Джеймс Миченер - The Source

If Zadok was insistent upon carefully organized sexual behavior, this did not mean that he was contemptuous of this function of life: two years ago, at sixty-two, with his children grown and his wives occupied with many matters, he had looked one day upon a group of slaves which his sons had captured in a minor skirmish with a settled village and had seen one girl of sixteen who was particularly appealing. Claiming her for himself, he had found much joy in having her in his tent in the long nights. She was a Canaanite who worshiped Baal the omnipotent, but as Zadok lay with her, feeling her warmth against his tired body, he spoke with her against the Canaanite god and convinced himself that he was winning her away from Baal and to an acceptance of the true god.

His principal joy, however, was his thirty children. His oldest offspring were now the secondary heads of the clan, men and women with children of their own and several with grandchildren, so that Zadok could boast, “A hunter is happy when he has a quiver full of arrows to shoot into the future.” But it was his younger children—the offspring of his fourth wife—who interested him most: Epher the daring one, who had organized the scouting expedition to the west and who was always eager to engage an enemy; Ibsha, younger and quieter, but perhaps more seriously dedicated to understanding the world; and above all Leah, a girl of seventeen, not yet married but studying with alert eyes the various men her father suggested as possible husbands. If a man had produced only these three children he could feel proud, and to have them arrive in his later days was a serene pleasure.

For many years it had been Zadok’s custom to spend his late afternoons sitting with Leah and any other children who cared to join him, recalling the traditions of the Hebrews. Recently the young slave girl had begun to appear each day, sitting at the right hand of her master and listening with delight as he told of his ancestor Noah, who had escaped the great flood, or of Nimrod the hunter, whose exploits were renowned, or of Jubal, who invented the harp. For hours he would speak of these men, telling this story and that, but each day he came to some episode in the life of Abraham, who had been the first to travel in this desert—“He passed by these very rocks on which we sit this day”—and it was his pleasure to expatiate on the matter of Abraham and his son Isaac, contending that on the day that El-Shaddai outlawed human sacrifice he proved himself to be a god of mercy, a god so superior to all others that comparison was meaningless. “There are other gods, of course, and Baal is not one to laugh at,” he said approvingly to the slave girl, “and in the lands my fathers passed through, it was always our custom to respect the gods we met. El-Shaddai demands this of us, but there can be no question as to which god is superior, reigning above all others.”

On this last afternoon during which Zadok awaited the return of his sons from their scouting trip, he did not appear for his restful conversation with the children, so Leah and the slave girl went about their tasks, and from her tent the latter could see the old man standing apart from the camp, looking at it critically, like a judge. At last we are ready, he said to himself. Our cattle were never more numerous and our donkeys are fat. We have nearly two hundred warriors and our tents are mended. We are like a mighty bow drawn taut, ready to shoot arrows westward with force, and if it is the will of El-Shaddai that we move, he has brought us to superb condition. Approving what he saw of the equipment, the old man next studied his clan. It was well organized, faithful to one unifying god, disciplined, vigorous. It was as cohesive a unit as could then have been found in the desert regions—less educated, perhaps, since no member was able to read or write or cast bronze—but unified as no other similar group could be, for it had been Zadok’s stern command that no strangers be allowed to enter his clan without a period of indoctrination so rigorous as to repel most applicants. A Canaanite man could live beside the Hebrews for years without their trying to convert him away from his belief in Baal, but once he asked permission to marry one of the Hebrew women—and they were beautiful women who attracted men—he had to present himself to Zadok, forswear his former gods, undergo circumcision if that rite had not already been performed, abandon his former associates, and then spend eleven days with Zadok, trying to penetrate the mystery of El-Shaddai. Afterward, allegiance to any other god meant death, and few men were willing to submit themselves to such treatment merely to wed a Hebrew girl, no matter how attractive, so where men were concerned Zadok had kept his clan homogeneous.

The Hebrews insisted upon the circumcision of their men for a logical reason: it not only formed a covenant between the man and El-Shaddai, an unbreakable allegiance whose mark remained forever, but it also had the practical value of indicating without question or quibble the fact that the man so marked was a Hebrew. In war against the uncircumcised the coward might want to run away and later on deny that he had been a Hebrew. His captors had only to inspect him to prove he was a liar, so the circumcised man had better fight to the death because for him there was no masking his identity. The Hebrews were therefore strong warriors who were sometimes defeated but rarely demoralized, and for much of this cohesive spirit the desert rite of circumcision was responsible.

With women the problems were different. In their constant wars with settled tribes Zadok’s men often took prisoners and they were apt to be enticing creatures. Not even Zadok could keep his sons from lying with the strangers, and he was smart enough to realize his impotence in this matter. But he did insist upon precautions. When a slave girl was captured she was put into sackcloth of the meanest sort, her head was shaved and she was allowed nothing with which to clean or cut her fingernails, no oil for her face and little water for washing. After one month of such treatment she was led forth to stand beside the man who had captured her, while Zadok asked, “Do you still want this woman?” If the man said yes, she was tested as to her willingness to accept El-Shaddai; she was not required to surrender her old gods completely, for she was a woman, but she must acknowledge that El-Shaddai was superior, and if she did this she was delivered by Zadok to her captor, with the admonition, “Have many children.” With his own slave girl Zadok had followed this regimen and was gratified to see that she was becoming a true child of El-Shaddai.

Next day, as El-Shaddai had said, the young men Epher and Ibsha returned from the west with exhilarating news. “It’s a land of oil and honey,” Ibsha reported.

“It’s a land with armies,” his red-headed brother added, “but not too great to conquer.”

“It’s a land with fields covered with grass,” Ibsha continued.

“It has cities surrounded by walls,” Epher reported, “but they can be scaled.”

“It’s a land with more trees than I have ever seen before,” Ibsha said. “Mountains and valleys to delight the eye.”

“It has roads that we can march along,” Epher told those around him, “and rocks behind which we can take cover.”

“It’s a land which I cannot describe to satisfaction,” Ibsha said. “Where that bush grows over there, a dozen olive trees are standing. When you shake the limbs the fruit comes down like dark rain.”

“They have metal spears,” Epher went on, “and we have stone.” He showed his brothers some metal weapons he had acquired along the way.

Then Zadok spoke to the clan, on the last evening that they would reside in the desert. “El-Shaddai has spoken. We are to occupy the land. The olive trees are to be ours and the walls of the city will open for us.”