed against him, one that he did not witness: in the depth of the shaft a stroke of light shattered the chains which held the widow Gomer, and with a radiance about her head she climbed the stone steps and when she crawled out of the shaft she watched as the light moved on to the postern gate, where with a mighty blow Yahweh knocked down the defenses, and nine Babylonian soldiers who had been pressing against that spot rushed into the breach to be followed by tens and hundreds. Makor was lost, but Jeremoth continued defending along the southern wall, unaware that Yahweh had already defeated him at the northern. Finally the defiant Canaanite turned to defend himself against the Babyl
onians surrounding him from the rear, and with only a wooden staff tried to hold them off, but he was borne to earth and his arms were pinioned. When he saw what had overtaken him and beheld the light hovering above the head of Gomer he asked in a stricken voice, “Woman, what have you done to us this day?” And in a terrible voice came the answer, “No woman, but Yahweh.”

  In those historic generations when Yahweh was wrestling for the soul of his Hebrews, and using the prophets to summon them away from Baal and back to their appointed tents, he often spoke and acted with a harshness that seemed incredible. Because the Hebrews were an obstinate people, loving Astarte, consorting with her sacred prostitutes and throwing live children into the fiery jaws of Melak, he had to visit them with terrible punishments. Why did he not destroy them outright? Because they were truly his chosen people and he loved them. And to prove this, when his discipline fell upon them and they submitted, he gave them assurances of the utmost gentleness to succor them during the years of darkness; for although he had to be cruel he had also to be merciful. And it was for this reason that the voice of Gomer now broke upon the wounded town of Makor in a gentleness hitherto unknown, uttering words of consolation that would often be recalled by the slaves in Babylon: “O my beloved children of Israel, I bring you hope. No matter how deep the dungeons where you tread the waterwheels, I shall be with you. My love will protect you forever, and after the slave pits you shall know green fields once more. The world shall be yours and the sweetness thereof, for when you accept my punishment you also accept my divine compassion. I am Yahweh, and I am beside you forever.”