Source

by James A. Michener

  “For more than fifty years Jerusalem has been before my eyes,” Gomer said.

  “I’m afraid you won’t see it now,” her son replied, not mockingly.

  “Suppose I said tonight, ‘In the morning we shall go up to Jerusalem’?”

  Rimmon laughed. “We have no money. I must watch the olive press and you must finish the garment.”

  Those were Gomer’s ideas, too, and she sadly dismissed from her mind any plans for going to Jerusalem; but next morning in the David Tunnel she was stopped for the third time, and the voice said like the roar of a lion, “Gomer, widow of Israel, for the third time, take your son and go up to Jerusalem, or the penalty will rest upon your children’s children till the end of days.”

  In the darkness she answered obediently, “I will take my son to Jerusalem, but may I halt here until the white dress is finished?”

  There was a silence, as if the presence were spending his time in judging this humble request, and after a while the voice said, “You are a woman who earns her bread by sewing. For you it is proper first to finish the work and then to leave for Jerusalem.” And Yahweh bided his time.

  It took Gomer two days of concentrated work to complete the dress, and when she fitted it on the governor’s daughter that young woman seemed more beautiful than ever. “I shall wear it at the dancing,” she said with excitement.

  “Then you’re going to Jerusalem?” Gomer asked.

  “Father has decided. It’s been four years, and as governor …” The girl grew grave, with shadows across her youthful face. “Do you think the Egyptians will call us to war again?”

  “The Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Egyptians and the Phoenicians and the Aramaeans,” Gomer recited as she cut the last threads, “they call us to war perpetually. Your father has protected us well and I’m glad that he’s going to Jerusalem to talk with the leaders of Judah.” She hesitated. “Would you please ask him if he could pay me today?”

  “Of course!” the young woman said, and she ran to find her father, but when he heard of the widow’s unusual request he came into the sewing room, showing displeasure.

  “Have the people of Jeremoth’s house ever failed to pay?” he demanded. Ordinarily a widow like Gomer would have been overawed by the governor, for he could be a frightening man, with unsympathetic eyes that had gazed with equal courage upon disaster and triumph. He had governed Makor under seven different rulers and in doing so had developed a hardness that almost glittered.

  But this was not an ordinary day nor was Gomer any longer an ordinary woman: she had been commanded by Yahweh to perform an act upon which the salvation of the world depended, and Governor Jeremoth did not cow her. In her soft voice she said, “You have always paid, sir. But in the morning my son and I must leave for Jerusalem …”

  “What?”

  “This year we shall build our booth in the holy city.”

  “You?” the governor sputtered, then he asked, “Does Rimmon know of this?”

  “Not yet, but …”

  In amused contempt the governor turned away from Gomer and directed one of his guards to summon Rimmon from the olive press, and when the young foreman stood before him Jeremoth said, “Rimmon, your mother tells me that you’re going up to Jerusalem tomorrow morning. Leaving my groves without permission.”

  “Jerusalem?” the young man repeated in surprise. “I have no plans …”

  Then came the moment of decision, that fragile moment which was to determine so much of Makor’s history in the months ahead. Gomer, seeing the contempt of the governor and her son’s unwillingness to oppose him, was briefly tempted to abandon her plans, but when she tried to withdraw her statement she found herself incapable of doing so. The words of retreat simply would not come from her throat. Instead, she looked directly at the governor and said in a low, soft voice marked by an intensity she had never shown before, “It is commanded that I take my son to Jerusalem tomorrow.”

  As soon as she said the words, she knew that she had evaded the one central problem of this day: it had not been intended for her to say, “It is commanded”; she should have said, “Yahweh commands.” But as a poor widow of humble origins she had neither the courage nor the arrogance to use that dreadful sentence. This day she avoided the issue and placed the responsibility upon an anonymous force. “It is commanded,” she said.

  But even that evasion was sufficient, for something transpired in the room that Governor Jeremoth could not have explained. Somehow he knew who had done the commanding; with the Hebrews these mysteries occasionally happened and he avoided a confrontation in which he did not consider himself involved. A Canaanite rather than a Hebrew, a man of Baal rather than of Yahweh, he was nevertheless eager, as a practical politician, to avoid antagonizing any god at a time when the shadows of Egypt and Babylon loomed so large across the Galilee, and it was this that kept him from challenging Gomer. To his daughter’s surprise and to Rimmon’s, too, he announced, “Very well, Gomer. Here’s your bag of money. Build the best booth in Jerusalem.”

  Rimmon tried to apologize, “Sir, I had nothing to do …” but the governor was gone, glad to have escaped the onus of decision. Thus the first of the critical challenges that would mark this pivotal age had occurred, although at the time neither Gomer nor Jeremoth recognized it. And Gomer of the soft voice had prevailed.

  The journey up to Jerusalem in that hot month of Ethanim was, as Yahweh had intended, an experience that Rimmon would never forget, although while undergoing it he perceived it as a physical adventure rather than as a spiritual ascent. It was a distance of more than ninety miles over difficult and wearing terrain, to be finished in the hot time of autumn, so that the journey occupied eight days. Mother and son left the zigzag gate at dawn, a tall pair dressed in the cheapest clothes, shod in heavy sandals and carrying staves. On their backs they carried a little food, in their purses a few pieces of silver, but Rimmon had with him an additional item that would prove of considerable value: lengths of cord with which to build his booth on the slopes leading up to Jerusalem’s walls.

  Leading his gaunt mother, who had no idea as to where the city lay, Rimmon started south through the olive grove, where he was minded to ask Baal to tend the trees during his absence; but when he started to kneel by the olive press his mother took him by the arm, saying, “There is no Baal, forevermore,” and her grip was like the clutch of iron upon his muscles and turned him away. He led her through the dark swamp, where insects tormented them, across the Kishon River and up to the fortress city of Megiddo, where they wept for the good king who had recently been slain in his futile war against the Egyptians.

  From this mournful spot they dropped down to Samaria, the capital city of the former kingdom of Israel, a strange place occupied by aliens forcibly settled there by the father of Sennacherib, and through the years these strangers had perfected a unique religion, borrowed from the Hebrews but a faith apart. Samaria both fascinated and repelled the travelers, and they gladly left it to climb to Bethel, where a problem of serious proportion confronted them, for this town had always marked the southern outpost of Israel and had served as a kind of watchdog to keep northerners from crossing the border in their attempts to visit Jerusalem. Even now many in Bethel considered it disloyal for a man of fighting age like Rimmon to leave the north, and certain fanatics tried to prevent him from doing so. But soft-spoken Gomer countered their arguments, saying, “I am an old woman who must see Jerusalem before I die,” and she led her son through the taunting Bethelites until she reached the village Of Anathoth, where prophets lived, and from there she and her son began the steep ascent to Jerusalem.

  In the first hours they climbed without actually seeing the noble city, but they were assured that they were on the right path by the hundreds of other pilgrims streaming in from outlying regions to celebrate in Jerusalem the high holy days which marked the beginning of each new year.

  There were young priests from Dan and date farmers from the shores of Galilee come
down to pray for a bountiful harvest. There were Hebrew dyers who kept their vats in the seaport city of Aecho, nestled among Aramaean and Cypriot merchants. There were Hebrews from Samaria who had doggedly held to their own religion amidst the enemy, and there were poor villagers from Shunem, where King David had found his last and greatest concubine, the sweet child Abishag. Those who could afford to do so led animals for sacrifice at the temple altars, and one could hear the lowing of cattle and the cry of sheep. Others carried chickens intended for their own consumption and some women had white doves captured in cages made of reeds: these were for the temple. A few farmers rode donkeys, but most came on foot to worship at the central shrine of the Hebrews, to see with their own eyes the everlasting glory of Jerusalem.

  Gomer and her son were struggling up the last steep, rocky path, surrounded by barren hills and deep wadis, when they heard ahead of them the joyful chant of people singing the traditional songs of the ascent:

  “I rejoiced when they said unto me:

  ‘Let us go unto the house of Yahweh.’

  Our feet are standing

  Within your gates, O Jerusalem …

  Whither the tribes go up, even the tribes of Yahweh.”

  All joined in this song of delight, but never for long did this mood prevail, for always some tormented voice, unable to believe that it was on the threshold of Jerusalem, would cry in humble supplication:

  “Out of the depths have I called upon you, Yahweh.

  Yahweh, hear my voice.

  Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.”

  Most endeavored to suppress their own desires and to submit themselves to the will of Yahweh, trusting as Gomer did that his guidance would sustain them:

  “Yahweh, my heart is not haughty nor my eyes lofty;

  Neither do I exercise myself in things too great,

  Or in things too wonderful for me.”

  And when they entered upon the last league they made a solemn promise that they would march uninterruptedly to the holy city regardless of what impediments they might encounter:

  “Yahweh, let me remember David and his afflictions,

  How he swore unto Yahweh

  And vowed unto the god of Jacob.

  Surely I will not come into the tent of my own house

  Nor go up into the bed that is spread for me;

  I will not give sleep to my eyes

  Nor slumber to my eyelids

  Until I find out a place for Yahweh,

  A dwelling place for the mighty one.”

  And then, when the day was very hot upon them, Gomer and Rimmon heard the singers ahead suddenly cease, and everywhere there was silence as those behind pushed forward, and at last the multitude looked south across bare hills and saw rising before them a stout, high wall, a most massive thing built of enormous stones that shone pink and gray and purple in the noonday sun; and from the walls, rose towers marking a gate, and beyond it the majestic outlines of a temple, heavy and monumental and brooding. Many fell to their knees, to think that they had lived to see this city, but Gomer noticed that Rimmon stood apart, staring at the extraordinary walls and the ineffable grace that invested the stones of this sacred place. Watching her son absorb the wonder of Jerusalem she tried to guess what divine need had brought him to this spot, but she knew not, and then she found herself pulled to his side and her soft voice began whispering words and ideas that she herself could not have conjured up: “Look not to the walls, Rimmon son of Gomer. Look rather to the west to those slopes by the fullers’ field. A hundred years ago did not Sennacherib, having crushed Makor, camp in that spot, his army as thick as locusts in the seventh year? And did he not make preparations to destroy Jerusalem”—of these matters Gomer knew nothing—“so that the holy City of David lay powerless before him? The terrible Assyrian needed only to press against those pink-gray walls, and Jerusalem was his that he might crush the temple and destroy the sons of Judah forever. But at the middle of the night I moved among the tents of the Assyrians. More powerful than chariots was I that night, more deadly than arrows tipped with iron, and in the morning death was upon the host and it melted away.”

  Rimmon noticed the peculiar use of the word I, and he realized that his mother could not be the one who was speaking; she, regaining consciousness, experienced for the first time the mystery of knowing that words had come from her mouth which she had not uttered. Both were aware that an incident of tremendous significance had occurred, but each was loath to investigate. Rimmon did not want to believe that Yahweh was speaking to him, for he could not consider himself worthy of such elevation, while Gomer knew that she was an ignorant woman who could neither read nor write, with no more possessions than she could gather into a large bag. In her life no man had loved her, and her son owned a father whose name no scroll recorded. It was not to such persons that Yahweh spoke; he did not choose people from the postern gate to represent him, and Gomer and her son drew away from any assumption of prophecy.

  Trying to be matter-of-fact Rimmon asked, “Didn’t Sennacherib destroy Jerusalem? Like Makor?”

  “I don’t think so,” his mother said in her own voice. Vaguely she remembered an old fable of how the city had been saved. “The cohorts were ready to strike, but they vanished.” And as two ordinary pilgrims they entered the city.

  They came upon a scene that could not have been duplicated anywhere in the contemporary world, neither in young Greece, where mysteries were practiced, nor in old Egypt, where celebrations along the Nile were sumptuous. In Babylonia, of course, there was grandeur and in Persia an awakening power, but only in Jerusalem could one see the solemn passion of an entire people, coming to focus on one splendid temple constructed centuries earlier by Solomon. It was to this apex of Hebrew faith that Gomer had brought her son for a purpose which she could never have comprehended, and before the temple they bowed.

  Then Rimmon led his mother outside the walls to a mount of olives at whose foot ran the Brook Kidron, rich with gardens and pomegranate trees and beds of many vegetables. From the trees the young farmer cut boughs and four corner poles, and with his cords built of them a booth in which he and Gomer would sleep for eight nights: on the mount as far as one could see were these booths, each with its branches so interlaced that a sleeping man could waken in the middle of the night and see the stars. Thus the Hebrews remembered the lonely decades in the desert when they were coming to know Yahweh in their ragged tents: each year all men of Israel and Judah took to their booths as Gomer and Rimmon did now.

  In the morning they rose early and left the mount of olives, returning inside the city, where they worshiped at the temple, Gomer standing outside with the women while her son went into the sacred place to gaze at the holy of holies, to which only a few priests were admitted. Later he joined his mother to observe the animal sacrifices during which perfect bulls were led lowing to the altar, and here as the solemn rite was concluded, with incense penetrating the brain, Rimmon caught an understanding of man’s eternal submission to Yahweh; and as the sacrificial fires twisted upward the significance of his faith was burned into his consciousness. This city he would remember forever, and on the sixth day Gomer heard him whispering, “O Jerusalem, if I forget you let my eyes be blinded, let my right hand lose its cunning.”

  But it was not only for these solemn moments that pilgrims made the long trek to Jerusalem; for after the days of worship had ended, after the fields were gleaned and the grapes were pressed, lyric celebrations occurred in which festivities as old as the land of Canaan were re-enacted, and none was more compelling than the night on which the unmarried maidens of Israel dressed themselves in white gowns, newly made, to go out into the vineyards on the way to Bethlehem where ceremonial grapes had been held in reserve, and there to nominate one of their number to enter the wine press with her new dress clutched about her knees, where she would dance upon these final grapes while her sisters sang in the most ravishing tones the unharmonized plain chant of longing:


  “Young men, young men of Jerusalem!

  Lift up your eyes and see whom,

  See whom, see whom,

  You shall marry.

  Look not for beauty,

  Look not for smiles,

  But look for a girl of good family,

  A family that worships Yahweh.”

  And as the girls danced about the wine press Rimmon watched with growing wonder the freshness of the faces and the desirability of these laughing eyes as they flashed past him in the torchlight, begging him to sample them, to see whom he would marry.

  But after a while the girl whose ankles were deep among the grapes grew weary, and she signaled for a replacement, and by chance the girls of Jerusalem picked as her successor a beautiful stranger from the north, Mikal the daughter of the governor of Makor, and men swung her into the wine press. As she clutched her new dress to keep it from being stained, Rimmon experienced the curious sensation that the dress was in a sense his dress—it had come from his kitchen and he had known it before even Mikal had known it—and it danced of itself, a swirling, beautiful white robe; and he reached for his mother’s hand, congratulating her upon having made such a garment.