Joshua Valiant

by Brian Godawa

  She had become quite well known in royal circles, but had always turned down offers to become a personal concubine to various officers who begged for her favor like pathetic mongrels. She wanted her independence and felt empowered to hold an establishment of her own. She had made the profession more respectable.

  But her real plan was found in the peculiar character of taverns in the township. They were places of local gossip that kept her on top of everything going on in the city all the way up to the Chief Commander, who had also slobbered for her affections.

  But more importantly, the tavern was the establishment of choice for travelers on their way to and fro through the land. So this allowed her the ability to gain information on anyone from the Transjordan that might be searching specifically for her. She poured her ale to loosen tongues and kept informed for her own safety.

  She had most recently heard from travelers in the southern Negeb and wilderness of Paran that there was danger in the Transjordan region. Apparently, a tribe of desert nomad troublemakers, Habiru, had attacked and destroyed the cities of Arad, and word through the Edomites came that the Habiru were on their way to the Transjordan. That piqued her interest. She would welcome any hostile force to rise up against the kingdom of Bashan because that would include the Serpent Clan of Gilgal Rephaim and maybe even lead all the way to Banias. She made it a point to keep her ears open for that news.

  But there was one other thing that she had planned for so many years. She saved her money until she could afford to buy back the one thing that had been taken from her so long ago and cast her adrift in a world of pain and sorrow: Her family.

  Today was the big day. She had paid a caravan of mercenaries to travel up to Banias and bring her family back to Jericho. It had taken almost all her savings to ensure their safety, but it was worth it. It took some convincing for them to go, but she proved her intent to them with a secret letter sharing details of her past that only she and her family would know.

  Her inability to show her own face in Banias was due to the fact that should any of the satyrs discover she was alive, they would link her to the disappearance of Izbaxl and sacrifice her on the altar of Azazel. Satyrs were passionate and vengeful creatures. They were given to great excess of emotion, which included animus.

  She paid off her family’s debts, which had kept them enslaved to the community, and brought them back.

  She had wondered after all these years, how many of them were still alive and healthy. Her father and mother would be quite old if they had survived.

  She only prayed they did not pay the price of her own rebellion.

  The day she saw the caravan in the distance through her window on the wall of the city, she could not contain herself. She mounted a horse and rode outside the city walls to meet them.

  When the mercenaries saw her coming, they halted.

  Her horse slowed to a canter.

  Rahab’s heart raced with hope and fear.

  And the first ones she saw were her two brothers in the lead. They were twins. They were grown now into handsome young men of twenty-six years old. Baraket and Baxilet. But she could tell them apart still.

  They did not recognize her.

  She got off her horse and pulled back her hood with a smile.

  Their eyes went wide.

  “Arisha!” they said in unison, and jumped off their horses to hug her desperately.

  And then she saw her sisters, now in their early twenties, and beautiful as ever. The oldest, Shiba, was worn looking; the youngest, Yasha, was like a princess.

  They screamed her name and she cried out. They almost fell over with their joyful caresses and kissing of one another.

  Rahab could see two young men standing sheepishly by, the husbands of her sisters.

  Then Rahab stopped, and she looked around. She felt dread over her soul.

  “Mother and father?” she said to them all. “Are they…?”

  She could not say it. She feared the worst.

  Baraket quipped, “Well, they are old and slow as ever, but they are not dead, if that is what you mean.”

  And then she saw them.

  They limped from the back of the caravan with creaky backs and legs.

  It was her mother and father.

  It had been over sixteen years since she had seen them, but they looked as if they had aged thirty years. She immediately began to cry and broke away from her siblings to meet them.

  She stopped in front of them.

  They looked at her with shocked unbelief.

  “You are so beautiful,” said her mother.

  “We thought you were dead,” said her father. “All these years. My little Arisha, you have grown.”

  “You are so beautiful,” said her mother again.

  The siblings had all drawn near to Rahab.

  “I have a new name,” she said. “Rahab.”

  “Rahab,” repeated her father. “My Rahab.”

  He opened his arms and they embraced, the three of them.

  And sixteen years of loneliness, despair, and sorrow melted into weeping.

  “Rahab?” said Baraket, “The name of the sea dragon?”

  Everyone began to laugh. Both laugh and cry.

  Then Rahab through happy tears croaked out, “Yes, and that means you had better do what I say, little brother, or you will experience the chaos of my wrath!”

  Everyone laughed again.

  “Well, I see you have not changed, dear sister,” replied Baraket. And they all laughed yet again.

  Rahab had redeemed her family. She had so dreaded the possibility that they were dead or tortured for her rebellion. But they were not.

  “What did you hear of me when I vanished?” she asked.

  Her father explained, “No one knew. Izbaxl and Sisa both disappeared as well without a trace. Izbaxl’s brother, Xizmat, announced to us that Izbaxl ran away with the two of you.”

  Rahab deduced what had happened. Izbaxl’s pride kept him from explaining anything to his fellow satyrs before leaving to hunt down Arisha. When the dire wolves ate him, they consumed all of Izbaxl’s and Sisa’s bodies and with them all the secrets of that night.

  Rahab breathed a deep sigh of relief.

  She turned to her family and said, “Come home with me, and I will tell you what happened that night.”

  • • • • •

  The dire wolves did consume all of Izbaxl’s body that night. All of his body that was in the woods. There was a certain severed body part of the satyr however that was left in Arisha’s room. She had completely forgotten about it. It had been tossed onto the floor. But Xizmat had examined the room that same night and found the bloody member lying in the corner.

  He knew that it was Izbaxl’s, and that it proved foul play. But he remained silent and waited for any news to give light to his horrible discovery.

  When no information was forthcoming, he hid the embarrassment of his brother’s emasculation from the rest of the community. He kept it to himself until he could discover new evidence that might bring resolution to the mysterious crime.

  When Arisha’s family had been redeemed from their debts and left for the south these sixteen years later, Xizmat immediately remembered them as the family of Arisha. He did not take the connection as a coincidence, and decided to employ a spy to find out where they went.

  That spy had followed them to Jericho.

  Chapter 14

  The gods and goddesses of Canaan met at their cavern in the heart of Mount Hermon. Mastema presided over the meeting on the throne seat that looked out upon the pitch-black lake that had a perpetual flame across its surface: The Abyss.

  Dagon, Molech, Asherah, and Chemosh had been waiting for Ba’al and Ashtart to arrive.

  They were late.

  When the two gods finally entered the cavern, the others noticed Ashtart being led by a collared leash with spikes around her neck. But that is all she wore. She was humiliatingly naked and sported excruciating body piercings all over h
er anatomy, from bars, studs, and rings, to hooks in her back, used to hang her by her skin. The reason she was naked was so that everyone could see the bruises, contusions, and open wounds covering her from head to toe. She walked with a slight limp and one of her eyes was a pus filled bulge closed shut.

  She would heal quickly. She was a Watcher.

  It was obvious Ba’al had been carrying out his violent sexual fantasies on her, but no one dared make reference to it for fear of Ashtart visiting the same upon them. She was submissive to Ba’al’s dominance, but she was still the goddess of war and could cut anyone else down with ease.

  She was just glad to be on top of the earth instead of below it.

  Mastema said, “You are late.”

  Ba’al replied, “Ashtart and I were building my temple on Mount Sapan in the far reaches of the north.”

  Mastema glared at Ashtart. “I am sure you were.”

  Ashtart played her part with irony. “We put a wonderful window in it, so Daddy Storm God could hurl his thunderbolts and rain storms. The earth convulsed, the mountains quaked, and he opened a rift in the clouds. You will all simply have to come and have a party.”

  Mastema was gangly and ugly, but he still commanded the attention with his superior legal standing over the seventy Sons of God.

  “The time for celebration is over,” he said. “The War of the Seed is upon us.”

  A hush went over the gods. They knew what that meant.

  It had been prophesied in the Garden that the Seed of Eve would be at war with the Seed of the Serpent. The gods had sought to pollute the seedline of Eve by interbreeding with it. They had bred the Nephilim, giant hybrids of human and angel, and had used them to draw worship away from Yahweh. They sought to violate the holy separation of creation.

  But they had also sought to track down Yahweh’s chosen one, the bearers of the seedline, in order to destroy him: Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah.

  The great Flood was Yahweh’s response of judgment.

  But their project of corruption did not stop. And their search for the Seed in each generation continued and failed time after time. Even after Yahweh had made a covenant with Abraham to establish his inheritance through his lineage. That Seed through Isaac and Jacob eventually became a large family of seventy that was sent into captivity for hundreds of years in Egypt and were forgotten to the world.

  That family of seventy became a nation of seventy thousand.

  Meanwhile, the Seed of the Serpent filled the land of Canaan with their progeny and purpose.

  Mastema caught them all up on recent events. “And so this Moses has led the Seed of Eve through the desert for a generation, and is now on its way around Edom to enter into the Transjordan.”

  Ba’al asked, “So their claim is on our land to dispossess us?”

  “Yes,” said Mastema.

  “Then why did they not enter into south Canaan?”

  “They tried, but failed,” said Mastema. “Yahweh even killed an entire generation for its lack of willingness to fight. And therein lies our hope. They may be Yahweh’s people, but they lack conviction. Many of them still worship some of us, and are therefore subject to curses from their god.”

  Molech and Dagon chuckled.

  Mastema continued, “If we are strategic about our battles and operations, we can crush these Habiru.”

  Ashtart said, “But the Cisjordan is considered the Promised Land by Yahweh. Why are they approaching the Transjordan?”

  “I think this Moses is going to establish a base of operations in the Transjordan from which to launch an invasion of the Cisjordan.”

  Ashtart said, “Well, I say, come and get it, old man.” Ashtart had been preparing for this for a long time.

  Molech sniggered. They had worked together on a plan so bold they actually wanted the Habiru to attack them. They would unleash a storm and stress upon these troublemakers that they would have no idea how to deal with.

  “We must be ready,” said Mastema. “And we must stay organized. Chemosh and Molech have the southern region of the Transjordan with Moab, Ammon, and King Sihon. Ashtart guards Bashan and King Og. Ba’al remains in the southern hill country with the Anakim, and Dagon, the coastline cities of the Philistines. Asherah can take the north.”

  “What about you?” asked Molech.

  “I will be filing legal motions against Yahweh in his heavenly court to try to keep him from entering into Canaan.”

  Ashtart grinned. “You are trying to force Yahweh’s hand.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Molech.

  Ashtart kept watching the legal adversary as she spoke, “Mastema believes that the Seed of Eve, is more than this nation of people, the children of Abraham.”

  Molech, Dagon, and Asherah looked to Mastema and the others for their answer.

  Mastema gave it up, “The Seed is not plural. It is singular.”

  “A person?” said Dagon.

  “A king.”

  “A king?” repeated Molech. “And it is he who will inherit Canaan?”

  “He,” said Mastema, “will inherit the earth. Canaan is only the beginning. I fear the real plan of Yahweh is that this tyrant ruler may even undo Babel, and with it our inheritance.”

  Molech was having a hard time following. He was a bit slower than the others.

  Ashtart tried to steal a bit of Mastema’s thunder as she quoted the ancient antediluvian prophecy. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

  Ba’al jumped in, “He shall crush your head. He is singular.”

  “Brilliant,” said Ashtart.

  Ba’al yanked her chain to quell her sarcasm. She gave a choked gasp.

  “Is it this Moses?” asked Ba’al.

  “No,” said Mastema. “But they have a sacred text that claims he will be a prophet like Moses. And he will come from the lineage of Judah. It says, ‘The scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes. And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.’”

  “How do you know this?” asked Molech.

  “Because he keeps up with current events,” said Ashtart. “You should try it sometime, ignoramus.”

  Molech withdrew. He felt stupid.

  Mastema explained, “Moses has spoken of it publicly to his people. He is even writing it down. And we, of course, have spies.”

  “That is audacious,” said Ashtart.

  Ba’al tried to sum it up. “So the Children of Abraham are coming to war on our inheritance. But then there is an anointed king who is coming through the line of Judah, and he is the prophesied Seed to crush…” he paused respectfully, “…your head?”

  Mastema showed his only moment of actual weakness, when he replied, “And all the Seed of the Serpent will go down with me.”

  “Well then,” concluded Ashtart with a more positive attitude, “I suggest we send out scouts to find this chosen seed—and kill him. And in the meanwhile prepare for war.”

  Chapter 15

  The Israelites left Mount Hor and traveled south. Their goal was to travel around Edom, by way of the Gulf of Aqaba where they would turn north and approach the King’s Highway, which would take them into the Transjordan area.

  One day, Joshua and Caleb came to Moses’ tent as he was writing on his leather parchments, a new technique he had learned in Egypt before the exodus. Tablets were so heavy and could break so easily. But this new form of writing on parchment was much more mobile, flexible and saved space. For years, Moses had carefully written down the laws and applications that Yahweh gave to him. But he also had been incorporating it into research on his people’s ancestry, from the Garden of Eden all the way up to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s lives. He would eventually add his own journeys in the wilderness with Israel.

  “Wait,” interrupted Moses. He was in the middle of looking through some clay tablets.

  “These are toledoth tablets,” he added. Toledoth is the word
for genealogy.

  “They are the very genealogies of Enoch, Methuselah, and Noah.”

  As a court Egyptian, Moses had been taught not only Egyptian hieroglyphs, but Akkadian, the international language of trade, as well as his people’s distinctive Canaanite dialect.

  “These have been engraved by the very hands of our ancestors. It is both humbling and rewarding. Like a window to our own past in Yahweh’s hands.”

  Joshua had no patience for such scribal frivolities. He got right to the point.

  “Moses, the people are protesting our desert sojourn again.”

  “Now what?” said Moses, annoyed at how this all kept interrupting his very important job of putting down Israel’s history. He started to glow with his emotion.

  Caleb explained, “The same as prior gripes. ‘Why did you take us out of Egypt? We do not have any food or water. Our families are going to die in the wilderness. It is not just.’”

  “They want justice, do they?” said Moses. “Then let us pray that Yahweh gives them justice.”

  Moses got up and led them to the Tent of Meeting. Caleb stood outside the tabernacle courtyard waiting as they prayed.

  His thoughts began to drift toward his daughter and how she really needed a mother. He felt a bad parent because he had been so involved in protecting the nation that he neglected his daughter.

  But then he thought of Joshua’s loss of his wife and children, and his heart was broken for his friend. He wondered if Joshua would ever recover his ability to love again.

  For so long he had envied Joshua and his special status as Moses’ servant. He wondered how a man could be so close to the presence of Yahweh, and yet be so hard.

  Meanwhile, Caleb, who loved every small detail of God’s tabernacle and every poetic ritual of atonement, was forced to stay outside the center of holiness.

  It was as if law and holiness seemed to be at odds with grace and beauty.

  Caleb’s attention was taken out of his thoughts by the sight of movement on the ground in the corner of his eye. He looked down. It was a snake. It looked like a kind of cobra. But this one had wings, four of them. It was what they called a seraph nachash, or flying fiery serpent, because it had shining copper scales like the Shining One in the Garden, and it looked similar to the seraphim that guarded Yahweh’s throne in heaven.