“For in one week I shall send a rain by which to blot out every living thing that I have made.”
Again, Noah obeyed. Two and two, male and female, the footed, the crawling, and the winged creatures Noah drove into the ark. Next went his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, their wives, his wife, and finally Noah himself. Then the Lord God shut the door.
On the seventeenth day of the second month of the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, the fountains of the terrible deep burst open and spouted water. The wild waters above the firmament also broke through heaven and poured down upon the earth. For forty days and nights water roared over the land, cataracts and waves upon the seas. The ark rose higher and higher until the mountains themselves were covered by the flood and there was water only, water everywhere.
All flesh perished in those days, birds and cattle, the beasts of the field and swarming things. And people. Everyone in whom there had been breath was drowned. Only Noah and those who were with him survived.
After forty days the rain ceased falling. Water continued to cover the earth. But God remembered Noah.
He sent a strong wind across the world and the waters began to abate.
In the seventh month the ark touched the tops of the mountains of Ararat. Noah opened a window and felt the breezes.
He sent forth a dove, but the dove returned to the ark and alighted in its window. She had found no place to perch.
Noah waited seven days and released the dove again. Again she came back, but this time with an olive leaf in her beak. The ark had come to rest in a cradle between two peaks of Ararat. One week later Noah released the dove a third time. She flew toward the southern sun and never came back again.
Then the Lord God said to Noah, “Open the ark. Send forth the living things that they might breed and fill the world again. And you, Noah: go forth as well. Be fruitful and multiply.”
So Noah arose. He and his family went out and built an altar and offered burnt offerings to the Lord.
When the Lord smelled the pleasant odor of the sacrifice, he said, “Never again will I curse the ground. Never again will I destroy all living things. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall never cease.”
And God blessed Noah and his children, saying, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. Life belongs to me. Therefore, whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall his blood be shed. For I made humankind in my own image!”
Then God said to Noah, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you—that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood. And this is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you for all future generations: I set my bow in the cloud. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in them, I will remember my covenant, an everlasting covenant between God and every living creature.”
In the generations after Noah, people began again to multiply. They spoke one language. Family after family, they spread eastward until they found a pleasant plain in Shinar, where they settled.
“Come,” they said, “let us make bricks.”
They made bricks by baking and they mortared them with bitumen. Then they said, “Let us make a city, and in its center build a tower so high it touches heaven. We will make a name for ourselves, and we will never be scattered like dust across the earth.”
So the people went to work, building a monument from the plain up into the sky.
Then the Lord God came down to see what the people were doing.
“Behold,” said the Lord, “they are one people speaking all one tongue, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Soon nothing will seem impossible to them!
“Come,” said the Lord, “let us confuse their language so they can’t understand each other.”
Therefore, the name of that city was Babel, because there the Lord confused the tongues of the people. They ceased working together, ceased building or living together. Like dust the people were scattered across the face of the whole earth.
EZRA READS, THE face of the whole earth, and immediately calls out to the Jews in the square before him: “Twice!”
He draws a deep breath. “Twice,” he says, “the Creator tried to establish his covenant with the people of the world. His second covenant was with Noah and all his descendants forever—but, as at the first, the people broke this covenant, too.
“What then?
“What was next?
“What next could the Lord God do for the people he had created, who now were divided into tribes and tongues and peoples and nations?
“O Judah, don’t you know? Don’t you remember what the Lord has done? Israel, are you ignorant of who you are?
“Next God chose one man with whom to make his covenant—and in that man, one people!”
Nehemiah is breathless because of the sudden passion in the tall priest. Ezra has come to the goal of his sermon. He is neither weary nor indifferent now. He drops his eyes and continues reading:
When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty! Walk before me and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.”
Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him: “Behold, my covenant is with you. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”
Ezra looks up.
“And who,” he calls, “are the nations to come from Abraham? Can you tell me? And then can you say which nation still has that everlasting covenant? The Moabites are the children of Abraham’s nephew, Lot. So are the Ammonites. Do they remember the covenant of Abraham? No.
“The Ishmaelites are children of Abraham. Do they remember the covenant? Does anyone on earth remember them?
“And Esau was one grandson of Abraham. His children are the Edomites who even today live south of us in Hebron where Abraham pitched his tent. Yet do they remember the covenant?
“Judah! With whom is the covenant?
“Abraham’s other grandson was Jacob, whom God named Israel. Israel! It was with Israel that God renewed the covenant. It was Israel whom God took to himself now not as one man, but as a people, as a nation, when he delivered them from the hands of the Egyptians, where they were in bondage.
“You, Israel! Judah, you!”
For ask now of the days that are past, since the day that God created humankind upon the earth—this time Ezra is quoting the Book of Moses from memory.
His voice is rich with the rhetoric:
Ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this was ever heard of. Has any god ever taken a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.
Therefore, you must keep his statutes and his commandments, that it may go well with you, and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord your God gives you forever.
“So, Judah,” Ezra says. He whispers it. He leans forward and lowers his voice to a whisper. “So then, is it well with you, Judah? Do you possess the land your God gave unto you? No? Why not?”
Ezra continues quoting:
The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Sinai. He
spoke with us face-to-face out of the midst of the fire.
He said, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.”
The Lord said, “You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy! You shall reverence your mother and your father. You shall keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God.
“Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods: I am the Lord your God.
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap the field to its border. Do not strip your vineyard bare or gather the fallen grapes. These things you shall leave for the poor and the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.
“You shall not steal nor deal falsely nor lie to one another. And you shall not swear by my name falsely, profaning the name of God: I am the Lord.
“You shall not oppress your neighbors or rob them. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.
“You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people: I am the Lord.
“You shall not hate a single brother or sister in your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbors, lest you bear sins because of them. You shall not take vengeance or carry grudges against the sons and daughters of your people, but you shall love your neighbors as yourself: I am the Lord.”
Suddenly Ezra pauses. There is a sound in the square, very soft, like running water, and for a moment the priest is mystified. But Nehemiah, nearer the people, knows that sound. It is weeping.
The people of Judah are weeping.
No one wails. No one is crying out. The passage of sorrow through the congregation is as quiet as rainfall.
“Yes, yes,” murmurs Ezra. “Now you know. The covenant is with you this day as at the first. As it was with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; as it was with Moses at Sinai; as it was when David truly possessed the land, so it is this day still. The covenant is with you, that you might keep it again in righteousness and in purity.”
But all the people continue weeping, releasing ancient griefs, centuries of sorrow
: You shall be holy, you shall be holy, you shall be holy—for I the Lord your God am holy.
Now Ezra descends from his platform. He begins to walk among the people. He touches the backs of their necks. “Hush,” he says. “Don’t mourn, don’t weep. This day is holy to the Lord your God.”
The priest moves slowly. Soon others of his entourage—the Jews, the Levites, and Nehemiah himself—are kneeling here and there among the people, comforting them.
“Go your way,” says Ezra. “Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to the poor. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
It is early in the afternoon. The people rise and do as Ezra says. They eat, they drink they send portions to those who have nothing—and soon in Jerusalem there is the beginning of consolation, because the people have understood the words that were declared to them.
So ends the day of the reading.
IV
HOW LONG DOES repentance last? If certain sins have continued a hundred years, and if a people were blind to their condition that long, will sinning suddenly cease? Will there follow a hundred years of righteousness? Or does sorrow die in the dawning of the very next day?
Nehemiah is encouraged by the tears of the people. But he is a pragmatic man, a realist, and in the next months he strives by governmental authority to turn the repentance of Judah into actual obedience.
Are Levites neglecting their duties in the temple? Yes, because the treasury is empty. They are not receiving sufficient funds for a living, so they’re finding employment elsewhere, and the temple has fallen into suffering disrepair.
Nehemiah fixes the problem by decree: he requires tithes to be collected throughout his province. He appoints honest treasurers to administer them. He commands the Levites to return to their sacred duties.
Did Ezra blame the people for breaking the Sabbath laws? Good: Nehemiah waits exactly one month, four Sabbaths, to see whether the moral word will have a visible effect. When it does not, he orders the gates of Jerusalem to be shut and locked all Sabbath long, blocking commerce and enforcing a religious rest.
But on the next Sabbath day merchants simply set up market outside the city. Nehemiah explodes. He opens a gate, rides through in a golden chariot surrounded by armed soldiers, threatens every seller with arrest, and drives them away in disgrace.
And then Nehemiah discovers that the grandson of the high priest has divorced his wife in order to marry another. The first marriage lasted a bare two years. The second marriage has just been celebrated, less than three months since the reading of the Law of God. And the second bride is not a Jew. She is a Samaritan with a magnificent dowry. She is none other than the daughter of Sanballat, governor of Samaria.
What decree should Nehemiah make in the face of this outrage?
He goes to Ezra the priest.
They talk in private for a very long time.
IT IS EVENING, the winter of the year. A cold sleet has begun to cut the air. Nevertheless, a man is sitting on the wet pavement outside the temple, groaning. His clothing is torn, his hair disheveled and dripping, his face aggrieved. There are great pouches under his eyes.
People have gathered around the man, people filled with pity and worry because they love him. They honor him. And they had truly thought it was well with him because they had repented when he taught them the Law. They repented, and he had comforted them.
Yet here is Ezra in a wretched state, and no one can persuade him to get up and go indoors. He has eaten nothing. He has drunk nothing. His groans are deep and wordless—and the longer he abases himself like this, the worse the people feel, helpless and confused and sad.
It is a child who says to the priest, “What are you doing?” And he answers, “I am mourning over the faithlessness of Judah.”
This is electric in the people.
“What? Our faithlessness?”
“Yours. Didn’t you hear who carries the covenant of God? Didn’t you understand? Yet you have not separated yourselves from those who practice abominations. You marry Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, Samaritans.”
Ezra bows his head. The wind blows harder through the temple courtyard. People pull their mantles over their heads, feeling worse than helpless: frightened.
Finally Shecaniah the son of Jehiel speaks. “We have broken faith with God,” he says, “but can’t there even now be hope for Israel? Ezra, priest, help us make a covenant with God to put away our foreign wives. Please, take the task. We will be with you. Arise, be strong, let all be done according to the Law.”
Nehemiah, standing at the back of the crowd, hears Shecaniah’s plea and immediately transforms it into a mandate.
That night an order goes forth through Judah that in three days all people must present themselves in Jerusalem, or else forfeit their property and suffer banishment from the congregation of the Jews.
FROM MORNING TO EVENING, the twentieth day of the ninth month of the year, an icy rainstorm pounds Jerusalem, blinding the beasts and chilling human flesh to the bone. Yet the courtyard of the temple is packed with people. The streets of the city are so crowded that no one can move. Judah, shivering with cold and fear, has gathered to hear Ezra speak a second time:
“You have trespassed and married foreign women and so increased the guilt of Israel,” says the priest. “Now then, make confession to the Lord and do his will: separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from your foreign wives.”
The sky darkens. The rain grows heavier. Water soaks the clothing of the people. No one is dry. Everyone is cold. Each can see his breath, grey clouds floating in front of his face: clouds of utterance, because the people are speaking.
“It is so,” they say. All their voices sound as if Jerusalem itself were groaning. “We must do as you have said. Let everyone who has taken a for
eign wife come before the elders and the judges and put them away, until the fierce wrath of our God is averted from us.”
Seldom does a cold rain trigger lightning.
Yet Nehemiah raises his face and blinks at the heavy clouds. He thinks he hears thunder, a muttering in heaven, and he takes it as a sign of divine approval.
TWENTY-NINE
The Yearning
I
An Oracle
Rejoice, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you,
triumphant and victorious,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the foal of an ass.
He shall command peace to the nations,
his dominion from sea to sea
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you, because of my covenant with you
I will set your captives free;
For I have bent Judah as my bow,
Ephraim as my arrow;
I will brandish your sons, O Zion,
and wield you like a warrior’s sword.
Then the Lord will appear over them,
his arrow going forth like lightning;
the Lord God will sound the trumpet,
marching forth in the whirlwinds of the south.
On that day the Lord their God will save his people,
for they are his flock,
and like the jewels of a crown
they shine on his land.
Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine gladden the maidens.
II
An Oracle
THUS SAYS THE LORD, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth, who breathed the spirit into human creatures, Lo, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of reeling to all the peoples round about!
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 49