Джеймс Миченер - The Source

In his mean quarters by the town gate, Governor Jeremoth finished his plans for the defense of Makor, and as he was doing so a messenger appeared to confirm the anticipated news that Nebuchadrezzar himself was descending upon all the territories formerly held by Egypt. “Riblah has fallen and mighty Damascus. Sidon is raided and Tyre is under siege. He will be upon you within three days.” And the haggard man had staggered on to Megiddo and Ashkelon, which were also doomed.

Now Jeremoth displayed his fortitude. Placing scouts upon the walls he went personally to every man in Makor and swore him to defend the town till death crashed down upon him. He called the women together and said, “Your men have seen the slave pits of Babylon. They know. In this town we shall fight together, and if need be, die supporting our brothers. This is the honorable way to behave. May Baal protect us.”

Each day he walked upon the walls, in knee-length battledress and bearing a shield of hides, assuring his men that the town was safe. He pointed often to the water system, reminding them, “In three hundred and fifty years no enemy has forced these walls. Nebuchadrezzar cannot do it either, and when he discovers that fact we shall make a peace with him that will protect us for years.” He assembled his own family—uncles, brothers, five daughters and their husbands—and gave each a task which kept him visible to the ordinary people. To Mikal he said, “Forget what the crazy old woman shouted. Rimmon is a good husband, and when this is over you’ll have many children.”

“I shall have another soon,” she revealed.

“Does Rimmon know?”

“Yes.”

Then the iron-hearted warrior went to his own command position atop that part of the wall that was most often attacked in the first days of a siege, and here he tested his sword and looked down the fateful road that had brought so many armies from Damascus, and he saw to the south the olive trees that his family had owned for thousands of years. “How sweet this town is,” he muttered to himself. “How worthy it is of our defense.” Then he looked with apprehension at the mountaintop from which Baal had been tumbled, and he wished that the mad old woman had not done that thing, and over the murmurs of the town he heard the cry from the bottom of the shaft, “A few days, a few more hours, O Israel! Then the long torment begins. It is the will of Yahweh that you march forth with yokes upon your necks. Surrender now to Babylon. Go to your destiny and work as slaves through the years of your agony …”

“Gag her!” Jeremoth ordered, pressing his head in regret that he should have to do such a thing to a poor old woman, but when men started down the steps Rimmon took away the cloths and said, “I will silence my mother,” and when he stood before her in the shadows she looked at him as if she were again his mother—as if she were merely an aging pauper who had lost her head for a while—and she said, “In a few hours the testing will begin. But the battle is unimportant. Yahweh asks only that you remember Jerusalem. It was in there,” and she indicated the place within the tunnel where the theophanies had occurred, “that he told me to take you to Jerusalem. He wanted you to see and to remember.”

“But why?”

“So that when you are in slavery and others forget, there will be one who remembers Jerusalem. You are the chosen of the chosen.”

“And Mikal?”

“She cannot go with you.”

“But she’s having another child.”

The old woman bowed her head, both as the servant of Yahweh and as a mother. Hot tears ran down her wrinkled face and she could not speak. She could only remember the days when Mikal had helped keep the family together by working like a slave in the fields, the long talks they had had, and the child Ishbaal. She would rather have died than say what was required next, but she said, “When you leave for captivity in Babylon it is the will of Yahweh that you take Geula with you as your wife.”

Rimmon’s shoulders dropped as if the great stones of the olive press had been thrown upon them. He did not look at his mother, but made preparations to gag her. She stopped him by saying, “I am silenced.”

“You will let us fight?”

“I am silenced,” she repeated, and he stuffed the offensive cloth in his pocket and climbed out.

“My mother is gagged,” he reported. “Now we can fight.”

Nebuchadrezzar had found that since he had almost unlimited manpower it was best to attack a fortified town like Makor with a series of stupendous rushes, and when dawn broke on the day of battle there was no orderly march down the Damascus road. Instead, from every side except the steep north where the wadi lay, thousands of shielded warriors shouting and hurling rocks leaped upon the town as if they were a band of locusts and it a doomed bush.

But Governor Jeremoth was not terrified by this tactic, daring though it was. He waited until the Babylonians were struggling up the steep flanks that guarded the walls, and then he unloosed a shower of jagged rocks that caused many deaths. The Babylonians were forced to retire without having effected a breach, but before Jeremoth’s men could completely rearm themselves, a fresh wave of Babylonians struck the walls, and then another and another; but Jeremoth coolly directed his men where to run to shore up weak spots, and repeatedly the attackers were thrown back.

At dusk that day it became apparent that Makor could not be taken by frontal assault, so Nebuchadrezzar ordered his men to mount a siege, even from the wadi, and he demanded to know where the little town got its water. When prisoners from Aecho exclaimed, “From a deep well inside the town,” he growled, “Bring up the rams,” and through the night the ponderous engines of war were shoved into position, but when they were ready to strike, Governor Jeremoth found them out and sent expeditions which set them afire, and in the morning Makor was still secure.

“Who is that one commanding on the walls?” Nebuchadrezzar inquired, and when he was told that it was a Canaanite he said, “Him I want taken alive, for he is a mighty general and we could send him against the Cilicians.”

These were the days when Jeremoth added luster to the name of Ur, for by his moral determination he held off the armies of Babylon, but on the eighth day a miracle was directed against him, one that he did not witness: in the depth of the shaft a stroke of light shattered the chains which held the widow Gomer, and with a radiance about her head she climbed the stone steps and when she crawled out of the shaft she watched as the light moved on to the postern gate, where with a mighty blow Yahweh knocked down the defenses, and nine Babylonian soldiers who had been pressing against that spot rushed into the breach to be followed by tens and hundreds. Makor was lost, but Jeremoth continued defending along the southern wall, unaware that Yahweh had already defeated him at the northern. Finally the defiant Canaanite turned to defend himself against the Babylonians surrounding him from the rear, and with only a wooden staff tried to hold them off, but he was borne to earth and his arms were pinioned. When he saw what had overtaken him and beheld the light hovering above the head of Gomer he asked in a stricken voice, “Woman, what have you done to us this day?” And in a terrible voice came the answer, “No woman, but Yahweh.”

In those historic generations when Yahweh was wrestling for the soul of his Hebrews, and using the prophets to summon them away from Baal and back to their appointed tents, he often spoke and acted with a harshness that seemed incredible. Because the Hebrews were an obstinate people, loving Astarte, consorting with her sacred prostitutes and throwing live children into the fiery jaws of Melak, he had to visit them with terrible punishments. Why did he not destroy them outright? Because they were truly his chosen people and he loved them. And to prove this, when his discipline fell upon them and they submitted, he gave them assurances of the utmost gentleness to succor them during the years of darkness; for although he had to be cruel he had also to be merciful. And it was for this reason that the voice of Gomer now broke upon the wounded town of Makor in a gentleness hitherto unknown, uttering words of consolation that would often be recalled by the slaves in Babylon: “O my beloved children of Israel, I bring you hope. No matter how deep the dungeons where you tread the waterwheels, I shall be with you. My love will protect you forever, and after the slave pits you shall know green fields once more. The world shall be yours and the sweetness thereof, for when you accept my punishment you also accept my divine compassion. I am Yahweh, and I am beside you forever.”