Elijah

by William H. Stephens

  Under the towering statue of Melkart an orchestra of flutes, harps, lyres, trumpets, drums, and cymbals filled the air with music. They began with a loud clash at the moment the sacrifices began, the rose in crescendo to a mighty forte as the smoke of the burned calf rose to Melkart, whose home was the sky. The music softened to a mellowness, accentuated with the soft beat of drums and easy clashing of cymbals while the line of babies passed. When the last child had been dedicated the orchestra stopped playing. The only sound left was the soft shuffle of sandals as young parents left the courtyard and as Baal priests came from the temple to gather around the altar.

  As if on signal, suddenly there came from the orchestra a rapid pounding of drums, followed by a resounding clash of cymbals. The priests then screamed in full-bodied unison: “Our God is Baal-Melkart, our Judge, and none is above him! The heavens rain oil, and the wadis run with honey!” The pounding of drums immediately resumed and the priests began to dance around the altar. They began with little more than a slow run, but as the orchestra joined the drums and the music became more intense they ran more frantically. They twisted their bodies, their faces became contorted; they circled, jumped, and shouted. Some beat themselves with leather thongs, while others offered their backs to be thrashed by brother priests.

  The music continued all the while. The steady thumping of the drums and the clashing of cymbals added a monotonous, intoxicating rhythm. Soon, several young men joined the priests around the altar. Others began to recite chants to Baal. Women dashed around the orchestra to kiss Melkart’s statue; others went into ecstatic trances to join the dancing men.

  Soon the entire courtyard was bedlam. Screaming men and women, their eyes glazed in ecstatic trance, twisted their bodies into unbelievable contortions. Mantles and robes, normally prized beyond other possessions, fell to the ground to be trampled unnoticed in the dust. Partners were chosen, with no consideration of Israel’s moral traditions, while the unattended, newly-circumcised babies cried from the outskirts of the court area. Eyes became transfixed on the bodies of partners. Each man and woman watched the stomach muscles of the partner. The dancing became more and more sensual. Untouching bodies gyrated toward each other and retreated, toward and retreated, again and again, until the space separating them closed.

  Zebul watched like a zombie. Already men and women lay around the base of the altar, the obelisks, the temple wall, anywhere to escape the pounding of feet, and openly engaged in the holiest ritual of Asherah.

  Nowhere in the throng did Zebul see the zonah he sought. Thinking she might be in the temple, the fat priest circled the court to work his way to the entrance, stepping around lovers who hardly knew each other. An occasional female arm reached toward him, and he glanced to its source each time to see a woman as fat as he, or old, or maimed, none of them able to engage in the wild dancing, but each aroused to passions that cried out for satisfaction.

  The inside of the temple was lighted more brightly than the courtyard. Zebul paused to look around. The walls were niched at several points, into which were placed alternating statues of Asherah, her organs emphasized in the crudest fashion, and Melkart.

  Zebul’s desire subsided at the sight of the excessive crudity. Even in his most private and sensual thoughts he never had imagined such scenes. In an attempt to deify sex, the statues only emphasized how insatiable was the sexual appetite.

  In the center of the room was a statue of Asherah, cast in the exact pose as the one in Jezebel’s chamber. As Zebul gazed at it, he was startled by a voice at his side. “Well, priest of Yahweh, have you laid aside your robes to join us?”

  Zebul looked at the woman made familiar by his dreams. “Am I so easily recognized?”

  “Oh, probably not by most.” She smiled and tilted her head a bit. “But then I have seen you before without your robes.” She laughed lightly.

  Zebul frowned. “I have not forgotten.” Then, deciding to change the subject, “Why such a large open room?”

  “Are you so ignorant of the traditions of Asherah? Every woman devoted to Baal must pay her homage to her goddess for the gift of fertility. One time in her life she must bring a pallet and find her place in the temple. Any stranger who comes to the city may enter the temple and look until he finds a woman to his liking. She must go outside with the first man who chooses her. She can refuse no one. The payment she receives goes into the temple treasury.” She paused and smiled, “. . . to join your ring.”

  Zebul ignored the thrust. “Perhaps she would be fortunate and not be chosen by anyone.”

  “Is the body of man and woman so unfortunate as that? No, my fat priest, that indeed would be most unfortunate, for she cannot leave once she enters the temple until her debt is paid. I knew a crippled woman in Byblos who remained in the temple for three years. Her family fed her faithfully until finally a maimed warrior viewed her with compassion.”

  Zebul shuddered.

  “And now, you have come to find me. I am glad that I pleased you. Your gift was extravagant.” The woman moved toward him.

  “No,” Zebul blurted. “I have changed my mind.” He backed away.

  The zonah looked at him, surprised. She shrugged and went to bow before the statue of Asherah.

  Zebul breathed hard as he watched her go. She easily could have aroused him if she had tried. He watched the woman bow and rise again and again before Asherah. She muttered chants in rhythm. As he watched, he saw her shiver as though a shock thrilled through her. She rose to her feet. With arms outstretched and eyes glazed she began the whirling dance that had possessed the mob outside. Hypnotized by the statue, she danced as though possessed by a demon, her shrieks answering Melkart and Asherah as they called her to move faster and faster, to whirl, to dance, faster and faster, harder and harder, her shrieks accenting each touch of a foot to the floor. Sweat poured profusely until her clothing was plastered to her thrashing body. Saliva flowed from her mouth to run down her chin. Zebul watched the movement of her body, but it no longer held interest for him, his appetite seared by the wild abandon he had witnessed.

  As he opened the door to leave he was greeted by a din even greater than before. Being a bit higher than the courtyard, he could see well. A young man, naked and brandishing a sacrificial knife from the altar, danced the most frenzied dance he had seen yet. A large crowd gathered around him as the youth’s wide-mouthed and continuing scream filled the air. His body was covered with dirt, some of it clotted with blood that flowed from self-inflicted cuts over his body. As he swung the knife in his orgiastic dance, fresh cuts appeared. The crowd clapped in rhythm and priests led the people in chants to Baal. The young man’s screams were so loud now that they echoed from the city wall and down the valley. His arms and legs flew so wildly that Zebul could hardly tell the limbs apart.

  Suddenly the youth stopped dead still and erect. Then, with a scream that startled even the ecstatic crowd, he grasped his organ and castrated himself. He threw the knife over the heads of the crowd and it clanked harmlessly against a stone. Screaming violently, with blood streaming down his legs, he darted up the hillside. The crowd parted to give him room, and then followed him until he crumpled at the foot of the city wall.

  Two Baal priests caught him under his shoulders and held him up toward the crowd. One raised his hand and shouted, “A new priest, a new holy man! One who has dedicated himself to the service of Baal! Behold him! He will wear the clothes of a woman and live with us in the temple.” With the announcement, other priests hurried to help carry the young man to the temple quarters where they would care for him until his recovery, then give him a place to serve in the temple.

  Zebul did not follow the crowd back to the courtyard but made his way toward the city gate. Out of sight of the throng, he stopped against a tree and retched. Then, weakly, dazed with disbelief, he turned toward the city gate.

  Chapter Four

  Pale and disheveled, Zebul made his way along the stone streets to his home. His sandals shuffled unevenly on
the basalt floor as he moved through the darkness to his room. He dropped his clothes on the floor, slipped quickly into a robe, and fell onto his bed. He lay stunned, his eyes open and unblinking.

  His mind drifted for some time, rejecting the incidents of the evening. Gradually, though, sensibility returned. With monotonous accuracy the events ran through his mind. He tried to shake free from the haunting pictures of gyrating bodies and incense smoke, from the feverishly amorous arms and the zonah and the wild-eyed young man. Exhausted and almost asleep, he repeatedly jerked to consciousness with the shriek of the youth or the shrill of instruments and pounding of drums resounding in his ears.

  Sometime before dawn the nightmare of sounds and voices and orgy gave way to bits of Scripture he had cited so many times throughout his life. Passages from the sacred scrolls of the Law, which he had memorized routinely, rose in his subconscious mind. At times he awoke and sat up in bed to look around the room. Each time, some familiar object jarred him back into the world of the present.

  By dawn Zebul was praying, but not in the monotonous manner he had possessed during the execution of his public duties. He prayed passionately. For the first time in his life he gained a feeling for the words of the Law and an understanding of their true meaning. His sensibilities shaken to the core, the genius of Yahweh religion broke on him like the new dawn.

  The Law of Moses, the covenant which God had made with Israel, the bits of sermons Zebul had heard from the lips of prophets whom he had considered trite and fanatical swirled in his mind. For the first time in his life, he saw the teachings of Yahwism against the backdrop of the world as it existed beyond the confines of the Temple. In his mind, the words rebounded from the walls of the marketplace, swirled in the wind of the threshing floor, filled the houses of the common people, hung in the air with the dust over the trading caravans, and permeated the atmosphere along with the sweet smell from the winepress. For the first time, he saw the prophets and other religious leaders as men bound to their time, yet ahead of their time, creating an ever-increasing tension to force men to rise above their petty selfishness to things higher and more noble. Gradually, he came to see Baalism as a weight to be cast off, as a shackle that bound men to the past, as a stick for the strong and a drug for the weak.

  Zebul sat up once more, shook off the stupor of sleep, and, still aching with exhaustion, struggled from his bed. He made his way to an intricately inlaid chest. He opened the lid and fumbled through brightly colored robes and stacked them to one side. Near the bottom he found a simple white traveling robe. He threw it to the bed, along with a white cloth with which to cover his head.

  He crossed the room to a table and poured water from an earthenware, narrow-necked jug into a basin. Lowering his heavy body to a stool, he bathed himself as quickly as his tired muscles would allow him.

  Revived by the cool water, he began to feel a new kind of excitement. He was nearly dressed when he realized that he no longer felt the old familiar emptiness. His brow furrowed; he became aware that for the first time in his life he felt excited about being alive.

  Infused with the new vitality, Zebul obtained a bronze chariot and a single horse to pull it. With an easy trot, he circled the city wall toward the north-south highway.

  As he passed near the Baal temple, he could not avoid a glance toward the courtyard, though now it was repulsive to him. The area was littered with forgotten clothing torn by dancing feet and half buried under the dust.

  An idea burst into his mind. He reined his horse and lashed the lines to a tree. Not bothering to sidestep the already trampled garments, he made his way to the altar in front of the free-standing obelisk columns. The ashes from the sacrifice of the night before had not yet been removed. He looked around for a container. Surely, among all this debris of clothing, there would be a clay jar. Finding none, he bent over, puffing from the exertion, and picked up a closeknit wool robe. He held it at one end with both hands and snapped it vigorously several times. Dirt from the trampling feet of the night before flew from it. He laid it carefully on one side of the altar and scooped ashes with his bare, fat hands until a heap several inches high lay on the cloth. Gathering the corners of the robe together carefully so as not to spill the contents, he made his way back to his chariot.

  Soon he was on the highway leading to Bethel. The road curved around Mount Ebal, steep, rocky, and barren, boasting only a few stunted olive trees and, higher up, prickly pear. Beyond Ebal rose the twin mountain of Gerizim, not quite as high but equally bare. From these two mountains Joshua had carried out Moses’ instructions that when the conquering Israelites had crossed the Jordan going west into the Promised Land they should build an altar to Yahweh. Joshua assembled the people in the pass between the mountains, near the well Jacob had dug four centuries earlier, their multitudes flooding up the hillsides. A representative from each tribe, six on each mountain, climbed above the mass of the people to shout in unison the Curses and the Blessings of the Law. Thundering from Mount Ebal, resounding in the natural theater. Zebul could imagine the scene.

  Cursed is the man who makes a graven or molten image.

  Cursed is he that sets light by his father or his mother.

  Cursed is he that removes his neighbor’s landmark.

  Cursed is he that makes the blind to wander out of the way.

  Cursed is he that perverts the judgment of the stranger,

  Fatherless, and widow.

  Cursed is he that lies with his father’s wife, or any manner of

  beast, or with his sister, or with his mother-in-law.

  Cursed is he that smites his neighbor secretly.

  Cursed is he that takes reward to slay an innocent person.

  Cursed is he that confirms not to all the words of this law to

  do them.

  After each pronouncement, the people responded loudly, “Amen!” Their voices blended together in a gigantic fury of sound, so awesome in its enormity that the very earth below them vibrated with the wave.

  After the sound of the curses had died away, there came equally strong voices from Mount Gerizim, trumpeting the Blessings of the Law:

  If you harken diligently to the voice of Yahweh your God, and do his commandments, then Yahweh your God will set you on high among the nations of the earth, and all these blessings shall come upon you:

  Blessed shall you be in the city, and in the field.

  Blessed shall be the fruit of your bodies, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your cows, and the flocks of your sheep.

  Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading trough.

  Blessed shall you be when you come in, and when you go out.

  Your enemies that rise up against you shall flee before you seven ways.

  Yahweh shall command the blessing upon you in your

  storehouses, and in all that you set your hand to, and he

  will bless you in the land he gives you . . .

  All the people of the earth shall see that you are called by the

  name of Yahweh . . .

  Yahweh shall open unto you his good treasure, the heavens

  to give the rain to your land in his season, and to bless the work of your hand . . .

  Zebul never had thought seriously about the Curses and the Blessings of the Law. Now, the moral codes of the two religions standing in such stark contrast, he realized in a new way: Yahweh promises the same fertility that Baal promises!

  The teachings went over in his mind as he continued his journey past the city of Shechem and finally, Shiloh. Bethel lay ahead, its white walls glistening in the afternoon sun. The journey had been hard of the soft Zebul, but the beauty of the city revived his spirit.

  Zebul spotted a tree just off the road and he guided his horse to it. He secured the reins, took the cloth of ashes from the floor of the chariot, and squatted under the protection of the tree. From the opened cloth he applied the ashes to his skin, starting with his sandaled feet, working up his le
gs to his body, his arms, his clothes, and finally his face, beard, and hair. He would meet Ahijah as an Israelite in mourning, penitent and despairing.

  He remounted his chariot and snapped his horse to a fast trot. Once through the gates of Bethel he guided his chariot carefully through the streets, which were paved with wide, flat stones. The sharp sound of hooves and the harsh grating of wheels made the air heavy with activity. Faces turned to gaze at the strange, fat figure, but he moved too fast for a crowd to gather. He made his way along remarkably well-drained streets lined with strongly constructed buildings to the simple house of Ahijah. He was tired, and prayed that Ahijah would be at home.

  The priest reined his horse to a stop and, still holding the reins in one hand, dismounted his chariot. His knock was answered by an old man dressed in a worn robe of the kind more prosperous Israelites used as underclothing. From a leaden face, heavily veined and with prominent cheekbones, peered eyes that were entirely out of keeping with the frail body that housed them. They held the piercing look of alertness and determination. Zebul glanced at the stringy whiskers and thin hair and had the impression that the beard once had been full and flowing from a craggy face. The hair had disappeared from the old man’s thin arms and his skin was incredibly wrinkled. He stood without speaking, looking quizzically at the ash-covered Zebul.

  “I am Zebul, priest from Samaria, high priest of Israel. I have come to talk with Abijah.”

  “I am Abijah. What brings you to me in mourning clothes?” The old prophet either did not recognize the priest or he believed him to be an imposter.

  “My message is long and I am tired. I beg your hospitality for the night.”

  Ahijah, puzzled but accustomed to a lifetime of unusual requests, stepped outside and closed the door. “Come with me. We will settle your horse first.”