by Lynn Austin
Dinah passed him the basket of figs next, watching him closely. “Will you promise not to work so hard in the hot sun today?”
He didn’t reply. How could he promise such a thing when the Holy One had given him a job to do?
“May I go with you again today?” Zechariah asked.
“I’m sorry, Zaki, but I promised the other priests that I would help catalogue the temple treasures, and it will take us all day. Stay here and help Safta.” He ate a few more bites of food, aware of everyone’s scrutiny, then decided to leave.
Iddo hated the way his legs trembled as he climbed up the path to the city. Thankfully, he would sit all day as he recorded the treasures, making sure that everything on the long list of silver and gold items had arrived safely from Babylon.
“Prince Sheshbazzar has called for a meeting first,” the others told him when he arrived at the treasury. “He wants to make an announcement.”
The prince got right to the point as soon as everyone had assembled. “After time to reflect on recent events, I’ve decided that we need to build houses for ourselves and our families right away. Our work on the altar will have to wait a little longer.”
“Wait,” Iddo interrupted. “Build houses? Shouldn’t rebuilding the temple be our top priority? Isn’t that what the Holy One brought us back here to do?”
“Yes, and it still is a priority, Iddo. But the anger and hostility we saw in the Samaritan mob the other day is a serious concern. They see us as invaders, and there have already been some attacks. Some livestock has disappeared from our caravan during the night, and we fear these attacks will escalate. We’re too vulnerable living in tents. We need to build houses, and I believe the safest place is up here on the ridge, in what used to be the old City of David.” Sheshbazzar wasn’t finished, but Iddo interrupted him again.
“The Almighty One didn’t set us free so we could live comfortable lives in stone houses. We were comfortable and safe in Babylon.”
“Yes, but I feel it’s important to stake our claim to Jerusalem by building a permanent settlement here and—”
“We can stake our claim—and the Almighty One’s claim—by rebuilding His temple.”
“And we will do that, Iddo. This delay is only temporary. Once we’re all out of the valley, we will return to our projects on the temple mount.” Sheshbazzar was losing patience with him, but Iddo didn’t care. He had to convince him and the others that this decision was a mistake.
“Listen,” Iddo said, “if our enemies are a threat, then restoring the daily sacrifices becomes even more urgent. Without the sacrifices, what right do we have to petition the Almighty One for protection?”
Sheshbazzar stroked his white beard, his face stern. “I’m sorry, Iddo, but I didn’t call this meeting to discuss the issue. I called it to announce that I’m suspending our work on the temple mount to give everyone time to move out of the Kidron Valley and into permanent homes. I ask for your patience.”
“Let’s hope the Almighty One will be patient.” Iddo felt helpless. Sheshbazzar was a royal prince and the official governor of the new territory of Judah. His decision was final.
When the meeting ended, Iddo went to work tallying the temple treasures, taking all morning and part of the afternoon to account for every article. As he was rolling up the finished scrolls, the high priest drew him aside. “Can you stay and work a little longer? The leaders of some of our wealthier families have come forward to give freewill offerings to help rebuild God’s house,” he said. “We could use your help recording those donations.”
The totals were staggering. Iddo counted sixty-one thousand drachmas of gold and five thousand minas of silver—all worth hundreds of years of wages. The patrons had also contributed one hundred linen garments for the priests to wear. Iddo laid aside his scrolls for a moment to examine the beautiful clothing, running his hand over the luxurious fabric. There were turbans of fine linen, headbands, and undergarments of finely twisted linen. Sashes of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, exquisitely embroidered. As a slave in Babylon, he had never worn garments of such fine quality, but one day he would wear these. “The treasures we catalogued today need to be put to use to serve God,” he told Jeshua, “not locked in a storehouse. These garments need to be worn.”
“And they will, Iddo. In time. Can you come with me, please, so I can show you one more thing?” The high priest lit a small oil lamp and led Iddo into the windowless treasury. He set down the lamp inside and picked up a slender object about four feet long wrapped in a linen cloth. He carefully unwound the wrapping to reveal a straight, slender tube with a flared end, made from hammered silver. He handed it to Iddo. “According to our temple records, the men in your family once played these silver trumpets.”
“Yes, I remember . . .” As Iddo ran his fingers over the cool, smooth metal, tracing the instrument’s flared bell, he recalled standing in the temple courtyard as a boy, listening to the penetrating trumpet call that sounded from the pinnacle. His father had been the one blowing it.
“These trumpets will announce the appointed feasts and New Moon festivals and will be an important part of our worship. The Torah says that the sound of the trumpet shall be a memorial for us before our God. We need you and your sons to carry on the tradition of your forefathers.”
Iddo handed back the instrument. “I-I’m sorry . . . but I don’t know how to blow it. I was too young when . . . when the end came.”
“I understand,” Jeshua said, wrapping the linen cloth around the trumpet again. “I’ve asked around and unfortunately, none of the other priests remember how to play it, either. Even so, I would like you to take a shofar home to practice on. Someone needs to learn how to play it again.” He picked up one of the long, curved ram’s horns that were lying with the trumpets and handed it to Iddo. “Maybe by the time the Feast of Trumpets comes in a few months, you’ll be ready.”
Iddo carried the ram’s horn down to his campsite in the valley when the workday ended. It didn’t weigh much, but it felt heavy in his hands, weighted with responsibility. “Is that a shofar?” Zechariah asked as he ran out to meet him. “What’s it for, Saba?”
“Yes, it’s a shofar. The high priest asked me to learn how to play it, so I can blow the silver trumpets the way our forefathers once did. You’ll play the trumpets one day, too.”
“May I hold it?” Iddo handed it to Zechariah and watched him turn the horn over and over in his hands, studying it carefully before looking up at Iddo again. “You never told me that our ancestors played the shofar.”
“I had forgotten all about it until today. Do you remember where the tradition of the ram’s horn comes from?”
“Um . . . from when Abraham offered to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah?”
“Very good. But don’t make your answer sound like a question next time. Now tell me, what does the sound of the shofar remind us of?”
Zechariah thought for a moment. “God’s salvation?” Iddo frowned, and Zaki quickly changed his reply from a question to a statement. “It reminds us of our salvation.”
“Very good. In faith, Abraham told his son that God himself would provide the lamb for the sacrifice. And the ram that took Isaac’s place and saved him was captured by its horn—like this one.”
“Will you play it for me, Saba?” he asked.
“I don’t remember how.” He lifted the small end to his mouth and blew air into it but nothing came out except a sound like the wind. “I will have to learn how,” Iddo said. But who would teach him?
That night another nightmare catapulted Iddo from his bed. He’d been so weary after two sleepless nights that he had fallen into an exhausted sleep only to be jolted out of it in terror. Once again, his screams awakened his neighbors, who came running. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he assured all of them. “I’m sorry for disturbing you again.”
Iddo put on his outer robe and went outside his makeshift tent to sit on the broken block of stone that served as their table. He gazed across the
valley at the Mount of Olives, afraid to close his eyes again. He would be barred from the priesthood if his nightmares were seen as a mental defect.
A moment later, Dinah came out to sit beside him. “I’m sorry for waking you,” he told her. “Please go back to bed.” Instead, she nudged him to move over so she could sit beside him.
“Maybe if you talked about your dreams you would get past them, back to the good memories of when you lived here.”
“I can’t talk about them.”
“Iddo, we’ve been married nearly forty years, and I’ve never asked you to tell me about your nightmares or what those terrible memories were. But I’m asking you now, for your own good.” When he didn’t reply, Dinah placed her hand on his cheek and made him turn to face her. “If you tell me what your dreams are about, maybe they’ll stop.”
He hesitated. What if he told her the truth? Would she despise him? It was a risk he had to take. The dreams had to stop. He needed to sleep. He needed to wear that linen robe and embroidered sash to serve as a priest. He looked over his shoulder at the shofar, lying where he’d placed it just inside his tent last night. It was his family’s job to play it.
“What’s the earliest thing you can remember?” Dinah prompted.
“My earliest memories are in Anathoth, the village in the mountains where my family lived. I remember how green it was, and how the wind rustled as it blew through the trees. I used to listen to the birds singing at dawn every morning.” He couldn’t recall any birdsong in Babylon.
“Is the village far from here?”
“No, only a few miles. We would walk from there to Jerusalem in about an hour’s time. My father used to carry me on his shoulders until I got too old to be carried. Then he carried my brother.”
“You never told me you had a brother. What’s his name?”
Iddo had never told anyone. He hadn’t wanted to think about his brother or remember his last moments with him. “His name was Jacob,” he said after a long pause. “He was two years younger than me. My father said it was my job to watch over him, to help take care of him. . . .” He bent forward, holding his stomach as the ache of regret gnawed at him.
Dinah rested her hand on his back, rubbing gently. “What else do you remember?”
He waited for the dull pain to ease before sitting up again. “We moved from Anathoth into the city when the Babylonian soldiers invaded our land for the final time. Everyone did. No one dared to stay outside the walls. And once we were safely inside Jerusalem, we remained there for two and a half years while the city was under siege. We had nothing left to eat in the end. I remember how thin my brother became, how his bones seemed to poke through his skin. I suppose I looked the same, but I didn’t think about it at the time. . . . My mother had grown very thin, too, except for her stomach. She gave birth to another baby the final year of the siege but he was stillborn. How could he live when my mother gave all of her food to my brother and me? It was my fault—”
“No, Iddo. You know that you would do the very same thing for our children. Any parent would.” He gave a small shrug, admitting the truth of her words. “Tell me about your father,” she continued.
“I used to hear him crying at night after he thought we were asleep. His own father had been captured during the second exile along with a group of priests that included Rebbe Ezekiel. My father kept weeping and saying, ‘We were wrong . . . we were wrong . . . and now my family will pay the price.’ I didn’t understand what he had done wrong. Even now I’m not sure.”
When he paused, Dinah squeezed his hand. “And then . . . ?”
Iddo looked up at the sky. It was a lighter shade of black above the mountain across from them. The stars were gradually fading, and morning would soon dawn. “And then the end came,” he said. “The Babylonian soldiers broke through the walls and flooded the streets. My father told us to stay hidden inside the house while he and the other chief priests went up to defend the temple. We tried to hide, my mother and Jacob and me, along with dozens of other people who crowded together in the house. It had once been a beautiful home with polished stone floors and plastered walls, much finer than our tiny home in Anathoth. But several families lived there with us—women and children and old people. I don’t even know who they all were. But after the Babylonians broke through the walls, all we could do was cower there together, hoping they wouldn’t find us.”
Iddo realized that his shoulders had slumped forward again as if he was trying to hide, trying to make himself small so he wouldn’t be seen. His voice dropped to a near whisper. “A long time passed,” he finally said. “Jacob and I huddled close to my mother, her arms around us. I put my fingers in my ears to shut out the sounds from the streets outside, screams and cries and shouts. Then thick black smoke began leaking past the shuttered windows and doors and into the tiny room where we hid. We tried so hard to be quiet, but the smoke grew thicker and thicker until we coughed and choked on it. Then part of the roof collapsed in flames, right in front of us. Our house was on fire and we had to get out! We had to run!”
Iddo stopped. He didn’t want to remember any more, but Dinah gave his hand a firm squeeze, encouraging him to continue.
“We ran into the maze of streets, everyone scattering as we tried to escape the flames. Jacob and I each clung to one of Mama’s hands, and I could see the terror in her eyes. She led us toward the stairs to the temple, up to where my father was, groping through the smoke. My eyes stung and watered from it. The air felt as hot as the khamsin winds that blow in from the desert. But we never made it to the temple. A group of soldiers appeared through the haze, marching straight toward us. Mama tried to turn around and run the other way, but there were soldiers behind us, too. Mama pushed Jacob and me to the ground, shoving us beneath something on the side of the road—a cart or a table, I don’t remember what it was. But she didn’t have time to hide with us. The soldiers attacked her. One of the men threw her to the ground, climbed on top of her . . .”
Iddo no longer tried to stop his tears. It was impossible. Dinah rested her head on his shoulder. “When the soldier was finished, he pulled out his knife and killed her. He slit my mother’s throat in the same cold, practiced way that my father sacrificed sheep.” He stopped and covered his face with his hands, unable to speak.
After a moment, he felt Dinah lean away from him. She pulled his hands down from his face and said, “Then what happened, Iddo?” He shook his head, unwilling to tell her the rest. “Please,” she said softly. “Tell me.”
He drew a breath. Exhaled. “Jacob and I had been clinging to each other, but my brother suddenly broke free and crawled out of our hiding place before I could stop him. He went to Mama, calling for her. . . . And the soldier killed him, too. He lifted him up in the air by one leg and . . . and smashed his head against the stones.” Iddo closed his eyes to shut out the image, but it was still there. It would always be there.
“And all that time,” he said when he could speak again, “all that time as I watched them kill my family, I stayed hidden. I was a coward, Dinah, so I hid.”
“No. You were a child.”
He shook his head. “In all of my nightmares, I’m hiding beneath that cart again. I always tell myself to get up this time, to help my mother, to save her before the soldier kills her. I promise to hang tightly to Jacob this time and not let go. But even in my dreams I can’t move. I don’t help my mother, and I don’t stop my brother from crawling out and going to her. Night after night I’m too cowardly to move.”
“You were just a child,” she said again. “How could you defend them against soldiers with swords? No one could possibly blame you for what you did.”
“No one has to. I blame myself.” Iddo ran his hand over his face, wiping his eyes. “Now you know why I never wanted to talk about what happened. I didn’t want you to know the truth. I was too ashamed to tell you that I was a coward. And my cowardice is the reason why I lived while all the others died.” He looked up at Dinah, her face clearly
visible now in the dawning light. He expected to see revulsion in her eyes. She would despise him from now on, and he deserved it. Instead he saw pity. And love.
“Yes, you lived, Iddo,” she said, stroking his face. “And now our nation and our people will live, too. We have three beautiful children who wouldn’t be alive today if you had died. Seven grandchildren—maybe eight by now if Deborah had her baby. Think of all the generations who will live after you because you had the wisdom to stay hidden.”
“It was cowardice.”
She shook her head. “And where does the Almighty One fit into your story? If He thought you were a coward, why did He allow you to survive?”
“So He could punish me with exile. And He is still punishing me by sending these nightmares, forcing me to relive my shame.”
“Your nightmares come from your own imagination, not from the Holy One. Thousands and thousands of our people were either killed or exiled by the Babylonians. And from what I can see, the same fate met those who believed in God and those who didn’t, good people and bad people, heroes and cowards. Even Daniel the Righteous One was sent into exile, wasn’t he? He certainly wasn’t a coward, am I right?”
“Yes. You’re right,” he mumbled.
“But you said it yourself, Iddo—our punishment has ended and God is restoring us. If it was His will to destroy our people, He had plenty of chances to do it. But do you believe that He’s showing mercy now?”
“He must be because we’re back in Jerusalem.” Where the sky was growing brighter and brighter, painting the dawning sky pink, turning all of the scattered building stones into gold.
“Then if He’s showing you mercy, nothing else matters. Put the past behind you.”
She was right. God’s people weren’t merely coming home, they were rebuilding the temple. Soon, when the altar was finished and the first sacrifices were slain, Iddo could ask God to forgive him for all his sins.