Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“Children?” Zadok asked, his hands trembling. Once when his people were traveling to the north he had heard of this god.

“And at the end of the dance women like us run to embrace the male prostitutes while their husbands go into darkened rooms with the female whores.”

Zadok staggered back, and the water-women concluded, “Many of the Hebrews are there now, sacrificing to the strange gods.”

“Abomination!” Zadok cried, uttering again the fearful word that condemned, the ultimate charge that could not be withdrawn once it had been invoked. He left his tent and wandered for many hours till night fell, and from the town walls he heard the sounds of revelry and the beat of drums. He saw the smoky fires. But after midnight, as he stumbled exhausted through the olive grove, he became aware of a presence speaking to him from behind an olive tree, and softly an admonishing voice said, “It was you who uttered the word, Zadok. That town is an abomination.”

“What shall I do?”

“It was your word. It is your responsibility.”

“But what must I do?”

“The abominations must perish.”

“The town, the walls?”

“The abominations must be destroyed.”

Zadok fell on his knees before the voice, bowing to the olive tree that hid the terrible countenance, and from this position of surrender the old man expressed his trembling pity for the condemned ones inside the wall. “If I can make the abominations cease,” he pleaded with his god, “may the town be saved?”

“It shall be saved,” the compassionate god replied, “and not a single rock will be unseated.”

“Praise be to El-Shaddai,” the old man sighed, and the presence was gone.

Without consulting anyone the patriarch threw his robe about him, took up his staff and walked through the night, his heart ablaze with love for the people he had been permitted to save. At the town gate he pounded with his staff, shouting, “Awake and be saved!” but the guards would not permit him to enter. He hammered again, crying, “I must see the governor now!” and Uriel was routed from his sleep; and when he looked through an arrow slit to see that the messenger was his colleague Zadok, he said to the guards, “Let him enter.”

Like a bridegroom rushing to greet his bride the old man swept into the governor’s room and shouted, “Uriel, Makor can be saved.”

The sleepy Canaanite scratched his beard and asked, “Old man, what are you talking about?”

“You have only to halt the abominations.”

“What is this?”

Joyously the old man explained, “You must destroy the temple to Astarte and the fire god.” Then generously he added, “Worship of Baal you may continue, but you must accept El-Shaddai as the one god above all.” His eyes were ablaze with the fire of zealotry that Uriel had seen that first day.

Uriel sat down. “You never demanded this before.”

The Hebrew, seeming not to hear the governor’s logic, ranted, “Divert this sinful city into the ways of the true god.”

Rahab was awakened by the noise and entered the room, wearing a nightrobe. “What is the old nomad saying?” she asked.

Zadok ran to greet her as if she were a beloved daughter. “Tell your husband to accept El-Shaddai’s will.”

“What frenzy is this?” Rahab asked her bewildered husband.

“Makor can be saved,” Zadok explained ecstatically, “if you halt the sacred prostitution and stop feeding babies to the fire god.”

Rahab laughed. “It is not prostitution,” she said. “Those girls are priestesses. And your own daughter Leah sent Zibeon to lie with them, the way I sent Uriel when I was pregnant. To insure an easy delivery. Old man, these rites are necessary, and your daughter has more sense than you do.”

Zadok did not hear what Rahab was saying. He was so ecstatic over El-Shaddai’s offer to save Makor that he expected others to react as he had done, and when they did not he became confused, but before he could react to the introduction of his daughter’s name, Zibeon joined the meeting, bringing Leah with him. When the girl saw her father, bewildered and looking very old with his unkempt beard, she ran to him with compassion and would have kissed him, but when he saw her the words of Rahab took meaning and with his staff he fended her off, asking, “Did you send your husband to the prostitutes?”

Zibeon answered, “I went to the temple to protect your daughter in childbirth.”

The patriarch looked at his son-in-law with pity and said, “You have committed an abomination.”

“But you agreed that I was free to worship Astarte,” the young man protested.

Then Leah interrupted: “I asked him to go, for my sake.”

Leah’s voice, uttering such words, startled the old man and he leaned forward to study her face, while a hideous fear took possession of his mind. “Leah,” he asked, “did you also take yourself to the male prostitutes, consorting with them in the same manner?”

“Yes,” his daughter replied with no shame. “It is how the women of Makor worship.”

“And if you have a son, will you give him to the fire god?”

“Yes. It is the custom of this town.”

Zadok drew back from the four Canaanites, for after this confession his daughter could no longer be a Hebrew, and he was struck by a dizziness that almost felled him. But he managed to focus his weary eyes upon the four doomed faces, and when he saw them clearly, uncomprehending and obstinate in their sin, he realized that El-Shaddai had arranged this night to exhibit the true abomination of the town. Yet even in that moment of discovery he remembered the god’s promise that if the Canaanites should repent they could still be saved. Raising his right arm he pointed a long bony finger at Uriel and asked, “For the last time, will you order these abominations to cease?” No one spoke. Directing his finger at Leah and her husband he asked, “Will you abandon this doomed town, now?” Neither spoke, so he fell to his knees and knocked his head three times upon the tiles, and from this position looked up at the governor, pleading, “As the humblest of your slaves, can I beg you to save yourself?” The Canaanite made no reply, so the old man pulled himself back to his feet.

At the door he turned back and pointed to each of the four in turn and then to the town. “This shall all be destroyed.” And he was gone.

It was too late to go to bed, so Rahab called for some food and said, “Your father sounds like an old fool.”

“In the desert he often talked to himself,” Leah explained.

“I warned the governor to destroy him at the beginning,” Rahab muttered. “Now it is he who speaks of destroying us.”

“We may have to turn the Hittites upon him,” Uriel said, and when Leah was gone Rahab directed her son not to let her wander from the walls, “For she is a Hebrew and cannot be trusted.”

“You think there may be war?” the young man asked.

“He talked like a madman,” Uriel replied, “and madmen bring war.” In the early dawn he went to the north wall to consult his Hittites.

Zadok, as soon as he reached his tent, summoned his sons to ask what plans they had devised for the capture of Makor, and they asked, “Is it to be war?”

“Last night El-Shaddai commanded us to destroy that town,” he replied.

To his surprise Epher and Ibsha laid before him a detailed plan for investing the powerful town and forcing its surrender. “It will cost us many lives,” they warned, but in his growing fury the old man refused to consider losses. Taking his sons with him to the tabernacle he dedicated them to the work of El-Shaddai, and the three prayed in silence.

That morning, as soon as the gates were opened, four Hebrew women went to the well while a detachment of men crept through the wadis until they were close to the waterwall. Of the four women, two walked with an awkwardness that should have been detected, but they were allowed to slip through the postern gate and into the dark passageway, where they hurried to the unoccupied guardhouses. There the two awkward ones slipped quietly into the retreats, throwing off their women’s clothing and unleashing long bronze knives. The two real women walked quietly forward, found two Canaanite women at the well and killed them. With rocks they signaled to their Hebrew brothers on the outside, and these troops started breaching the wall that surrounded the well. Canaanite soldiers from inside the town, belatedly aware of the danger, rushed through the postern gate and into the tunnel, where they were intercepted by Epher and Ibsha, who had constructed from pots and benches a kind of barricade. The way was narrow and the two Hebrews were courageous, so that the Canaanites were held back, and after a quarter of an hour the Hebrews on the outside had broken through the wall and taken possession of the well. They ran forward to relieve the two sons of Zadok, but when they reached the barricade they found Ibsha dead and Epher sorely wounded.