A great load was lifted from their hearts. They no longer needed to pretend to themselves that they were more pious men at heart than they were. They had been loyal to Jesus through good times and bad, but now that he had resolved the doubt which had been torturing them for months, and for entertaining which they had secretly reproached themselves as traitors to him, they loved him more than ever before. No, the End was not yet! Israel was as yet unprepared for salvation. They might relax the taut strings of the heart.
Only Judas abstained from wine, on a plea of sickness, and by midnight was the only disciple who could still stand upright on his feet. He reassured himself : “It cannot be ; I know the Master well. He is not one to yield, as he seems to have yielded, to a sudden despondency. He is a King, he is true-born, he is of those who endure to the very end. He is playing a part, that is all. He is playing a part to try us. To-morrow he will make everything clear.”
Yet the next morning Jesus was still in the same strange mood. He reminded Peter of his commission at the slaughterhouse and drank unmixed wine, which he pressed on the other disciples. Judas remembered the words of Isaiah : “Woe to those who rise up in the morning to follow strong drink !” When Peter returned with the crook and cord, all went outside into the garden. Jesus said to Judas : “I am hungry. Climb up into this fig-tree and fetch me a handful of figs.”
“There is none on it.”
“What, none ?”
“No, Master, it is not the season.”
Jesus flew into a passion and, stretching out his fingers, solemnly invoked the Worm that had gnawed at the roots of Jonah’s gourd to destroy the fig-tree in the same manner. Its tender leaves began to wilt before their eyes, and by the next day it was dead.
Judas said : “Master, your parable of the wise farmer and the fig-tree —the tree which is an emblem of Israel. He refrained from felling it though it had not fruited for three years ; yet you are destroying this tree without even waiting to see what it will yield in the fig-season !”
Jesus laughed scornfully. “What? Do you not see my new staff, splashed with the blood of the flock? Come with me, children of the slaughterhouse! Let us perform a great deed to-day, an honourable deed, a deed to fire the hearts of simple pilgrims. Let us cleanse the Outer Courts of the Temple, beginning at the Basilica of King Herod.” He led them off towards the Temple. Wine made their hearts bold and their feet unsteady. They stopped to drink again at an inn near the City gates.
Judas said nothing, but wondered to himself : “What is this? If the Temple is an idol, what need to cleanse it? Especially the outer parts? The other day he spoke a parable of a man who carefully cleansed the outside of a covered dish without lifting the lid to disclose the unclean food inside ; and he spoke it against the Temple priesthood.”
The strict Pharisaic rule against entering the Temple Mount with money or merchandise, or even with shoes on one’s feet, was scorned by the Levite priesthood, who considered that only the Sanctuary and the Inner Courts were holy in any true sense ; that nobody need tread with much awe in the Court of Israel or the Court of Women, and that the Court of the Gentiles was no holier than any other part of the Old City of Jerusalem. As for the Basilica built by Herod to the south of the Court of the Gentiles, they regarded it as a mere lobby and allowed stalls to be set up there for pilgrims who found it inconvenient to climb up the Mount of Olives to buy pigeons, doves, lambs and other beasts of sacrifice in the regular market under the cedars there. This trade in livestock brought another with it : that of money-changing. A great inconvenience of the Roman occupation was that the Romans reserved the sole right to mint gold and silver, and that because of the Commandment against the worship of false gods, the head of the Emperor on the more recent coins, with the inscription : “Tiberius Caesar Augustus, High Priest, Son of the God Augustus”, prevented them from being carried into the Temple. Thus any Jew who came to the Basilica to buy a dove or pigeon and had only unclean money with him must change it first into clean at the money-changers’. Certain types of foreign money were tolerated as clean, and Herod’s copper coins stamped with Jewish emblems were still current.
On his arrival at the Basilica, Jesus took up his station just inside the gate, clapped his hands for silence and instructed the disciples to do the same. An inquisitive crowd gathered. Then, pitching his voice high and clear, he recited part of a prophecy from the Book of Jeremiah as follows :
The word of our God came to Jeremiah : ‘Stand in the Gate of the Temple and there proclaim these things which I put into your mouth. Say : Listen to the words of the God of Israel, the Lord of Hosts, all you Jews who enter by these gates to worship him. He says : Amend your ways and your deeds and I will establish you securely in this city. Do not deceive yourselves in lying repetitions : “The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, all is well with the Temple of the Lord, all will be well with the Temple of the Lord !” Has this house which is called by my name become a robber’s den in your eyes?’
And he also says : ‘I have observed and seen all. But go to my former shrine at Shiloh in Ephraim, which was once called by my name, and see what I have done to it to punish the wickedness of my people Israel.’
And he also says : ‘Because you have done all this’—and I myself delivered his words to you at cock-crow, I called to you and you neither answered nor listened—‘because you have done all this I will do a thing to this Temple which is now called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the city and land which I gave to your fathers and to yourselves : I will do the very same thing that I did to Shiloh and cast you out of sight as I cast out your kinsmen the Ephraimites.’
And he says : ‘Offer no prayers for this people, no prayers and no supplications, no supplications and no intercessions. For I will shut my ears to them.’
This passage he recited three times, and his disciples stood about him and compelled the people to listen ; the crowd increased and the market-stalls were deserted of customers. Then he said : “The Jews of Jeremiah’s day would not listen, or repent, but the words of the Lord were proved true, for the Temple was destroyed. On the ninth day of the month Ab it was destroyed by fire. But the people repented by the waters of Babylon, and the Temple rose again, and is now rebuilt more gloriously than ever ; yet the ancient abominations are revived. Men of Israel, our God is dishonoured in his own house! Whose is the sin? The Sons of Levi are the sinners. They take too much upon themselves, reserving holiness for their own tribe at the expense of all other Israelites. Is it not written in the fifteenth Psalm that no man shall dwell on this Holy Hill who traffics in money? And is not this place where we stand a part of the Holy Hill? Yet the Sons of Levi care nothing for its desecration so long only as their own enclosure remains inviolate. They shut their eyes to wickedness, and say : ‘We know nothing,’ though porters with profane burdens make the outer Courts a short-cut between one quarter of the City and another. How long is this to be borne? Look about you at these great buildings! Unless you amend your ways there will presently not be left one stone on another, but all will be cast down.” So saying, he took his length of butcher’s cord and plaited it into a scourge as they watched. When he had done, he cried : “Who is on my side, who? With this plaited cord I will purge these Courts of their filth !”
All the disciples, except Judas alone, shouted : “Lord, we are with you !” The crowd took up the cry exultantly : “We are with you !” and Jesus advanced to the traders and money-changers. “Go, go, be off I say, lest this plaited cord leave its mark on you for the rest of your days !”
Some of the traders began at once to fold up their trestle tables, and gathering their goods together made off ; they knew the proverb : “A pilgrim crowd is a dangerous crowd.” But the president of the Money-changers’ Guild came boldly forward and thrust a paper at Jesus, crying : “Read this, Sir, if you can read! It is a receipt from the Treasurer of the Temple, son-in-law to the High Priest himself, a receipt for a thousand shekels in lawful money which our guild pay
four times a year for the privilege of changing money at this gate. Do you set yourself above the authority of the Temple Treasurer ?”
Jesus answered : “Do you not set the God of Israel above the authority both of the Treasurer and of the High Priest? Beware this plaited cord !”
Then he began to overturn the tables of the money-changers and the money slid down to the pavement in heaps ; gold, silver and copper together. The money-changers threw themselves on the heaps in despair, clawing the coins together, snatching them from under the feet of the mob and screaming like women in travail. As for the doves and pigeons, the disciples opened the coops in which they were caged and released them in fluttering flocks, and the lambs ran hither and thither bleating. The confusion was increased by a number of wild young fellows in the crowd, who scrambled for loose coins or stray birds with shouts of laughter. Though no one was shameless enough to rob the trembling money-changers of any large sum, their president afterwards complained that, in all, his guild was the poorer by a month’s earnings.
Jesus continued into the Temple itself and purged the Courts of all forbidden traffic, as far as the barrier beyond which only a Levite might pass. Several hundreds of people supported him, and his word was taken up : “Is this Temple become a robbers’ den ?” For the Galileans who formed the greater part of the crowd had long resented not only the presence of the money-changers and sellers of livestock in the Basilica, but the extortionate prices with which they offset the high fees demanded by the Temple Treasurer.
The High Priest, when news of the rioting first reached him, took it calmly enough. “Passover pilgrims are hot-blooded men,” he told his son-in-law the Treasurer, “and the traders of the Basilica have perhaps overreached themselves and suffered justly for their greed. Indeed, the so-called purge that has been made of the outer Temple Courts does great credit to the religious feelings of the populace, though little to their intelligence. No serious injuries are reported, and now that they have had their fling the grandeur and vastness of the Temple and the dignified demeanour of our Tribe may be counted upon to restrain them from any further act of ruffianism. No, I have no intention of disciplining them with clubs. If I summoned the Watch they would run mad, and out would come their hidden daggers. In the end we should be obliged to call in the Romans, and then the fat would be in the fire.”
The Treasurer said : “But, Holy Father, what of the traders? Are they to resume their employment to-morrow ?”
“It were better not.”
“That would be a great loss to them and to the Temple revenue : and honest pilgrims wishing to change money or buy birds would be greatly vexed.”
“And the traders would learn to be content with smaller profits ; and pilgrims who are short of breath would soon realize the inconvenience of an over-scrupulous conscience when they had to retrace their steps and climb the Mount of Olives as far as the Booths of Hino to buy their offerings. No, I shall give the order that all trading must cease until the Feast is over.”
“But what action are you taking against this Jesus of Nazareth? He engineered the whole affair.”
“Jesus of Nazareth? I had no idea that it was he! According to my report it was an Edomite from Bozrah. So he did not take the hint at the Fish Gate, the obstinate fellow ?”
“No ; and strange stories are current about him. The strangest and most persistent is that he restored a dead man to life at Bethany a few weeks ago, by use of the Name !”
“Since the dead are, by definition, incapable of living again, and since, in any case, nobody but a High Priest can know the Name—even the version treasured by the High Court is not the true one—I hardly think that we need trouble ourselves with nonsense of this sort. What else have you heard ?”
“Yesterday he rode through the City dressed in scarlet with a branch in his hand, and a rabble of little boys shouting behind him.”
“Indeed? Why was I not informed? The affair, then, is more serious than I had supposed. Now that his insanity has taken a violent form we must act as quickly as possible. We should have arrested him at the Tabernacles ; Nicodemon son of Gorion officiously prevented us, you may remember.”
“By the way, Holy Father, someone of importance—I forget who—told me at the time that this Jesus is the same man who some twenty years ago was warned to keep out of the Temple until he could clear himself of the suspicion of bastardy.”
The High Priest’s son, the Chief Archivist, said : “Yes, it was I. I heard the story and it interested me, so I turned up the records. They go far to prove the charge. Unfortunately, however, the file is incomplete—the marriage contract of his mother is no longer there. Without it we cannot accuse Jesus of trespass, for his supposed father, the only relevant witness, has been dead for several years, I find.”
“He is a dangerous man,” said the Treasurer, “dangerous, reckless, and more than usually gifted. I shall be in suspense for the rest of the Feast unless we can place him under restraint. I fear that the rebuff that he was given as a boy set him brooding on imagined wrongs, and, like many an impoverished country Pharisee, he has come to identify his own sufferings with those of the people at large. Holy Father, may I convey your order for his arrest at once to the Captain of the Temple ?”
“Arrest him in the Temple ?” cried Caiaphas. “Son, would you make matters a thousand times worse? Wait until dark, wait until he goes off for the night to his lodgings. As that wind-bag Joseph of Arimathea never tires of telling the Sanhedrin, we must do our good deeds by stealth.”
“With your permission,” said the Chief Archivist, “I will send a person of importance to confront him in the Temple to-morrow and ask him a few questions : questions that will make a fool of him ; questions that he cannot answer without falling into trouble either with the Romans or with his own supporters—questions, therefore, that he will not attempt to answer. We will not need to arrest him if the affair goes as I hope it will.”
“I will leave it to you, my Son. Why not ask the questions yourself ?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Sword
THAT evening Jesus returned with his disciples to Bethany. He went to the house of Lazarus, but the porter would not admit him. Lazarus sent Martha out to explain that, by a general resolution of the Free Essenes, none of them was permitted to converse with him again, as being in league with a witch and having himself used witchcraft. Nevertheless, to show that he was not ungrateful to the man in whose debt he stood beyond hope of payment, he would put his house at Jesus’s free disposal, and remove elsewhere with his two sisters. Jesus accepted the offer without comment, spent the night cheerfully there with his disciples and returned to the Temple on the following day.
By this time news of what he had done at the Basilica had run through the City like fire through dry grass. There was a sharp division of opinion. The Sadducees condemned the action as a wanton interference with legitimate trade. The leading Pharisees agreed with them in deploring the use of violence on the Temple Hill : for though the traders had been at fault, it was an inexcusable presumption to chastise sins of sacrilege which could be confidently left to the vengeance of Jehovah. But crowds of Zealots and Anavim—injudicious, easily stirred to religious zeal in festival time and careless of consequences—praised Jesus to the sky for his piety and daring. If anyone asked : “But surely this is the same Jesus who was expelled from Capernaum and Chorazin by the elders of the synagogue ?” the answer came pat : “It was done in jealousy. They could find no fault in him, except that he was not too proud to preach to poor men like ourselves.”
Tales of the remarkable cures that he had performed lost nothing in the telling : the cure of one vitiliginous leper became the cure of ten true lepers, and he was credited with having revived three or four dead persons in different parts of the country, including another Shunemite boy, his mother’s only child, like the one whom the prophet Elisha had raised from the dead. It was also asserted that he had the power of suddenly disappearing, and reappearing on
the same day at a place fifty miles off, and of walking dry-shod over water. Many were stirred by huge hopes. Had the Messiah come at last, with Elijah in the guise of John the Baptist as his forerunner? Already certain of the required signs had been fulfilled : Jesus had entered the City in the manner prescribed by the prophet Zechariah, wearing the dyed garments prescribed by Isaiah, and had called Israel to repentance in no uncertain voice.
From a flight of marble steps on the shady side of the Court of the Gentiles he preached to a crowd of some five thousand men and women who listened to him with rapt attention. This time he did not prophesy in his usual manner, of the Pangs of the Messiah, the dangerous times, the times of national affliction, wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, famines and disasters such as had never been since the Creation. Instead, he eloquently recalled the glorious feats of King David and his thirty-seven chosen companions in their war of liberation against the Philistines, and in their wars of conquest against the Moabites and Syrians. Companions worthy of their leader : Adino the Esnite who killed eight hundred men in a single battle, and Shammah the Hararite who fought the Battle of the Lentil Patch against six companies of Philistines and left them all dead on the field ; and Benaiah of Kabzeel who set a pitfall for mountain lions in the snow and when one fell into it, leaped down and strangled it with his bare hands. Surely that heroic breed was not yet extinct in Israel?
He made these ancient tales live again by the power of his voice and gestures. “Swell with martial pride, pacific heart! Strut proudly, meek foot! For it was here at Jerusalem that King David elected to reign, and his free-hearted companions worshipped on this very hill !” He also told of the splendid reign of David’s son Solomon, whose navies sailed over all the seas of the world and in whose army twelve thousand horsemen served, and fourteen hundred chariot-men—Solomon King of Israel, who acknowledged no overlord, the wisest king and the most favoured of God who had ever reigned in Israel. Solemnly he recited the prayer that Solomon had uttered on that same hill at the dedication of the First Temple, publicly holding Jehovah to the promise, sworn to his father David, that there should never fail a prince of the royal line to sit on the throne of Israel. “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”