The Chronicles of the Kings Collection

by Lynn Austin

  “I understand,” he said. “This is difficult for me, too. It’s not my home anymore. I thought it would be, but it isn’t. Most of my life has been lived on Elephantine Island.”

  “Maybe things will change once our families arrive,” Joel said quietly.

  Amariah shook his head. “I can’t ask Dinah to live here. I don’t even know if I can stand it myself. Manasseh is everywhere.”

  “I know,” Joshua said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.” The tour ended near the door to the royal walkway, leading up to the Temple. None of them had gone up to see it since their return. “Does anyone feel like taking a look?” Joshua asked.

  Joel sighed. “All right. The first time will be the hardest, no matter how long I avoid it.”

  When they reached the top of the hill, the three men could only stand outside the gate and stare in horror. Except for the sanctuary, the Temple Mount was unrecognizable. “God of Abraham,” Joshua murmured. He had never witnessed such a sight. The courtyards were crammed with forbidden images. The royal sorcerers, astrologers, and shrine prostitutes all continued to practice their idolatry, going about their rituals as if the king had never left Jerusalem. The scene was so vile that none of them could bear to walk through the gate.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Amariah said.

  The triumph Joshua felt earlier as he’d climbed the palace steps had all faded, leaving sorrow and emptiness in its place. He wondered, as they walked down the hill again, if the task they faced would prove too great for them. “We have so much work ahead of us,” he said. “We may as well accept the fact that it’s going to take a long time—probably the rest of our lives.”

  Joel wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I hardly know where to begin.”

  “I know what you mean,” Amariah said. “I wonder if this is how my father felt when he began to reform the nation after King Ahaz died.”

  “This has to be worse,” Joshua said, “much worse. Manasseh has reigned for a long time. If any man ever deserved God’s wrath, it’s him.” He walked in silence for a moment, then said, “Ironic, isn’t it? My father’s first job for your father was repairing the Temple.”

  He had been chasing memories of Abba all day, but they had eluded him, darting out of sight every time he tried to picture his face. There were two more places he wanted to visit, but he needed to confront them alone. “I’ll meet you later tonight,” he told the others. “I want some time to look around the city by myself.”

  Joshua threaded his way through the jostling crowds, following the street that led to the Damascus Gate. Jerusalem seemed noisy and strident, the people he passed rushed and ill-tempered. He was surprised to find himself longing for the peace of Elephantine Island and the gentle sound of lapping water. When he reached the gate he paused, drawing a deep breath for courage. Then he hurried through it to face the king’s execution pit.

  The site was unchanged, a well-used testimony to the brutality of Manasseh’s reign. Joshua stared at the scourging posts and the deadly stones that littered the ground, picturing them splattered with innocent blood. If he walked through the pit, he imagined that the earth itself would be soaked with it. Abba had suffered here, died here. Joshua didn’t even know where he was buried. He found it difficult to live with the fact that he might never know. He hoped that Manasseh’s suffering was ten times greater than what he had inflicted here.

  The last place Joshua visited proved to be the most painful of all. He reentered the city and wandered through the broad streets of elegant houses that stood below the palace until he found his boyhood home. Like the execution pit, it seemed unchanged, except that someone else now lived there. He gazed at the front door for a long time, the ache in his throat so large he couldn’t swallow. He thought of his mother’s words: “I will thank God for all that He has given me, not curse Him for all that I’ve lost.”

  He would remember the good times, the happy memories: Mama sitting beneath the tree in their tiny garden, teaching him to count as they shelled dried beans; Abba crouching to greet his children after work, Joshua and Jerimoth both talking at once, Tirza and Dinah clamoring for his kisses. He imagined Grandpa Hilkiah returning home from the Temple in his prayer shawl, pausing to reverently kiss the mezuzah on the front door, his fingers caressing the box that contained the sacred law. Joshua peered at the doorframe, but the mezuzah, like his grandfather, was gone. He slid his fingers beneath his eye patch to wipe his eyes, then finally turned and hurried away.

  As he made his way through the jumble of streets to his rented house near the marketplace, he silently thanked God for all that He had given him—for his peaceful life on Elephantine, for his infant grandson, for Nathan and for Miriam. Then he thanked God for Miriam’s stubbornness. Because of it, he would find her waiting for him in their tiny home, ready to comfort him.

  Manasseh’s peace proved elusive; the warmth of God’s presence, fleeting. As he sat in his prison cell day after day, sifting through the refuse of his life, condemnation and guilt continually buried him beneath their weight, leaving him alone with his devastating doubts. God couldn’t possibly forgive him. His grace would never reach as far as this wretched pit. Despair forced Manasseh to sing the words of his mother’s favorite psalm over and over until he believed them once again. “‘He does not treat us as our sins deserve. . . .’”

  His mother had worshiped Asherah for a time. Rabbi Isaiah had admitted it was true. At last Manasseh understood why this psalm had been so important to her. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. . . .”

  The only other measure of comfort Manasseh found was in prayer. It was through prayer that he eventually accepted the fact that he would live the rest of his life in this cell and probably die here. His life sentence no longer brought terror but quiet resignation. Even though God had forgiven him for all that he’d done, Manasseh still had to suffer the consequences of his sins. And that seemed right to him.

  Slowly the months passed. Soon it would be a year since his arrest. As the nights grew colder and summer faded into fall, he begged the guard for a blanket against the chill. He lay huddled in the corner one morning, trying to keep warm, when he heard two sets of footsteps descending the stairs. Manasseh sat up in surprise, listening. He was astonished when the guards started prying the bar loose from the cell door, as they had when they’d removed Zerah’s body. They must be giving him the blanket he had asked for. They must be removing the bar to shove it inside. He heard the bar fall to the floor with a loud crash, and he crouched near the door, ready to take the blanket.

  “You may come out,” a voice said.

  Manasseh didn’t understand. Did they want him to come out for the blanket? He couldn’t seem to move.

  “I said, you may come out, King Manasseh.”

  No. He remembered the taunting games the guards had played once before and refused to believe it. He waited for the joke to end, for his food and water to slide through the hole as they always did. But the hand that reached into his cell was empty.

  “Come . . . take my hand. Let me help you.”

  The door to his cell stood open. The guard was telling him he could crawl through it. Manasseh had dreamt of doing it so many times that this seemed unreal, another dream. Slowly, he lay down on his stomach and inched forward, his eyes clamped tightly closed against disappointment. As soon as his shoulders emerged, two strong sets of hands gripped him beneath his arms and pulled him the rest of the way. Manasseh cried out in terror.

  “It’s all right, we’re not going to hurt you,” one of the guards said as they hauled him to his feet. Manasseh’s knees wouldn’t support his trembling legs. The men propelled him down the passageway toward the stairs against his will, away from the safety of his cell.

  “Stop. . . . What are you doing to me? Where are you taking me?”

  “We’re setting you free.”

  “No . . . no . . .” he moaned. He refused to believe it, refused
to trade his quiet acceptance and resignation for false hope and then despair.

  When they reached the room at the top of the stairs, the huge, open space terrified Manasseh after being enclosed for so long. He felt as if he were shrinking. Strange, elongated shapes floated past him, and several moments passed before he realized that he was seeing people. He clapped his hands over his ears to escape the deafening sounds that clamored all around him. When one of the guards tried to pull his hands down, he resisted.

  “Please,” the guard said. “Give me your hands, King Manasseh. I want to take your shackles off.”

  He hesitated, afraid to believe him, then finally held out his trembling hands. The guard removed the heavy bronze fetters from his wrists, then his ankles, for the first time in nearly a year. Manasseh felt naked without them, his body so light he was afraid he might float. He rubbed his arms in disbelief, staring at the bands of skin that had remained cleaner beneath his bonds.

  Someone took his arm and gently guided him into a smaller room close by. So much time had passed since Manasseh had felt another person’s touch that the warmth of it brought tears to his eyes. Three servants waited for him beside a plastered mikveh large enough to immerse himself in; a fragrant scent he couldn’t identify filled the room. As they stripped off his filthy rags and helped him into the hot bath, he wept. God’s grace and forgiveness had stripped and cleansed him this same way. “Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. . . .”

  Manasseh clung to his blue tassel, moving it from hand to hand as the servants scrubbed him clean. The water became so murky that he could no longer see the bottom. Afterward, they trimmed his hair and beard. He stared at the long strands that dropped to the floor, astonished to see that they were white. Finally, the servants made him lie down as they carefully filed off the bronze hook and removed it from his nose.

  When Manasseh stood before a mirror, dressed in new robes, he didn’t recognize the very old man facing him. He lifted a shaking hand to touch his sunken cheeks, his grizzled beard, and the man in the mirror did the same. “That’s not me. . . . It can’t be me,” he murmured. He saw a dead man, pulled from his grave, with gray skin and black-rimmed eyes. Most terrifying of all was the glimpse of hell he saw in those eyes.

  Someone took his arm again, and he floated, dreamlike, out of the building for the first time. How beautiful the world was! Manasseh wept aloud when he saw the azure sky, the billowing clouds, the radiant sun. And birds! He had forgotten about birds—how they sang, how they soared through the air. He stood in awe to watch a palm tree swaying in the wind, its long, graceful branches waving like green arms. Beautiful . . . oh, so beautiful! He lifted his face and the breeze caressed it like fingers, then ruffled through his hair. Everything he gazed at or touched seemed graced by the hand of God, a gift just for him.

  They led him into another building, into a room with walls painted white and blue and ocher. Thick woven rugs covered the floor, and he stopped to kneel, to trace their swirling, multicolored patterns. He had to touch everything, feeling the nubby texture of the plastered walls, the fine weave of the linen tablecloth, the cool smoothness of the bronze lavers. He had nearly forgotten what colors were, but now they exploded all around him: pulsing crimsons, cool greens, dancing yellows. A woman entered with a tray of food, and he stared at her, transfixed. How astonishing a human face was! So soft, so delicate and perfect!

  Then he smelled the food. When they seated him at the table laden with delicacies, he could only stare at it and weep, afraid that everything would disappear if he touched it, like the food always did in his dreams. He ate a few bites of each item they served him, but his shrunken stomach and starved palate were unable to tolerate more. One sip of wine made his head reel, and he pushed the cup aside, his senses already overburdened.

  After the meal, Manasseh was reunited with the half-dozen of his nobles who had survived. They looked like walking skeletons, and he was terrified of them at first. His secretary was an ancient, crippled man, barely able to walk or speak. Together, they stood before the Assyrian rabshekeh.

  “You’re free to return home, King Manasseh,” the rabshekeh told him. “Our investigation has found you innocent of all charges of conspiracy. Your record has been cleared. We will provide you with transportation so you can return to your homeland.”

  Manasseh couldn’t understand what was happening to him. Experiencing God’s forgiveness in his prison cell had been a far greater gift than he had expected or deserved. To be pardoned by the emperor, set free, allowed to return home, was beyond his comprehension. He fell at the Assyrian’s feet, weeping at Yahweh’s goodness.

  That night he slept in a room with two tall windows and shutters that opened to the starry night sky. Manasseh stared in wonder at the heavens until the air grew too cold and he had to close the latches. He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Instead, he traveled back in time on his final memory journey.

  Abba had held his hand as they’d walked through the palace treasure house. The vessels of silver and gold, the caskets of precious stones and jewels left Manasseh awestruck. “All of this will be yours someday,” Abba had told him, “but listen carefully, son. Don’t let worldly goods or the praises of men fill you with pride. That’s what happened to me. I did nothing to deserve all this wealth. Everything you see is a gift from God.”

  Abba had tried to explain how he had sinned, but his words had repulsed Manasseh. He didn’t want to believe that Abba could ever sin. His father was perfect. He could never do anything wrong. And so Manasseh had closed his ears to his father’s confession, and to his warning. But Abba had made him memorize a verse from the Torah, and now the words came back to Manasseh in his room in Babylon as if he had just learned them. “When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon or destroy you.”

  All his life Manasseh had feared living in his father’s shadow, afraid that Yahweh wouldn’t perform the miraculous feats during his reign that He had during Hezekiah’s. But tonight Manasseh knew that God had performed an even greater miracle for him than slaying 144,000 enemy Assyrians. God had forgiven him, erasing the record of his sins.

  The knowledge was too much for Manasseh. He fell to the floor on his face and worshiped God.

  28

  Joshua sat behind the worktable where his father had once sat and stared at the documents spread out in front of him. After working nonstop for nearly a month, he still hadn’t finished sifting through all the unfinished business Manasseh’s palace administrator had left behind. So much of it was worthless garbage—pages of strangely worded omens and reports from the astrologers about which days were favorable to act and which ones weren’t. He sat back and rubbed his eye, remembering Miriam’s warning about straining it with too much reading.

  After living more than half his life-span, Joshua was finally working at the job for which he had trained, beginning the work he once thought he’d spend a lifetime doing. Clambering around construction sites with the hot Egyptian sun on his back seemed to belong to a dream world from which he had finally awakened. But as Joshua gazed at the courtyard outside his window, he found that he missed the fresh air and sunshine more than he thought he would; missed the sense of accomplishment he felt as he watched a new building take shape. Most of all, he missed working with Nathan.

  Joshua stood, compelled by a sudden urge to find his son and see how his work was progressing. They had assigned Nathan the task of removing the barricades from around the palace and restoring the facade. Joshua started toward the door, then stopped; he didn’t want his son to think he was hovering over him, checking up on him. He returned to his seat again.

  Maybe once they reclaimed the Temple Mount, he and Nathan could work side by side on the repairs. Nathan’s original designs and expert craftsmanship would far outshine the gaudy idols that currently littered the Te
mple courtyards. But he couldn’t begin the work; Manasseh’s priests were still deeply entrenched there. Without a military force, Amariah and Joel weren’t prepared for a power struggle with them yet. In fact, as Joshua and the prince quietly went about their work, most of the nation remained unaware that they had taken control of the reins of government.

  Joshua was tired of sitting; he needed to stretch. He picked up two documents that required Amariah’s seal and decided to deliver them himself. He found the prince in one of the council rooms, poring over lists of Assyrian tribute demands.

  “Have you seen these accounts, Joshua?” he asked in astonishment.

  “Not yet. Why? Are they in bad shape, too?”

  “It’s a wonder our nation isn’t bankrupt!”

  As Joshua skimmed the list Amariah handed him, a palace servant interrupted. “Excuse me, my lords, but a messenger has just arrived from one of our northern border outposts.”

  “Send him in,” Amariah said. He looked up at Joshua, frowning. “Who would send us a message from the northern border?”

  Joshua shrugged. “Who even knows that we’re here?”

  The disheveled messenger appeared as though he had come a long way in a short time and still hadn’t caught his breath. He stared openmouthed at the two of them, as if he hadn’t expected to find anyone in charge. Obviously, the border outpost hadn’t received word of Prince Amariah’s return, and that made the man’s message an even greater mystery.

  “Yes? What is it?” Joshua asked.

  “I was sent ahead to tell the palace servants to prepare for the king’s arrival.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” he asked irritably.

  “You have to get everything ready. The king is coming!”

  “The king? Which king? Who sent you here?”

  “King Manasseh. He gave me the order himself.”

  Joshua opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Amariah scrambled to his feet, then abruptly sat down again as if his knees had given way. “Is this some kind of a joke?” he asked.