Джеймс Миченер - The Source

It was his possession of this god that had caused Zadok his recent fear, for the old man sensed that such a deity could never have been conceived by men who lived in a town, nor by settled farmers who occupied river valleys where growing seasons had to be protected by propitiating seen gods who lived in known places over which they exercised a limited jurisdiction. Such settled people required seen gods to whom they could return; they needed statues and temples. But nomads who lived at the mercy of the desert, who set forth on a journey from one water hole to the unseen next, taking with them as an act of faith ail they owned and everyone they loved, trusting blindly that the path had been ordained for them and that after many days of near-death they would find the appointed well where it was supposed to be … such nomads had to trust a god who saw the entire desert and the hills beyond. Reliance upon El-Shaddai, the unseen, the unknown, was a religion requiring the most exquisite faith, for at no point in their lives could these lonely travelers be sure; men often came to water holes that were dry. They could only trust that if they treated El-Shaddai with respect, if they attuned their whistling harps to his, he would bring them home safely through the bleak and empty spaces.

Looking up from his flints, Zadok turned his face toward the silent bush and said, as if reporting to a trusted advisor from his camp, “El-Shaddai, I am at last prepared to take my people to the west.” The bush said nothing.

For fifty-seven years, beginning as a child, Zadok son of Zebul had been speaking with El-Shaddai, and in accordance with instructions from the solitary god, had kept his clan in the desert while others had left for the south on adventures that would be long remembered. Centuries earlier the patriarch of all, Abraham, and his son Isaac had moved down into Egypt, where now their descendants languished, in slavery. The clan of Lot had settled the country of Moab, while the sons of Esau had conquered Edom. Lately the clan of Naphtali had swung off to occupy the hill country of the west, but Zadok had kept his group in the northern desert, listening for the clear word of El-Shaddai that would take him out of the lonely desert and into the land of promise.

The desert in which the Hebrews had lived for so many generations consisted of three parts. There were sandy wastes where nothing grew, and these the nomads avoided, for no man dependent upon donkeys could traverse them; in later years, when camels had been tamed, it would be possible to travel these wastes, but not now. There were also vast expanses of rock and arid land with occasional oases of reliable water, and here men with donkeys could just barely live; “the wilderness,” this desert was called. And, finally, there were long stretches of semi-arid land lying next to settled farms, with not enough water for the regular planting of wheat or olive trees but enough to nourish sheep and goats, and it was in these lands that Zadok and his clan had been living for the past forty years. The wiser Hebrews felt certain that sooner or later El-Shaddai would command them to move on, but what they did not know was that three times the god had ordered Zadok to do just this, but the patriarch had been afraid and had temporized.

El-Shaddai, having at last become impatient, had delivered his latest command not to old Zadok but to the red-headed Epher. As a result of this message Epher had come to Zadok some weeks ago, saying, “Father, we ought to move into the good lands of the west.”

“El-Shaddai will instruct us when to move.”

“But he did instruct us. Last night. He came to me and said, ‘Go to the west and spy out the land.’”

Zadok had taken Epher by the shoulders and had asked directly, “Did El-Shaddai himself speak to you?” And Epher, a hot-headed young man of twenty-two, had insisted that the god had come to him. “What kind of voice did he use?” Zadok had probed, but his son could not explain, and that night Epher and Ibsha had run off to spy out the west. During their absence Zadok had worried as to whether Epher had spoken the truth. Why would El-Shaddai deliver a message of such importance to a youth? It seemed most unlikely, but now the god had indirectly confirmed Epher’s story, saying that tomorrow the young men would return with instructions for the move west; and when Zadok reflected on the matter he had to admit that it was not so strange if El-Shaddai had spoken to Epher directly, for Zadok himself had been only seven when the mysterious god had first spoken to him, saying, “In the rocks on which your father Zebul sits, there lurks a serpent.” He had stood transfixed, for the voice came from nowhere and he could not believe it. “Go,” the voice continued, “and warn your father, lest he be bitten by that serpent.” And he had run to the rocks and caused his father to leave just as the snake unwound itself from an inner crevice. From that day he was a child apart.

His name, Zadok, meant righteous , and he had continued to serve as the agency whereby El-Shaddai kept his chosen people informed. They were never many, the Hebrews of the desert. When Lot and Esau journeyed south they took with them less than a thousand people each. The clan of Zadok, as it waited for its culminating drive to the west, contained only seven hundred persons, for the great Hebrew tribes had not yet been formed. Zadok’s group of nomads could not be called a family, because it comprised much more than a single unit; for example, Zadok’s four wives and thirty children, many of whom had families of their own, did not add up to even a quarter of the total. But all in the group were related in some way to the old man, so although they were not a family they were a clan, and in the centuries ahead when several of these clans coalesced, the tribes known to history would emerge.

The clan of Zadok was one of the better-organized units, thanks principally to the righteous character of the man who led it. In all things he relied upon El-Shaddai. In war he was not overzealous, for he loved peace and sought it whenever possible—even at the displeasure of his sons, who were willing fighters. In trading he was honest and in charity generous. Among his wives he kept peace and among his children gentleness. He loved animals and initiated the practice of never slaughtering one member of a family in the presence of others, of never killing a kid and a dam on the same day, lest the creatures be offended by injustice as well as by death. In his clan women who had borne children could not work until five months had passed, except for kitchen duties that were not onerous. Yet he was a stern judge who had sentenced numerous persons to death, because infractions of divine law, such as adultery, filial insubordination, any profanation of El-Shaddai, were punishable by death. But when sentence was passed, with the old man warning that no appeal was possible, he usually allowed the victim a chance to escape, and it was understood that any condemned man might take with him one donkey and three water bags. But return to the clan of Zadok was forbidden.

The most intimate details of life were regulated by the old man. It was he who instituted the rule that unmarried men might not tend sheep alone: “lest it lead to an abomination.” Two young unmarried men were not to occupy a booth alone when they hired themselves out to settled farmers at the harvest: “lest there be an abomination.” Nor could men dress as women or women as men: “lest it lead to an abomination.” From centuries of experience in the desert the Hebrews had built up a body of sensible law which Zadok had memorized and which he transmitted to his older sons, who would serve as judges when he was gone: “A man may not marry two sisters, lest there be an abomination, nor may he marry a mother and daughter, lest it lead to an abomination.” And because it was essential that the great life of the family and of the clan continue uninterrupted, he enforced the ancient law that if a husband died before his wife had children, it was obligatory for one of the dead man’s brothers to take the widow immediately and get her with child so that the life of the clan could go forward with children to replenish it. If the surviving brothers were already married, no matter; if they despised their sister-in-law, no matter; so long as she had no children it was their responsibility to lie with her until she conceived—in the name of her dead husband, that his name might continue.