Джеймс Миченер - The Source

As soon as she said the words, she knew that she had evaded the one central problem of this day: it had not been intended for her to say, “It is commanded”; she should have said, “Yahweh commands.” But as a poor widow of humble origins she had neither the courage nor the arrogance to use that dreadful sentence. This day she avoided the issue and placed the responsibility upon an anonymous force. “It is commanded,” she said.

But even that evasion was sufficient, for something transpired in the room that Governor Jeremoth could not have explained. Somehow he knew who had done the commanding; with the Hebrews these mysteries occasionally happened and he avoided a confrontation in which he did not consider himself involved. A Canaanite rather than a Hebrew, a man of Baal rather than of Yahweh, he was nevertheless eager, as a practical politician, to avoid antagonizing any god at a time when the shadows of Egypt and Babylon loomed so large across the Galilee, and it was this that kept him from challenging Gomer. To his daughter’s surprise and to Rimmon’s, too, he announced, “Very well, Gomer. Here’s your bag of money. Build the best booth in Jerusalem.”

Rimmon tried to apologize, “Sir, I had nothing to do …” but the governor was gone, glad to have escaped the onus of decision. Thus the first of the critical challenges that would mark this pivotal age had occurred, although at the time neither Gomer nor Jeremoth recognized it. And Gomer of the soft voice had prevailed.

The journey up to Jerusalem in that hot month of Ethanim was, as Yahweh had intended, an experience that Rimmon would never forget, although while undergoing it he perceived it as a physical adventure rather than as a spiritual ascent. It was a distance of more than ninety miles over difficult and wearing terrain, to be finished in the hot time of autumn, so that the journey occupied eight days. Mother and son left the zigzag gate at dawn, a tall pair dressed in the cheapest clothes, shod in heavy sandals and carrying staves. On their backs they carried a little food, in their purses a few pieces of silver, but Rimmon had with him an additional item that would prove of considerable value: lengths of cord with which to build his booth on the slopes leading up to Jerusalem’s walls.

Leading his gaunt mother, who had no idea as to where the city lay, Rimmon started south through the olive grove, where he was minded to ask Baal to tend the trees during his absence; but when he started to kneel by the olive press his mother took him by the arm, saying, “There is no Baal, forevermore,” and her grip was like the clutch of iron upon his muscles and turned him away. He led her through the dark swamp, where insects tormented them, across the Kishon River and up to the fortress city of Megiddo, where they wept for the good king who had recently been slain in his futile war against the Egyptians.

From this mournful spot they dropped down to Samaria, the capital city of the former kingdom of Israel, a strange place occupied by aliens forcibly settled there by the father of Sennacherib, and through the years these strangers had perfected a unique religion, borrowed from the Hebrews but a faith apart. Samaria both fascinated and repelled the travelers, and they gladly left it to climb to Bethel, where a problem of serious proportion confronted them, for this town had always marked the southern outpost of Israel and had served as a kind of watchdog to keep northerners from crossing the border in their attempts to visit Jerusalem. Even now many in Bethel considered it disloyal for a man of fighting age like Rimmon to leave the north, and certain fanatics tried to prevent him from doing so. But soft-spoken Gomer countered their arguments, saying, “I am an old woman who must see Jerusalem before I die,” and she led her son through the taunting Bethelites until she reached the village Of Anathoth, where prophets lived, and from there she and her son began the steep ascent to Jerusalem.

In the first hours they climbed without actually seeing the noble city, but they were assured that they were on the right path by the hundreds of other pilgrims streaming in from outlying regions to celebrate in Jerusalem the high holy days which marked the beginning of each new year.

There were young priests from Dan and date farmers from the shores of Galilee come down to pray for a bountiful harvest. There were Hebrew dyers who kept their vats in the seaport city of Aecho, nestled among Aramaean and Cypriot merchants. There were Hebrews from Samaria who had doggedly held to their own religion amidst the enemy, and there were poor villagers from Shunem, where King David had found his last and greatest concubine, the sweet child Abishag. Those who could afford to do so led animals for sacrifice at the temple altars, and one could hear the lowing of cattle and the cry of sheep. Others carried chickens intended for their own consumption and some women had white doves captured in cages made of reeds: these were for the temple. A few farmers rode donkeys, but most came on foot to worship at the central shrine of the Hebrews, to see with their own eyes the everlasting glory of Jerusalem.

Gomer and her son were struggling up the last steep, rocky path, surrounded by barren hills and deep wadis, when they heard ahead of them the joyful chant of people singing the traditional songs of the ascent:“I rejoiced when they said unto me:

‘Let us go unto the house of Yahweh.’

Our feet are standing

Within your gates, O Jerusalem …

Whither the tribes go up, even the tribes of Yahweh.”

All joined in this song of delight, but never for long did this mood prevail, for always some tormented voice, unable to believe that it was on the threshold of Jerusalem, would cry in humble supplication:“Out of the depths have I called upon you, Yahweh.

Yahweh, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.”

Most endeavored to suppress their own desires and to submit themselves to the will of Yahweh, trusting as Gomer did that his guidance would sustain them:“Yahweh, my heart is not haughty nor my eyes lofty;

Neither do I exercise myself in things too great,

Or in things too wonderful for me.”

And when they entered upon the last league they made a solemn promise that they would march uninterruptedly to the holy city regardless of what impediments they might encounter:“Yahweh, let me remember David and his afflictions,

How he swore unto Yahweh

And vowed unto the god of Jacob.

Surely I will not come into the tent of my own house

Nor go up into the bed that is spread for me;

I will not give sleep to my eyes

Nor slumber to my eyelids

Until I find out a place for Yahweh,

A dwelling place for the mighty one.”

And then, when the day was very hot upon them, Gomer and Rimmon heard the singers ahead suddenly cease, and everywhere there was silence as those behind pushed forward, and at last the multitude looked south across bare hills and saw rising before them a stout, high wall, a most massive thing built of enormous stones that shone pink and gray and purple in the noonday sun; and from the walls, rose towers marking a gate, and beyond it the majestic outlines of a temple, heavy and monumental and brooding. Many fell to their knees, to think that they had lived to see this city, but Gomer noticed that Rimmon stood apart, staring at the extraordinary walls and the ineffable grace that invested the stones of this sacred place. Watching her son absorb the wonder of Jerusalem she tried to guess what divine need had brought him to this spot, but she knew not, and then she found herself pulled to his side and her soft voice began whispering words and ideas that she herself could not have conjured up: “Look not to the walls, Rimmon son of Gomer. Look rather to the west to those slopes by the fullers’ field. A hundred years ago did not Sennacherib, having crushed Makor, camp in that spot, his army as thick as locusts in the seventh year? And did he not make preparations to destroy Jerusalem”—of these matters Gomer knew nothing—“so that the holy City of David lay powerless before him? The terrible Assyrian needed only to press against those pink-gray walls, and Jerusalem was his that he might crush the temple and destroy the sons of Judah forever. But at the middle of the night I moved among the tents of the Assyrians. More powerful than chariots was I that night, more deadly than arrows tipped with iron, and in the morning death was upon the host and it melted away.”