Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The sun-swept desert was as silent as the heavens on a night when there are no falling stars. The only sound was a soft rustle on the sand as a serpent, reacting to some unspecified fear, left the sun to seek the protection of a tall rock. A few goats grazed silently among the scattered boulders, finding shreds of grass where none seemed to exist, and two gray dogs from the encampment moved silently to keep the goats from roaming far. Like the snake, they were apprehensive and kept looking not at the goats but at some mysterious thing that moved they knew not where.

Then came a rustling sound from a bush—a tumbleweed kind of bush, half as big as a man, which ran and twisted across the desert when it dried—and the two dogs looked sharply, as if a hyena had come creeping in to snatch a goat, but still they did not bark, for they knew that the trembling in the bush was caused by no animal.

A light began to glow in the branches but no smoke came, nor flame either, and the bush shook as if it were determined to tear itself loose now, this hot afternoon, and go tumbling across the desert, even though no wind was blowing. As both the light and the trembling increased, a voice came, speaking gently and with persuasion.

“Zadok?” All was silent. “Zadok?” The dogs leaned forward. “Zadok?”

From behind the rock to which the serpent had fled an old man appeared—bareheaded, lean and leathery from his more than sixty years in the sun. He had an untrimmed beard that reached his chest, and wore a coarse robe of knotted wool and heavy sandals; he carried a shepherd’s stave but did not lean upon it. Cautiously he moved out from the rock and like a reluctant child took his place before the burning bush.

“El-Shaddai, I am here.”

“Three times have I called you, Zadok,” the voice said.

“I was afraid. Have you come to punish me?”

“I should,” the voice said gently. “For you have disobeyed me.”

“I was afraid to leave the desert.”

“This time you must go.”

“To the west?”

“Yes. The fields are waiting.”

“How will I know where?”

“Tomorrow at dusk your son Epher and his brother Ibsha will return from spying out the land. They will show you.”

“Are we to occupy the land?”

“Fields that you did not cultivate shall be yours and olive presses that you did not build. The walls of the town shall open to receive you and the gods of the place you shall respect.”

“These things I will do.”

“But remember the curse that shall be upon you if you worship those other gods. Or fail to observe my instructions. I am El-Shaddai.”

“I shall remember, I and my sons, and the sons of my sons.”

The trembling of the bush ceased and the light began to fade, whereupon he prostrated himself and cried, “El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai! Forgive me for not having obeyed you.” And as the light retreated the voice said, “Sleep in the shade, Zadok. You are a tired old man.”

“Will I live to see the fields of promise?”

“You shall see them and you shall occupy them and on the eve of victory I shall speak with you for the last time.”

There was silence, and that day the hyena did not come.

As in all times, these were years when El-Shaddai had power to command and men had free will to accept or reject his commands as their consciences dictated; therefore Zadok carefully considered the fact that his god had ordered him to sleep but decided that he might better spend his time on tasks which he must complete if his clan was to cross enemy territory. Finding a place in the shade of the tall rock, he chipped away at the big end of a flint nodule, building a smoothed platform from which he could later knock off a series of sharp knife blades to be fitted into wooden hafts which some of his sons were carving, and as he huddled over his flint, like a young apprentice taking care not to ruin the nodule, he epitomized his history. For the past three thousand years copper tools had been known in these regions, and at least two thousand years ago smithies in the towns had discovered that if they mixed one part of tin to nine parts of copper they could produce bronze, which was harder than either of the original component metals used alone. With this bronze the townsmen were now making tools of subtle precision and weapons of power. In the towns, life had been revolutionized; but this old man still clung to his flints, making from them whatever tools and weapons his people required. He used flint not only because he could get it for nothing—whereas bronze tools cost dearly in hides—but also because he knew that ii? his god had intended his Hebrews to use bronze he would have put it in the world for them and not have asked them to mix metals, which was a suspicious occupation and an evidence of human arrogance.

To all problems the old man reacted in the same way: there was an ancient truth that had been proved by long years of usage and there was innovation which might lead men into unknown regions, and he was determined to keep his people secure in the old ways. He preferred the practical thing done in the practical manner. His people worked harder than most, so their flocks prospered. His women spent long hours making cloth, so his men dressed better than other nomads. He taught diligence in all things and reverence, too, so the families about him multiplied. And since his people were content to live within the protection of El-Shaddai, they were happy and creative.

For if the old man who led them was practical, sitting on his ankles and working his flint to that richly satisfying moment when he could begin tapping with his small stone hammer, flaking off one sharp knife blade after another—the reward for having done one’s preliminary work carefully—he was also a spiritual man whose tired eyes could see beyond the desert to those invisible summits of the imagination where cool air existed and where the one god, El-Shaddai, lived. In later generations people who spoke other languages would translate this old Semitic name, which actually meant he of the mountain, as God Almighty, for through devious changes El-Shaddai was destined to mature into that god whom much of the world would worship. But in these fateful days, when the little group of Hebrews camped waiting for the signal to march westward, El-Shaddai was the god of no one but themselves; they were not even certain that he had continued as the god of those other Hebrews who had moved on to distant areas like Egypt. But of one thing Zadok was sure. El-Shaddai personally determined the destiny of this group, for of all the peoples available to him in the teeming area between the Euphrates and the Nile, he had chosen these Hebrews as his predilected people, and they lived within his embrace, enjoying security that others did not know.

He was a most difficult god to understand. He was incorporeal, yet he spoke. He was invisible, yet he could move as a pillar of fire. He was all-powerful, yet he tolerated the lesser gods of the Canaanites. He controlled the lives of men, yet he encouraged them to exercise their own judgment. He was benevolent, yet he could command the extinction of an entire town—as he had done with the town of Timri when Zadok had been a child of seven. He lived in all places, yet he was peculiarly the god of this one group of Hebrews. He was a jealous god, yet he allowed non-Hebrews to worship whatever lesser gods they pleased.

As Zadok chipped away at his flint, he knew that the mountain in which El-Shaddai was supposed to live did not exist in any ordinary sense of the word, for it would be offensive to imagine so powerful a god as limited to one specific place, with a tent, a couch and a concubine; no sensible man would commit himself to a god so restricted. El-Shaddai was a deity of such all-pervasive power that he must not be tied down to one mountain, unless that mountain were like the god himself—distant and everywhere, above and below, not seen, not touched, never dying and never living, a one god towering over all others, who existed in a mountain of the imagination so vast that it encompassed the entire earth and the starry heavens beyond.