Джеймс Миченер - The Source

The Hebrews had won the first encounter. They controlled the well and would try to strangle the town with thirst. Governor Uriel appreciated the significance of this move, but in spite of the fact that five of his soldiers had been killed in the waterwall he still hoped that any honest grievances the Hebrews might have could be adjudicated, and to this end he sent messengers to Zadok asking what might be done. But the patriarch refused to meet with the Canaanites, and they returned knowing that complete war was upon them.

When Governor Uriel heard their report he decided to recapture the well at once and summoned his Hittite captain from the stables. Together they climbed a tower from which they studied with satisfaction the unmilitary manner in which the Hebrews were gathering before the town walls. “We can massacre them,” the Hittite boasted, rubbing his hands with pleasure.

“Ride back and forth and kill as many as possible,” Governor Uriel directed. “We’ll end this war quickly.”

The Hittite ran to the stables and ordered his men to harness their horses, two by two, to the war chariots which up to this time Governor Uriel had kept hidden. Few citizens of the town were aware that these ultimate weapons had been smuggled in at night from the seaport of Akka, and none of Zadok’s Hebrews had encountered such machines of war. Into each driver’s bucket stepped a Hittite whose left hand would control the horses while his right was free to swing a chain to which was attached a huge bronze ball studded with spikes. One swipe of this weapon would break a man’s back. Behind each driver stood two soldiers lashed to the chariot so that their hands were free to wield swords and heavy maces. And from the wheels of the chariot projected scythes that revolved as the wheels spun, cutting down anyone the chariot brushed against. They were horrible instruments, calculated to terrorize and kill, and Governor Uriel now moved them to the main gate.

When they were in position, and when the maximum number of Hebrews were milling aimlessly about the walls, he directed trumpets to sound and foot soldiers to rush forth as if this were to be an ordinary sortie. The Hebrews, surprised by the daring of the Canaanites, began massing at the exact spots Uriel had anticipated, and when they were most vulnerable he ordered the gates to swing open and the chariots to gallop down the ramp and into the midst of the stunned Hebrews. The Canaanite soldiers, instructed as to what was coming, slipped deftly aside, leaving a clear path for the terrible chariots, whose drivers lashed their horses directly at the milling Hebrews while the mounted riders ripped and cut at them.

It was slaughter, for if the Hebrews stood to fight, the horses trampled them; if they sought retreat, armed riders chopped them down from the rear with maces that broke their necks; and if they merely stood, the whirling scythes on the wheels cut them to death. Zadok, seeing the carnage, cried aloud, “El-Shaddai, god of hosts! What have you brought down upon us?” But Epher broke away from the women binding his wounds and leaped onto the neck of one of the Hittite horses, cutting its throat and toppling the chariot onto the rocks. The red-headed warrior thus proved that the vehicle was not invincible nor the horses immortal, and his Hebrews rallied, driving the Hittites back with stones and flint-headed arrows.

Judged numerically, the first day’s battle represented a clear defeat for the Hebrews. They had captured the well, but when Zadok mustered his forces before the tabernacle he could count thirty-four dead, and as he moved among the fallen he recited their names: “Naaman, my son. Joktan, my son. Aaron, my son. Zattu, my son. Ibsha, my son.” Not many generals could walk a battlefield at dusk and count as one day’s loss five sons and twenty-nine relatives, and when he reached the last corpse, “Simon, son of Naaman, son of my loins, son of Zebul who brought us from the desert,” he was possessed by a consuming rage and he stood before the tabernacle, swearing, “This town shall be destroyed. Not one roof shall rest upon its beams, not one man committed to the prostitutes shall five.” In this manner the peace-loving old man finally surrendered himself to the accomplishment of El-Shaddai’s will, but at the moment he could not know that his submission had come too late.

In his determination to crush Makor he became like a young warrior; in moral ardor he was again the primitive man of the desert facing the corruption of the town. But gradually he had to see that the effective decisions regarding the war were now being made by Epher, who, in spite of his wounds, led his father and his brothers to the mountaintop, where this time they succeeded in throwing down the offensive monolith which their Hebrews had erected to El-Shaddai. As the group was about to leave the high place Epher cried, “Let us throw down Baal as well.” The old man tried to stop his sons as they rushed toward the remaining rock, warning them, “No! It is only the abominations we fight. Baal rules here and El-Shaddai approves.” But Epher was headstrong and shouted, “Our war is against Baal, too,” and he brushed his father aside. Leaping at the monolith he called for his brothers to join him, and they toppled it down the mountainside.

It was a revolutionary moment. For it would be more than a hundred and fifty years before El-Shaddai, in his later manifestation as Yahweh, would deliver to the Hebrews in Sinai a commandment requiring them to abandon all other gods. It was this evolution that Epher was anticipating when he acted upon the principle that El-Shaddai was not only the supreme god of Zadok’s clan but of other peoples as well. When Epher made this arrogant extension of definitions Zadok knew that the boy was wrong.

“That was not the will of El-Shaddai,” the old man thundered, but Epher ignored him, as if through a vision he had foreseen the direction in which El-Shaddai must grow. And that night when the wounded young leader laid before the others his final plan for capturing Makor, Zadok realized that he had had no part in the building of this plan. It is the daring of a young man, he told himself, one bold enough to throw down the rock of Baal. And at that moment he was forced to acknowledge that the grandeur of leadership had slipped from him.

While others planned the forthcoming battle he walked alone through the olive grove, seeking to talk with his god, from whom he needed guidance. It would be difficult to penetrate the meaning of the words he talked with his god. Certainly El-Shaddai was no lackey to be summoned at will, as oracles were summoned by the witches of nearby En-dor; many times Zadok had needed advice from El-Shaddai when none was forthcoming. On the other hand, Zadok was certainly not an insane man, as his daughter had suggested, who heard demonic voices; he was never more clearly in control of his faculties than when he conversed with El-Shaddai. Perhaps the explanation was that when the Hebrews faced moments of decisive crisis, especially those involving moral impasses where decision could not be deferred, they found guidance coming to them from the lonely places. A voice cried out from unexpected quarters, the voice of accumulated reason; it could not be conjured up, for El-Shaddai appeared only when he was ready. But the voice could be relied upon, for the god delivered a consistent message; and now as the patriarch sought him among the trees, El-Shaddai did not take refuge in burning bushes or flaming rocks. Like a father he walked beside Zadok, conducting the last great conversation he would offer the old man.

“The abominations shall be destroyed,” El-Shaddai assured him.

“And the walls, will we penetrate them?”

“Did I not promise you in the desert, ‘The walls shall open to receive you’?”