The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  The adventurer laughed a laugh of such spectacular anticipation that not a warrior in Israel was fainthearted thereafter. Jephthah raised a thunderous shout and led them into battle.

  He crossed over to the Ammonites, attacked them, and the Lord gave them into his hand. He smote them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty cities, and as far as Abel-keramim with a very great slaughter.

  Then Jephthah the Gileadite returned to his house. And behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child.

  III

  The Maiden Speaks

  Her Seventh Day

  My flow began today. The way of women is upon me. In these last weeks I had forgotten that it would come. But the times have not changed my body. Of course it would come.

  Milcah, do you think the times have changed the law for me? Will I have to sacrifice two turtledoves in eight days in order to purge myself again?

  But for me there shall not be an eighth day.

  Her Sixth Day

  They carve in stone the laws that govern the nations!

  They raise marble obelisks upon which to write the histories of great and bloody battles! Kings who triumph want their triumphs remembered.

  Covenants are baked into an everlasting clay.

  Even the transactions of wealthy men are etched in tablets and preserved.

  O eternal God, let this also be inscribed in stone, for it is as monumental as any battle that any man has ever fought to the death: that Jephthah’s daughter wept because of a word her father spoke. His speaking stopped her womb forever.

  Jephthah’s daughter howls in the mountains because no child shall ever call her Mother.

  Write this in stone and save it: that at the end of all battles, Jephthah’s daughter dies a virgin.

  Her Fifth Day

  But how can a daughter blame her father?

  This is true: a man need not make a vow. Nothing compels him.

  But if he chooses nonetheless, and if he makes his vow before the living Lord, then he must keep it. After the oath has been established, there is no longer a choice. There is only obedience and the deed. Or what is a covenant for?

  But the world is always larger than the man, always larger than his knowing or his ability to know. And his vow binds him to the universe. It causes wheels to grind that he can no longer stop.

  The man who forgets this largeness—he shall suffer when his oath returns to him with a strange face and a fateful consequence.

  How, then, can a daughter blame her father? He is as sad as she is now.

  Ah, he was ignorant. He did not know.

  Her Fourth Day

  He loves me! He loves me! He has always loved me!

  He built a beautiful house for me.

  He set it on a stone foundation exactly where I paced the sides for it, and I asked that my house look like all the houses of Israel, and it does!

  He said, “Where shall I build it?”

  And I said, “On a hill!”

  So he built its walls of a baked mud brick laid in perfect rows. He plastered the outside and whitewashed it. My house is radiant! It catches a golden evening light.

  When you enter the doorway you stand in a lovely little court. There is not much room for flowers, but the sunlight comes down from above, and I have my oven there, my own tabun, where I prepare food for the two of us.

  On the right side of the court are four strong posts and an open room. On the left is the door to my room. In the back is the door to his.

  I chose to dress in his room.

  On the day when they said he was come home again, I went into his room and put on clean white linen—his room because I wanted to smell his scent. I was filled with such joy for him!

  I planned to follow custom, to go out dancing as Miriam danced when the Egyptians were defeated at the Sea. Hadn’t my father defeated the Ammonites?

  So when I heard his mount coming up the long road to our little house, I laughed. I laughed aloud and grabbed my timbrel and ran outside to meet him, dancing.

  Her Third Day

  My father’s mother was a concubine and an outcast. Yet she had a child, and her child loved her and took care of her until she died.

  I am not a concubine. I am not an outcast.

  But I shall die with no children at all.

  Her Second Day

  Sisters, sisters, come and sit by this stream a while. We will be home soon.

  The Lord has watched our going and now our coming. No one has harmed us, though there was no other guard to protect us. Seven women, walking the mountain roads two months long in safety. My father has brought peace to the land. The highways are free of raiders now. Yes. Peace.

  I’m thirsty.

  Thank you, Milcah.

  Oh, don’t cry! We have cried. We’ve cried through seven Sabbaths, and when you cry I begin to cry all over again, too.

  Here. Drink water from my cup.

  It is surely a grief we grieve, isn’t it?—though no one has died.

  You say: But you shall die.

  Yes, but I say, But I do not cry for that.

  Sisters, I cry no differently than any woman whose child was taken from her by war or by famine, by sickness or by the bloody sins of men. We cry for absent children. They cry for the one that is no more; I cry for the one that shall never be.

  Ah, sisters, I lament for us all! I lament the bearing itself! The travail that promises such joys and delivers such sorrows. I lament this, that we can and do and must bear—but may never hold one good thing still and here in the crook of our arm forever.

  I cry that every birth is the beginning of death.

  No, no, no, no, my father hath gotten us no peace at all in the land, no peace whatsoever.

  Come.

  Let’s walk before I find the words for cursing.

  Her Last Day

  Milcah, wake up. It will be dawn in an hour. I want to ask two things of you before we have to separate.

  Please remember me. This is the first thing

  . Perhaps in the years to come you might lift your eyes to these mountains and remember that we wandered here and that we lamented together, yes? Milcah, my friend, I love you.

  I must go and bathe while it is still dark and I am alone. You stay here. I must wash my clothes and anoint myself and so prepare to meet my father. He is there. He is in the little house, waiting.

  And this is the second thing I have to ask you:

  Will you take care of my father when I cannot? If you agree, you must swear to serve him not only for my sake, but also for his.

  Because he loves me, Milcah. That was never in doubt. From the beginning my father has loved me completely, and he will only love me the more tomorrow.

  Therefore, you must be there when the sun arises and he looks out to see what has changed in the world.

  IV

  AS JEPHTHAH THE Gileadite, after having destroyed the Ammonites, approached his home in high spirits and laughter, he heard a small, sweet laughter in the distance, mixing with his. It quickened his heart.

  Then, to his even greater joy, he saw his daughter emerge from the house in long white linen, laughing, striking a timbrel, and dancing.

  Almost he kicked his mount into a gallop.

  But the Lord said, She is the one. As I have given you a victory, so shall you give this child to me as the burnt offering of your vow.

  “Alas!” cried Jephthah. Laughter and dancing died together. “Oh, my daughter, you have brought me very low!”

  The child stood transfixed by the horror in her father’s voice. He dismounted and walked to her on foot. As he went, he told her his vow in every sad particular: the first good thing that meets me.

  Softly she set down her timbrel. “Father, let this thing be done for me,” she said. “But let me alone two months that I may wander on the mountains, I and my companions, and bewail my virginity.”

  He said, “Go.”

  And she departe
d, to return at the end of her appointed time.

  JEPHTHAH THE GILEADITE judged Israel six years. Then he died and was buried in a city in Gilead.

  After Jephthah, Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel. He had thirty sons and thirty daughters. He gave his daughters in marriage outside of his own clan and brought thirty women in from the outside for his sons. He judged Israel seven years, then he died.

  After him, Elon the Zebulunite judged Israel. He judged Israel ten years, then died and was buried at Aijalon in the land of Zebulun.

  After him, Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite judged Israel. He had forty sons and thirty grandsons who rode on seventy asses, a wealthy man. He judged Israel eight years.

  THIRTEEN

  Samson

  IN THOSE DAYS Israelites north and south began to tell stories of a mighty man who came from the village of Zorah, of the tribe of Dan. It was said that he had never cut his hair in his life, for that was his vow before the Lord. In return, God had bestowed upon him more strength than the lion or the ox.

  What flowing hair the man must have! Like a black robe blowing, when he lets it down.

  His name was Samson. Named for the sun. And he was as cunning as he was strong, for single-handedly this hero could distress the Philistines, enemies of Israel.

  Oh, it stirred their blood to hear of his adventures. It made them proud and it caused them laughter, both at once.

  ONCE UPON A time Samson was in the Philistine town of Timnah. There he spied a maid so lovely that his heart grew sick on account of ber.

  He rushed home to Zorah and said to his parents, “Get her as a wife for me.”

  His parents said, “Samson, don’t take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines. Look among your own people.”

  But Samson’s heart ached and he could not forget the maiden. So he went by himself to Timnah to speak with her father about a marriage.

  On the way a young lion roared against him, and the spirit of the Lord stirred mightily within him, and he tore the lion as one tears a kid, breaking its joints apart. He left it dead and continued on.

  The second time he saw the maiden, she pleased him even more than the first. With passion and eloquence, then, Samson persuaded her father to grant him his daughter in marriage.

  Remembering his parents’ objections, Samson said, “Let it be a sadigâ,”—a marriage in which the wife remains home with her family and the husband visits from time to time.

  Now, while he was traveling from Zorah to Timnah for the wedding feast, he noticed the carcass of the lion he had killed, that bees were swarming around it. He looked closely and found a hive in the lion’s bones, and honey in the hive. Samson scraped honey into his hands and continued to Timnah, eating as he went.

  The wedding feast lasted seven days, at the end of which the formal acts of marriage would be accomplished. In the meantime there was dance and food and merriment. Thirty Philistine men came to celebrate with Samson.

  On the first day, Samson proposed a game. “Let me put a riddle to you,” he said. “If you can guess it before the end of the seventh day, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments, too. But if you can’t, you must give me the thirty and thirty.”

  There was wine, and there was gladness.

  The Philistine men said, “Put your riddle to us.”

  Samson grinned and said:

  “Out of the eater, something to eat;

  out of the strong one, something sweet.”

  The thirty companions laughed and returned to their wine. In private they discussed the riddle, but none could guess its meaning. Not the first day, nor the second, nor the third.

  On the fourth day they took the bride aside and said, “Either you find the meaning of Samson’s riddle, or we will burn your father’s house with fire.”

  On the fifth day the maiden came to Samson and burst into tears. “You don’t love me,” she said. “How could you keep secrets from me if you loved me?”

  “What secrets?” Samson said.

  “The riddle you put to my countrymen. That one.”

  “But that’s a riddle, not a secret,” he said.

  But she only wept the louder.

  On the sixth day the maiden refused to speak to Samson. This caused his heart such sorrow that he told her the meaning of the riddle.

  On the seventh day, exactly at sundown, when the husband and the wife were preparing to enter a private chamber to consummate their marriage, thirty companions cried out together, “Israelite! We know the meaning of your riddle!”

  “What is it?” said Samson.

  And the Philistine men said:

  “What is sweeter than the bee?

  Or the lion, stronger than be?”

  Samson glanced at the woman beside him, hidden in veils; then in a low, cold voice he spoke to the Philistines: “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would never have discovered my riddle! But I will keep my promise to you in my own way!”

  Samson bolted from the wedding house. The spirit of the Lord came upon him and he went to Ashkelon, where he killed thirty men and took their spoil. That same night he returned to Timneh with thirty festal garments, and then he went home to Zorah in a rage.

  THERE WERE FIVE LORDS of the Philistine people, each controlling a strong walled city: Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ashdod on the coast of the Great Sea west of Dan; Gath, in the foothills of Judah, and Ekron, six miles inland.

  Hundreds of years ago when the children of Israel were still wandering in the wilderness, the Philistines had been a marauding, seagoing people, bold enough to invade Egypt. Egyptian armies had repelled them; but then, even as Moses was marching against Sihon and Og east of the Jordan, the Philistines began to seize cities north of the Negev and to destroy the people who inhabited them. Therefore, Israel and Philistia had entered Canaan at the same time, one from the wilderness, one from the sea.

  The children of Israel chose to work the soil, to herd flocks, and to live in a loose federation of tribes.

  The Philistines, on the other hand, gathered in whitewashed cities where they developed military aristocracies, hierarchies of power. Altogether they became a society formed for war, training their sons already in childhood to fight.

  Israel plowed as farmers had plowed for ages, behind the slow ox with a wooden plowshare sheathed in bronze.

  Philistia was learning a new thing: how to work iron. And the lords of the Philistines were beginning to make weapons of iron.

  IT WAS JUST at the start of the wheat harvest when Samson’s heart again grew sick for his Philistine wife, with whom he had never yet lain.

  So he took a kid for a meal of reconciliation and traveled to Timnah, to her house.

  Samson was about to enter, when her father met him at the door and prevented him.

  “She is not here,” he said.

  “Then I will wait for her,” Samson said.

  The old man hung his head. “No, she is never coming back.”

  “Then where can I find her?”

  “What could I do?” the old man said. “I really thought you hated her.”

  “I do not hate my wife. Where is she, that I might lie with her now?”

  “Son, it would have disgraced us if there had been no marriage at the end of the feast.”

  Samson began to frown. The cords in his neck stood out. “What did you do?” he said.

  “Please, son, her younger sister is fairer than she. Take her sister instead.”

  “What, old man? What did you do?”

  “I gave your wife to the best man and she married him.”

  Slowly, Samson gathered his hair into seven locks and tied them back from his face. “This time,” he said, “I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines.”

  Then he went and took torches and caught three hundred foxes. He tied them tail to tail with a torch between each pair. And that night he set the torches afire and released the foxes, and they ran throughout the standing grain of the Philistines, burning
the fields, exploding the shocks that had already been tied, and leaping even to the olive orchards.

  Seeing the flames, the Philistines cried, “Who has done this to us?”

  And they said, “Samson! The son-in-law of the Timnite, because he took his wife and gave her to another!”

  Therefore they seized both her and her father and began to burn them with fire.

  But Samson, who was returning with another kid, heard the screams of the woman he had married, and in a rage he smote the Philistines hip and thigh, a very great slaughter.

  Then he ran from their land to a cleft of rock in Etam, which was in the territory of Judah. There he hid himself while an army of several thousand Philistines went looking for him.

  THERE WERE NO kings in Israel in those days, only the judges whom the Lord sometimes appointed as leaders of his people in times of crisis.

  In contrast, each of the five cities of the Philistines was ruled by a tyrant who held complete authority. Moreover, these five lords were capable of joining into a single force for war. And in these latter days that expediency looked more and more likely, for they had a complex system of trade routes to protect, and their populations were growing larger and hungrier every year.

  Israel had rich valleys, vineyards, orchards, herds, and fields. But Israel had no standing army. Her warriors were her farmers. Philistia had weapons of iron. And her citizens were an army. The lords of the Philistines, considering it infinitely more efficient to take than trade, now began to arm themselves.

  In the nighttime, therefore, in the privacy of their houses, the Israelites increased their confidence and courage by telling stories of their national hero.

  ONCE UPON A TIME an army of a thousand Philistines entered the territory of Judah, breathing threats of war.