“I believe the girls and I have the food and drink well in hand,” I said. “But might you be willing to stay close to Margalit tonight? The longer this wedding celebration has gone on, the more withdrawn she has become.”
I gestured to the poor girl standing a few paces away, who was still deep in the throes of grief over the death of her baby, the separation from her distraught young husband, and her conviction of manslaughter. I’d done my best to offer comfort over the past few months, to empathize with her, and to keep her occupied with tasks at the inn, but she still walked through the days in a haze, barely speaking and neglecting to wash her body or comb her hair. Whenever Abra came to the inn, Margalit would flee to the room she shared with Chana, seemingly desperate to avoid the sight of a pregnant woman.
“I certainly will,” said Zendaye, who was familiar with the young woman’s plight.
I squeezed her arm in thanks, remembering how she’d cared for me during my own time of desperation. “If anyone can draw her out, it would be you.”
She pressed a kiss to my cheek, her white smile dazzling against her dark skin as she gripped my shoulders. “Now you, my friend, will go sit down for a few moments and rest. You’ve been on your feet for seven days. You are no girl of twenty anymore.”
I laughed at her tease. “That, I am not. But this wrinkled old grandmother refuses to lay down her weary bones during a feast. I’ll rest tomorrow.”
Her next words were lost to me as a shriek tore through the air, followed by a number of exclamations and then a rising murmur among the wedding guests. Confused by the furor, I watched Eitan dash across the plaza toward Sofea and pull her away from her children to whisper something in her ear. Her hands went to her mouth and then her gaze flew straight to me.
Not five paces away, Margalit, the young woman who’d been so flat and distant since her arrival in Kedesh, began to sob, her knees buckling. Releasing me, Zendaye ran over to kneel and gather the distraught girl in her arms. Then my husband was suddenly in front of me, pulling me close, his familiar warm, brown eyes filled with tears.
“Darek,” I said, trembling in confusion and fear. “What is happening? Are the Arameans coming?”
He lifted his hands to cradle my face, his thumb gently stroking the brand-scar on my cheek. “No, my love. Eleazar, high priest of Israel, has died. You are free.”
A Note from the Author
In many ways this book has been the most personal for me to write. There was a time in my life when I, like Rivkah, turned my back on my family and my spiritual heritage and squandered my own blessings. Of all the lessons I learned during that time of reckless self-centeredness, the greatest was that not only does my family love me unconditionally, but my heavenly Abba refuses to let me go. He was always there, waiting for me to run back to his arms and to remind me of his extravagant and marvelous grace. My hope for this story is that we will all be reminded that no matter how far we’ve run, no matter how we’ve wasted the days and talents we’ve been gifted with, there is no place we can go to hide from the One Who Sees, and there is no pit we can dig deep enough that he won’t graciously climb into to rescue us and carry us to safety.
As with both of the first two books in the CITIES OF REFUGE series, Until the Mountains Fall is based in the time period after the Conquest and before the Judges. There is little known about this time, except in the biblical account it is clear that once Joshua died, things went downhill fast. The tribes of Israel were not one united kingdom at this point. They were a confederation of tribes connected by shared heritage and the Torah, and just like during the lifetime of Jacob’s twelve sons, there was very little smooth sailing and not a small amount of tension between the tribes.
And not only were the Hebrews already sliding into idolatry, but they’d pretty much given up on getting rid of the Canaanites, who still lived among them. Moses’s admonition to keep themselves as a holy people focused on God’s Word went largely unheeded. The archeological record shows that there were, in fact, many idols of Yahweh and references to his “marriage” to different goddesses. Obviously worship of Yahweh became entangled with worship of the Canaanite gods in a fairly short period of time, and syncretism (mixing of worship practices) twisted God-given rituals into something that angered him so much that he gave them over to subjugation by the Arameans for eight years (a period that will be explored in the conclusion to the CITIES OF REFUGE series, Like Flames in the Night). It was the beginning of the sad cycle of compromise, idolatry, subjugation, desperation, repentance, and salvation that dominates the timeline of the Judges.
It was fun to explore some new settings in this book. I had the pleasure of seeing Tel Dan (ancient Laish) with my own eyes in the winter of 2017, and as I walked those timeworn cobblestones, saw the gorgeous lush beauty of the forest all around, and hopped from rock to rock over many tiny tributaries that gather into the headwaters of the Jordan, I knew I wanted to place my heroine in that beautiful, yet historically wicked place. I also had the pleasure of standing on a mountaintop in the Golan Heights and looking over the valley where many believe Golan, the Levitical city of refuge, may have stood. There is a reason why this small patch of land has been fought over for thousands of years, even to this day. It’s beautiful, fertile, and in an important strategic position, which is why I chose to place the first battle with the Arameans here.
Edrei (modern Daraa) is in Syria and sadly has been ground zero for some of the worst atrocities in that war-torn country, so little to no archeological work has been done there. However, I stumbled across information about a man named Gottlieb Schumacher, who was an engineer, surveyor, and architect in the late 1800s and was part of building a railway in the area around Daraa. Schumacher published detailed descriptions of the land, its people, and archeological interests, along with a fascinating account of the place locals informed him was ancient Edrei. Beneath the ruins of the city was a maze of tunnels carved into the bedrock thousands of years before, the perfect place to hide during a siege. Schumacher’s descriptions of shimmying along on his belly through the dank blackness underground gave me lots of fodder for my own imagination about Malakhi and Rivkah’s flight through the tunnels. Edrei seems to have been in Hebrew hands for only a short period of time after they captured it from the giant King Og (Deut. 1:4), and it’s very conceivable that it could have been one of the first cities to fall to Kushan.
We don’t know much of anything about King Kushan, except that he was most likely a king of Mesopotamia (although think of a “king” more like a governor over a city-state) from the area of Aram-Naharim, which is between the Tigris and Euphrates. His name wasn’t even Kushan. In Hebrew, Kushan Rishathayim (or Cushan-Rishathaim) meant roughly “the king of double wickedness,” so it was basically a not-so-nice nickname for a really bad guy. The Arameans were known for their brutal war tactics, some of it so disturbing that it was difficult to read about, and likely the fall of Israel into the hands of Kushan was a horrific and bloody one.
Rivkah’s occupation as a scribe is not quite so farfetched as it may seem; there were accounts of women scribes in both ancient Egypt and Babylon, and as one scholar pointed out, we cannot tell the gender of the scribe from the writing on parchment. So it may have been a much more common practice that we might even guess. Who knows?
We tend to view the ancient people as vastly more primative than we are, but not only does the Bible make it clear that written contracts were common (in fact, the entire Torah itself is a written covenant between Yahweh and his people), but the Code of Hammurabi, which dates well before the Exodus, lays out a complex set of legal codes that dictate interest rates and lending practices. International trade was well established in this part of the world, so scribes would be necessary to conduct commerce and correspondence between buyers and sellers, as well as government officials. A good and honest scribe would have certainly have been in demand by wealthy traders like Samil.
I hope that you have enjoyed Rivkah and Malakhi’s story, w
hich, of course, was loosely inspired by the parable of the Prodigal Son, as told by Jesus in Luke 15:11-32. We tend to be quick to judge that reckless son who squandered his inheritance and ended up eating with the pigs, but aren’t we all far too easily compromised by our own idols? Isn’t it so very tempting to waste our time, money, and attention on things that aren’t eternal? How simple is it to grow complacent and forget the price that was paid for us on Calvary and the blood that was shed to buy our freedom?
Thank goodness for a God who keeps pursuing us and loving us, even when we are caught in the same destructive cycle the ancient Hebrews were swept into time and again. But our Abba is always there, isn’t he? Standing on the roof. Hand shielding his eyes as he searches the tree line for any movement. Ready to run to us with arms outstretched, robes flying, to welcome us home. Selah.
I would like to give special thanks to my mom, not only for her constant prayer when I was in the throes of my own prodigal wandering, but for her unfailing support in this writing endeavor. My deepest appreciation also goes to my writing and plotting partners: Nicole Deese, Tammy L. Gray, Christy Barritt, and Amy Matayo, whose insight transformed this story from a tiny wisp of an idea into a fully-bloomed plot line in the space of ninety minutes, and whose continual support makes this sometimes overwhelming writing life into something truly special.
Thanks also to my eagle-eyed beta-readers Joannie Schultz, Ashley Espinoza, and Jodi Lagrou and my go-to grammar girl Elisabeth Espinoza. I am also blessed to have Tamela Hancock Murray, my gracious and encouraging agent, in my corner. Many thanks as well to the entire team at Bethany House: my editors Raela Schoenherr and Jen Veilleux, Noelle Buss and Amy Green and the rest of the marketing team, Jennifer Parker and the design team, and all the hardworking people who have their hands and eyes on my books from start to finish. I cannot even begin to express the depth of my gratitude for such a supportive publishing house behind me as I travel this fantastic journey.
I’d also like to thank all my friends in Waxahachie, Texas, for the support and encouragement over the past few years. It was so hard to move away from a community that has shown my family and me so much love. From my fellow homeschool mamas at ECCHO and MomHeart, to my neighbors the Lapusans and the Matthews, who always made my kids feel so at home while I was writing like a madwoman, to the sweet librarians at Sims Library, to every one of you who showed up (sometimes in costume!) for my book release events, I miss you all and am so very grateful.
Thanks also to Adam Barnes, the Bee Guy of Nashville, who enlightened me on ancient beekeeping practices and shared his extensive knowledge of honey and its many applications, both edible and medicinal.
And lastly, I’d like to thank my precious family, Chad, Collin, and Corrianna, for their unfailing love as well as their patience with my writing-hangover mornings, my tendency to suddenly slip into storyworld and stare into space, and also for being my greatest cheerleaders as I pursue the path God laid out for me. I love you three to the moon and stars and back.
Questions for Conversation
This book was inspired by the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11–32. What similarities do you see between Rivkah’s journey and that of the reckless young man in Jesus’s tale? What differences?
The concept of arranged marriages and levirate marriages (Deut. 25:5) is pretty far from our cultural and modern norms. What, if any, benefits do you see in such unions? What complications might arise? What would our society look like if arranged marriages were still customary?
The definition of prodigal is “reckless or wasteful.” Have you, or someone you love, ever spent time wandering from your spiritual and/or familial heritage? In what ways were you (or they) reckless during that time? What, or who, influenced a change? What lessons were learned during that period of your (or their) life?
Rivkah and Malakhi change drastically over the course of the book, due to both circumstances and simple maturation. What contrasts do you see between Rivkah at the beginning and Rivkah five years later? What about Malakhi?
When have you, like Rivkah, made harsh judgments about a person and then come to realize that you did not have all the information and were perhaps wrong in your assessment? How did that change your relationship with that person?
When have you, like Malakhi, mistakenly put someone on a pedestal or imagined them to be something more than who they actually were? How did you come to understand the truth? How did that new insight affect your relationship with that person?
Have you ever made a decision out of desperation, like Rivkah did when she sold herself into slavery? What effects did that have on your life or on those around you? What good came out of that situation?
Which secondary characters are your favorites in Until the Mountains Fall? What about the other books in the series? Why are you drawn to them?
How has Moriyah’s influence shaped the town of Kedesh? What do you think she and her family might do now that she is free to leave?
We met Tirzah as an infant in Shelter of the Most High and encountered her as a spunky, energetic young girl and then as a feisty, adventurous teen in Until the Mountains Fall. Since she will be the heroine of Like Flames in the Night, book four in the series, how do you think her character might develop over the eight-year interim? What kind of hero do you think would be a good complement to her spirited nature?
Connilyn Cossette is the CBA bestselling author of the OUT FROM EGYPT series from Bethany House Publishers. Her debut novel, Counted with the Stars, was a finalist for both the 2017 Christy Award, INSPY Award and the Christian Retailing’s Best Award. There is not much she enjoys more than digging into the rich, ancient world of the Bible, discovering new gems of grace that point to Jesus, and weaving them into an immersive fiction experience. She lives with her husband of twenty-one years and a son and a daughter who fill her days with joy, inspiration, and laughter. Connect with her at www.ConnilynCossette.com.
Sign Up Now!
Instagram: Bethany House Fiction
Resources: bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook
Newsletter: www.bethanyhouse.com/newsletter
Facebook: Bethany House
Table of Contents
Cover
Books by Connilyn Cossette
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Cities of Refuge in Israel
Part I 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Part II 13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Epilogue
A Note from the Author
Questions for Conversation
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
List of Pages
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
/>
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
101
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
Until the Mountains Fall Page 31