The Last Sacrifice

by Hank Hanegraaff

  For centuries, the fire had remained constantly lit. Eleazar was not going to be remembered with shame as the one who let it die.

  Gilad understood instantly. “The Festival of Xylophory.”

  Eleazar nodded. “How much wood is left in the Temple? A month’s worth? Two months’ worth?”

  “Not enough.”

  “I worry about this. I may have a solution to earn the support of the people, but if the festival does not proceed . . .” Eleazar stared directly at Gilad. “Do you agree? The festival is of paramount importance?”

  Gilad didn’t hesitate. “We agree.”

  “Good,” Eleazar said. “Because I need help that I trust only you to give.”

  “Whatever it is, you have my oath.”

  “Deliver a message to my father to meet with me tomorrow.”

  “Your father? Surely you are testing me again.”

  “I wish I were.” A faint smile. “Ironic, isn’t it? The one man who desperately needs my defeat is the one man who can prevent it.”

  Young as he was, Quintus had enough street sense to recognize the signs of danger.

  The shops and markets grew unnaturally quiet; someone had seen the rebels begin to set up an ambush and had spread the word throughout the shops.

  While the soldiers realized that conversations and bartering would cease at their approach and resume as they moved on, this silence was more than that, and the horses responded to it by whipping their heads in agitation, as if they were sensing the first tremors of an earthquake.

  The soldiers knew just as well as the people around them that attack was imminent. From his safe distance behind them, Quintus saw this by the way the soldiers bunched closer together and cast wary eyes toward alleys and rooftops. Yet no amount of vigilance could ever give them much warning of an attack. Unlike the new city beyond the second wall, the lower city was a maze of alleyways and crowded buildings.

  Then it happened.

  Rocks and clay pots cascaded down on the soldiers. At the same time, men flooded the streets from the narrow alleys, screaming. Some were armed with hoes, others with sticks. Only a few actually carried swords and spears and shields.

  Quintus sprinted toward the fighting, then stopped abruptly only steps away from the nearest soldier, who was slashing his sword at three men trying to beat him. Quintus dodged beneath a cart filled with the blankets of a shop owner, narrowly escaping more rocks that cascaded down.

  He peered upward from the street as a pot slammed against the soldier’s head. He staggered, and one of the men landed a solid blow across his forehead. The skin split, and the injured man fell to his knees, putting a hand on his eyebrows to keep the blood from blinding him.

  Before the other two men could attack, however, another soldier moved forward and stabbed the midsection of one of the attackers with his sword. The soldier pulled the sword loose without hesitation and began swinging at the other two, who stepped away.

  By the shrieks and groans and grunts, Quintus knew the battle was frenzied. But he didn’t expect it to last long. The rebels rarely pressed once they’d lost the advantage of surprise.

  He was not disappointed.

  One of the rebels screamed an order to retreat, and all of them fled, temporarily leaving behind their dead. They’d learned the soldiers would move on quickly, giving them time to remove the bodies later.

  It was this small gap of time that Quintus relied upon.

  The soldiers regrouped and hurried down the street.

  On the ground, beside the cart that protected Quintus, was the rebel who’d been stabbed by the soldier’s sword. He gripped the center of his abdomen in agony, futilely trying to stem the flow of blood.

  Quintus crawled toward him. The man’s eyes widened, and he groaned as he tried to speak to Quintus.

  Quintus lifted the bottom edge of the man’s tunic. The man was too stunned and too close to dying to react. Quintus felt for a money belt.

  Nothing.

  But on the man’s neck was a glint of gold.

  A chain!

  Quintus flashed his hand upward and grasped it in his fingers. With a quick yank, he snapped it loose.

  And ran.

  14 Av

  The Fourth Hour

  “Where were you yesterday afternoon?” Valeria asked her younger brother Quintus.

  Quintus had come to visit her on the roof of the glassblower’s house. As an apprentice, she’d been given a room on the roof as part of her wages. It was a simple square of mud walls with a sheet as a doorway flap. Inside, all it had was a mattress and a chamber pot. She was expected to take meals with the family below.

  Quintus walked to the edge of the roof and looked down at the street. He spoke without looking back at her. “Where you tell me to spend all my days. With Malka.”

  “Really?” Valeria was unable to keep an edge out of her voice. “Strange. I was there and couldn’t find you.”

  “Maybe I was at the market for her.” He kept watching the street. “That’s right. Now that I’ve thought about it, she sent me for bread.”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  Valeria moved to the edge of the roof and pulled Quintus back with a roughness that surprised even her. “Malka told me that you left more than an hour before I arrived.”

  “Don’t believe her,” Quintus said, wrenching away from her grip. “She’s blind. She can’t see when I come and go.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Valeria said, much more softly.

  “What worries you?” Quintus immediately lost his boyish indignation.

  “She’s old and blind. If you’re going to disappear into the lower city for hours at a time, maybe I need to find someplace else for you to stay.”

  “No.” Quintus stepped forward and pulled at Valeria’s tunic with both hands. “Please, no. She needs me.”

  Valeria cocked her head. This was nothing that she would have expected from her younger brother. “She needs you?”

  Quintus dropped his hands. “I help her cook and clean. I listen to her stories. She’s so happy when I’m around. I never leave unless I know she’s going to be fine until I get back.”

  “Quintus . . .” Cooking and cleaning for an old woman? Sad and serious? He’d been a selfish, happy-go-lucky boy until the May riots. Commanding slaves around as if he owned them. “Don’t you remember the first day with her and how you cried when I left you there?”

  The riots in late spring had left them homeless and on the run. Valeria had decided that if she and Quintus found a place to stay together, it might be too easy for the enemies of their family to find them.

  With this in mind, they had roamed the markets until they saw a blind woman totter slowly, tapping the street with a cane to guide her steps. They’d followed her to a shack in the most crowded part of the lower city. When Valeria had offered her a pittance to take in a small boy, Malka had gladly accepted.

  Quintus, however, had not been so happy. Before the riots, he’d lived in a mansion in the upper city; Malka’s shack was dark and cramped and had strange smells.

  “I remember the first day,” Quintus said, his little-boy face very serious. “But that’s changed. She sings to me. She tells me stories. She holds me when I cry in my sleep because of nightmares.”

  Quintus left unspoken what Valeria understood. Their own mother had never been like that to either of them.

  “You’re going to have to say good-bye someday soon,” Valeria said. “Someone from Rome will come for us.”

  He puffed his chest. “Then we’ll take her with us.” Thinking about it, he began to smile. “Can you imagine what that would be like for her? Slaves to pour her hot baths. Feasts every day. New clothes. Perfumes. She could live like a queen.”

  Quintus became more excited. “Yes! Yes! In Rome, we have money, more than we could ever spend. You tell me that all the time. We’ll take Malka with us and make sure she never has to worry about anything ever again in her life!”

  “We�
�ll talk about this later,” Valeria said, with no intention of ever discussing the subject again. Malka was no more than an employee, paid to keep and hide Quintus. “I want to know where you went yesterday afternoon and where you’ve gone all the other times you leave her alone.”

  Quintus frowned.

  “Yes,” Valeria said, “Malka told me. She also said that you’ve been bringing food home from the market. Where do you get the money for that?”

  “You’re not my mother,” Quintus said. “So stop acting like it.”

  “I’m the only person you can depend on in the entire world. Where do you go and how do you get money for food?”

  Quintus spun away and marched back to the edge of the roof. He crossed his arms as he resolutely stared away from Valeria.

  “I can’t help us if you don’t help me,” Valeria said. “This is a dangerous city, especially now.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Tell me how you get the money. That’s all I want to know.”

  “I can take care of myself.” He stamped his heel, betraying his boyishness.

  “I order you not to leave her house.” Valeria took a step toward him and then froze as a high-pitched wail of anguish reached the rooftop.

  It came from directly below.

  The wail grew louder.

  “I have a question for our high priest,” said Annas the Younger.

  In the upper city, in the palace of the high priest, fifty-two men were assembled in two semicircles for a council of the Great Sanhedrin, the highest authority among the Jews. Of the seventy-one members, only twenty-three were needed for a quorum. This was important to Annas the Younger, who had finally been granted the floor to address the high priest, Ananias.

  Annas the Younger had been given the name to distinguish him from his father, Annas the Elder, whose legendary political maneuverings as a high priest had ensured that a son-in-law and each of his five sons—including Annas the Younger—had had turns occupying that position over the last four decades.

  Annas the Younger had never made a secret of how badly he wanted to regain his position as high priest. He had lost his appointment in disgrace two years earlier because of a man named Simeon Ben-Aryeh. Three months ago, Annas had inflicted partial revenge on Ben-Aryeh, and today, with luck, that revenge would be complete with the help of a Pharisee named Boaz. What a message that would send to anyone who dared defy him politically!

  Given this reputation and the situation against the rebels, Annas the Younger knew many of his peers had wondered when he might issue a challenge to the authority of the high priest.

  He also knew he wasn’t going to disappoint them, for he had spent days pondering and planning his attack.

  “Ask your question.” The high priest, Ananias, leaned on a cane as he faced Annas, his flowing gray beard almost touching the top of his hand on that cane. Sad weariness had etched deep lines into a face already well wrinkled, and that weariness leached his voice of any power.

  “Eleazar, the temple governor, has brought civil war to our city with his refusal to allow foreigners to make sacrifices at the Temple,” Annas the Younger said. “For bringing unrest to Jerusalem and to the Jewish people, he must die. Yet Eleazar is also your son.”

  Annas was a handsome man in his forties. He ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair as he waited for the tension to build.

  Then Annas struck, as if he were trying to inflict a blow on the older man. “My question is this: is our high priest prepared to throw the first stone at the execution of his son?”

  As Maglorius sat in the shade of the inner courtyard and waited for the arrival of Boaz and the men he’d promised would evict Amaris, he stared at his wrists. He could not escape the sensation that both were bound together.

  The rope, of course, was imaginary. He didn’t know what was more troubling—the predicament he faced, the sensation of an imaginary rope, or the fact that he was actually engaged in thought about the situation.

  In the shade, Maglorius actually growled at himself for these thoughts. Men who spent too much time in analysis, he’d always believed, were weak men. Now he was one of them. And yes, felt weak for it. Maglorius had spent his adult life killing other humans and, in his prime, had been among the best in the world at this task. Half a dozen men, no doubt poorly armed, would be far easier opponents than the desperate and fully armed criminals he’d executed in the arenas as a gladiator.

  He was a man of action. Not philosophy. Amaris was his friend Simeon Ben-Aryeh’s wife, and every instinct urged Maglorius to protect her—by whatever means necessary. Yet now he was bound. By a struggle with his newfound faith. For Maglorius now followed the Christos.

  The man whose teachings had brought him peace and hope, the man he’d committed his heart and soul to follow, this man had accepted crucifixion for a crime He did not commit rather than fight back against injustice.

  So should Maglorius do the same here? allow Amaris to be forced from her house by the same type of religiously hypocritical man as those who had pierced Jesus of Nazareth?

  Yet, Maglorius thought, had his Jesus not also given a directive to clothe the poor, feed the hungry, and defend widows and orphans? What was Maglorius to do while remaining faithful to the Nazarene who had given His life on behalf of humanity?

  It was one thing, he told himself, to fight in the heat of defense, doing what was necessary to preserve his life; reacting without thinking; unleashing the strength, agility, and killer instinct that had made him feel so alive in the pursuit of the death of other men.

  If thieves were to attack him and Amaris in an alley without warning, he would destroy first and deal with his conscience later. But here, waiting to face down a different kind of thief was an entirely different situation.

  Too much thinking.

  To complicate his decision, he’d made a vow to protect this woman in the absence of her husband. Walking away, permitting the travesty for the sake of peace, breaking the vow— wouldn’t this, too, be a moral wrong?

  Maglorius growled at himself again.

  Too much thinking.

  Maglorius stood. Beside the chair, where he’d leaned it against the wall, was an iron bar the thickness of a cane and roughly twice as long. He grabbed it, held it with both hands across his waist, and paced back and forth in front of the closed door that led into the house.

  This, he thought, feeling the coldness of the iron in his fingers, was what he wanted to use. Not thinking, but action.

  Would his faith allow him that?

  Annas wasn’t surprised as murmurs went through the assembly at his question to the high priest. Politically, the question was as masterful as it was vicious, for Annas was forcing Ananias to choose between his office and his son.

  The murmurs faded as all eyes turned to Ananias. The old man’s hand on the cane shook. The ephod, breastplate, robe, embroidered coat, girdle, and miter of the high priest’s garments gave him an appearance of dignity and power, but his frailty in the moment betrayed him.

  “Let me repeat my question,” Annas said when Ananias delayed his answer. “Is the high priest prepared to throw the first stone at the execution of his son?”

  When Ananias spoke, it was with little energy. “For the record, my relationship with the governor of the Temple is irrelevant to this discussion.”

  Ananias nodded at both of the scribes who were, as customary, taking note of the proceedings. “In the written record, you should not use the word son in that question. The man we speak of must be referred to as Eleazar, or, as I’ve just pointed out, governor of the Temple. Let us move on to the reports and discussion of strategy against the rebels.”

  Victory, Annas thought. He’d rehearsed all possible answers and had decided there was only one way for Ananias to escape the difficulties the question raised—by immediately agreeing he would throw the first stone and, in so doing, ending the debate before it could start.

  But Annas had also decided the real weakne
ss that Ananias faced was the love of an elderly man for his firstborn son and that the high priest would choose that love over power. The fool.

  “I would respectfully ask our high priest to explain why his relationship to the governor of the Temple has no relevance,” Annas said, speaking to the assembly. “This is a time of extreme crisis. A time that demands decisive leadership. Yet the man who asks that we continue to grant him authority appears unable to exercise authority over his own son.”

  This statement, too, Annas the Younger had planned. He wanted the debate to be a personal attack on both father and son.

  “Eleazar is the governor of the Temple,” Ananias said. “He did not start the rebellion as a son acting against his father, but as a man in high position acting upon his conscience and the abuses of Rome.”

  “Ah,” Annas the Younger said. “So you approve of his action? Is the kind of high priest we need leading us in our crisis?”

  “My feelings here are irrelevant.” Ananias clutched his cane. “You will note that I have done everything in my power as high priest to press the battle against the temple governor, the temple priests who support him, and the Zealot rebels who fight for him. That is what matters.”

  “So make it public record, then, that you will set your feelings aside and throw the first stone at the execution of your son Eleazar. Tell all of us assembled here that your loyalty is to your duty, not the governor of the Temple.”

  Ananias lifted a shaking hand and covered his eyes.

  “Make it public record,” Annas repeated. “Unless your loyalty—”

  “This is my son!” Ananias dropped his hand. Tears were obvious on his wrinkled face.

  Annas relished the old man’s pain and seized the advantage. “During Passover just over thirty years ago, there was a man some claimed to be our Messiah. A man stirring trouble in the Temple to the point that it seemed rebellion might start against Rome. Weren’t you among those in the Great Sanhedrin during his trial? Didn’t you agree then that it would be better for one man to die than an entire nation? Didn’t you agree to the execution of that man?”