Return to Me (10 page)

When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion,

we were like men who dreamed.

Our mouths were filled with laughter,

our tongues with songs of joy. . . .

The Lord has done great things for us,

and we are filled with joy.

P
SALM
126:1–3

Z
echariah stood behind the loaded cart and pushed as his grandfather prodded their mule up the hill. The hard work tired him, but they were nearly there, nearly to Jerusalem. Last night their caravan had camped outside the village of Bethel, agonizingly close to their goal. Zechariah had barely slept as he’d waited to make the final climb up to the city, starting just after dawn. “I never knew the Promised Land was so mountainous,” he said, straining as he pushed. “It’s so different from Babylon.”

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Saba asked. “I forgot just how beautiful after living in a flat, featureless land for nearly fifty years. We’re almost home . . . at last.”

For most of their journey, the view of endless wilderness had barely changed from day to day. Pale sand and dark rock. Lifeless. Colorless. Then they’d reached the snow-capped peaks of the Mount Hermon range and the countryside had turned greener. They had traveled through Galilee, past the shimmering lake that nestled among the hills, and Zechariah thrilled to know he was following in Abraham’s footsteps, retracing the path that the patriarch had taken when he entered the Promised
Land for the first time. Like Abraham, he had obeyed God and left his father and mother to make this journey.

The cart finally reached the crest of the hill, and Saba halted by the side of the road for their first glimpse of Jerusalem. Yael and Safta stood beside them. But instead of a city, Zechariah saw a wasteland. Desolate piles of rocks and rubble, overgrown with weeds and bushes. No signs of life. “Are you sure this is the right place, Saba? Maybe Jerusalem is on the other side of that hill over there.”

“No, son. That’s Jerusalem down there—what’s left of it.”

“It doesn’t even look like a city,” Yael said. “Where are all the palaces and temples and big buildings like they had in Babylon?”

As Zaki shaded his eyes to study the view in front of him, he began to see traces of crumbled walls beneath the vegetation, gates and towers and charred buildings where the city had once stood. How would they ever clear out all that growth and move all those stones? Where would they begin? The task seemed overwhelming. His grandfather wiped away tears, and Zechariah wondered if they were tears of joy or sorrow. Maybe both. Beneath all the debris lay the bones of Saba’s family and thousands of other people who had been massacred.

“Oh, Iddo,” Safta groaned. “It will take a lifetime to rebuild all of that. How can we possibly do it with so few people?”

Saba cleared his throat. “That rubble shows us the consequences of our disobedience. It should serve as a warning to us not to fail again.”

“Where was the Almighty One’s temple?” Zaki asked.

Iddo pointed to an enormous pile of toppled building stones on a distant hill above the other ruins. For a moment he seemed too moved to speak. “Up there,” he finally said. “It used to be right up there on Mount Moriah. And that’s where we’ll rebuild it.”

The caravan had continued flowing past them all this time,
and the first vehicles in their group had already reached the ruins below. The collection of carts and people and livestock that had seemed so numerous along the caravan road looked tiny and insignificant against the expanse of destruction. Zechariah wondered if Safta was right, that it would take his entire lifetime to rebuild all of this.

Saba gave the reins a tug, and the cart began to move again, joining the others as they headed down the winding path into the city. “Where did you live, Saba?” Zechariah asked as they started downhill. “Are we going to rebuild the same house that you lived in before?”

“My family’s home was in Anathoth, not Jerusalem—a couple of miles from here. But we took refuge inside the walls when the Babylonian army surrounded the city. See that hill, closest to us? Can you make out the circle of walls around it? That’s the
Mishneh
, or Second Quarter, built during the time of King Hezekiah.”

Zechariah looked where Saba was pointing and saw the faint outline of city walls. But huge sections of them, along with the gates, had been toppled. Rubble lay strewn everywhere, swallowed up by a sea of weeds and scrub brush and tangled vines.

“Hezekiah had to expand Jerusalem,” Saba continued, “because so many refugees fled here to escape the Assyrians. The old city couldn’t hold them all. God performed a miracle to rescue the king and his people from their enemies.”

Zechariah looked up at him. “If the Almighty One could rescue Jerusalem in King Hezekiah’s time, why couldn’t He rescue it from the Babylonians, too?”

“Because we no longer deserved His mercy. By then our sins were too great, in part because of the long, evil reign of King Manasseh. See that valley south of the city? That’s the Valley of Hinnom where Manasseh—”

“Don’t say it, Iddo.” Safta interrupted. “It’s too horrible.”

He nodded and didn’t finish. But Zechariah knew from his studies that people used to sacrifice their children to Molech in that valley.

“The blood of those innocent children contributed to Jerusalem’s destruction and our peoples’ exile,” Saba said.

The main road and city streets were so overgrown with vegetation and choked with rubble that it took the rest of the afternoon to reach the narrow Kidron Valley east of the City of David. “Our leaders have decided to camp here for now,” Saba told them, “beside the Kidron Brook.”

Zechariah helped pitch their tent and make camp. At dinner, he poked at his food, weary from the effort of scrambling over debris and the hard work of pushing the cart up and down Jerusalem’s many slopes. But his disappointment outweighed the weariness he felt. Jerusalem no longer resembled the beautiful city that the psalmists had described. Restoring it would be challenging enough if Zaki were a grown man and an experienced builder, but he was neither. Why had the Almighty One commanded him to come here? What could he possibly do in the face of such overwhelming desolation?

He was about to say good-night to the others and try to go to sleep when he heard a single flute playing a slow, haunting melody. He listened for a moment, and the sound began to grow as other instruments joined in—more flutes, finger cymbals, drums. The tempo gradually quickened, and he heard clapping and then voices, singing a familiar song of hope and joy:
“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken.”
His family used to sing it at Passover and weddings.

“It’s a celebration,” Saba said. He smiled for the first time all day. “Let’s join them.” He led the way, with Safta, Zechariah, Yael, and Mattaniah following behind. Zaki’s pulse began to beat in rhythm with the joyful music as they joined in the singing.
“As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, both now and forevermore.”

Before long, it seemed as though everyone in the caravan was dancing and singing in spontaneous celebration.
“I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’ Our feet are standing in your gates, O Jerusalem.”
It was true. He had sung the words of this psalm all his life, and now he was standing here, in Jerusalem. Zechariah’s weariness and discouragement vanished as he danced and celebrated with his grandfather and the others until late into the night.

It was barely dawn when Saba shook him awake. “Get up, Zaki. Get dressed. There’s a mob of local men coming.” Zechariah tossed back the covers and scrambled to his feet, his heart pounding. While he dressed and put on his sandals, Saba roused Joel and Mattaniah. They hurried to the edge of the camp, joined by hundreds of other men from their caravan, halting near the Kidron Brook. On the other side of the narrow stream a mob of Samaritan men, several hundred strong, marched steadily toward them. Many of them carried swords. Others had bows and arrows. Some carried farm implements such as scythes and hoes and winnowing forks.

“What do they want, Saba?” he whispered. It surprised him that his grandfather had asked him to come at all, considering the danger. Maybe his grandfather no longer saw him as a boy but as one of the men.

“I imagine they’ve come to see what we’re doing here.”

“Are they Jews, like us?”

“Some of them might be. The Babylonians left the very poorest of our people behind during the exile and carried away all our leaders and craftsmen and priests. But most of those men are probably descendants of exiles from other countries who were forced to settle here the same way we were forced to go to Babylon.”

Zechariah watched as Prince Sheshbazzar walked forward to speak with the mob’s leader—a fearsome-looking man with a sword strapped to his side. The white-bearded prince would be no match for him. “We’ve come in peace,” Sheshbazzar called out, holding up his hands.

“Who are you?” the leader asked. “What are you doing on our land?”

“I’m Sheshbazzar, a descendant of King David and of Judah’s last king, Jehoiachin. We’re all sons of Abraham, returning from exile in Babylon to reclaim our ancestral land. This is our destination—the city of Jerusalem and the land of Judah.”

The mob began to shout and jeer in protest, and when their leader settled them down again he said, “This is
our
land, not yours! We’ve lived on it and tended it for three generations. You have no right to settle here. Take your caravan of intruders and move someplace else.” There were shouts of agreement from the mob and more sword-waving, but Sheshbazzar continued to speak calmly to them.

“King Cyrus, the Persian monarch, authorized us to return and rebuild the temple of our God. I’m certain that the governor of your Trans-Euphrates Province received a copy of this proclamation from Persia. He will verify that what we’re saying is true.”

“We’ll send envoys to him immediately, but in the meantime, take your caravan off our land and camp someplace else. This land belongs to us. If you try to occupy it or do any rebuilding, we will interpret it as an act of war.”

Zechariah’s pulse raced as he listened.
An act of war?
The Holy One needed to strike this enemy dead the way He once killed the Egyptians under Moses.

“Listen, we don’t want any trouble,” Sheshbazzar continued. “But Jerusalem has been deserted all these years, so it will
make no difference to you if we settle there—and that’s what we intend to do.”

“You have no right!”

“When you contact the governor, you’ll see that we have every right. We’ve been commanded by God and by the king to rebuild the Holy One’s temple, and that’s our most important task. There will be many of us settling here in Jerusalem in the days to come. Others from our caravan will return to the villages where their forefathers lived, to reclaim their ancestral land. They must start plowing and planting before the fall rains begin.”

“They may reclaim
nothing
until we’ve received word that what you’re saying is true!” the leader shouted, and the mob behind him responded with such a terrifying cry, waving their swords and scythes above their heads, that Zaki was certain they would surge forward and attack.

“We will not take any of your land,” Sheshbazzar shouted above the noise. “Only what’s rightfully ours. But we cannot wait to begin building. We must obey our God, not your threats.” The angry response reached an insane pitch as the prince turned his back on the men and walked away with the elders. Zechariah wanted to run—he and Saba were unarmed! The Samaritans could easily wade across the shallow creek.

“Let’s go eat our breakfast,” Saba said, turning his back, as well.

“But, Saba—”

“The Almighty One is on our side. Do you believe that, Zaki?”

He didn’t reply. Any faith Zechariah possessed came secondhand from stories in the Torah, not real life. He glanced over his shoulder at the shouting mob as he followed his grandfather and Mattaniah back to their tents.

“So the opposition has started already,” Mattaniah said as they walked. “I wondered if it would. Do you think we should be worried? Will we have to fight them?”

“The Samaritans will find out soon enough that our claims are legitimate. In the meantime we can trust God.”

“I was hoping that the local people would be friendly,” Mattaniah said, “so we could work alongside them.”

Saba shook his head. “We would be wise to keep our distance from them and trust no one.” He halted before they reached their tent. “Let’s not talk about this with the women and worry them unnecessarily.”

“But our families are very vulnerable living in tents in this unprotected valley,” Mattaniah said. “And the Persian guards will be heading back to Babylon soon. We’d better start building homes higher up on the ridge right away.”

“The temple must come first. The very first thing that God commanded our ancestors to do after leaving Egypt was to build His sanctuary. The people camped below Mount Sinai in tents until it was finished. Building His sanctuary must be our top priority, too.”

Zechariah hurried through breakfast and his morning prayers, looking over his shoulder, expecting the Samaritans to attack any minute. When they didn’t, he worried that they might come at night, while everyone slept. Then, for the second time that morning, Saba surprised him when he invited him to survey the temple mount with him and the chief priests.

As usual, Saba walked too slowly. Zechariah raced up the ramp that led into Jerusalem ahead of his grandfather, then stopped to wait for him near the top. He could see the caravan sprawled out, without protection, in the valley below, and he also noticed the scattered Samaritan settlements dotting the Kidron Valley and perched on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Workers resembled tiny ants as they tended their vines and groves on the terraced hillsides. The olives would be ready to harvest soon, the dates and figs in another month. The sight of those Samaritan villages made Zechariah uneasy.
The men had been so angry this morning, insisting that this was their land.

Saba soon caught up with him, and they continued to climb until they reached a pile of ruins below the temple mount, swarming with men and even a handful of Persian soldiers. “Why all the activity around here?” Saba asked the others. “What’s going on?”