King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (52 page)

“And what do you yourself say ?”

“Hillel has the last word. Let those who love the Lord forgo the licence even where there is adultery. For once a man marries a wife they are become one flesh, joined by God and not to be parted. If he sins, he draws her with him into sin ; if she sins, he is answerable for her sin as if it were his own. So Solomon says : ‘A good wife is more precious than rubies.’ And I say to you : only by refraining from carnal love are man and wife joined together in the love of God. For whoever sows to the flesh, from the flesh he shall reap corruptio.”

So from Jerusalem Jesus led his disciples southward to Ain-Rimmon, where word had come to him from John, and there in a stream that flowed through a pomegranate grove John baptized them all and anointed them prophets ; they were now bound, as Jesus was, to abstain from wine and all other intoxicants. Jesus gave them his blessing and this simple order : “Children, love one another.”

John afterwards asked : “By what road now, Lord ?”

“Through the land plagued by unfertility to the land plagued by fertility ; then, God willing, to the Mountain of the North.”

“I will prepare the way.”

“Do so, and let us meet on the Mountain.”

“All shall hear my voice, from the dunghill beggar to the throned prince.”

John thereupon left his own disciples under the charge of Simon of Gitta, the most zealous of them, and hurried off towards Galilee, shouting wild exhortations to every man and woman whom he met : “Repent, repent, for the King is coming !” On the third day he reached Sepphoris, where Herod Antipas was in residence, and unceremoniously thrusting aside the sentries at the gate, burst into the palace, shook his staff at the major-domo and demanded an immediate audience with Antipas.

Antipas was dispensing justice in the Great Hall, his wife Herodias seated beside him, when John ran in. “I am John son of Zacharias, a
prophet of the Lord !” His words echoed shrilly down the marble corridors.

The attendants reprimanded him. “Offer obeisance to the King, man !” —for within the walls of the palace they flattered Antipas with the title of King—“Prostrate yourself on the carpet !”

“A tetrarch is no king. My allegiance is to the King of Israel.”

Antipas stared at John’s gaunt frame, bloodshot eyes, red beard and matted hair, and at his camel-hair mantle so ragged and worn, it hardly held together. More puzzled than offended, he asked : “Is my father Herod returned from the dead that you should say this ?”

“Your father was King of the Jews, never King of Israel. Come with me at once to pay homage to the King of Israel, and send for your brother Philip to do the same.”

“Who is this King ?”

“In your ear,” said John. He leaped up the steps of the throne, bent down and whispered : “One who escaped the Thracian spearmen.”

Antipas paled.

John twirled his staff and addressed him again in the hearing of all : “The word of the Lord : Put away this woman, Tetrarch, lest you die in miserable exile. Put her away, sinful Edomite, lest your name stink to the end of time !” For Antipas, thirty years before, had committed the same offence against the Levirate law as his brother Archelaus : at Alexandria on his return from Rome he had persuaded his cousin Herodias to divorce her husband, his half-brother Herod Philip, and marry him, though she already had a daughter by the marriage.

Herodias asked indignantly : “My lord, will you let this madman rave at his pleasure? He has insulted both me and yourself and the daughter of our marriage. You will be no prince but a son of sixty dogs if you do not instantly throw him into prison.”

Antipas gulped and nodded, but feared to act. It was Herodias who detailed two guardsmen to lead John away to the palace prison ; and ten more were needed before he was securely gyved and fettered.

Antipas visited him the same evening and, dismissing the attendants, said to him : “That you are fettered grieves me ; but my wife is proud. Tell me the name of this new King, pray, and where he is to be found.”

“Release me, and I will gladly lead you to him.”

“To-morrow ?”

“If to-night you put away your wife.”

“Must I lose my wife first and then my throne ?”

“Better even lose your life than your hope of salvation.”

Antipas once more urged John to reveal the whereabouts of the King. “I will write a letter to my brother Philip, if you will.” But John would only nod and say : “You will know in good time, you will know in good time.”

Antipas threatened to put him to the torture, but John laughed in his face.

Jesus meanwhile was making a slow progress northward through a district of Judaea that had suffered severely during the troubled reign of Archelaus and not since recovered its former modest prosperity. The villages were ruinous and miserably poor, and though he might have been well received had he travelled alone, thirteen mouths discouraged hospitality. The harvest was not yet ripe and stocks of corn were almost exhausted. Besides, all but Jesus and Judas were Galileans : the people of Galilee were despised in Judaea for their uncouth accents, their keenness in bargaining, their ill-temper and their obstinacy. At each village that they entered the elders of the synagogue excused themselves from feeding them, on the ground that the laws of hospitality compelled them to feed the wayfarer, but not a troop of wayfarers, and directed Jesus with a polite blessing to the next village. One elder quoted the Preacher, the Son of Sira : “Give a portion to seven men, or even to eight ; for you know not what evil may befall you”, and said sincerely : “Were you only seven men, or eight, I should gladly obey this injunction.” At Kirjath-Jearim, Jesus ordered his disciples to disperse in pairs and meet him again in three days’ time at Lebona, on the Samaritan border.

Once or twice he preached by the way, but the people who listened were vacant-eyed and inattentive. He said to James and John, whom he had chosen to accompany him : “The vision that came to the prophet Ezekiel. Tell me : when in the Great Day of the Lord the letter
Tav
is marked in blood on the brows of the faithful to reserve them from the slaughter, how many will cry out : ‘I am a Judaean from the hills which stand between Jerusalem and the plain’ ?”

James and John shook their heads gravely. Nevertheless, on that same day a poor man gave them a lapful of locust-beans for the love of God, and on the next day they had mouldy cheese and a little bread from a poor widow, and they did not lack for well-water.

At Lebona they found the other disciples already assembled, and all of them together helped a rich farmer to cut and carry his harvest, and were well rewarded. Thence they passed through Samaria, where the peasants grudged them even water, and hurried forward to reach Galilee before the oncoming Sabbath prevented further travel. They came to En-Gannim late in the afternoon before the Sabbath, but the hospitality of the place had been exhausted by Passover pilgrims ; that night they nearly fainted for hunger.

The next morning they entered the cornfields of a large estate. Philip and James the Less who walked ahead of the rest began plucking the ripe corn as they passed through and rubbing it between their hands to husk it. The estate-steward, on his way to the synagogue with two of his neighbours, caught them in the act. Husking corn was regarded by the Sages as a sort of threshing and a desecration of the Sabbath, and the steward therefore warned Jesus that he intended to make an example of the two offenders. “To what township do these wretches belong ?”

“These two hungry men are of Capernaum.”

“Very well,” said the steward ; “the charge will be referred to the
elders of Capernaum. I myself will accompany you and your disciples there as witness. With Samaritans or Greeks or beggars I should not trouble myself, for I can ill afford to lose two days’ work at this season, but when two men clothed in garments of deception, and in company with eleven others, similarly clothed, thresh my master’s corn on a Sabbath day, conscience will not permit me to condone the crime. If justice is done they will be well beaten and their staffs broken across the beadle’s knee.”

“We will come with you,” said the neighbours. “We also witnessed the offence.”

That evening the estate-steward fed Jesus and his disciples well, saying : “Until you are found guilty you are innocent. I would not have my master’s house defamed by you as inhospitable. Eat, men, eat, until the tears flow !” But he was still stern in his resolution to bring them to justice.

At Capernaum the synagogue elders thanked the steward for showing public spirit in bringing the case before them, and agreed that it seemed a most serious one. But Jesus demanded that the charge of breaking the Sabbath should not be preferred against Philip and James until he had himself been charged with inciting them to break it.

His demand was granted, and presently Jesus stood as defendant in a court for the first time in his life. Yet it was soon clear who was, in fact, the judge and who were the accused.

Jesus admitted that the two disciples had done what was charged against them, but pleaded necessity and quoted a precedent : “Have you not read what King David did at Nob when he was starving? He demanded from Ahimelech the priest—Abiathar’s father—the hallowed shew-bread laid up at the altar, and shared five loaves with his comrades.”

“These men were not starving.”

“Must a man die to prove that he is starving ?”

“Nor are you King David.”

“Nor did my disciples eat hallowed bread ; they only exercised their ancient pluck-right. If our accusers from En-Gannim had invited us into their houses, as was their duty, and set food before us, these men would not have done what they did. It is the duty of every householder to feed the hungry traveller ; if the Sabbath was broken, it was our accusers who broke it.”

“Food was not wanting ; for it was afterwards set before us in shame,” Peter interposed. “But I know En-Gannim of old. On week-days they set an armed guard at the gate leading through the fields to deny pilgrims returning from the Passover the exercise of their pluck-right.”

One of the judges said : “That is neither here nor there, Son of Jonah. That you might not eat corn on the day before the Sabbath, or on the day after, does not entitle you to break the Sabbath. You should have brought provisions with you !”

Jesus answered for Peter : “So Ahimelech might well have told King David. But was man created for the Sabbath, or the Sabbath for man?
Was it instituted as a day of refreshment and joy, or as a day of fasting and grief? And can a hungry man be joyful and refresh himself ?”

The corn-factor whom Jesus had cured on his first visit to the synagogue sat among the judges. He said severely : “King David himself counselled us to put our trust in the Lord, testifying that he had never in all his life seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread. Those who keep the Law do not go hungry on the Sabbath.”

“Do you say this in self-praise? Being one of the rich yourself, you shun the society of poor men because they do not keep the Law—though it is you yourselves who prevent them. Must a cattleman or labourer forfeit the blessing of God because, worked nearly to death, he is unable to pay all the ritual debts which you impose on him as necessary to salvation? Can he don and doff his praying robe thirty times a day to make long set prayers in unison with yours, and wash his hands a hundred times? You find delight in the Law, in voluntarily undertaking burdens never envisaged by Moses, and the Law is indeed for delight ; but what is delight for you is misery for the poor. You say : ‘This man is unclean ; let him not enter into our clean congregation.”

“We are warned by the Sages to guard the Law from infringement by setting a fence about it.”

“The Sages have said : ‘Set a fence about the Law and guard it well, but do not take up your station within the enclosure ; he who does so cannot watch behind his back. Rather, take up your station outside and you will see all.’ Yet you take up your station within the enclosure ; you turn the fence into a high wall and the enclosure into a private demesne, from which the poor are barred.”

“Would you have us consort with eaters of unclean food ?”

“It is not only what goes into a man that defiles him, but also what goes out of him. Even clean food is turned into uncleanness when the body voids the noisome residue. Though you feed on the sweet food of the Law—as it is written : ‘It was in my mouth as honey for sweetness’—you void it again in evil thoughts, pride and foolishness.” With that Jesus pointed his finger at the corn-factor and spoke a parable of a demoniac who, when rid of the evil spirit that has driven him out into dangerous and filthy places, decides to return home ; finds his house swept and cleansed and then, lonely for company, invokes seven other evil spirits to share it with him.

The aged President of the Synagogue asked : “Do you, a young man, set yourself up in authority against us Doctors who have grown white-headed in the study of the Law ?”

“Let the prophet Jeremiah answer for a young man who must be silent when the old speak folly : ‘How say you : “We are wise and the Law of the Lord is with us”? For the false pen of the commentator leads you to falsehood.’ ”

This ended the case, and the judges, after a brief conference, publicly reprimanded Jesus and his disciples for their action at En-Gannim but imposed no other punishment. Privately, they sent a message to Jesus’s
elder brothers Jose, Judah and Simeon to the effect that, unless they could persuade him to return to his carpenter’s bench at Nazareth, the Herodian police would be requested to place him under restraint as a lunatic.

Two days later the three brothers arrived in consternation at Capernaum, bringing Jesus’s mother with them. They learned that Jesus was preaching at a tax-gatherer’s house to a large crowd of his poorer and more disreputable followers. Jose, the eldest, sent a boy in with the message : “Your mother and brothers desire to see you outside at once.”

Despite the Commandment, “Honour thy father and mother”, Jesus did not break off his discourse and go out to greet Mary, as other pious Jews in his position would have done : it was clear to him that the peremptory message came from his brothers rather than from her.