Joshua stared at the reflection the lamp made on the water, waiting until he could trust himself to speak. “Miriam told me that forgiveness is costly. She said I would pay the price if I chose to cancel Manasseh’s debt.”
“Abba, you were willing to pay my debt, willing to take my punishment and be flogged in my place.”
He looked up at Nathan through his tears. “Does that mean that God is also willing to pay the cost and bear the punishment for all of our sins?”
“I guess it must,” Nathan said softly. The tunnel was silent for a moment except for the sound of Joshua’s labored breaths. “Abba, you’re getting sick. This breathing attack is a bad one. You need to get out of this cold water. Do you want to carry the lamp?”
“No, you carry it.” Joshua followed Nathan out of the tunnel, leaning against the wall for support, his knees still trembling badly. When they finally emerged, the night air was warm, the heavens splashed with stars. It seemed like a different sky than the one Joshua saw every night on Elephantine Island.
“I suppose you’ll want to stay here in Jerusalem,” Joshua said as they walked home.
“I want to live wherever you do, Abba.”
“But I’ll probably go back to Egypt. I know how much you’ve always hated it there.”
“It’s only a place. It doesn’t matter where I live. I want to stay with you, work with you—if you’ll let me.”
Joshua stopped and pulled Nathan into his arms, holding him close. Was it possible that God had allowed all those years of struggle with Nathan just to show him His own heart toward His rebellious children?
“I love you, Nathan.”
“I know you do, Abba. I know how very much you do.”
30
The breathing attack was the worst one Joshua had ever had in his life. He feared that it might kill him. He tossed on his pallet, delirious with fever, as his exhausted lungs slowly filled with fluid. For days, he drifted in and out of consciousness, aware at times of Miriam or Nathan sponging him with water to cool his fever, propping him up so he could cough, or wrapping him in blankets when he shivered with chills. He grew so weary of his struggle to live that he longed to quit, but the sound of Miriam’s voice always urged him to draw another painful breath.
At one point when he opened his eyes, he saw Joel kneeling beside him. “Joshua, do you want to make peace with God?” he asked kindly. “Do you want me to pray with you?”
Joshua knew what Joel was asking and why. “You’re going to die separated from God,” Miriam had warned, “while Manasseh, who did evil his entire life, will die reconciled.”
“Am I going to die?” he asked the high priest.
“You’re gravely ill, Joshua.”
“Yes . . . pray,” he whispered, closing his eyes again. “Ask God what His will for me is. . . . Tell Him . . . I want to obey it. . . .”
He heard Joel’s voice as he prayed aloud. It sounded soothing, but his words made no sense. He heard Miriam weeping.
Joshua fell asleep again and dreamed of his father. Abba took him in his arms and covered Joshua’s mouth with his own, breathing life into him. But it wasn’t air that Abba poured into him, it was words from the Torah. “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge . . . but love your neighbor as yourself.” In his dream, Joshua knew that the words would heal him if he inhaled them deep into his soul. He struggled to draw them in, to draw life from his father.
The next time Joshua awoke, his fever had broken. He began to hope that he would live. Gradually, over the next few days, it became easier and less painful for him to breathe, and his coughing eased. He could sit up when he wasn’t sleeping, and eat a little food.
“How long have I been sick?” he asked Miriam.
Her face was drawn and pale, as if bereft of tears. “Nine days. I thought I was going to lose you.”
“Come here,” he whispered. He drew her into his arms and held her close, his love for her too deep for words. “I think God is going to let me stay a little while longer.”
“Yes . . . thank God,” she murmured.
Nathan crouched beside them. “Abba, if you’re strong enough, will you come to the Temple with me tomorrow morning? It’s the Day of Atonement.”
Joshua covered his son’s hand with his own. “Yes, I’ll come.”
The sky was overcast the next day, the streets damp with the first fall rains as Joshua entered the Temple courtyard with Nathan. Most of the pagan idols and shrines had been cleared away, and the air smelled of incense and freshly plowed earth. Joel stood beside Yahweh’s altar, his brightly colored robes making vivid splashes of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet against the gray sky and wet pavement.
“Throughout these past days of fasting and mourning,” Joel said, “God has led us to examine ourselves and to confess our sins. Now we bring those sins before Him as a nation so we can await His forgiveness.”
Joshua knelt with the other worshipers and bowed his head, aware that he had no more right to ask God for forgiveness than Manasseh did. “Forgive me for my anger and my hatred,” he prayed. “Forgive me for wanting revenge and justice for my enemy more than I wanted your mercy. I’ve been angry with you, Lord, because your measure of mercy is as great as your measure of justice. I’m sorry. Now I need your mercy and forgiveness, too.”
He stood again as the high priest cast lots for the two sacrificial goats. Joel slit the throat of the one selected to be sacrificed and drained its blood into a golden basin. He held up the blood for the congregation to see.
“‘The Lord is my strength and my song,’” Joel recited, “‘he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him. . . . Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders? . . . In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.’”
Joel walked across the courtyard and disappeared through the doors of the sanctuary. Joshua knew he would carry the atoning blood into God’s presence in the most holy place. A long rope trailed from his ankle. Only the high priest dared to stand before God once a year, and only after offering a sacrifice for his own sins earlier that morning. If God didn’t accept the atoning blood, if He struck Joel dead in His wrath, the rope would be used to pull his body from the sanctuary.
Joshua waited in the silent courtyard for Joel to reappear and assure the worshipers that their sins had been atoned for. He listened for the faint tinkle of bells on the hem of the high priest’s garment but heard only the plaintive cry of birds wheeling overhead. Joel seemed to be taking a long time. The people waited, watching the sanctuary doors. There was no sign of the high priest.
As the tension mounted, Joshua turned and glanced in the direction he had been avoiding all morning. King Manasseh stood on the royal platform, his eyes fixed on the sanctuary doors as he waited like everyone else for the high priest.
Joshua knew what he had to do if he wanted God’s forgiveness. He pushed his way through the crowd until he came to the barrier that separated the congregation from the royal dais. He drew a painful breath, then stepped over the divide. Two of the king’s officials rushed forward to stop him.
“Let me go. I need to speak to the king,” Joshua insisted. He scuffled with them as he tried to break free. Manasseh looked down at the commotion and their eyes met. Joshua saw Manasseh’s fear.
“Let him through,” the king said in a shaking voice. But the guards didn’t release their grip on Joshua’s arms as they marched him to the foot of the platform. “No, let him go free,” Manasseh said.
Joshua was face-to-face with his enemy, but he hesitated. He couldn’t do this on his own strength. He hated Manasseh too much. He remembered praying for God’s help to love Nathan, and he offered up a silent prayer. Help me do this, Lord. I can’t do it on my own. His lungs wheezed loudly in the hushed courtyard.
“I forgive you, Manasseh,” Joshua said quie
tly. Then he stepped forward to embrace his enemy. When Joshua did, it wasn’t only Manasseh who was set free, but himself.
“Thank you,” Manasseh wept. “Thank you . . . thank you . . .”
As Joshua stepped down again, the sun emerged from behind a cloud, reflecting off the Temple’s golden roof. A murmur rippled through the crowd, and Joshua squinted in the glare to watch as the high priest stepped through the doors of the sanctuary.
Atonement had been made. Joshua’s sins were forgiven.
He wiped a tear as the high priest laid his hands on the scapegoat’s head. “We confess to you, Lord, all of our wickedness and rebellion. May the burden of our sin rest on this substitute that you have provided. And may all of our sins be removed far from us.”
Joy filled Joshua’s soul as he watched the scapegoat being led out of the gate, out of the city to be released into the desert—bearing his sins. As the peace of God flooded his heart, all the suffering of his life suddenly made sense to him. He understood the journey on which God had led him, bringing him here to forgive and to be forgiven. And he knew that for the remainder of his years, God wanted him to help Manasseh with his reforms. Joshua drew a deep breath—his first in many days—and crossed the courtyard to where Nathan stood waiting for him. He felt the sun of his homeland warming his back as he walked, a fresh breeze from the Judean hills caressing his face.
“I could use your help, son,” Joshua said. “We have a lot of rebuilding to do here in Jerusalem.” It seemed to Joshua that his words were an echo of what God was asking him to do.
Nathan looked up at him and smiled, his reply the same as Joshua’s response to God: “Of course, Abba. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
When Christ came as high priest . . . He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. . . . How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
—Hebrews 9:11–12, 14
[Manasseh] got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the Lord, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel.
—2 Chronicles 33:15–16
The Prayer of Manasseh
O Lord Almighty, God of our ancestors,
of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and of their righteous offspring;
you who made heaven and earth with all their order;
who shackled the sea by your word of command,
who confined the deep and sealed it with your
terrible and glorious name;
at whom all things shudder, and tremble before your power,
for your glorious splendor cannot be borne,
and the wrath of your threat to sinners is unendurable;
yet immeasurable and unsearchable is your promised mercy,
for you are the Lord Most High, of great compassion,
long-suffering, and very merciful,
and you relent at human suffering.
O Lord, according to your great goodness
you have promised repentance and forgiveness
to those who have sinned against you,
and in the multitude of your mercies
you have appointed repentance for sinners,
so that they may be saved.
Therefore you, O Lord, God of the righteous,
have not appointed repentance for the righteous,
for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who did not sin against you,
but you have appointed repentance for me, who am a sinner.
For the sins I have committed are more in number than
the sand of the sea;
my transgressions are multiplied, O Lord, they are multiplied!
I am not worthy to look up and see the height of heaven
because of the multitude of my iniquities.
I am weighted down with many an iron fetter,
so that I am rejected because of my sins, and I have no relief;
for I have provoked your wrath
and have done what is evil in your sight,
setting up abominations and multiplying offenses.
And now I bend the knee of my heart,
imploring you for your kindness.
I have sinned, O Lord, I have sinned,
and I acknowledge my transgressions.
I earnestly implore you,
forgive me, O Lord, forgive me!
Do not destroy me with my transgressions!
Do not be angry with me forever or store up evil for me;
do not condemn me to the depths of the earth.
For you, O Lord, are the God of those who repent,
and in me you will manifest your goodness;
for, unworthy as I am, you will save me according to
your great mercy,
and I will praise you continually all the days of my life.
For all the host of heaven sings your praise,
and yours is the glory forever. Amen.
from the Apocryphal book The Prayer of Manasseh (NRSV)
Author’s Note
In 1961, archaeologists uncovered the ruins of a temple on the island of Elephantine in Egypt. Aligned to face Jerusalem, it was identical in size and construction to the Jerusalem Temple and had been built by Jewish priests and Levites fleeing the persecution of King Manasseh’s reign. Records unearthed with it revealed that a full schedule of sacrifices and feast days had been celebrated there. Since no other temple was ever built by exiled priests or Jews, some scholars have concluded that the Ark of the Covenant might have been rescued during the time of Manasseh and housed in Egypt, as well. My novel Among the Gods is based on this premise.
King Hezekiah did have a second son named Amariah. In the book of Zephaniah (1:1), Amariah and his son Gedaliah are listed as the prophet’s ancestors.
Lynn Austin has sold more than one and a half million copies of her books worldwide. A former teacher who now writes and speaks full-time, she has won eight Christy Awards for her historical fiction. One of those novels, Hidden Places, has also been made into an Original Hallmark Channel movie. Lynn and her husband have raised three children and make their home in western Michigan. Learn more at www.lynnaustin.org.
Books by Lynn Austin
www.lynnaustin.org
All She Ever Wanted
All Things New
Eve’s Daughters
Hidden Places
Pilgrimage
A Proper Pursuit
Though Waters Roar
Until We Reach Home
While We’re Far Apart
Wings of Refuge
A Woman’s Place
Wonderland Creek
REFINER’S FIRE
Candle in the Darkness
Fire by Night
A Light to My Path
CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS
Gods & Kings
Song of Redemption
The Strength of His Hand
Faith of My Fathers
Among the Gods
THE RESTORATION CHRONICLES
Return to Me
Keepers of the Covenant
On This Foundation
Resources: bethanyhouse.com/AnOpenBook
Website: www.bethanyhouse.com
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Lynn Austin, The Chronicles of the Kings Collection
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