Source

by James A. Michener

  In those historic generations when Yahweh was wrestling for the soul of his Hebrews, and using the prophets to summon them away from Baal and back to their appointed tents, he often spoke and acted with a harshness that seemed incredible. Because the Hebrews were an obstinate people, loving Astarte, consorting with her sacred prostitutes and throwing live children into the fiery jaws of Melak, he had to visit them with terrible punishments. Why did he not destroy them outright? Because they were truly his chosen people and he loved them. And to prove this, when his discipline fell upon them and they submitted, he gave them assurances of the utmost gentleness to succor them during the years of darkness; for although he had to be cruel he had also to be merciful. And it was for this reason that the voice of Gomer now broke upon the wounded town of Makor in a gentleness hitherto unknown, uttering words of consolation that would often be recalled by the slaves in Babylon: “O my beloved children of Israel, I bring you hope. No matter how deep the dungeons where you tread the waterwheels, I shall be with you. My love will protect you forever, and after the slave pits you shall know green fields once more. The world shall be yours and the sweetness thereof, for when you accept my punishment you also accept my divine compassion. I am Yahweh, and I am beside you forever.”

  Now the Babylonians began to muster the Hebrews for the long march to slavery, and it became Gomer’s duty to visit each group of prisoners, reassuring them, “In your distress remember Yahweh, for I am a well of cool water. Will I forget you now, when your need is greatest?” And when the Hebrews expressed their amazement at this contradictory message of love arriving at the moment of punishment, Gomer said in tones as gentle as those of a mother singing to her child at night when the father must work in the fields, “The Canaanites and the Babylonians shall perish, but you shall remain, for in the bitterness of my punishment you shall grow strong.”

  And she came to the group where her son stood in chains and to him she said, “Remember Jerusalem, O remember the city on the hill. Speak of it in the tents and sing its praises in the darkness. Remember Jerusalem, for you are a people commanded to remember. When your breath grows weak and your heart fails and death comes to you in a strange land, remember Jerusalem, the city of your inheritance.”

  Mikal saw her husband waiting with the prisoners, and with their son Ishbaal she ran to him, volunteering out of love to follow him into slavery, and other Canaanite girls offered to do the same for their husbands, but to these latter Gomer came and sent them away, shouting, “The whores of Canaan are not required in Babylon. False wives shall be left behind.” But when she came to Mikal, standing in the white dress that she herself had made, she could not utter the words, for her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, and with tears of love she looked at the faithful girl who had worked beside her in the fields and she would have moved away in silence; but she was forced to stand and cry, “The scarlet woman of Canaan who gives birth in the temple of Astarte, who names her son Ishbaal, she shall be cast aside.” Mikal hesitated, and her mother-in-law shrieked, “Go! Stay not with him for he is no longer your husband. Begone.” And with a powerful thrust she threw the weeping girl away, so that her uncle had to lift her from the ground and lead her to a place among the watching Canaanites.

  When Rimmon picked up his chains and tried to follow he was intercepted by his mother, who said not in her own voice, “These things I do not in hatred but in love. Other nations shall vanish but Israel shall survive. For in captivity shall you cling together and each shall be loyal to the other, and all shall remember Jerusalem.”

  Then Gomer left her son and strode among the prisoners till she found the girl Geula, standing in chains, and with great force she broke those chains apart and led Geula to her son. Joining their hands she announced, “Rimmon, son of Gomer, you are divorced. This day you are divorced. And in the presence of three you are married to Geula. You are children of Israel, and your former children of Canaan are forgotten, those born and those unborn. For only you are the people that I have chosen.”

  It was a phrase that brought smiles to Babylonian lips. These slaves in chains, this remnant of a once proud town! The chosen! Soldiers began to laugh outright and soon gusts of ridicule came from Babylonian and Canaanite alike. But Gomer, in her rage, turned her matted head toward Nebuchadrezzar in his hour of triumph and pointed her long finger at him, crying in tones of lamentation, “How brief will be your triumph, Imperial One, how brief your pause at the apex! Already the Persians are gathering along your frontiers, impatient to invade your dazzling city with its intricate canals. Even now have I composed the decree that the Persian Cyrus will pronounce, sending my chosen people home. O King, how very brief is this day’s triumph.”

  And she turned to the Hebrew captives, whispering those words of timeless consolation, “I am Yahweh who walks with you in darkness and shall lead you back to light if you but remember Jerusalem.”

  Nebuchadrezzar would hear no more and with his right arm made an impatient gesture, commanding, like the Egyptian before him, “Silence that dreadful woman!” in obedience to which a Babylonian soldier stabbed her through the chest. Then, seeing the deep shaft that yawned behind her, he whistled for two friends and with little difficulty they pitched her head-first down the opening, so that her gaunt body struck the pockmarked steps and plunged to those dark depths where once she had talked with Yahweh.

  LEVEL

  X

  In the Gymnasium

  Hellenistic carving of the hand of an athlete holding a strigil used for scraping sweat and dirt from the body after competition in the gymnasium. Carved in Antioch, 184 B.C.E., from white marble imported from Carrara, north of Rome. Work complete in its present form, having been intended to suggest a fragment of a classical statue. Original bronze blade cast of Macedonian metal, now corroded away. Deposited at Makor during the Antiochene riots which occurred in the autumn of 167 B.C.E.

  Many times in their long history the Jews would be threatened with extinction because of planned religious persecutions, but none of the later holocausts would start so gently and with such persuasiveness as the first in the series, launched in the year 171 B.C.E. by Antiochus IV, tyrant of the Seleucid empire.

  In 605 B.C.E. the Hebrews of Makor had been hauled off to their Babylonian captivity, but some fifty years later, as the voice of Gomer had predicted, Cyrus of Persia had crushed Babylon in a war that lasted less than a week and the Jews of Makor were not only permitted but encouraged to return home, so long as they remained obedient to Persian rule. In 336, at the age of twenty, Alexander the Great ascended his throne and began his conquests, so that for the next seven hundred years everyone from Sparta to India experienced Greek culture and most spoke the Koine, a Greek dialect common to all countries; but the distances in the new empire were so vast, and so few citizens could have direct contact with Greece, that a kind of substitute Greek culture developed, the Hellenism born of men who loved the Greek ideals of beauty but who interpreted them in Egyptian or Persian or Syrian terms. It was this Hellenism that was to rule the known world for many centuries; but the empire was not destined to remain unified, for in the confusion following Alexander’s death, the eastern portion was finally divided between two of his Macedonian generals. Ptolemy took Egypt, including Makor, as his northernmost outpost, while Seleucus took enormous holdings from Thrace to India, later to be known as the Seleucid empire, with its resplendent capital at Antioch, some two hundred and thirty miles north of Makor.

  In 198, after a century of border warfare between the two Hellenistic empires, the Seleucids under Antiochus III finally humiliated the Egyptians, taking from them Israel as a prize of war, and Makor switched from being the northern outpost of Egypt to being a southern outpost of Seleucia. One of the first things the new ruler did was to promulgate a decree which gave much encouragement to the Jews of Makor: “Be it known that our majestic emperor advises his new Jewish subjects that they are now free to worship their god as they wish. They may build synagogues. Their p
riests may offer sacrifices—the only requirement being that they must in no way offend Zeus, whom all accept as the supreme deity of the Seleucids.” Not only was the pronouncement generous; its enforcement was sympathetic. In the center of Makor, above the ancient site where the monolith of El lay buried in rubble, a beautiful little temple was built, with six small Doric columns and a pediment showing goddesses at rest. It contained one small head of Zeus carved from Parian marble, and neither the temple nor the god was obtrusive. In another part of town, tucked in against the eastern wall, stood a synagogue equally unobtrusive but not equally beautiful. In fact, it was ugly—having been built of muddy-colored clay bricks and rough timbers—but for the first twenty-seven years of Seleucid rule those Jews who remained loyal to their synagogue lived easily with the bulk of the citizenry who adhered to Zeus and his temple. Each group followed Greek customs, used coins with Greek inscriptions and in their public life spoke the Koine. Though they had never seen Greece they referred to themselves as Greeks, so that in all respects Makor was a typical Hellenistic town.

  In 171 Antiochus IV announced a small change in the religious life of his dominions, and if the Jews of Makor had enjoyed first-rate leadership they might have foreseen at that moment that trouble of great magnitude was upon them; but they were poorly led and the fact escaped them. The new rule was clear-cut: “Henceforth all citizens must acknowledge that the god Zeus has come to earth in the person of our divine emperor, Antiochus Epiphanes.” At first the idea seemed startling to the Jews, but they were assured by the town officials that the new ruling would affect them in no way. Some time later a gigantic head of the emperor was moved into the temple, the small head of Zeus having been placed to one side, and when the new god was at rest, all citizens were assembled in the square facing the temple, where an official read the law: “Those who enter the temple of Zeus must pay homage to our imperial leader, Antiochus Epiphanes, and accept him as Olympian Zeus appearing among us in mortal form.” The citizens, straining their necks to see the massive head, agreed that Antiochus looked like Zeus, with godlike curls and benign visage. “Jews who prefer to worship in their synagogue are not affected by this law,” the reader continued, “for our great emperor has no wish to offend any man so long as his deity is acknowledged.” As a matter of fact, when the Jews heard that they did not have to worship Antiochus a good many through natural curiosity wandered into the temple, where they stood bewildered before the heroic head, genuflecting before Antiochus the emperor and smiling to themselves at Antiochus the would-be god. They found the name Epiphanes to be especially arrogant—“God-Made-Manifest”—and they wondered how their Greek masters could delude themselves into believing such folly. They saw only an ordinary stone statue of an ordinary man, and they could not visualize him as a god. They bowed, bit their lips to hide their contempt, and returned happily to their synagogue, where they were free to worship the true god YHWH without fear.

  In 170 a law was announced requiring all citizens to present themselves four times a year to pay formal homage to Antiochus Epiphanes as the senior god of the Seleucids, and this did entail hardship on the Jews—but in an area that they could not have anticipated. The day chosen for these periodic submissions was Shabbat, when Jews preferred not to leave their homes, this being their day of prayer. They therefore directed their leaders to protest the law, but the Greek officials explained, “Our choice of Shabbat was in no way intended to offend the Jews. This day was chosen for the whole empire because it was acceptable to the most people.” When the Jews pointed out that it was certainly not acceptable to them, the Greeks replied, “Our empire contains only a few Jews, and it would be unreasonable for us to make our laws conform to their wishes. However, Antiochus himself has commissioned us to say that so long as he is emperor, nothing will be done to offend you in any way.” The Jews tried to protest that the Shabbat genuflection did just that, but the local Greeks made a notable concession: “Let us, for the sake of peace, agree upon this compromise. We Greeks will bow before Antiochus during the daylight hours, and on Shabbat evening, when your prayers have ended, you shall do likewise.” And in this honorable truce the Jews marched each quarter to the temple to pay proper homage to Antiochus the emperor; but in their hearts they ignored Epiphanes the presumptuous god.

  In 169 the Jews were summoned to hear the next edict: “In order to halt the perpetuation of differences among the peoples of his great empire, Antiochus Epiphanes has decided that Jews shall no longer circumcise their male children.” This caused an immediate outcry from some Jews, but its force was lost because others saw the reasonableness of the Seleucid request. They argued, “The Greeks hold that the human body is a temple which must never be profaned or altered, so this is only a minor request which our emperor makes.” They were supported by others who argued, “Antiochus is right. Circumcision is an old-fashioned, barbaric rite whose only function is to make us look different from the Greeks.” But there were others who knew that the covenant which Abraham had made with YHWH regarding circumcision was binding through eternity, and these continued to circumcise their sons, but their protest was lost because of the indecision of the Jewish community; however, word of their obstinacy reached the ears of Antiochus, the God-Made-Manifest, and he remembered.

  In 168 the Greeks of Makor were required to promulgate an edict which was bound to cause trouble, and they put an extra force of men into military uniform before they announced it. Then, summoning all citizens to the temple of Zeus, onto whose portico the giant head of Antiochus had been moved, they directed the herald to read: “Throughout the empire it is ordered that from this day the worship of Antiochus Epiphanes shall be the one and official religion of all people.” This disturbing news was greeted with an angry murmur—and not only from Jews—so that the herald quickly added, “But after a man has paid proper homage to Antiochus he shall be free to worship his old gods as his second and private religion. Thus Phoenicians may worship Melkart, Canaanites may worship Baal, and loyal Jews may go to their synagogue to worship …” The herald hesitated, and Jews leaned forward to see if he was going to profane their deity, for following their return from Babylon they had adopted the convention that the god who had saved them was so powerful that his name must never be pronounced, nor did they write it, nor refer to it in talk among themselves. Their god was known simply by the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH, unpronounceable and unknowable. Now, in granting exception to the Jews, the herald avoided offending them. He did not announce that they were free to worship YHWH; he added simply, “Our loyal Jews are free to worship their peculiar god,” But then he prepared to read that portion of the law which was certain to cause trouble, and he was gratified when he saw armed men moving into position to quell any riot. “Sacrifice to the new god Antiochus Epiphanes shall be made four times each year, both at the altar of Zeus here in the main temple, and in any other such temple or holy place as may exist within the town.” Here he nodded gravely to the Phoenicians and the Jews. Then he swallowed and tensed his shoulders as if preparing for a blow. “And this sacrifice, which is to be repeated four times a year, shall consist of a perfect animal, brought alive to the altar, and this animal shall be a swine.”

  In 167 came the inevitable climax to any religious persecution. The instructions from the outrageous emperor were so brutal that the Greek officials of Makor were loath to read them, and the edict was handed to a common soldier, who caused the Jews to be marched to the public square, where they stood sullenly to hear what their punishment was to be. In harsh, guttural tones the soldier shouted, “Jews of Makor, approach in single file and kiss the god of Asia,” and the recalcitrant ones were moved inside the temple to the monstrous head of Antiochus, where they were made to stand on their toes to kiss the great stone neck below the protruding Adam’s apple. Then, in the awesome silence of the holy place, the soldier rasped, “You Jews of Makor, having disobeyed the law of our emperor by continuing to circumcise your sons, and having offended our god by refusing to s
acrifice swine in your synagogue, have surrendered any claim to mercy. Hear and obey! From this moment on, any Jew who refuses to accept Antiochus Epiphanes as the sole god, supplanting all others, including your god known as Yahweh”—the Jews shuddered—“any Jew who persists in following the law of your prophet called Moses, any Jew who circumcises his son, or any Jew who refuses to place his hand upon the sacrificial pig, shall be arrested and dragged before the temple of Zeus. There he shall be scourged with fifty blows, after which he shall be placed upon the ground so that his skin may be pulled away while he still lives. Thereafter he shall be slain, his body cut apart and thrown to the dogs. Hear these penalties and obey.” The astonished Jews were then herded back into the square where a large pig had been brought for sacrifice, and as it squealed and twisted in the sunlight they filed past and each placed his hand firmly on the forbidden beast. But there was one old Jew who had had enough of spineless leadership, and of his own will he refused to honor the emperor’s pig. The Greek soldier started to manhandle him, but the captain of the guard intervened gently and said, “Old man, you have not obeyed our god Antiochus.” The old Jew, his beard testifying to the years he had studied Moses, drew back in disgust, but again the captain warned him in a low persuasive voice, “Dear friend, it will go hard with you if you do not obey the law”; but again the old man refused, whereupon the captain had one of his men produce the lash—a club containing several dozen leather thongs. “They are tipped with lead,” the captain explained, rustling the dreadful pieces. “Do you think you could stand up against such punishment?” The old man spit on the sanctified pig, and the soldiers quickly proceeded as they had been instructed, should such an emergency occur. They stripped the old man till he stood naked; they then tied him to a pillar, where ten swift blows of the lash tore at him terribly. The speeding lead tips caught at his face and ripped out one of his eyes. They tore away a corner of his mouth and laid bare the muscles of his neck. “Will you now acknowledge the pig?” asked the captain, and when the old man refused, the man with the lash directed his blows lower on the body, where the lead tips tore away the old man’s testicles and laid open his loins; and at the fortieth blow the humane intention of the captain became apparent: he hoped that the scourging alone would kill the old man that he might be spared the agony of being flayed, but the old Jew had within him some profound source of resistance and he survived the hailstorm of pellets, so that he was finally thrown to the ground, where he lay quivering as men with sharp knives came to cut away the mutilated skin. And when it seemed that he must surely be dead, he raised his head and called the permanent prayer of all Jews: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And on the long, wailing pronunciation of the last word he died.