"Maacah-Maacah, wake up. Help me move this stone."
Maacah stirred and tried to sit up. "Why is it so dark?"
"It's night. The soldiers are gone. I think it's safe to climb out now.
"What about Mama and Abba?"
"I ... I don't know. Come on-help me shove the lid off."
They pushed together until the stone shifted, making enough room for Jerusha to crawl out. Then she helped Maacah. They stood in the center of their gutted home, speechless with shock.
Only the outer stone walls remained standing among the smoldering ruins. A gentle breeze stirred warm ashes beneath her feet. Jerusha looked up and saw a pale sliver of moon and thousands of flickering stars shining in the sky. How could the night be so beautiful, she wondered, when the world around her had been so devastated? She drew a deep breath for the next task.
"Stay here until I'm sure it's safe," she told Maacah.
"No-I'm going with you" Maacah gripped her arm tightly.
Beyond the gaping hole where the door once hung, the ruins of their father's land lay naked in the moonlight. A charred pile of stones marked his emptied storehouses; his slaughtered oxen lay strewn in a heap of bones and entrails; his ancient olive grove with its centuriesold branches lay trampled and burned. The Assyrians had torn his stone winepress apart and left it a smoldering ruin. His farmland and all his crops lay black and smoking.
"Jerusha-over there" Maacah pointed to something sprawled along the vineyard path.
"Stay here," Jerusha said, but Maacah shook her head, still gripping her arm.
Together they walked through the vineyard in the pale starlight and knelt beside their parents' bodies. A ragged hole pierced Mama's heart; Abba's body looked the same. Jerusha closed their staring eyes, then cradled her mother's head in her arms and sobbed. She had thought she had no tears left to shed, but Mama and Abba were dead, and Jerusha wished she had died with them.
Gradually she became aware that Maacah's weeping had faded to soft sniffles. Jerusha felt her sister's hand on her shoulder. "Abba would want to be buried on his land," Maacah said.
Jerusha nodded in agreement. They worked together for the next few hours to dig a shallow grave beside the vineyard. They buried Hodesh and Jerimoth side by side, then piled stones from the winepress in a mound on the grave. When they finished, the sky was growing light.
Jerusha sat on the stone steps of her house and stared at the desolation before her. The Assyrians had swept across the face of the earth like a merciless plague, killing everyone in their path, leaving a legacy of destruction and death-a holocaust-behind them.
"What are we going to do now?" Maacah asked quietly.
"I don't know; just survive." It had been Jerusha's goal for as long as she could remember, but she no longer knew why. She wished the blackened earth would open up and swallow her.
"Maybe we can plant again next spring," Maacah said. "We can grow enough food to live on and-"
"I don't want to live anymore. I'm sick of struggling to survivesick of it all! Mama and Abba are dead, and I wish it was me. I wish I was dead."
Maacah turned on her fiercely, grabbing Jerusha's shoulders and shaking her hard. "Don't say that! Abba and Mama prayed for you! They refused to leave and go where it was safe because they were waiting for you! They died so you could live! You owe them your life, Jerusha! Don't you ever talk like that again!" She stopped shaking Jerusha and threw her arms around her neck, sobbing. "Please-please live for them and for me. I don't want to die."
"All right," Jerusha whispered. "All right, don't cry."
Somehow she would figure out a way to keep the two of them alive. She had promised Abba. She and Maacah still had each other, and maybe that was reason enough to live.
24
IDDINA STOOD BESIDE THE ROAD and stared at the well-worn path that led through Jerimoth's vineyard. The body of the soldier he had killed still lay beside the road, but the other two bodies had vanished. Dried blood marked the place where they had fallen. He had found no sign of Jerusha farther down the road, and after the army had passed, he returned with his men to where he had lost her trail, hoping to find a clue he had overlooked. Instead, Iddina discovered that the bodies were missing.
If they had simply burned along with everything else, some evidence would remain. But there was none. Nor did he see signs of scavengers. Iddina peered closer and saw a flattened trail, as if the bodies had been dragged, leading through the burnt stubble. When he reached the end of it he found the grave near the winepress, heaped with stones.
Every muscle in his body tensed. "Spread out. Search every inch of this farm," he told his men. "Someone lived through this."
With mounting anger, Iddina hurried up the hill to the gutted house, guessing what he might find. Charred beams and rubble lay scattered over the flagstone floor, but in the center of the room a stone had been pushed aside, revealing an empty cistern.
Iddina howled in rage. The little dog had beaten him! And Iddina hated to lose. He no longer cared about his promotion. This was no longer a hunt for sport. He wanted revenge.
He and his men searched every inch of the farm but found no sign of the girl. As the day grew late, Iddina knew that he had to catch up with his troops. He had soldiers to command, the city of Samaria to besiege. For now, he couldn't waste any more time on the girl. But Iddina silently vowed to find her and recapture her-even if it took the rest of his life.
Corpses-bloated, stinking corpses so numerous that they would never all be buried. Jerusha and Maacah had wandered the countryside for days, scavenging for food, sleeping in gutted ruins and in caves, searching for signs of life, for someone who had survived the destruction along with them. But all they found were smoldering ruins, desolate, blackened land, and the eerie silence of death. They were the sole survivors. With every step Jerusha took, with every dead body she saw, her guilt deepened. She didn't deserve to be alive. Why had she survived when so many, many others had perished?
Eventually she and Maacah wandered into Dabbasheth, where Jerusha's long nightmare had first begun. The village lay flattened and burned as if crushed beneath God's heel. As the wind blew soot through the rubble-strewn streets, even the birds were silent. Jerusha sat on the foundation of Uncle Saul's house, trying not to stare at the pitiful bodies impaled on stakes around the village, trying not to look into any of the faces in search of a familiar one. Her cousin's wedding seemed a lifetime ago, part of another world of laughter and song, a world forever lost.
"I don't know where else we can go," she told Maacah. "We've tried all of our relatives' houses ... all of our friends ..."
Maacah didn't reply. It seemed she had also run out of tears to shed at the horror all around them. Instead she bowed her head and closed her eyes to pray. The futility of her prayers angered Jerusha.
"Are you out of your mind?" she asked. "How can you still believe in God? Was He deaf to the cries of all these people? Is He blind to what's happening to His promised land? Doesn't He care about any of this?"
"Jerusha, don't talk that way. You-"
"Have you gone insane, or have I? How can you pray to God after seeing all of this?"
"But Abba believed, and-"
"Abba didn't have to see dead bodies piled up like cordwood! He didn't have to smell the stench of death and decay, day after day, or cry out to God to deliver him from this hell! Go ahead and pray if you want to, but believe me-it won't do any good!"
Jerusha jumped down and stalked away from Maacah, then stooped to sift through the debris of her uncle's house until her hands were black and gritty with soot. She found the blade of a flint knife and a clay storage jar of grain. Most of the wheat kernels were too charred to eat, but she sorted out a few edible grains.
Maacah came over and squatted beside her a few minutes later. " "Jerusha, I know where we can go."
"Where?"
"To Jerusalem. We'll be safe there. I know the way, and-"
"Maacah, you do not!"
&nb
sp; 64 -and we can stay with Hilkiah and Eliakim"
Jerusha stared at her sister as if she had spoken gibberish. "Who?"
"Abba took us to Jerusalem for all the festivals, so we could pray for you. I know the way. We have friends there who will help us."
Jerusha felt a crushing weariness, not only from the thought of another long journey, but also from the hopelessness of it all. How could they travel that far? How could they avoid the Assyrians who were camped between here and Jerusalem? It seemed useless to try. It would be better to die here and get it over with. If only she hadn't promised.
"Is that what you want to do?" she asked wearily.
"I know we can make it."
"All right, then. We'll go to Jerusalem. But don't ask me how" She stared down at the kernels of grain in her hand, then held them out to her sister. "Here. You need to eat"
"So do you."
"Then we'll share them." They divided the kernels between them; they tasted burnt and bitter.
"What else did you find?" Maacah asked. Jerusha gave her the broken knife blade, and Maacah knelt to draw in the dirt with it, twirling her thick braid around her finger as she worked. "I'll show you how to get to Jerusalem. First we follow the road to the Sea of Galilee-"
"Maacah," Jerusha interrupted. "We have to cut our hair."
Her sister stopped drawing and stared at her. "Why?"
"We have to look like boys. We'll be safer that way." She took the knife from her. "Do you want me to cut yours first?"
"No! I don't want to cut my hair at all!" She clutched her braids protectively.
"You have to:' Jerusha said gently. "It's for your own good. It'll grow back. Here-cut mine first, then." She handed her the blade, then drew her hair into a loose bunch and held it out for Maacah.
"Are you sure, Jerusha?"
"Yes."
Maacah sighed and reluctantly started cutting. Jerusha watched her long, brown hair drop in thick clumps at her feet, and some of it blew away with the breeze. She felt relieved, unburdened, as she reached up to feel her head. "Make it shorter, like a man's."
"But, Jerusha-"
"We'll wear men's clothing, too. Maybe from one of those corpses.
"I can't!" Maacah shuddered.
"Just do it. Then you can show me how to get to Jerusalem."
Sunlight glared off the white stones as King Hezekiah climbed the narrow stairs to the top of the city wall. General Jonadab sprinted up the steps ahead of him, familiar with their sloping unevenness and the dizzying, unguarded view of rooftops below. Shebna and Eliakim followed behind him, mindful of their footing and hugging the wall to avoid the forty-foot drop.
When he reached the top, Hezekiah shaded his eyes to gaze at the sprawling new city under construction for the refugees. The area crawled with activity as men labored to lay foundations, plaster mudbrick walls, or tamp earthen roofs with heavy rollers.
"I had no idea we would take in this many refugees," Hezekiah said. "You've built an entire city down there."
"And twice as many refugees have relocated in the Negev," Eliakim told him. "They wanted farmland and seemed grateful to get it, even though they'll have to struggle to raise crops."
General Jonadab wiped the sweat off his forehead. "But these houses are outside the walls. They have no protection."
"We ran out of room inside the walls," Eliakim told him.
"These people are working so hard to rebuild new lives in our nation," Hezekiah said. "Couldn't we extend the city walls to surround this new section of the city?"
"It would be very expensive," Shebna answered quickly, "and accomplish very little. These people are transients who might pack up and leave Jerusalem as quickly as they came"
"They'd be more likely to stay if we offered them some protection," Eliakim said.
"What do you think, General Jonadab?" Hezekiah asked.
"Well, I don't care much about defending the refugees, but from a military standpoint, double walls would be an excellent defense. And this northwest approach to Jerusalem has always been the most vulnerable to an attack."
Hezekiah quickly grasped Jonadab's strategy. "When the enemy breaches the first wall, we retreat behind the second."
"That's right, Your Majesty. Then they have to start all over again on the second wall, adding years to their campaign."
Hezekiah turned to his engineer. "Can it be done, Eliakim?"
"Sure. See the contour of that western ridge? That's where I'd build the wall-around the end of that valley. It would join the old wall there-on the northern side of the Temple Mount."
Hezekiah followed Eliakim's finger as he drew a wide arc. "That would double the size of Jerusalem!"
"That's right, leaving us plenty of room for growth."
Jonadab frowned. "Wait a minute. I think we should repair the old walls first. There are some places where-"
"Why can't we do both?" Eliakim asked.
"Because we do not have unlimited resources," Shebna said. "You are talking about thousands of hours of work."
"Well, there's your manpower!" Eliakim said, gesturing to the refugees in the valley. "I'm sure they'd be motivated to protect their new homes."
"And it has to be done," Hezekiah sighed. "These old walls couldn't possibly withstand an Assyrian siege. The sooner we start, the better prepared we'll be if they decide to invade us next. I think we should start on both projects as soon as we can."
"Yes, Your Majesty," Shebna said. "I will look for an engineer to assign to each project."
"But two engineers will have to compete with each other for manpower and materials," Eliakim said.
The constant bickering between Shebna and Eliakim frustrated Hezekiah. He wondered what lay at its source and how he could resolve it. "I want you to work together on this," he told them. "Shebna, prepare a reasonable budget and allot funds. Eliakim, you'll be in charge of both projects. How soon can you finish your work with the refugees?"
"Immigration has dropped off, now that the Assyrians have overrun Israel. But we can probably expect a few hundred more."
"Do you have someone who can take over for you?"
"Yes, my assistant knows what to do"
"Good. Then draw up plans for the, new walls as well as for repairing and reinforcing the old ones. Inspect the entire perimeter. General Jonadab will work with you and advise you from a military standpoint. Have you two worked together before?"
The two men exchanged glances. Hezekiah saw a look of recognition pass between them-and something more: wariness on Eliakim's part, discomfort on Jonadab's.
"You do know each other, then?" Hezekiah asked.
Jonadab wiped his forehead again. "Yes, we've met. I'm responsible for that scar across his throat."
"No hard feelings," Eliakim assured him. "You were following orders."
"Uriah's orders," Jonadab explained. "I didn't know any better."
"Just keep it in the past, all right?" Hezekiah said. "I need you to work together"
Eliakim extended his hand to the general. "I have no problem with that." He managed a faint smile as Jonadab grasped it.
"The three of you must work together on our nation's defenses," Hezekiah told them. "We must be prepared to withstand an Assyrian attack. Any other suggestions?"
"We should build fortified cities and army outposts throughout Judah to defend the borders and the main routes to Jerusalem," Jonadab said.
"I agree" His nation's weakened condition angered Hezekiah, and he was determined to remedy it, regardless of the cost. "Finish surveying Jerusalem's defenses, then you and Eliakim can do the same thing throughout the nation."
"We'll also need a communication network:' Eliakim said. "I'd like to build watchtowers with signal fires to relay information from outpost to outpost"
"Excellent idea. Let's get to work."
Hezekiah knew he had found three outstanding men, and he greatly admired each of them for their unique strengths. But as he glanced at the scar on Eliakim's neck and at the
silently brooding Shebna, he wished he could be sure they felt the same respect for one another.
25
IT TOOK ELIAKIM MORE THAN a month to inspect Jerusalem's walls and supporting terraces with General Jonadab. Before they had completed their circuit, the Assyrians laid siege to the northern capital of Samaria. Ehakim knew he would have to hurry if he hoped to make Judah secure before Samaria fell.
He sat at his worktable late into the night, searching for ways to save time and improve efficiency. He worked by lamplight, barely able to see what he was doing, with clay tablets and scrolls scattered everywhere. As he bent over his drawings, he heard footsteps and looked up to see Hilkiah dressed in his nightclothes, carrying an oil lamp.
"Such an hour to be working!" his father scolded. "How can you see what you're doing? Must you finish it tonight?"
Eliakim leaned back and rubbed his eyes. "I'm almost finished, Abba. And yes, this has to be ready by tomorrow. General Jonadab and I are presenting our plans for the city walls to the king's advisory council. Have a look." Hilkiah leaned over his shoulder as Eliakim pointed to his drawings. "See? These are the city walls as they currently stand. But the king wants me to expand them like this...
"Around the new city?"
"Right. Ever since the Assyrians laid siege to Samaria, King Hezekiah has been anxious to start working on these double walls." Neither of them mentioned Jerimoth and his family, but Eliakim knew that their friends filled his father's thoughts and prayers. "So now you know what keeps me up so late."
"My son-such an important man. Working for the king's advisory council, no less! Who would have ever believed it? You should thank God every day for such a blessing as this!"
Eliakim frowned. "I've worked hard to get where I am."
"I know, son. I know you have. But remember what the psalmist has written: 'No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt a man. But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another.' "