The Gifts of the Jews

by Thomas Cahill

  From Many to One

  Despite the amorous exploits recorded in the Book of Samuel, David must be considered a sexual moderate among ancient monarchs. His son and successor Solomon, installed on the throne after some behind-the-scenes string-pulling by his mother, Bathsheba, and the prophet Nathan, quickly expanded the royal harem to seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, contributing considerably to the population boom in Jerusalem, which soon spread out over the neighboring hillside. Solomon’s appetites were hardly confined to the harem. In fact, the acquisition of new wives was principally for political, rather than sexual, gratification. Each new acquisition was made to further an alliance, none more important than the one brought about by Solomon’s acquisition of Pharaoh’s daughter, for whom he built a separate palace on the new hill to the north.

  Since Solomon’s father had vanquished the Philistines, who had been the only credible threat to Israelite suzerainty over the Levant, and since the Davidic kingdom had reached almost to the borders of Egypt in the south, Syria in the north, and Mesopotamia in the east, Solomon was in the enviable position of being the middleman between fabulously wealthy societies. Israel was the necessary trade route for all caravans—and, as any businessman will tell you, if your choice is between being a producer of goods or a middleman who takes a percentage, the sure bet is to take the percentage. No startup costs, no ongoing production costs, no overhead, no inventory, no insurance, just the expense of collecting the toll.

  His treasury overflowing, Solomon embarked on a building program the likes of which the land of Canaan had never seen, an enterprise of such ambition as to rival the fabled civilizations that lay at his distant borders. Gold, silver, bronze, and iron, cloths of scarlet, crimson, and violet, scented wood from Ophir, and Lebanese trunks of cedar and juniper all poured into Jerusalem, along with architects and designers, engravers and carpenters, and skilled workers of all kinds. “All King Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold, and all the plate in the House of the Forest of Lebanon was of pure gold; silver was little thought of in Solomon’s days, since the king had a fleet of Tarshish at sea … and once every three years the fleet of Tarshish would come back laden with gold and silver, ivory, apes, and baboons. For riches and for wisdom, King Solomon surpassed all kings on earth, and the whole world consulted Solomon to hear the wisdom which God had implanted in his heart; and everyone would bring a present with him: things made of silver, things made of gold, robes, armor, spices, horses, and mules; and this went on year after year.”

  And though this goes on page after page, I will not inflict it on you further. How wise was Solomon anyway, and how much was his reputation based on wealth alone? Solomon was certainly not wise in the mess he left behind him.

  At first, his unskilled workers were defeated Canaanites impressed into service. But once the Egyptian princess’s palace was built, and the king’s palace, which covered the whole crest of the new hill, and, adjacent to it, the Temple of YHWH—a new house for the ark grander even than the storied temples of Egypt and Babylon—Solomon’s designs grew ever more elaborate. He needed roads, he needed bridges, he needed to fortify his defenses throughout the realm, he needed special “chariot cities” to hold his cavalry, he needed … storage cities such as the pharaohs had built with impressed Israelite labor. He began to impress Israelites; and, since his treasury was now empty, he began to tax exorbitantly—the surest way in the world to lose the affection of one’s subjects.

  Solomon was succeeded by his son Rehoboam, the third member of the House of David to sit on the throne of Israel. As so often happens, the creative energy of the founder was followed by the presumption of the second generation—and then by the presumption and stupidity of the third. By the time of Rehoboam’s enthronement, the strains in the union had reached such a crisis that the nobles of the northern tribes delivered a threat: “Your father laid a cruel yoke on us; if you will lighten your father’s cruel slavery, that heavy yoke which he imposed on us, we are willing to serve you.” Strapping young Rehoboam, taken aback, temporizes, asking for “three days’ time.” His elders advise him that “if you are kind to these people, pleasant to them, and give them a fair reply, they will remain your servants forever.” But not wishing to commence his reign with a show of weakness, he rejects this advice and consults his buddies, “the young men who had grown up with him,” who urge him to hold the line. When the northern nobles return in three days for the king’s response, he gives them a little speech, concocted for him by his buds: “My dick is fatter than my father’s thigh! So—my father laid a heavy yoke on you? Mine will be even heavier! My father kept you in line with the lash? I’ll whip you with scorpions!” Way to go, Rehoboam!

  Thus dies the United Kingdom of Israel. Henceforth the northern kingdom will go its own way under its own king.

  In three generations the House of David went from exaltation among the nations to unrivaled prosperity to the disaster of a rump state, the Kingdom of Judah. But in that brief time, Hebrew literature was born—in a language that was but a slight variant of the common language of Canaan and using the world’s first alphabet, invented by Israel’s northern neighbors, the Semites of Phoenicia. David’s Psalms were followed, during Solomon’s reign, with the writing down of the ancient stories. This record was later entwined with stories from the north (often the same stories differently told) and still later emended and refined to fit the agendas of priests and monarchs, giving us the Torah as we have it today.

  In addition to the early monarchy’s matchless contribution of early Hebrew literature, the United Kingdom of Israel lasted just long enough to establish in the mind of people north and south the idea that monarchical government was their natural destiny; and monarchical leadership will perdure till the fall of both kingdoms. But the procession of kings that will sit on the thrones of Saul and David over the centuries to come will seldom measure up to expectations, normally exhibiting Saul’s vacillations or Solomon’s cruelties or undesirable qualities all their own, till there will rise in the hearts of their subjects a sharp longing for the return of the true king, a second David; and the myth of the Kingdom of David will grow to Arthurian proportions, transformed over time into an ever more detailed belief that one day God will send another messiah, a divinely “anointed one,” his true deputy come at last to save his people.

  But long before such daydreaming commences, the notion of an inspired leader, like Moshe, whom God used as a medium to speak to the people, will recede into the distant past, a part of the narrative of the ancestors; and the king will become just another figure of political power, often unreasonable, sometimes tyrannical, with nothing special to say. Thanks to David’s establishment of the cult of YHWH in Jerusalem and Solomon’s uniting of cult and monarchy in a great building complex beetling over Jerusalem, even the priests of YHWH will become but temple functionaries, members of the monarchical establishment, little more than bureaucrats, more like the priest-politicians of Egypt and Mesopotamia than like the Hebrew priest-prophets of former times. One can no longer expect from them the kind of prophetic insight that Samuel brought to the inventive task of creating the monarchy or that Nathan brought to the daunting task of admonishing the king. We are back to the old problem of who will be God’s mouthpiece: who is open enough to hear God’s word and courageous enough to speak it aloud? Certainly not the officially anointed king or the officially appointed priests. What is needed is someone unofficial, a radical outsider.

  In the northern kingdom, the new king wastes no time in setting up a cult to rival Jerusalem’s, an altar at Bethel for two golden calves—“gods that are no gods,” in the opinion of Judah. In the second quarter of the ninth century B.C. there comes to the throne of Israel Ahab and his powerful Phoenician queen Jezebel, whom the Book of Kings portrays as a painted harlot. She is a zealous worshiper of Baal and high priestess of Baal’s Asherah, and the Bible depicts her as a sort of Canaanite Lady Macbeth. Ahab builds a temple to Baal in his northern capital of
Samaria, sacrificing two of his sons in the process, while Jezebel occupies herself “butchering the prophets of YHWH,” probably bands of roving ecstatics.

  Elijah the Tishbite, the last prophet left, challenges the prophets of Baal to a dramatic duel on the slopes of Mount Carmel: each side will offer sacrifice and the one whose sacrifice is consumed by fire from heaven will win—and his god will be acknowledged as the true god by the people. The results are predictable; in fact, the whole narrative of Elijah, which is full of vindictive miracles and ends with the prophet being taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, has a kind of naive conventionality to it, except for one incident which takes place in Sinai on the “Mountain of God,” where Elijah has sought temporary refuge.

  “There he went into a cave and spent the night there. Then the word of YHWH came to him saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ He replied, ‘I am full of jealous zeal for YHWH Sabaoth, because the Israelites have abandoned your covenant, have torn down your altars, and put your prophets to the sword. I am the only one left, and now they want to kill me. Then he was told, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before YHWH.’ At that moment YHWH was going by. A mighty hurricane split the mountains and shattered the rocks before YHWH. But YHWH was not in the hurricane. And after the hurricane, an earthquake. But YHWH was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, fire. But YHWH was not in the fire. And after the fire, a light murmuring sound”—which in King James is beautifully rendered as “a still, small voice.”

  YHWH is not Baal the bull, not a storm god, after all. He controls the weather, since he is its Creator, but he is not in any of its elements; he does not belong to the special effects. He is in us, the still, small voice, the murmuring of personal conscience. For once, we are given a description of the Voice that has played the central role in all our narratives, and it sounds quite other than what we might expect. Elijah is a prophet in the old style: like Samuel, he belongs to a priestly brotherhood and his revelations are private oracles for the king. But in this one episode he gives us something new and provides a kind of bridge to what will happen next.

  About the middle of the eighth century, a Judean shepherd named Amos, living a few miles outside Bethlehem, is seized by a message from God and impelled to head north to preach to idolatrous Israel, which is enjoying high-flying economic success, a success that has passed some of its population by. Amos is decidedly not a professional prophet, like Elijah, and has no connection with any of the prophetic brotherhoods. He is, in his own words, “merely a herdsman and dresser of sycamore-figs,” as is evident from his rough, prickly words, delivered at the schismatic shrine of Bethel and in the streets of Samaria. There the shocked shepherd is witness to conspicuous consumption on a grand scale, which he realizes is just a new form of social injustice:

  “Listen to this, you cows of Bashan

  living on the hill of Samaria [the best real estate],

  exploiting the weak and ill-treating the poor,

  saying to your husbands, ‘Bring us something to drink!’

  The Lord God has sworn by his holiness:

  ‘Look, the days will soon be on you

  when he will use hooks to drag you away

  and fish-hooks for the very last of you;

  through the breaches in the wall you will leave,

  each one straight ahead,

  and be herded away towards Hermon,’

  declares YHWH.”

  The leisurely ladies of Samaria were not used to being addressed in this manner, nor were their prosperous husbands, whom Amos accuses thus:

  “ ‘They hate the man who teaches justice at the city gate

  and detest anyone who declares the truth.

  For trampling on the poor man

  and for extorting levies on his wheat:

  although you have built houses of dressed stone,

  you will never live in them;

  although you have planted pleasant vineyards,

  you will not drink wine from them:

  for I know how many your crimes are

  and how outrageous your sins,

  you oppressors of the upright, who hold people to ransom

  and thrust the poor aside at the gates …’

  “Seek good and not evil

  so that you may survive,

  and YHWH Sabaoth, be with you

  as you claim he is.

  Hate evil, love good.

  let justice reign at the city gate.”

  The growing revulsion of the people of Israel against this loud nuisance in their streets is only increased when he dares criticize—in God’s name—their elegant piety:

  “ ‘I hate, I scorn your festivals,

  I take no pleasure in your solemn assemblies.

  When you bring me burnt offerings …

  your oblations, I do not accept them

  and I do not look at your communion sacrifices of fat cattle.

  Spare me the din of your chanting,

  let me hear none of your strumming on lyres,

  but let justice flow like water,

  and uprightness like a never-failing stream.’ ”

  It was an amazing performance, the more so that it was completely unexpected—and Amos got himself expelled from Israel in short order. But during his brief celebrity, he had taken the old art of prophecy and shaped it into a new instrument for a new age. Long gone were the popular leaders like Moshe, acknowledged by all, long gone the good kings like David, gone the priests like Samuel and the prophets like Nathan who spoke truth to power. So God raised up a nobody from nowhere to tell the truth—openly, without riddles, and in everyone’s hearing—a shepherd with the smell of the pasture still on him, bellowing out the truth to the smug and perfumed.

  And the truth—for eighth-century Samaria—was this: to serve God means to act with justice. One cannot pray and offer sacrifice while ignoring the poor, the beggars at the gates. But more radical still: if you have more than you need, you are a thief, for what you “own” is stolen from those who do not have enough. You are a murderer, who lives on the abundance that has been taken from the mouths of the starving. You are an idolator, for what you worship is not the true God. You are a whore, for you have bedded down with other gods, the gods of your own comfort and self-delusion, you who “cram [your] palaces with violence and extortion,” who have “sold the upright for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals [from Gucci, no doubt],” who “have crushed the heads of the weak into the dust and thrust the rights of the oppressed to one side.”

  Amos is joined by a younger contemporary, Hosea, who preaches in a similar style, but who, because of his own experience with an unfaithful wife, is able to enrich his preaching with the dramatic metaphor of Israel as the whoring wife of a loving God. Hosea’s yearning for Gomer, his wife, is painfully unrequited—and so mixed up with God’s love for Israel that it is not always possible to distinguish the reality from the metaphor:

  But look, I am going to seduce her

  and lead her into the desert

  and speak to her heart.…

  There she will respond to me as when she was young,

  as on the day when she came up from Egypt.

  Thus the metaphor of a courtship and “holy marriage” between Israel and God, first broached in the desert narrative of Exodus, is given a new twist. But both Amos and Hosea also look forward to a “Day of YHWH,” a terrible day of vengeance in which the exploiters will receive their justice and, according to Amos, only a “remnant” will be saved. The images of the Day and the remnant, met here for the first time, will come to be of increasing importance as the new prophetic movement grows in strength.

  In 721, the Day of YHWH arrived for the Kingdom of Israel, which had recently been reduced to the status of a vassal kingdom by the expanding Assyrian empire to the northeast. But soon after the death of Tiglath-pileser III, Assyria’s great warrior emperor, Israel decided to flex its muscles and throw off the Assyrian yoke. This was its last mistake. The
Assyrians descended and carried off all the people of property, dispersing Israelite nobles throughout the empire as nameless slaves who would never be heard from again. In time to come, their land would be colonized by subject peoples from elsewhere in the empire, who one day, intermarried with the remaining peasant stock, would come to be known as Samaritans.

  Amos knew what he was talking about. He even had right the direction of this permanent exile—northeast “toward Hermon,” as he had warned the “cows of Bashan,” now deprived of their homes and finery and even their identities. As a people, Israel had simply evaporated—ten Lost Tribes,1 who leave no further trace in the historical record.

  We do not know how this horrific confirmation of Amos’s and Hosea’s prophecies was understood by the remaining Children of the Promise—the Judeans of the southern kingdom, the people who would soon be known as the Jews—now “the remnant” prophesied by Amos. But the people of the south had their own new prophets; and preeminent among these gadflies stood the man who is perhaps the greatest of all prophets, Isaiah of Judah. Quite unlike Amos, Isaiah was an educated man with access to kings and may even have been a writer—the first literary prophet, though the less than seamless quality of the Book of Isaiah suggests that his oracles were arranged by his disciples after his death.

  When Isaiah was twenty-five, he had a vision in Solomon’s Temple at Jerusalem of God enthroned in his heavenly sanctuary, surrounded by seraphim, the six-winged “fiery ones,” who shout

  “Holy, holy, holy

  YHWH Sabaoth.

  All the earth is full of his glory.”

  Isaiah, whose lips are purified with a fiery coal by one of the seraphs, is then sent forth to tell the truth, which no one will believe, “until towns are in ruins and deserted, houses untenanted and a great desolation reigns in the land, and YHWH has driven the people away and the country is totally abandoned.”