The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  “Now, therefore,” said tiny Joshua, “fear the Lord. Serve him in sincerity. Keep his statutes now as he has kept his promises to you. Be his people, for he has chosen you, and he is your God. Love him.”

  Suddenly Joshua lifted his face. He opened his eyes, eyes moist and unfocused in the sunlight, and he raised his thin voice like an eagle’s claw upon the air.

  “But if you are not willing to serve him, then choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your most ancient ancestors served beyond the river, or the gods of the Canaanites in whose land you dwell. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

  Silence returned. It was the same waiting silence with which Joshua had begun his valediction—but then he desired their looking. Now he required their speaking. His raised face sought some word of the people.

  Almost as one, then, the children of Israel said, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It is the Lord our God who did great signs in our sight! He preserved us all through the wilderness. Therefore, we will serve him. Yes! He is our God!”

  Joshua said, “You cannot serve him and another, too. You cannot serve him with words only, or with emotion. Israel, he is a holy God. He is a jealous God. If you forsake the Lord to serve foreign gods, he will turn and consume you after having done you good—”

  “No!” cried the people. This was thunderous. It was the united voice of men and women together. In a sacred manner the entire nation had gathered at Shechem, and the whole nation cried, “No, we will serve the Lord.”

  Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord.”

  They said, “We are witnesses.”

  “Then incline your whole heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

  They said again, “The Lord our God—him will we serve, and his voice will we obey.”

  So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day. He ordered a great stone to be set up under the oak tree in the sanctuary at Shechem, and he said, “Behold, this stone shall stand witness to all that has been said here, both for your generation and for the generations to come.”

  AFTER THESE THINGS Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died. He was a hundred and ten years old. They buried him in his own land, on his own inheritance at Timnath-serah, which was in the highlands of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.

  Likewise, the bones of Joseph, which the people had carried with them out of Egypt, were buried at Shechem. Joseph, finally, was gathered to his people in that same portion of ground which his father Jacob had purchased from the sons of Hamor for a hundred pieces of money.

  Thus he, too, after many centuries, had land and a home, and lay in it.

  NINE

  Ehud

  NOW, THESE ARE the nations which were left in Canaan when Israel took possession of it: the five lords of the Philistines, who controlled the southwest seacoast and the plain from Gaza to Ekron and as far inland as the foothills of Judah; the Canaanites in pockets and cities everywhere among Israel; the Sidonians on the northwest and the seacoast there; the Hivites, who dwelt on Mount Lebanon from Mount Ba’al-hermon as far as the entrance of Hamath; some Hittites; Amorites, Perizzites, and Jebusites.

  As time went by, the memories of Moses and Joshua began to fade among the people. They forgot the mighty signs which God had done for them in the wilderness and even at their entering into this land. By degrees Israel slipped into sinning. They took as wives the daughters of these nations. They also gave them their daughters in marriage, and in the homes where such crossings occurred, the people began to serve foreign gods.

  They served Ba’al and his consort, Asherah.

  When they planted crops; when they sought the early and the late rains upon their seed; when they wished their fields to be fruitful, they went to the god who mounted the clouds, Ba’al, whose figure was a bull and whose province was fertility.

  This is how the people of Canaan propitiated Ba’al: they lay with the prostitutes who represented his consort, the receptacle of seed and rain, the soil. They did for Ba’al as they desired the storm-god to do for them. It was a ritual of like to like.

  The children of Israel copied this ritual and the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. God allowed enemies to arise against his own people.

  IN THOSE DAYS, Eglon the king of Moab began to subdue his neighboring lands. He established an alliance with the Ammonites; he swelled his armies with warriors from the Amalekites; then he invaded the territories of Israel. He crossed the Jordan and seized territory as far west as the city of palms near old Jericho.

  For eighteen years King Eglon oppressed Israel, requiring them to bring him an annual tribute of their produce. And during the last six of those years King Eglon grew fat. Each time Israelites returned from paying tribute, the description of his corpulence grew. It was said that he seldom stirred outside the courtyards of his own house.

  Israel said, “He drinks our sweat. He eats the meat of our bones and swells while we are starving here! O Lord God, save us from the hand of Eglon!”

  Their tears and their prayers were a repentance before the Lord. Therefore he raised up a deliverer for his people, Ehud, the son of Gera the Benjaminite.

  In the eighteenth year of the rule of Moab, the people elected to send Ehud with tribute to King Eglon. And the spirit of the Lord came upon Ehud so that he fashioned for himself a sword with two edges as long as his forearm. He sewed, too, a scabbard of tough cloth and girded it under his clothing on his right thigh, because he was a left-handed man.

  Then Ehud led seventy men eastward, all of them with donkeys bearing wool and wine and figs and fresh grapes and sacks of barley. They were a caravan of value. They forded the Jordan at low water and continued southwest without a guard. No one would attack them, because all the land belonged to Eglon.

  The king received his tribute at a low, stone house, sitting on a bench, wide and deep. He did not rise. He scarcely acknowledged the Israelites before him. Instead he commanded his servants to relieve the donkeys of their burdens and then, without ceremony, sent the delegation away, donkeys and all.

  Indeed, this was a very fat man. He wore flesh like an apron hanging down between his spread knees.

  Just as the Israelites began to re-cross the Jordan, Ehud turned back toward Moab on his own.

  He came again to King Eglon’s house and said, “I have returned in secret to tell the king something regarding the loyalty of Israel.”

  A traitor is always welcome to tyrants. Therefore one of the guards checked the left side of Ehud’s robe for weapons, then led him by a stone staircase to the roof of the king’s house, where a cool room had been built. Within the shade of this room, Eglon sat on a wooden board through which was a hole under which was a chamber pot. Evidently the king spent much time in this place. It was surrounded by courtiers, advisors, servants, and a cook.

  “Well?” said the king.

  Ehud said, “The message is a secret, O King.”

  Eglon cried, “Silence!” to the crowd around him and invited Ehud into his small room alone.

  So Ehud entered and closed the door.

  “It is a matter of life and death,” he said, reaching to his right side where couriers kept diplomatic correspondence.

  King Eglon raised his right hand to receive a written message.

  Ehud said, “I have a message from God for you”—and with his left hand he drew the double-edged sword and thrust it into the king’s belly, and the hilt went in after the blade, and the fat closed over both blade and hilt so that Ehud could not withdraw the sword again. The dirt came out of Eglon and a tremendous odor filled the air.

  Ehud stepped out of the small room and shut the door behind himself.

  “The king is very busy,” he said to the attendants, and he left.

  Eglon’s attendants sniffed the air and recognized what sort of business it was. Politely they waited for the king to finish. They waited until the evening.
They waited until they became alarmed—and then, despite the shame, they opened the door of his chamber, and there lay their lord dead on the floor.

  In the time of their delaying, Ehud had run as fast as he could to the Jordan and over the ford to Seirah. Then up and down the hills of Ephraim he went, sounding the ram’s horn of war, declaring the death of King Eglon. Ehud gathered the forces of Israel to attack the leaderless armies of the oppressor.

  “Follow me!” he cried, filled with the spirit of the Lord. “God has given your enemies the Moabites into your hand!”

  So the men of Israel went down with him and seized the fords of the Jordan, cutting off the escape of the occupying Moabites. Then they turned and destroyed altogether the armies that had ruled among them.

  So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel.

  And the land had rest for eighty years.

  TEN

  Deborah

  IN TIME THE PEOPLE of Israel began again to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the anger of the Lord was kindled against them.

  Jabin, a Canaanite king who reigned in Hazor, grew strong and subdued the northern tribes of Israel. He empowered Sisera of Harosheth-ha-goiim to command his armies—a force of nine hundred iron chariots, stupefying to the foot soldier of Israel who carried but a bronze sword—and together these two oppressed Israel for twenty years.

  Jabin and Sisera controlled the Esdraelon plain, the rich valley of Jezreel which was watered by the Kishon River and which swept eastward from the sea as far as Mount Tabor, cutting the tribes of Israel nearly in two.

  For fear of Jabin and Sisera, caravans avoided the Israelite highways. Trade ceased, and Israel was impoverished.

  Travelers took the crooked paths, the back roads, in order to guard against attack and plunder.

  Even the farmers disappeared. They were targets in the daylight. There were no crops in this rich plain. The land looked bleak and abandoned.

  As THEY HAD BEFORE, the people of Israel repented. They cried for help unto the Lord.

  So the Lord raised up for them a deliverer: Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, a woman whose language issued from her mouth like liquid fire.

  The spirit of the Lord came upon her, and she grew wise in the laws of the covenant. Beneath a palm near the cities of Ramah and Bethel, Deborah sat and resolved private disputes for the people. As a mother in Israel she judged them. Her name was spoken everywhere among the tribes. She won their admiration.

  And then by the spirit of God she also began to prophesy.

  Deborah sent word everywhere in Israel, south to Benjamin, near to Ephraim, north to Issachar, Zebulun, and Naphtali, saying:

  Arise! Arise!

  Even peasants must take the field!

  For the Lord is emerging from Sinai!

  Look how the heavens

  crack and tremble at his coming!

  The earth shakes! Mountains roar before the Lord!

  Barak, arise!

  Man of lightning, come and take captives!

  For the people of God will rule the mighty, come!

  Thus Deborah summoned Barak to herself, the son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali.

  When he stood before her she removed the hood of her robe and faced him bareheaded. Her hair was very long, iron-grey, and uncut—the sign of one who has made a vow before the Lord and who will not cut her hair again until the vow is fulfilled.

  There was an absolute conviction in this woman. Mother in Israel, her eyes were steadfast on Barak.

  She said, “The Lord commands you to gather ten thousand men on the wooded slopes of Mount Tabor. He himself will draw Sisera into the valley along the river Kishon, where you must attack the chariots. God will give the Canaanite armies into your hand. Go.”

  When this word had been spoken, Deborah turned away and sat again beneath her palm. She lifted the hood to cover her head, glanced up, and saw Barak still standing in the same place, staring at her.

  “Well?” she said.

  Barak pinched his lips and dropped his eyes.

  “Sisera’s chariots number nine hundred.”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re made of iron. They are pulled by one and two horses each.”

  “Yes.”

  “We are on foot. We have scarcely a shield or a spear anywhere in Israel.”

  “I know that.”

  “Well,” said Barak, gazing at the tips of his fingers, “if you, Deborah, will go with me, I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go.”

  Deborah let fall the hood behind her. She gathered her long hair and began to wind it into a thick rope, which she coiled around her head. All the while she looked directly at Barak.

  “I will go this road with you,” she said. “But it will not lead to your glory, Barak, nor to the glory of any man.”

  And she prophesied, saying:

  Praise Jael.

  Of women, praise Jael.

  Of tent-living women, praise Jael

  whose left handgrips one stake of her tent,

  whose right hand holds a workman’s hammer,

  whose eyes are bright on the vein in the temple

  of him who commands an army of chariots—

  he drives nine hundred chariots

  all armored in iron

  and heavy.

  So BARAK AND DEBORAH went north to Kadesh, where they gathered farmers and fathers, shepherds, vinedressers and boys—the armies of Israel. They made no secret of their recruitment. They blew the ram’s horn of war. And then they conducted a noisy march ten miles south to Mount Tabor.

  All this was observed by Sisera’s spies, who told him that Barak the son of Abinoam had positioned ten thousand fighting men in the forests on the southern slopes of Mount Tabor. The woods might hide them a while, but they were poorly armed and vulnerable.

  Sisera wasted no time. He called out his chariots and his armies from Harosheth-ha-goiim near the sea and drove them in a swift, massive march along the river Kishon, over the Esdraelon plain toward Tabor.

  Deborah sat on a high mountain crag. Through eyes as stony as the hills she watched the dust of Sisera’s advance. “Wait,” she murmured to Barak. “Wait. Wait. Wait—”

  Suddenly there rose a cold, urgent wind. It snapped her robe and tore down the mountain, westward. At the same time a black cloud began to overshadow the river, the valley, the dust, the armies, the entire mountain.

  “There,” said Deborah, pointing to heaven. “There: that is the Lord.” And she cried suddenly, at the top of her lungs, “Up, now! Barak, attack! The Lord goes forth before you: Go!”

  So Barak led ten thousand men out of seclusion, down to the plains. They charged directly into the onrushing chariots.

  And at the same time, the Lord God struck with convulsions of nature:

  From heaven the stars threw spears to the earth;

  from their courses they fought the chariots—

  for the black cloud broke

  and lightning dropped

  and rain like arrows

  ripped the soil—

  and the river rose!

  It rose like an ox

  to gore the warriors,

  trampled their chariots,

  and drove them back to Megiddo!

  Through the blinding rain and the mud that mired every chariot, Barak and his men pursued the Canaanites westward, past Megiddo, as far as Sisera’s city, Harosheth, toward the sea.

  But Sisera himself was not among the slaughtered.

  He had leaped from his chariot and run straight north toward Hazor, the city of Jabin. But as he ran through the black rain and the furious wind he became more and more exhausted. So when he saw tents and recognized the camp of Heber, a Kenite who had made peace with Jabin, Sisera turned aside to seek some kind of asylum.

  He found only women in the camp. He was comforted by that.

  Moreover, when the wife of Heber heard his story, that the forces of Israel had routed his army and soon would c
ome looking for him, she invited him into her own tent.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. Her whole manner was kind and consoling.

  “What if Barak comes looking for me?” Sisera said.

  The woman thought a moment. She glanced around the interior of her tent, then said, “Lie on the ground. I’ll cover you with a rug, and tell him that I am alone.”

  Sisera began to relax. “May I have a drink of water?” he asked.

  The woman smiled and shook her head. “Oh, sir, better than water, I have milk to replenish your strength.”

  So she opened a skin of milk, and he drank until he was full. Then he lay down and she covered him completely in a new rug. The scent of the thing was homely and familiar. Very soon he fell asleep.

  AND DEBORAH SANG this song:

  Most blessed of women is Jael

  the wife of a Kenite!

  Of tent-dwelling women give praise

  to this one, Jael:

  when the enemy begged for cover

  she offered a rug;

  when Sisera asked for water

  she gave him milk;

  she brought him the sweet curd

  in a king’s bowl,

  and laid him down in safety

  and he slept.

  Jael: she kneels beside him,

  a stake at his temple.

  Jael: she raises a mallet,

  and her rug blooms

  a bright round flower of blood.

  Now through her window a woman is looking;

  the mother of Sisera calls through her lattice:

  “Why does he tarry? Where is his chariot?