The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  Now the king would learn what strategy he’d have to contend with. He glanced swiftly at his archers and the spearmen. They knew exactly their killing distances. They would not release an arrow till the enemy was within reach.

  But Israel never came that close.

  While the line of Israelites was still at a safe range, horns began to blare and the vanguard soldiers turned. They turned parallel to the city wall. They kept marching in a measured step, gazing straight ahead. They would not even look at Jericho! The entire file of Israel’s army circled the city. The trumpets snarled and tore the air and did not cease.

  Archers on Jericho’s wall shivered, so strong was their desire to shoot. But their captains, glancing at the king, commanded patience. And the king kept twitching his eyes left and right along the strange procession that now surrounded his city.

  Where would the attack come from? From everywhere at once?

  The faces of Israel revealed nothing. They were grim, controlled, fixed, and unforthcoming. Every warrior stared straight ahead.

  There: in the very middle of the march. The king saw seven men in priest’s robes of stunning luxury, gold and blue and purple and scarlet, fine twined linen. Each man held a hollow ram’s horn to his lips, and all were blowing together brutal harmonies, causing the flesh on Jericho’s neck to shiver. There: that’s where the orders were coming from, from that sound!

  And immediately behind these seven men came four more carrying a box of beaten gold by means of two long staves, two men before and two men after it.

  So the file of the hosts of Israel passed round the city all that day. Not one arrow was released between the enemies. Not a word was exchanged. No, not so much as a glance from the eyes of one to the eyes of the other. And when one slow circumference had been accomplished, Israel turned back to Gilgal. The rams’ horns ceased their sounding. And in silence the host departed again.

  The men of Jericho were exhausted, drenched in an acid sweat. But the king could not console them. He sent them down from the wall, commanding them to eat and to sleep and to prepare for the attack tomorrow.

  Yet even now he did not know what strategy the desert swarm had chosen against him. If this were siege there was no sense to it. Or perhaps it was some ritual by which to bind the city’s strength and soul. If so, then the assault would come tomorrow at daylight.

  Therefore, the king was on his wall the following dawn.

  All his warriors accompanied him.

  And Israel came out of Gilgal as before. But—precisely as before—Israel marched once around the city, blowing seven horns, displaying its mysterious golden box, and returning to camp by the setting of the sun.

  So it was the third day. And the fourth: Israel encircled the city once and departed.

  On the fifth day the king of Jericho began to shout from the top of his wall. All morning long he shouted taunts and execrations. It heartened his people a while. He gave his words the bite of bitter poetry. He pronounced vile maledictions on the heads of Israel. But Israel’s eyes remained forever forward. Israel’s horns did not cease to blow.

  By afternoon the king despaired of cursings and of his gods as well. A suffocation was overcoming his city. People trembled. They could neither eat nor sleep. Children had long since ceased to cry.

  On the sixth day the king cracked a door in the city wall and, flanked by four bodyguards, boldly approached the head of Israel’s marching column in order to attempt negotiations. There he saw a small man whose eyes were bent ever to the ground, a shuffling fellow given to much thought. A reasonable man, perhaps. The king tried to engage him in conversation, but the studious man didn’t answer. He looked up at the king. He squinted fiercely and finally produced an otherworldly stare as if the king were but a phantom. The horns blew and blew, while all Israel passed this personage with no acknowledgement. He might have been a beggar.

  So the king of Jericho returned to his city, to his wall, to his ignorance and his futile observation.

  The seventh day was different.

  On this day, Israel circled Jericho not once, but seven times, from dawn to late afternoon. Suddenly, in the midst of their seventh passage, the sound of the ram’s horns changed. It rose to the shrieks of eagles. And all the voices, all the throats of Israel opened. Ten thousand warriors turned inward, roaring, and charged the city. The city walls themselves began to shudder. The king felt a terrible agitation in the stones beneath his feet. His archers leaped up. Spearmen reached for spears. Women brought smudge-pots to ignite the oil in sheets of fire. But just as Israel entered the range of Jericho’s arrows, the city walls rose three feet into the air, bellowed like a living thing, cracked at every join and mortar, then collapsed—a great crush of stones on all the people below.

  The king of Jericho tumbled down into his dying city. The burning oil spilled inward. Fire and timber and rock fell with him. And the final vision vouchsafed unto the king was of a piece of wall which neither crumbled nor burned, a slim finger of stone with one window two stories up, from which hung a scarlet cord.

  In his last instant of life all the world seemed to the king a bitter joke—for why should that one live at last and not another? The window belonged to an outcast! A whore named Rahab.

  IV

  JOSHUA WATCHED THE FLAMES. He had heard the thunderclap, the voice of the Lord that cracked the walls of Jericho and dropped them into a heap, and now he let the watery curtain of red flame play upon his poor eyes. Dark figures rushed here and there, the hosts of Israel reducing the city to dust.

  Except for certain metals which God had reserved for the treasury of the Tabernacle, absolutely everything of Jericho had been placed under a sacred ban. It was devoted to the Lord for destruction. Herem: the Lord God commanded that neither the people nor the possessions of this city should ever again serve a human purpose.

  Joshua was watching the utter obliteration of a city, all the cattle, all its citizens young and old, all the wealth it had gained throughout its generations, the riches that would have enriched another army—all.

  And when Jericho was but an acrid smoke arising from ashes, Joshua bowed his head and in a quiet, frightened voice said, “Cursed be the one who shall ever rise up to rebuild this city.”

  Those near him heard what he said. But what he said next was so terrible that the words were imprinted on their memory forever:

  At the cost of his firstborn

  shall he lay foundations;

  for the price of his youngest

  shall he buy new gates.

  So the fame and the fear of Joshua went throughout the land of Canaan, for the Lord was with him.

  V

  WE WILL CUT CANAAN at its middle, then take each half individually.” Joshua was squatting on a dusty plot, drawing lines with his finger. “I’ve studied this,” he said. He fussed with the accuracy of his picture. “Here is the Jordan River; at its south is the Salt Sea; at its northern reach, the Sea of Kinnereth. We are here, northwest of the Salt Sea. Jericho.”

  Joshua peered at the ground. The officers of Israel made a circle around him, taller, younger, more robust than he. They kept changing position, trying to see; but the little man hovered so blindly over his map that he blocked their view.

  “Here is Ai,” he said softly, “and Bethel, west of it. These cities sit on the ridge route running north and south from Beersheba, here, to Shechem, here. This road is the spine. Break it and we break Canaan in two.”

  Joshua squinted up at the officers. “And we will break Canaan in two,” he said quietly. There was neither triumph nor urgency in his voice. It was a matter of fact. “For when he chose me, the Lord said, No man shall be able to stand before you. I will be with you; I will not fail or forsake you—for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.”

  Joshua returned to his map, marking and naming cities first in the south and then in the north. This was the sequence he intended for the campaign to come: secure the l
and west of the Salt Sea, a hilly, less populated country, and then reach for the richer regions of the north.

  But start with Ai

  “Othniel,” Joshua said, trying to find that man among the faces, “what did you say of that city?”

  A young man of large, grinning cheeks said, “It sits on a ridge, but the people have made little of that defense—and they are so few you needn’t send more than two thousand men.“ He grinned broadly. “I’ll shake my spear and that army will scatter, so scared are they of us!”

  Joshua nodded.

  IN THE MORNING Joshua sent three thousand warriors westward to Ai, to defeat that city with a single strong assault.

  At the same time he met with a group of impoverished travelers who were requesting to live among Israel. They said they had come from a far country because of the wonders the Lord had performed in Egypt.

  They said, “We will be your servants. Come, make a covenant with us…”

  But before this conversation or any covenant could be concluded, Joshua heard shouting at the western tents of Israel. It sounded like an outcry of grief

  . Joshua began to walk in that direction, and soon the young man of grinning assurances came dashing through the camp.

  When he saw Joshua, he fell before him and gasped, “We are beaten!” His body stank of a sweaty fear.

  “Beaten, Othniel?” Joshua said. “Beaten?”

  “They came out of the gate like bees and killed ten men before we could speak,” Othniel panted. “We fled. We ran down the ridge—but they followed as far as some stone quarries, killing, I don’t know, thirty, forty men. Yes, beaten.”

  Joshua was astonished. “What’s forty among three thousand! Why didn’t you stand and fight?”

  “Our courage died in us.”

  “Why?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. But the spirit was snatched out of the whole army of Israel!”

  Then Joshua went to the Tabernacle and tore his clothes and bowed down in front of the Ark and whispered, “Alas, Lord God, it has only just begun! Yet already Israel has turned tail to the enemy! Why are we defeated now? Why should we be stopped at the start of our campaign?”

  The Lord said to Joshua, Israel has sinned. They have stolen treasures of Jericho, the very things I placed beneath a sacred ban. Israel cannot stand before their enemies, because the whole people has become like that which was stolen. They are a thing devoted to destruction.

  Joshua said softly, “What, then, can we do?”

  The Lord said, Find and destroy the devoted things that were stolen.

  “How shall I seek them?” said Joshua.

  Divide the people. Let the tribes pass by until I choose one tribe. Of that tribe, let the clans pass until I choose one; and of the clans, households; and of the households, men.

  And so it was.

  On the following morning, after a sacrifice to sanctify the people for this solemn trial, Joshua commanded representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel to come before him at the Tabernacle.

  One by one they passed by while lots of judgment were cast. And the tribe of Judah was taken.

  Then representatives of the clans of Judah passed by Joshua. Lots were cast, and the clan of Zerah was taken.

  Among the households of Zerah, Zabdi was taken.

  And of the sons of Zabdi, Carmi. But Carmi had perished in the wilderness with everyone else of his generation. Therefore, the final lot fell upon Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah.

  Achan had stolen the treasures of Jericho.

  Joshua squinted against the sunlight, identifying Achan. Forty years old. He had been the firstborn of the new generation, for his mother delivered him even as Israel was passing through the sea from Egypt into freedom. Achan. The son of his mother Elisheba, a faithful soul who died at their second crossing, from the wilderness, over Jordan, into this land of promise.

  “Achan,” said Joshua so softly his breath was but wind on sand, “Achan, my son, render praise to the Lord God of Israel and tell me now what you have done. Do not hide it from me.”

  “My father wanted two fields and got none,” said Achan. “I want only one. But even my one is uncertain. The land is filled with enemies. Many of us are going to die.”

  “Achan,” Joshua said, “what did you do?”

  The man sighed and lowered his head. “When I saw among the spoils of Jericho a beautiful mantle from Shinar, close-woven and dyed with a deep purple dye, I took it. I took silver weighing two hundred shekels, a gold bar of fifty shekels. I buried these in the earth inside my tent. I planned to buy the field my father never had.”

  And now it was Joshua who sighed. He got up and walked away, his head bowed down as always, his poor eyes peering at the ground before his feet.

  As he went, he gave orders softly, and the orders were accomplished, and all Israel was sober and thoughtful that day.

  They dug in Achan’s tent and brought out the things that had been devoted to destruction. These they carried with Achan into a separate valley, and there they burned all that Achan was: his oxen, his asses, his sheep, his tent, his possessions, his sons, his daughters, his wife, and himself. They burned him with fire, and they stoned him with stones, and he was no more, and Carmi’s heritage passed from the earth.

  Thereafter the name of the place was the Vale of Achor, Valley of Trouble.

  AFTER THAT ISRAEL defeated Ai easily.

  Joshua, in the strength of two victories, established covenants with four cities south of Ai: Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, Kiriath-jearim. So the back of the land of Canaan had been broken indeed.

  WITHOUT HESITATION, then, the small, studious man led his forces southward according to lines once drawn on the dusty ground.

  The kings of five southern cities strengthened themselves by forming a coalition and moving north as a single army: Jerusalem and Hebron and Jarmuth and Lachish and Eglon. But Joshua heard of their union and drove Israel all night long in a forced march uphill from Gilgal to the pass of Beth-horon where at sunrise he astonished the enemy by his mere and massive presence. He attacked them, routed them, and pursued them southward into the foothills, striking again and again, at Azekah, at Makkedah. The Lord went with him, once hurling great hailstones down from heaven, once holding the day itself, the sun and the moon, dead still while Joshua finished battles that needed more time than a single morning and an evening.

  Marching southward he attacked the main fortresses of the foothills, Libnah, Eglon, and Lachish. Then he turned east and mounted straight into the heart of the southern highlands, taking Hebron and Debir.

  AS HE DID in the south, so he did in the north.

  Again, kings in fear for their cities joined forces against this common enemy.

  Again, the soft-spoken Joshua directed the hosts of Israel in assaults so accurate, so balanced, and so well-timed that the natural weakness of any coalition, the lines along its join, cracked. Joshua divided his enemy and conquered them one by one by one.

  The number of kings whom Joshua defeated on the west side of the Jordan, from the valleys of Lebanon in the north to Mount Halak in the south, was thirty-one kings.

  VI

  WHEN JOSHUA THE SON of Nun was very old, he summoned to himself the elders and heads and officers of Israel.

  When he began to speak, he scarcely lifted his head. It seemed too large for his thin neck. And his body was small, bent round like a shepherd’s crook. Those who listened had to press in close and tip their heads sideways.

  Moreover, the man’s voice was but a hollow whisper. He seemed to speak from the caves of the ancients. None remembered Egypt but him. He alone had seen the griefs of Egypt.

  “Behold,” he breathed, “we have divided the land as best we can among the tribes of Israel. Every tribe has a territory, every tribe an inheritance, fields and houses and land. So it is, and so it shall be. The Lord has kept his promise to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel and Leah. My ch
ildren, look about you. We are home.”

  It was a day of radiant sunshine, though Joshua still had not raised his head. He kept silence a while, and it occurred to the heads of Israel that he really meant it: they should look around at the land, the soil, the magnificent oak by which they had gathered, the earth.

  But Joshua could not look. His eyes were blinded by the sunlight.

  “Your work is not altogether done,” he said. “Many foreign nations remain among us. In time the Lord will push them back before you.

  “But until that time you must not mix with these nations, or mention the names of their gods, or swear by them, or serve them, or bow down to them. You must cleave to the Lord your God as you have done to this day. Israel, love the Lord your God!”

  As he spoke, more and more people gathered. The small group grew. Mothers holding babies came, and the young men and young women together, farmers and shepherds, priests and weavers and potters.

  Joshua was at Shechem, between the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim, a holy place before the Lord—and perhaps that was why so many soon began to hear a man who spoke so softly. They were listening as much with their spirits as with their ears.

  “I am about to go the way of all the earth,” said Joshua. “Before I go, I must hear your faithfulness.

  “Our most ancient ancestor—Terah, the father of Abraham—served other gods beyond the Euphrates. But the Lord took Abraham and led him here and gave him Isaac; to Isaac he gave Jacob; and to Jacob, twelve sons and a daughter. Then Jacob and his children went down to Egypt. The Lord! The same Lord who delivered your parents from the bondage of Egypt is he who has led you here. God has kept his promise. Israel, you are like the stars of heaven for multitude! You are the descendants God swore to give to our father, the fruit of our mother’s barren womb! You are the nation that was to come from them—and you are home!