The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible (31 page)

So Seila’s father made ready to go to war yet again. By morning, his armor and weapons were loaded atop a single ass, and Jephthah mounted another animal to ride alongside the elders of Gilead toward the encampment on the approaches to Mizpah. Once more he embraced his daughter, holding her perhaps a moment longer than on other partings, and he whispered yet again the words that he had already spoken to Seila several times during the long night: “If I return at all, I will return as a chieftain—and you will live out your life as befits the daughter of a chieftain.”

As it turned out, the frightened throngs of Gileadites who camped out’ side Mizpah made a better bargain with Jephthah than the elders had offered the day before. The richest of the townsfolk, now refugees from their houses and estates back in Gilead, did not wait for Jephthah to meet and defeat the armies of Ammon before acclaiming him both general
and
chieftain, and the elders did not debate the point. Jephthah, after all, was the only man who was willing and able to turn the militia into an army and then, God willing, lead the army to victory over the invaders. Just the sight of Jephthah—strong, self-assured, sturdy, and reassuringly battle-scarred—inspired confidence in the militia
and
the cowering civilians whom they were supposed to defend and avenge.

Jephthah was promptly installed in a pavilion suitable to his new rank—the question of who would take possession of his father’s estate in Gilead was left for another day—and his cohorts set to the task of drilling the rank and file of the army of Israel. Day by day, the lines filled out with new recruits. The elders congratulated themselves on their decision to draft Jephthah as commander: he had certainly risen to
the task, bastard and mercenary though he was, and the soldiers of Israel might actually stand a chance against the professional army of the King of Ammon.

But as the days passed the elders noticed that Jephthah himself did not seem to be in much of a hurry to field his troops against the Ammonites. Instead, the new-minted chieftain summoned scribes to his tent and spent long hours drafting a diplomatic letter that he dispatched by messenger under a flag of truce across enemy lines to the king of Ammon himself. “What have thou to do with
me
, that thou art come unto
me
to fight against my land?” Jephthah wrote to the king of Ammon, turning himself from chieftain to king and the plight of Israel into a matter of personal honor.

To the amazement of the elders, the mighty king and conqueror deigned to write back to Jephthah. “Because Israel took away my land when he came up out of Egypt,” the king of Ammon parried. “Now, therefore, restore those cities peaceably.”

Jephthah, it seemed, preferred to use words rather than arms—and a great many words at that—to turn back the Ammonite invaders. Much
ink and parchment were squandered on his long letters, which harked all the way back to the Exodus from Egypt, recited the names and deeds of monarchs long dead, and even invoked the authority of the pagan god of the Ammonites rather than the Almighty.

“Will you not be content to possess the lands that Chemosh thy god gave to you,” Jephthah proposed, “and we will possess the lands that the Lord our God has given to us?”

To the elders, the words of Jephthah to the king of Ammon seemed to be a plea rather than a threat, and the enemy king did not bother to reply. Everyone—the elders no less than the king of Ammon—waited to see if Jephthah would actually take up arms and go to war.

As the sun rose over the tents of the Israelites the next day, the soldier who stood the night watch was roughly awakened by Jephthah himself. No longer was Jephthah draped in his chieftain’s robes. Instead, he was wearing his poor and battle-pitted leather armor. He had strapped his double-edged sword to his side, and he carried his long spear in his right hand. The sentry cringed slightly, fully expecting a blow or at least a reprimand for sleeping at his post, but Jephthah gave him only a sharp look.

“Take your place in the ranks,” Jephthah said curtly to the sentry before moving on, “because today we march.”

Even before the drums and trumpets summoned the other soldiers to the drill field, word began to buzz through the encampment: Jephthah
was ready to fight! The eiders of Gilead, hastily gathered on a rise overlooking the drill field, gladdened at the sight of soldiers stepping briskly into line and forming up into long phalanxes that bristled with spear points. Jephthah could be seen moving from column to column, con-suiting with his lieutenants, calling out by name to this man or that. When he finally joined the elders, they saw not only a new firmness in the set of his jaw but also an unmistakable light shining in his eyes. Suddenly, Jephthah seemed to have run out of words, but a fiery resolve communicated itself even without words. He saluted the elders, signaled to his lieutenants to set the columns of men in motion, and strode off to lead them into battle against the army of the king of Ammon.

“Well, I am relieved to see that Jephthah is no longer content to sit in his tent and write letters to the enemy,” said one of the elders. “I wonder what put the will to fight in him at last.”

“Surely,” one of the others answered, “the spirit of the Lord is upon Jephthah.”

Jephthah marched in silence at the head of the army, but his trusted cohorts from Mizpah, following a step or two behind him, were full of chatter.

“We could have used another week of drilling,” one of them muttered.

“And another thousand men under arms,” said the other. “As it is, we are badly outnumbered—and we are fielding raw yokels against seasoned troops.”

“It will be a miracle if a tenth of them survive in battle,” said the first one, “and a greater miracle still if we win.”

Jephthah looked back over his shoulder without breaking step and
silenced their words with a single glance. The two old soldiers, so accustomed to trading easy banter with Jephthah on the way to a fight, were struck by the chilly light in his eyes and the unfamiliar sternness of his expression.

“If it takes a miracle,” Jephthah said, “then God will give us one.”

On any other day, they would have laughed out loud at Jephthah’s sanctimonious words, but something in his tone of voice warned them that they dare not laugh today.

“If you will deliver the children of Ammon into my hands,” Jephthah continued in a low voice that was not addressed to anyone within sight, casting his eyes heavenward, “then I vow, when I return in victory from the battlefield, whatsoever comes forth out of my house to greet me will belong to the Lord, and I will offer it up on the altar as a burnt offering.”

The two old soldiers who walked behind Jephthah exchanged a brief glance, but they said nothing.

Seila occupied herself with her customary tasks during the weeks and months of Jephthah’s long campaign, but word of his exploits reached her through the young women who accompanied her on weekly excursions into the countryside. As they walked through the dusty streets of Mizpah, Seila was greeted by acquaintances and strangers alike with marked warmth but also a certain deference—after all, she was the daughter of the man in whose sure hands the fate of all Israel was now held, the daughter of the heroic fighter whose victories mounted with each new battle.

“Jephthah fights like one possessed,” the townsfolk reassured one another, and Seila heard the phrase countless times as her father and his army engaged the Ammonites across the breadth of Israel. Word of each victory was a cause for celebration in the place where the young women gathered on their excursions, the secret cleft in the hill where Seila had found the spring and the spreading oak. Indeed, Seila and her companions often told each other that it was their song and dance, their rites and rituals, that assured victory to Jephthah as he rode into battle again and again.

Twenty battles were fought by Jephthah, or so went the rumors that flashed through Mizpah like brushfire, and twenty cities of Israel were liberated from occupation by the king of Ammon. As the Ammonites were driven out of each city, another knot of refugees would pack up their belongings and move out of Mizpah. Soon enough, thanks to Jephthah’s successes over the king of Ammon in the field, the encampment outside Mizpah dwindled and then disappeared, and Mizpah itself began to resemble the sleepy backwater it had been before Jephthah was called to service.

Then, one day, a clutch of young women appeared at Jephthah’s house in a frenzy of giggles and squeals, literally dancing up to the doorway and pounding on ribboned tambourines to call Seila forth.

“Word comes that your father is on the road back to Mizpah,” one of the young women said, and then all of them gathered to embrace her, some laughing, some weeping. “Your father returns in victory tonight!”

Seila spent the long afternoon tending to chores, but not much was accomplished. She started to sweep the floor, but then she thought to assemble the ingredients for a sweet loaf, and when she knelt by the pantry, it occurred to her to tidy up the courtyard, and then she hastened back into the house to pick up the broom—and still her father did not come home.

The other young women had lingered at the house until the sun began to set, begging and then demanding to be allowed to join her in greeting Jephthah in the traditional manner—a line of dancing maidens, waving ribbons and pounding timbrels, is what the hero ought to encounter when he returned from war! Indeed, Seila’s companions insisted that the victory belonged to them, at least in part, because they had been so earnest and so devoted in devising prayers on behalf of Jephthah and sending them forth in such imaginative ways during their excursions to the great oak.