Джеймс Миченер - The Source

At the crest of the mountain they found the monolith, long sacred to Baal, at whose feet lay the familiar signs of a placid nature worship: some flowers, a dead pigeon. Makor no longer worshiped a fiery god who consumed children; there were no public prostitutes administering to Astarte, for such practices the Hebrews suppressed. But the quiet worship of Baal they had been powerless to eliminate because it was the Hebrew farmer as well as the Canaanite merchant who felt the need of this vital deity; even King Saul had paid his homage to Baal by naming his sons after the kindly god. Occasionally the Hebrew rulers of Makor discussed outlawing the Canaanite god, but pressures from the people kept the deity alive. Now in King David’s reign directives had come from Jerusalem suggesting that the time had come when the worship of Baal must be forbidden, but governors of the recently conquered northern regions, with large Canaanite minorities, had always cautioned against precipitate action which might later be regretted. In this way Makor kept its ancient deity, and citizens climbed regularly to the mountain seeking assistance from the one god they knew personally—the god who had always insured the prosperity of their fields.

Meshab the Moabite knelt before the monolith, repeated prayers he had learned in the southern desert, then rose prepared to accept once more the stinking slave camp to which Baal had temporarily assigned him, but before he could start his march down the path, Hoopoe asked, “Why aren’t you sensible? Why not accept Yahweh and become a freedman?”

Then Meshab voiced the difference between himself and Hoopoe. “I live and die with Baal,” he said quietly, and it had been this intransigent answer thrown at King David after his capture in Moab that had prevented him from now being a Hebrew general.

“Wait,” Hoopoe said, drawing the big man onto a rock from which they could see both Aecho and Makor in the moonlight. “My family used to be like you, contemptuous of the Hebrew god. For centuries out of mind we worshiped Baal. But gradually we came to see that the Hebrews …”

“Aren’t you a Hebrew?”

“I am now. But not long ago my people were Canaanites.”

“How could that be?” Meshab’s own family had died rather than surrender their god.

“We lived in Makor side by side with the Hebrews in an easy friendship,” Hoopoe explained. “One of my ancestors named Zibeon made believe he was a Hebrew, and once or twice he fell into trouble. But in the end the Hebrews discovered that they needed Baal and we found that we needed Yahweh. And we’ve all prospered ever since.”

“How could you be false to your god?” Meshab asked suspiciously.

Hoopoe looked down at the walled town of his ancestors, the scene of the struggle between the two great deities, and it was difficult for him to explain the power that Yahweh had come to exercise upon the minds of Canaanites who had sought the truth. “All I can tell you, Meshab, is the legend I learned as a boy. Our people lived in the town with Baal, and from the desert came the Hebrews on donkeys bearing their god El-Shaddai. They camped outside the walls and a great battle developed between the two gods for the possession of the mountaintop. Baal triumphed of course, so in revenge El-Shaddai burned the town and gave the ruins to the Hebrews. For many years El-Shaddai ruled down in the valleys and Baal ruled up here. But after some centuries an agreement was reached, and the Canaanites accepted the new god Yahweh and the Hebrews accepted the old god Baal, and we have lived in contentment ever since.”

“You say that Yahweh is a new god?”

“Yes. Another group of Hebrews went down into Egypt, where they were treated rather badly, and the god they had taken with them developed into a most powerful deity, capable of striking his enemies with terror. This new god, Yahweh, brought forth the man Moses, who led the Hebrews out of Egypt and guided them for forty years in the desert, where Yahweh became more and more powerful … unlike any god ever known before. Under Yahweh and Moses the Hebrews became a driving force …”

“We knew Moses,” the Moabite interrupted. “He tried to enter our land, but we drove him off.”

“We Canaanites were not able to do so,” Hoopoe said. “So now Yahweh rules us all.”

With some accuracy Hoopoe’s legend reflected history. Centuries before old Zadok had brought his clan to Makor, other patriarchs had wandered into Egypt bearing with them an ordinary desert god little different from El-Shaddai, but during the vicissitudes suffered in Egypt and Sinai this god had matured into a supreme concept, notably superior to any deity developed by lesser groups of Hebrews who had stayed behind, so that when the tribes which had coalesced around Moses returned to Canaan, the superiority of their god Yahweh was manifest to all. This maturing of Yahweh was another instance in which a challenge had produced an illumination which an easy acceptance could not have. The complaisant town of Makor with its amiable gods could never have produced Yahweh; that transformation required the captivity in Egypt, the conflict with the Pharaohs, the exodus, the years of hunger and thirst in the desert, the longing for a settled home and the spiritual yearning for a known god … these were the things required for the forging of Yahweh.

Yet even in his hour of triumph over the lesser gods of the Hebrew tribes, Yahweh remained only the god of those Hebrews. The time had not yet come, in these years of Saul and Solomon, when the people of Israel would openly propose that their god should rule universally; such extension would not take place for several centuries. But now in the time of David, Yahweh was acknowledged as the god of all the Hebrews, from north to south, and the various covenants which he had concluded with his chosen people from the time of Abraham were recognized as binding even in remote spots like Makor. The various Els—the Elohims, the Elyons and the El-Shaddais—were now happily merged into the great successor.

But as Yahweh grew more powerful he also grew more remote, so that it was no longer possible to walk with him in the olive grove; it had been four hundred and fifty years since the last Hebrew of Makor had spoken with his god directly. That last conversation had involved General Epher after the destruction of Canaanite Makor. When the temptation to worship Baal had become too alluring, the red-headed general decided to move his Hebrews to some cleaner spot, but on the eve of departure El-Shaddai had appeared for the last time, saying, “Have I not brought you to this town and delivered it to you after manifold difficulties? Is it not your responsibility to accept it as it is and to make of it something good?” So Epher had built a new town upon the ruins of the old and it had prospered and influenced the countryside. Thus, in later years, when the unified Hebrews of Moses had come across the Jordan from the east, they had found in many obscure corners of Canaan little settlements like Makor prepared to accept Yahweh.

But the remoteness of Yahweh, his stern invisibility, made it inevitable that many Hebrews would cling to lesser deities who provided them with the personal warmth that Yahweh no longer did. Baal still flourished throughout most of King David’s empire. Astarte was worshiped in many places and fire gods who consumed children were being revived; it sometimes seemed that across the land there were local altars under every verdant tree.

As Hoopoe and the Moabite talked of these things, they saw in the moonlight two Hebrew women climbing the hill. They were coming to worship Baal and they did not see the men sitting off to one side, for the women were concerned with domestic worries which only Baal could solve. Climbing, out of breath, to the high point, the women prostrated themselves before the monolith and after a while Hoopoe heard one praying, in short gasps, “Baal … let my husband Jerubbaal come safely home from the sea … let the Phoenicians not molest him … in Aecho protect him … great Baal … bring my man home safely.”