Judging Noa

by Strutin, Michel;

  Yared turned his head, glared at his mother, and turned back, rapt in the rush of sex. Keturah also turned her head and fastened her eyes on Tirzah. Her face was shining, not with desire but with triumph.

  Tirzah turned and ran into the tent to find her knife, just as zealous as Pinchas. She raised the knife above her head, and keened, “My son, my only one,” before thrusting it.

  ADAM AND GIBOR returned to find Tirzah slumped on the ground. Near where she lay, a stain spread across the dirt, blooming like an enormous night flower.

  “Tirzah!” Adam cried.

  Gibor, noticing the rise and fall of his mother’s breath, eased himself down on his good leg and laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “Mother?”

  Tirzah, hearing familiar voices, mumbled a rambling string of words that made little sense.Movingas quickly as his leg allowed, Gibor entered the tent and readied a warm and secure place for his mother to lie. Then Adam carefully lifted her and carried her in. Gibor heated water while his father wiped the dirt from his wife’s face. Tirzah’s eyes wandered, her right arm twitched, her body a fugue of confusion.

  Neither knew what terrible thing had occurred nor how to help, so Gibor sought Milcah, who asked Noa to accompany her. As Milcah applied warm compresses and coaxed Tirzah to sip yarrow tea, Adam and Noa tried to draw out a coherent story. The most they learned was “My son . . . gone.”

  Gibor went out to look for Yared, tracing a path through Manasseh, among the tents of Efraim, and into the grounds of the tribe of Benjamin. During his journey, he learned what strange events had happened that day. Gibor brought home what he had learned and found an excuse to call Noa outside, beyond his father’s hearing.

  He knew his aunt’s eyes were clear, and he trusted her judgment, but he was shy to speak of what he had heard. He fidgeted, looking this way and that, but not at Noa.

  “Gibor, tell me. What have you learned?”

  “I fear for my brother. What happened was no accident.”

  “What did happen?”

  “Midianite women took our young men.”

  “What do you mean ‘took them?’ Women simply do not come in and take men away.”

  “It was a plot.”

  “Does this have to do with Pinchas and what happened at the Ark of the Covenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Today some of our young men went with Midianite women to their festival. Where they do things I can’t speak of.”

  “So you are saying that these women lured the men away. Were others killed as Zimri was?”

  “I did not hear of any. A sister of one said her brother swore her to secrecy. He told her how the Midianites honored their gods with drink and feasting, and . . . and . . .”

  “Yes, I know what they do,” said Noa, remembering the night of the Golden Calf. “And Yared? What happened to him?”

  “He met with a Midian woman even before today. He would disappear, then return, full of . . . spirit.”

  “And the blood. It is blood that coats the ground where your mother lay.”

  “Yes.”

  “I found the knife.” Noa drew the knife from among the folds of her robe.

  He had seen the knife as soon as they had come upon his mother. Immediately, he used his crutch to shove it under the skirt of the tent, hoping his father would not notice. Now he looked at it closely. A smear of blood covered the tip of the blade. The haft was clean.

  “Nothing deadly happened here,” said Noa.

  Gibor agreed, although neither found anything more positive to say.

  Milcah stayed by Tirzah’s side until morning. When Tirzah awoke, she rose to light a cookfire, wordlessly busying herself with getting water and grain to make gruel. When Milcah gently attempted to find out what had happened, Tirzah ignored her.

  THE GYRE OF vengeance began the next day. Each tribe picked men to march on the Midianites. They arose in darkness and went forward as a storm. They were many, but knowing the Midianites might be more, they planned to take them from their beds.

  The Midian tents stood near the base of the Mountains of Moab. As they drew near and the tents became distinct in the half-light of dawn, the Israelites saw a line of totems spread widely across the front of the encampment. As they approached, the totems took shape. Adam saw what remained of a young Israelite, pierced through from anus to mouth, his body sagging on a stiff pole. Bile rose in Adam’s throat, now fearing what had become of his son.

  Seduced, then delivered to Balaam, most of the young men who had come to the Midian camp were killed on the spot. A few, Yared among them, were chosen for worse. They were scourged, then impaled, their flayed bodies a fierce warning to those who would dislodge the Midianites or seek revenge. The young men died slowly. By the time the tribes of Israel arrived, some had still not reached their end, each in individual agony.

  The Israelites stopped at the sight of their dead and dying sons and brothers. A quiet breeze floated through as, momentarily, the whole of Israel breathed as one. Above, a raven winged over a scene so still it might have been etched in stone, held forever in that moment.

  Then Joshua called for the shofars. Those who carried them pulled the curved rams’ horns from their backs and blew deep, raw blasts. The men’s bile transformed to fury. They plunged forward, howling, spears and swords ready for flesh.

  Anticipating the assault, the Midianites leaped from their tents, ready to slay the avengers, their women and children hidden in tents to the rear. Israel, possessed by momentum, killed whomever they came upon. They fought forward through the camp, driven by rage and from fear of dying as a totem.

  As Israelites penetrated the camp, Midianites secreted among folds at the foot of the mountains emerged at a run. They planned to squeeze the Israelites from back and front, like the grasp of a scorpion before its deadly sting. They ran toward the backs of the Israelites, waving banners so their comradescould see them.

  Some are born for words, some for action. Joshua was born for both. He knew how the hearts of men beat. He saw their patterns, as they were and as they would be. Unlike Moses, a reluctant leader, Joshua was built for battle and would lead this day and days to come. He watched the Midianites emerge from the mountain folds and waited until they had committed themselves to battle. Then he loosed the wave of men he had held back.

  Midian self-congratulations were short, their strategy outflanked by one who had schooled himself in the ways of war. Rushing from the rear, Israel fell upon their enemies, breaking as a blood-dimmed tide.

  Dust and the frenzied din of battle roiled the camp. Blood foamed from the points of spears followed by agonized cries and the desperate breath of the dying on both sides. Adam, filled with fierce clarity, had screened his mind from the reasons for Yared’s fate and all the clouded emotions it aroused. His eyes alert to those who might attack from back or side, he thrust with doubled-armed force, his sword seeking necks and bellies and any other point of entry. Before he took his son home, he would cut down many of his son’s tormentors.

  In another part of the camp, Hur’s vision was blurred with Haddad’s face as he last saw him. He feared Haddad would appear before him, and he would have to choose to slaughter or spare him.

  Among the Midian hoard, Scarface did not wonder. He knew this was his chance. In the chaos of battle, he need only find Haddad from the back. With the end of Haddad, he could finally make his move and seize tribal power.

  Hur moved forward with his kin, killing their way through those who would kill them. But his concentration was not complete so he did not see the Midianite sword that struck his thigh, drawing blood even as one of his kin pulled off Hur’s attacker. His cousin found an empty tent, pulled Hur inside, and bound his wound.

  “I will stay with you,” he said, as his eyes looked to return to the fight.

  “No. This is nothing,” Hur said. “A scratch. Look, the blood is clotting. Return to help our kin. I will, too.”

  His co
usin bolted past the tent flap as Hur sat on a pile of bedding. He thought of how his father and the other spies saw themselves as grasshoppers in the eyes of giants. Nothing here sized for a giant. Strange fate, he thought, that his son was born the very day his father was swallowed up with Korach’s followers. His son was out there now, he and his companions fighting as men alongside their fathers.

  At this, Hur shook off his thoughts and willed himself a single vision. He slipped outside the tent, gained his battle eyes, and plunged in. His respite brought strength back to his arms while the arms of those around him had become heavy. He drove himself on, lunging and thrusting, watching for danger at the edges of his vision, refusing to notice as he began to tire. Then he caught sight of Gaddi and Gaddi of him, and he found an extra cache of strength.

  As men battled, the sun rose, heating the earth. Vultures launched themselves from ledges, their broad wings lifted by the rising air. Silently they circled, looking down to observe their future food.

  The sun had passed its apex before the battle wound down. Dead and dying littered the camp as Hur and Gaddi fought within sight of each other until the fighting was done.

  “God has given us this day!” the Israelites shouted.

  They knew if they had not taken the day, that all—from Kenites at the Red Sea to Amorites near Mount Hermon—would mark the Israelites as slave-prey. And the land promised them would remain only a promise.

  Midian women and children had fled into the hills. The young women who had allied themselves with Balaam stayed to help their warriors. At the end of the battle, some fled, some hid, and some stood their ground, their wrath making them careless of death.

  The Israelites took the women as spoils, along with flocks and goods. When they found Balaam, they did to him what had been done to their brothers and sons. They cheered when he cried in terror and pain.

  “How fair are your tents?” one jibed, mocking Balaam’s blessing and eliciting a burst of laughter. They left his body for birds and beasts to feast on.

  Gaddi and his age-mates found Yared, eased his body off the post, and wrapped him in a Midian robe. They carried him so his father would not see the suffering that death had fixed on his young face.

  Hur, exhausted, trudged behind them. He kept his distance. He did not want to talk, even to console Adam. There was too much death for talk.

  Behind him, Israelites had torched the camp. Before him was the way home. His head bent, he little noticed what he passed until he saw Haddad lying on the ground, his friend’s eyes staring at eternity, his leg broken and bent, his blood spent on the ground.

  Hur stopped. Then sank to his knees and wept. He forgot himself in a wash of emotion, shuddering tears of loss and exhaustion. Finally, he forced himself to gain composure. He closed Haddad’s eyes and put his body in order. He found a cloth and covered him. He did not know what else to do but leave him for his people. He had nothing to give him. Then he remembered the knife. From his waistband, he took the tooled knife Haddad had given him so many years before. He set it in Haddad’s right hand and wrapped his friend’s fingers around it.

  When he caught up with Adam, Gaddi, and the others, no one noticed that tears had striped his dirt-crusted face. They were as weary and battered as he.

  The men returned to their camps, and the women, set free from fear, moved into action. They lit fires and heated water to bathe wounds and wash away the filth of war. Older children prepared food while the young raced around, also freed from tense waiting. Relief filled the camps, except where a body was returned and wailing rose in waves.

  They divided the Midianite flocks and other goods. The women they had herded back were bunched together, like sheep at a market. Among them were those who had seduced the sons of the Israelites.

  Word came from Moses that the women who perverted God’s laws and killed Israel’s sons must die. Each tribal leader assigned an executioner, but they were robbed of their bloody job. Mothers whose sons had been impaled attacked the Midian women with stones, raining down their pain.

  Tirzah saw Keturah, who tilted her chin and leered, having nothing left to lose. For a moment, Tirzah thought to kill Keturah. Then she spat, turned, and walked away.

  Tirzah would have nothing to do with her dead son. She could not bear to be near his body. She could not bear to be near anyone, so secluded herself behind the drape dividing the tent.

  Adam knew the Israelites’ stay at Shittim would be short-lived. He refused to leave his son behind, so asked an adept from the tribe of Dan to prepare Yared’s body. He tried to help the embalmer, but when he looked on his dead son, Adam wept. It was Gibor who helped the man extract Yared’s organs and coat his body with soda ash to speed desiccation. They filled the body cavity with pungent herbs, then wrapped it in cloth. As they worked, Gibor noticed the clotted gash on Yared’s back, his mother’s doing.

  They kept Yared’s remains within their tent, wrapped, ready for travel. When the priests heard, they railed against keeping the dead so close to the living, but Adam would not be moved. The silence in the tent hung like the curtain between Adam and Tirzah. Gibor saw that his parents were deeply damaged.

  Those who survived the battle rejoiced. The fighters sloughed off the brutality of the day and told tales of victory and daring, raising tributes to comrades who had led them forward. They gathered in clans, and the smell of roasting mutton from Midian sheep filled the evening air, its savor rising on the smoke of cookfires. Their praises, too, rose to the heavens.

  “Hear, o kings of the mountains,” sang a man of the tribe of Naftali.

  I sing a song to the Lord

  Who heaps up the mountains

  And swells the waters of the seas

  Who makes the earth quiver

  And raises the praises of His people high to His throne

  Who gives us this day . . .

  The women ululated, thrumming timbrels while men answered on drums.

  The songs sung that evening were passed down as tribute to the first of the victories they were sure would come. They went to their beds filled with a potency that masked what they had seen and done that day. Yet, through the weeks that followed, many twitched at night as horrors surfaced in their sleep.

  The day after their victory over the Midianites, Joshua rallied his warriors to armor them with praise and steel them for soldiering, knowing more battles lay ahead. Filled with glory,they told tales of their promised land: the pacts Abraham and his son Isaac had made with Abimelech, king of that land, for the wells at Beer Sheva. They reminded themselves of the price Abraham paid for the field and cave of Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah and their descendants were buried.

  “Four hundred shekels of silver—a fortune. We will regain what we paid for.”

  The land may have been promised, but it would not come cheaply. It came with a clause: God in the heavens would provide the spirit; those below would provide the strength. The price would be more lives, on this side and that, until the cycle of blood was stilled by exhaustion.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE PENULTIMATE JUDGE

  THE JUDGES OF Thousands, the highest bet din of the people, had summoned Noa to present her petition for inheritance. On a mild day, the broad court around the Tent of Meeting would have been thronged, as her case had gained fame and most knew its history.

  This day, rain-dark skies kept crowds away. Noa feared that the lack of a crowd would strengthen a decision against her, as her passion and tenacity on the path toward justice had gained public favor.

  The sweep of ground before the Tent of Meeting was nearly empty. Only Milcah, Hoglah, and a few others whose families depended on the decision stood braced against the rising wind. She squinted to see the faces of the three judges, but they were blurred by gloom.

  Knowing this bet din was the end of her journey, the highest court of Israel, Noa had practiced her presentation, again and again. As she offered her argument for inheritance, the sky began to release its burden. Fat drops fe
ll, muffling her voice. Her words did not ring with as much passion, and few were there to hear.

  She silently cursed the weather as she waited to hear what the judges would decide. The lead judge cleared his throat, his voice sonorous. “Your words are measured. But do they measure against natural law? If a woman can inherit, perhaps so can a slave.”

  “Sometimes not much difference,” a bold woman challenged.

  “Quiet!”

  Noa’s chest tightened.

  “Yours is a matter with consequence for all our generations,” the judge continued. “And our judgment will set a standard for all Israel . . .”

  He stopped to let the import of his words settle, as though he spoke before a throng.

  A slanting rain drove all but Noa and Milcah to shelter. The two stood alone on the rain-swept ground. Noa’s hair was soaked under her sodden head covering and her robe was so wet she shrank from its touch. She was certain bad weather had put an end to her plea.

  “Like the laws handed down by God,” the judge said, “this judgment must come from the mouth of Moses. Your petition will sit with him.”

  Exhausted by rain, suspense, and judgment, Noa breathed jaggedly. She bent her head to show humility and to hide tears indistinguishable from the rain. She had been sure this would be the last step of her long journey.

  “Sending it to Moses is how you can reject me without taking responsibility,” she said as she turned to go, knowing the rain muffled her words.

  Noa waved Milcah away. Anger was her chosen companion. No one crossed her path on the way back to her mother’s tent. Noa’s anger found voice as she walked, and she shrieked to the heavens and to the God who sent the rain and everything else. Anyone passing would have taken her for a madwoman.

  As Noa approached the tents of Manasseh, the rain and her anger abated. She shivered under her wet robe. Entering her mother’s tent, she stamped her feet to shake off sand and chill.