Yet for all his experience and intuition, Myrad could read nothing more of his companions’ expressions than wasn’t readily apparent. Most of the magi wore the same expression as Mikhael, who’d set his sights on Jerusalem like a man returning home from a long journey, one that had taken him far away for too long. Hakam’s countenance was more avid, his eyes burning with thoughts of retribution toward the Romans.
Even Walagash’s guards seemed eager for the culmination of their journey. Except for Yehudah. Pressed for the reason behind his silence, he claimed grief at Eliar’s death, taken from their company at the doorstep of the journey’s conclusion. But Yehudah had shown this same demeanor the entire time of their travels. The closer to Jerusalem they came, the more shadows gathered behind the clear brown of his gaze.
They crossed the Jordan River just north of the Dead Sea close to sunset. Three miles later they came to Jericho, a city full of tales that were centuries old. Beggars lined the streets, filling the spaces between uncounted palm trees from the city gates to the threshold of Herod’s winter palace. Conversation between the magi stopped, drowned out by the cries of the blind, lame, and ill for mercy and money.
The crowds of pilgrims heading toward Jerusalem forced them to divide and stay in different inns. After a moment of hesitation, Myrad and Roshan changed groups so they could stay with Yehudah. As he came alongside, the magus’s gaze cut to him and he slowed. The others pulled ahead. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Jerusalem,” he said after a moment.
The two of them walked side by side with their heads toward the ground. “Certainly an easier trip this time,” Myrad said.
“Is it?” Yehudah asked. “I suppose that depends on what we find.”
“What will we find?”
“The Holy One of God,” Yehudah said, “if our count is correct.”
Myrad almost laughed. “You mean after all this time, even after finding the Messiah beneath the star, you’re still not sure?”
“Doubt, even doubt in the face of overwhelming evidence, is the human condition,” Yehudah answered.
Myrad forced the question past the knot in his throat. “Will . . . the Messiah be exiled or executed?”
Yehudah stumbled, the toe of his sandal catching in the dirt. “None of the magi have said anything about such an event.” Even as he offered his denial, he curled his shoulders like a man expecting blows.
“And that,” Myrad said, “is the crux of my doubt. Why? Because I found Daniel’s prophecy in Palmyra. It’s not hidden; it’s right there for everyone to see. Unless the wording in Hebrew is somehow different than it is in Greek.”
Yehudah sighed. “No. If anything, the words are more emphatic in Hebrew. I’ve been hoping, praying, that my fears are misplaced as simply the dread of an old man who fears too easily.”
“How can you hope that?” Myrad asked. “It’s written right there with the rest of the prophecy.”
Yehudah sighed. “I’ll try to explain. You found the prophecy in Palmyra. Did you read it yourself, or did one of the teachers there read it to you?”
“One of the teachers.”
The magus nodded. “Did it trouble him?”
“Not at all,” Myrad said, his voice rising. “And I don’t understand why it didn’t.”
“You have the advantage of limited information.”
Myrad could do nothing with this except shake his head and wait.
“Do you think Daniel is the only prophet to speak of the Messiah? The scrolls are filled with the signs of His coming. The prophets tell us He’s to be born in Bethlehem and yet He comes from Egypt, and He will be called a Nazarene. They trumpet the fact He will be King forever, but He will also be exiled or executed. One says He will judge the nations from Jerusalem, while another says we will be healed through the beating He takes.” Yehudah’s words spilled from him in a torrent. “Are you beginning to understand?”
“No,” Myrad said.
Yehudah nodded. “That’s the point. Neither do we. Our God has given us so many seemingly contradictory prophecies, we have no idea how they can all be fulfilled. Most men are like Hakam, who read the prophecies of triumph and place their hopes on a conquering Messiah.”
“But not you,” Myrad said. “Why?”
“Because that is the world’s measure of a man.”
“Dov,” Myrad said simply.
“Yes.” Yehudah sighed. “I still miss him. He and I were of a mind in numerous ways, but he saw more deeply than I, past the despair of the prophecies to hope.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? We rode together for weeks. You knew what Gershom kept from me, knew of my ignorance for decades but never said a word.”
They approached the steps of the inn, where servants came to take their horses. “I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“At first, of undermining Gershom’s intent. I intended to tell you more at some point, but the time came and passed, probably somewhere on the road to the Messiah’s birthplace. By then my reticence had taken root and I was unwilling to share my fears. If it is any consolation, I haven’t shared them with the other magi either.”
“Eloquent,” Myrad said, “but not good enough. You say it’s possible, even likely, you might be wrong, yet your eyes fill with grief as if the Messiah’s death were already written in history. Why?”
“Daniel,” Yehudah replied. “It always comes back to Daniel.”
He paused again, and Myrad clenched his fists, wanting to scream his frustration. “Stop making me drag this out of you. Speak plainly.”
“There’s not much left to tell. In his writings, Daniel referred to earlier prophecies. He actually received one in the midst of praying for the fulfillment of another given nearly seventy years prior.” Up to this point, Yehudah had answered Myrad’s questions while staring straight ahead. Now he turned to face Myrad like a man accepting the burden of his beliefs. “Every time we read of a prophet interpreting prophecy, the words are read literally with events taking place exactly as it was spoken.”
“You mean they’re all true?”
Yehudah lifted his hands, palms up. “I can come to no other conclusion.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know.”
It was during the evening meal, among the muttered echoes of the other guests’ conversations within the inn’s walls, that they heard the first mention of Mary’s son.
“Will he be there, do you think?” a woman asked.
The man next to her lifted his hands. “The Pharisees speak against him. He should stay away.”
Another man, younger, with a beard as wild as the expression in his eyes, leaned forward. “Yeshua has the people on his side. The Pharisees would not dare harm him.”
An older woman seated close by shook her head at him. She might have been his mother. “The people are but sheep.”
The young man bristled. “Watch. Someday the people will take up arms and throw the yokes of the Romans and the Pharisees from our necks.”
Across the room, Myrad overheard another conversation. A man with a thick bandage around his eyes, his hands fumbling to eat the food in front of him, spoke to the woman on his left. “Can he heal me?”
She patted his hand. “They say the carpenter’s son has healed the blind and the lame. Even raised the dead.” While her words flowed with the practiced ease of a Greek actor, doubt filled her eyes.
Myrad tried to close his ears to the hopes and animosities of the people around him. It all weighed too heavily upon him.
They approached Jerusalem from the east, circling the Mount of Olives where tents dotted the hillside, and riding across the Kidron Valley to enter the city through the Water Gate. The streets teemed with Roman soldiers, who marched in a straight line through the crowds of people, all of them parting for the soldiers like water flowing around boulders. Yet the soldiers, beneath their looks of stoic disdain, seemed uneasy.
Next to Myrad, Walagash said, “When I was young, before I became a m
erchant, I earned my living as a wrestler. We would work the crowd, stoking them so the wagers would be larger. A few times they would riot when the match didn’t go the way they wanted. No one was safe.”
His father-in-law’s observation required no explanation. Myrad spotted a slim opening and urged his horse through it until he came to Yehudah’s side. “The city is filled to bursting,” he shouted above the din. “Where will we stay?”
“I’ve made the trip since the Messiah’s birth,” Yehudah said. “Several times. I sent letters ahead to make arrangements with a friend. He has a small inn. Space will be tight, but we won’t have to camp on the hills outside the city.”
They came to a low building with a flat roof owned by a man named Silas and his wife, Rachel. The innkeepers greeted them with smiles, explained by the amount of silver Yehudah gave him as they entered. “Yehudah, it is good to see you. Another week and I would have given your place to another.”
“As agreed. The city is overflowing already.”
Silas scoffed, even as his smile grew. “This? This is nothing. We’re still nearly two weeks from Passover. Wait a few days. Jerusalem will be five or six times its usual amount of people, but there’s much more tension this year. The zealots are more active than usual, and the Romans are crucifying so many criminals that the carpenters can hardly keep up.”
Yehudah kept his expression neutral. “We heard talk in Jericho of a man, Yeshua.”
Silas’s eyes widened. “Ah. That one. Even some of the Pharisees speak of him as if he’s a prophet. But he doesn’t speak like any prophet I’ve heard. I don’t know what to make of him and I don’t think anyone else does either. They say he works miracles. Some of the zealots want him to rescue us from the Romans, while the Pharisees accuse him of being in league with Satan.”
“What do you say?” Myrad asked.
Silas shrugged. “Who am I?”
“Is he in the city?” Yehudah pressed.
“No, not that I’ve heard.” Silas pointed to a hallway. “Your rooms are there.”
After thanking the hosts, their party moved to get settled when Yehudah called for everyone to linger a moment longer. “I would like to compare calendars once more. And make a plan.”
“To what purpose?” Hakam asked. “We know who the Messiah is. We have only to wait for Him.”
“But what will He do?” Yehudah asked. “The city is so crowded, we might miss Him.”
“No,” said Mikhael. “If He is the true Messiah, we will not miss Him. God will not allow it.” His expression softened. “Still, it won’t hurt to compare the calendars again.”
Each of them retrieved parchments with columns of numbers and tick marks. Myrad, his parchment newer and showing fewer marks than the other magi present, counted the days remaining.
“Seven,” each of them said. Myrad counted and added his voice to theirs, his heart confused, beating in anticipation one moment and stilled in the next with fear.
“Just as we planned,” Hakam said. “At least a week to spare until Daniel’s vision is revealed.”
They spent the next seven days in the inn, venturing out in groups of two or three to buy food and listen for news. Day by day, tension in the inn tightened like a rope under too much load until tempers frayed. Then, when it seemed they would descend into fights of their own to mirror those in the city, the sun broke the horizon on the day of Daniel’s fulfillment. Enduring the night without sleep, Myrad rose from his bed, put on his boots, and shuffled quietly from the room. He found Yehudah and Mikhael at one of the low tables, their heads close together over their parchments.
“Today,” Mikhael said. “The Messiah will reveal himself today.”
Yehudah nodded. “The count is complete. Sixty-nine sevens of years have passed.”
“What do the prophecies say will happen next?” Myrad asked.
Though the question was aimed at Yehudah, it was Mikhael who spoke. “So much it’s impossible to guess.”
“What do we do?”
Yehudah smiled. “I’ve sent my men to each quarter of the city. Until one of them returns to us with his report, we wait.”
An hour later, Yehudah and Mikhael still sat, unconcerned, wrapped in a silence that drove Myrad to his feet to pace the room despite the ache in his foot. Outside, a pair of women, their voices carrying the excitement of the day, rushed down the slope of the street to the Water Gate. The women were soon followed by a quartet of men. Then the trickle became a flood, as if the city were trying to empty itself in a rush of bodies.
Tomyris filled the doorway, his bulk blocking the morning light as his hands gripped the lintel. “He’s coming!”
CHAPTER 37
Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip . . . “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.
John 12:20–22
They rushed the street. Magi with their guards and families exited the inn only to be engulfed in the crowd sweeping toward the gate. Myrad gripped Roshan’s hand as eddies and accidents in the press of people worked to pull them apart. Outside the Old City, they pushed north along the Kidron, paralleling the walls until they came to Gethsemane. There, with the throngs pouring in from the Tekoa Gate farther south, they merged with crowds still coming from the Golden Gate . . . and then stopped. Men and women yelled over the din as they shoved one another, trying to gain a better view.
Ahead, from the road circling around the Mount of Olives, came singing. Near him, a woman, her gray hair framing her lined face, cried out in a voice like a child’s. “There he is!”
Myrad strained to see while all around him men and women jumped and stretched as the singers drew closer.
Roshan, diminutive by any standard, pulled him up the slope toward the Golden Gate, farther away from the road. With each step, people flowed around them, filling the space they vacated. Before long, they found themselves just outside the gate, perched above most of the clamor. But he still couldn’t make out the center or cause of the commotion.
A few seconds later, the crowd shifted, revealing a man riding a donkey, surrounded by others who looked around in fear. Before them, the road filled with palm fronds and colorful clothes as thousands of different voices sang and coalesced into a single unified voice until the hills echoed the refrain.
“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. The king of Israel.”
The celebration grew until it became a living thing, feeding on the rejoicing of the people. “Look!” Roshan shouted in his ear. He turned to see her pointing at the Golden Gate, where men in dark robes stood in a knot of silence, glaring at the crowd.
When Yeshua came near, they screamed, their necks corded with the effort to be heard above the noise. “Rabbi! Rebuke your followers!”
Silence fell across the multitude closest to him, though in the distance singing still echoed across the valley. Myrad held his breath, standing among a crowd of people waiting to see if the man before them would take up the title they’d sung.
“I tell you the truth,” Yeshua said in a voice that carried despite the clamor, “if they were to keep silent, even the stones would cry out.”
The people erupted all over again, and Myrad covered his ears as cry after cry went up to announce the King and Messiah.
He glimpsed Hakam, trailing after the men surrounding Yeshua, his expression brimming over with triumph and retribution. The procession swept past the Pharisees and through the Golden Gate.
“He’s going to the Temple,” voices cried through the singing.
Myrad moved to follow, but too many people were squeezing into too small of an area. Each time they tried to step forward, they were swiftly pushed back. He became aware of a persistent tug on his sleeve and a voice calling his name. Roshan pointed back behind them to where a man with a red plume on his helmet watched the crowd, his features menacing. All around him, Roman soldiers s
tood ready and watchful against attack, their short swords drawn.
“We have to leave!” she yelled. “One rock or dagger will turn the streets into a killing ground.”
They retraced their way to the Water Gate, moving into the shadow of the tower that protected it and back into the lower city. Myrad’s throat hurt, though he couldn’t remember at what point he’d added his voice to the thousands around him. When they arrived at the inn, no one was there, not even Silas or Rachel.
“Lie down,” Roshan told him. “You’ve walked too far on uneven ground. I can see pain written in your eyes.” She took two pillows and stacked them beneath his right foot, then disappeared into the kitchen to return with a full wineskin and two cups. The deep red liquid burned his throat, but he finished the cup and asked for more. He drank in silence while she took oil and massaged the pain in his clubfoot away.
“What did you see?” Roshan asked him after a long while.
He lifted his cup to his lips, stalling, overwhelmed. “A king,” he finally said. “Did you see them? Calling the man’s name, ‘Yeshua!’ and throwing their garments on the ground before him for a donkey to trample on? If he hadn’t complied, they would have ignored him and made this man their king regardless.”
“What . . . happens now?” Roshan hesitated to ask.
Myrad couldn’t seem to bring order to his thoughts. Then it struck him to the core, the truth, and he believed. “It happened. On the very day Daniel predicted, He appeared.”
“That surprises you?” Roshan asked. “You kept the calendar faithfully, along with the rest of the magi.”
A helpless laugh he couldn’t contain burst from him. “Of course it surprises me! It should surprise anyone.”
“Perhaps this Yeshua knew about the calendar.”
The End of the Magi Page 29