Jerusalem's Hope (36 page)

His mother frowned. “Well then. You'll have to make do with your mother telling you you're wrongheaded.”

He smiled sheepishly. “I can't so much as glance away from the affairs set before me now, Mother. Or something terrible may happen here this week. I feel it. I fear it.”

“Then should the children be here when it happens?”

“No.” He feigned cheerfulness. “All right. Joppa. The sea. Tell them. Get everything ready. I'll hire escorts and porters from the Temple staff to take you to Joppa in the morning.”

“Will you come? Have
seder
with us at least?” She placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“I'll try.” He stared at the open scroll on his desk. Words swam before him. He knew well enough he would be in Jerusalem this Passover and nowhere else. “But don't get their hopes up.”

The mood around the watch fire was mournful.

Emet sat with his head cradled in his hands. He was unable to escape the sense that besides causing the deaths of so many innocent lives, the tragedy had not stopped. It expanded until it included the one innocent life he had cherished most in the world: the lamb Bear.

Zadok had ordered the three apprentice shepherds to stand night watch over the flock bound for the Temple. Then, unexpectedly, the old man accompanied them.

Tomorrow, Zadok said, Emet and the other two boys would return with him to Jerusalem to meet with Rabbi Gamaliel. Rebels who cause wanton destruction and the deaths of civilians, he said, are not soldiers fighting for a cause but criminals. As much as Zadok disapproved of the aqueduct and despised the Roman overlords, he still intended to denounce the rebels who attacked Siloam Tower.

Politics and rebels were of very little interest to Emet. He hurt inside. Yeshua had given him a voice, but when the time appeared to use it to shout a warning, he had failed.

Zadok tramped the rounds of the flock, posted Red Dog in a watchful spot, then returned to the fire. “Don't take more on yourself than y' deserve,” he said, sitting next to Emet and rubbing his hands together to warm them. “Your shoulders aren't as yet as broad as a man's, and many men would have failed the test you faced.”

Emet sniffed and shook his head. “But it's my fault. If I had told you about Asher right after it happened, then you could have warned someone.”

“And that would have been the right thing for y' to do,” Zadok acknowledged sternly. “There's a time to keep silent and a time to speak.” The chief shepherd's gaze took in a distant horizon, as if examining a scene visible only to him. When he spoke again, his tone was softer. “You were afraid,” he said, “and fear makes us forget right and wrong sometimes. But hear me, Emet. You'll never again in your life let that happen. You would give anything to undo yesterday, wouldn't y'?”

Emet wiped his nose on the sleeve of his robe, and big tears welled up in his eyes. “And today.”

Zadok continued, “You've learned at age five what many men never grasp: failing to do what is right may have far worse consequences than anything y' fear for yourself . . . and you'll ache inside afterward. There will come a time in your life when this trial will again be yours. On that day you'll remember what happened at Siloam's tower, and you'll not fail.”

“But did it have to take Bear too?” Emet said, his voice quavering.

“Yes,” Zadok said. “Bear paid a penalty because of you . . . but so it is with every sin offering and trespass offering and Day of Atonement sacrifice. Sin is not imaginary. It piles up on men's backs like loads of heavy stones.”

Zadok paused, as if in thought. “Y' saw men crushed, trapped under the timbers of the tower . . . men who could not free themselves, and who needed someone to lift the weights before they died. Sin is exactly like that, except that it cannot be removed any other way than this: some other, some completely innocent other, must remove the burden. And this, the Almighty teaches, requires a death. Do y' understand me, boy?”

“But why the one lamb I loved?”

“For repentance to be effective . . . for anyone to be forgiven and know without doubt that he is forgiven . . . that which is sacrificed must cost something, be precious, even be agonizing in the loss of it.” The chief shepherd put his arm around Emet and drew him closer. “You're well and truly forgiven, Emet. It was a blood covenant that was enacted today, but for you it was an act of atonement. And the Almighty sees your heart and forgives you.”

Emet and Zadok, Ha-or Tov and Avel sat beside the fire for a long time without speaking. The crickets were awake in the tall grass and frogs croaked in the pond at the far side of the meadow. These and the sighing breeze chorused with the crackle of the burning acacia branches.

Emet sighed. He studied a bright blue-white star overhead and wondered at its name. When a blazing knot of wood popped particularly loudly, Red Dog turned and regarded the humans gathered in the circle.

The boy recognized that something had happened: he was forgiven. It had been a greater struggle, a tougher thing to achieve, than opening his ears, because that miracle of Yeshua's had been so effortless. Forgiveness of sin was harder than making the deaf hear, but it was no less real.

Nor would Emet ever forget the lesson.

Zadok seemed to sense that the time had come to close that chapter and move on, for he said, “Can y' imagine what Father Abraham was feeling on the night before he reached Mount Moriah?”

A threefold refrain of boyish voices urged the old man to explain, which he willingly did. “Our father, Abraham, was a man of enormous faith. When he was well along in years—the same age as I am now—he left his home, family, friends, and all his comfortable surroundings. He journeyed to a far country, this very land on which we sit, because the Almighty had promised it to him and his heirs. You heard me speak of this today, because that was the subject of the blood covenant made by the Most High.”

Affirmative replies echoed around the circle. Emet noticed a strengthening of the old shepherd's voice, as if he had recently gained extraordinary power.

“Many years later, the Almighty gave Abraham an heir—his only son, Isaac. And Abraham loved the boy, cherished him, watched him grow, and thanked the Lord God daily for the gift more precious than cattle or land.”

Avel waved for Zadok's attention. “Abraham was old when his son was born?”

“Very,” the shepherd said. “And his wife, Sarah, was well up in years too. But that's not the story I'm telling now.”

Red Dog stood and stared off into the darkness. Zadok stopped speaking and observed for a time. When Red Dog stretched and lay down again, Zadok resumed.

“Many years passed and a time came when the Most High put Abraham to the test. He told our forefather to take his only son to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him.”

“No!” Ha-or Tov protested. “He didn't, did he?”

Regarding each child in turn, Zadok explained, “Abraham trusted
Adonai Elohim
more than he feared for his son. He didn't know what the Almighty planned, but he still believed. And so they traveled three days from their home near Hebron toward where Yerushalayim is now. Think of it: in Abraham's mind for all those three days it was as if Isaac was as good as dead. Remember: not only was Isaac Abraham's son, he was his
only
true son
and
the son of the promise. The one means to fulfill the oath sworn by the Most High in the blood covenant. On the second night they reached just about where we are sitting right now.”

Avel and Ha-or Tov glanced around.

Emet wondered if that was why Zadok had brought them out here on this night and why he had come with them. In the next breath the shepherd replied to Emet's unspoken queries.

“It was about this same time of year, so the sounds were similar . . . the stars much the same. Isaac slept, not knowing what was in his father's heart. In my younger days I often stood the night watch in this very spot and pondered what Abraham thought about through that long darkness.”

Emet wondered too. How could a father who loved his only son still go forward knowingly toward the child's death? What sort of faith could overcome that sort of fear? Did Abraham hold on to the hope that the Almighty would change His mind? Or did he believe that the Most High would bring Isaac back from the dead as Yeshua raised Deborah? But a deliberate killing?

Even though the fire burned brightly, Emet tossed a tangle of dried brambles into the flames, as though the brilliance could drive back his dread of what would happen in the tale.

“The next day Abraham looked ahead and saw the holy mountain, where the Temple stands today. He made his servants stop then, while he and his son went forward together. Abraham even made Isaac tote the wood for the holocaust offering, just as the Romans make condemned prisoners carry their own crosses to the place of execution.”

Emet shuddered. He had seen the grisly remains of men crucified by Rome, their bodies left to rot in the sun.

“When they reached Mount Moriah, Isaac realized they had not brought a lamb. He said to his father, ‘Here's the wood and the fire, but where is a sheep for the sacrifice?' ‘The Lord God himself will provide,' Abraham told him.”

The heap of rocks on which Red Dog perched resembled an altar. Emet, peering through the leaping flames, was terrified of what was coming.

“Abraham built an altar where the rock of sacrifice is,” Zadok said. “Stone by stone, placed carefully and neatly. And he arranged the wood for the fire. Then he trussed up his son, who did not resist, and put him on top of the wood on the altar. Then Father Abraham reached out and took the knife to slay his son.”

The chief shepherd's knife appeared from inside his sleeve. Rays of firelight glinted off the blade, as if the weapon were a tongue of fire in Zadok's hand.

Now Emet pictured what was going through Isaac's mind! “Make him stop!” he shouted.

Zadok smiled. “That is just what the Almighty did. His messenger said to Abraham: ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy. Do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted y' are, since you did not withhold from me your beloved son.”

Avel and Ha-or Tov cheered. Emet shouted also, but his voice squeaked because his throat was tight.

“Abraham used his knife to free his son instead of to kill him! Next he spotted a ram caught by its horns in a thicket of brambles. And so he offered the ram as a sacrifice instead of his son. He named the place, ‘the Lord God will provide.' ”

The boys applauded, but Zadok was not quite finished. “Another message came to Abraham from heaven: The Lord God said, ‘I swear by myself that because y' acted as y' did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky.'” Zadok waved his hand overhead at the myriad of glowing pinpoints of light. “ ‘And the sands of the seashore; your descendants shall take possession of the gates of their enemies, and in your descendants all the nations of the earth shall find blessing—all this because y' obeyed my command.'”

Emet cheered again, a piping note of joy.

Zadok held up a cautionary finger. “Know this: there was a test, and there was still a sacrifice, even though the Lord God made an escape for Isaac.” Zadok's brow furrowed and the creases of his forehead spilled into the vertical scar that crossed his eye and cheek. “A time will come when bulls and goats and lambs won't any longer die as sacrifices. The prophets tell of the Anointed One, the Messiah, and many want him to be king. Isaiah calls him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. He's named Son of the Most High.”

Emet thought then of Yeshua, of the miracles, and of the cheering crowds. How did that vision tie in with the story they had just heard?

Zadok said, “And Isaiah says his name shall be Immanu'el, God-with-us.”

Three tousled heads snapped upright at that utterance.

“But that's what Yeshua . . . ,” Ha-or Tov gushed.

“Shh!” Avel hissed.

“The prophet Isaiah also said this about Messiah,” Zadok continued, his scowl deepening. “ ‘It was our infirmities he bore, our sufferings he endured. He was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins. Upon him was the punishment that makes us whole. By his stripes we are healed.' ”

Zadok stopped and stared toward Herodium and the ruined Tower of Siloam. His face was twisted, as if he had eaten something sour; as if his own words were distasteful to him and yet he could not stop himself from uttering them. He gestured toward the lambs. “We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; but the Lord laid on him the guilt of us all. . . . Like a lamb led out to be slaughtered, like a sheep silent before its shearers, he did not open his mouth. . . . He poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sins of many. . . . The death of a completely innocent sacrifice . . . what can it all mean?”