The Source

  She had lain in the dust for some time when Joktan said to his sons, “Go fetch the woman, for she was a loyal wife.” And in this manner the widow Timna became part of the Habiru encampment.

  In the days that followed there took place those interchanges of curiosity which marked the arrival of any new family in the fields outside a walled town. The Habiru women walked sedately to the well, using a path that did not intrude upon the town. On their heads they bore large jugs to be filled with the good water, and the women of Makor studied them in silence. Priests left the town to inspect the nomad tents, where they discovered that all the newcomers were members of one extensive family—the people of Joktan, who had been willing to die rather than betray the sanctuary of his gods. The exact nature of his deities he seemed unwilling or unable to communicate, but the priests explained that if he intended sharing water from the well at Makor he must acknowledge the god El, the major baals, plus Melak and Astarte; and although Timna tried to dissuade him from making such a promise, he said that he did not object but made it clear that he would at the same time maintain his own altar under the oak tree, and to this the priests consented.

  It was not surprising that Makor so easily accepted the strangers, the forerunners of a mass immigration that would come centuries later, for in the past thousand years many isolated families had drifted into the outlying fields and then into the town itself, accommodating themselves to Makor, its customs and its gods. The Habiru, even upon careful inspection, gave no evidence of being different from the others, and the priests had a right to assume that within a relatively short period the newcomers would be absorbed as their altar under the oak tree became incorporated into the worship of the monoliths in front of the temple. Such assimilation had always occurred in the past and there was no reason to suppose that it would not happen again. They were impressed with Joktan as a powerful man with sturdy sons, and they were pleased to welcome him as part of their town.

  Having been accepted by the community, Joktan was now free to visit inside the walls, where the luxury of Makor astonished him. He had never lived in a house nor had he seen many, but here were more than a hundred jammed together and their effect upon him was startling. The shops were crowded with goods that excited his envy: wine and oil, crockery and cloth. Especially compelling was the temple area, where the four monoliths bespoke authority. When the priests introduced him to the ancient statue of El he said quietly, “The god I worship is also El,” and the priests nodded in satisfaction.

  Timna, in the tents of the Habiru, learned what a robust race they were, fond of eating and singing, quarrelsome when drunk and close-knit to face all strangers. Boy babies were marked by the rite of circumcision, and girls were married young—frequently to their cousins. To the Habiru the rude altar of El was not so important as the temple was to the town of Makor, but it was treated with a greater reverence, and Timna went there often, finding votive flowers or the feathers of a pigeon. The god who inhabited this holy place did not require first-born sons nor did he desire to see naked girls lying with farmers. Timna was especially impressed when Joktan, who had moved her in with his wives and who was accepting her unborn child into his camp, went to the altar alone to pray in silence, with no drums beating, no trumpets and few words.

  “Who is your god?” she asked one day.

  “The one god,” he replied.

  “Then why did you accept the baals, as the priest required?”

  “In any land I enter, I worship the local gods.”

  “I believe that among the many gods there is one who counts, and the others do not merit worshiping. What is your god named?”

  “El.”

  “The one who lives in the little stone in front of our temple?”

  “El has no home, for he is everywhere.”

  This simple idea reached Timna’s inquisitive mind like sunshine after storm, like a rainbow after a fall of cold rain. She recognized Joktan’s explanation as the concept she had been groping for: a solitary god of no form, residing in no monolith, with no specific voice. With Joktan’s permission she began placing each day upon the altar of this transcendent god a few spring flowers—yellow tulips, white anemones or red poppies.

  It was Timna who showed the Habiru the road to Akka, where Joktan took his donkeys on a trading expedition, for Habiru meant donkey driver or one who was dusty from the roads, and when the caravan returned, laden with goods from the seaport, Joktan sent his sons to the olive field while he went through the zigzag gate to consult with the priests: “In Akka I found much trading to be done. I should like to live within your walls and I shall bring Urbaal’s wife with me, for she is now my wife,” and the priests assented. But when Timna walked nervously past the house of mirth which she had done so much to destroy, she remembered that day when she had first stepped over its threshold as Urbaal’s wife. On the stones Amalek had broken a ripe pomegranate, crying, “May you have as many sons as this fruit has seeds.” Now Joktan led her to a mean shed which the priests had assigned him along the eastern wall, but soon Timna transformed it into a place of dignity with an altar to the one god, and she found consolation when a son was born whom she insisted upon naming Urbaal, that his line might continue. But her joy in this son was tarnished when priests came to the shed, saying to one of Joktan’s slave girls, “Your baby is a first-born of Joktan, and his wrists we shall mark with red.”

  In the anguish of this bereft slave girl Timna relived her own grief, which gnawed at her heart as rats gnaw wheat, and she felt more sorrow for this poor girl than she had for herself, for now she was able to see infant sacrifice as the incomprehensible cruelty it was. Leaving the shed with its red-marked infant, she fled disconsolately into the streets, past the house of Amalek, where she had stood guard one night, past the house of mirth, where Matred now ruled in bitterness, up past the monoliths who would never again have power over her, and down along the western wall till she reached the secret spot where the four Astartes lay buried with their ridiculous phallic stones. Over their heads she stamped her feet, crying, “You sleeping down there, you contain no life. You are corruption. Life lies in the womb of the slave girl.” And she wept for Urbaal, for the slave and for the red-marked infant lying in its crib; in this deep humility of spirit she leaned against the wall and became the first citizen of Makor to pray of herself, with no altar and no priest, to that formless god whom the Habiru had introduced to this vicinity.

  In the morning, when drums called worshipers to the place of sacrifice, Joktan was bedazzled by the power of these new gods. Fiery Melak fascinated him, a deity of immense potential, and when his child was lifted into the air and thrust down upon the stone arms, he experienced a sense of religious awe unknown before, and when the festive part of the celebration began, with music and soft singing, Joktan guessed that something exciting was about to happen.

  Leaving Timna and the slave girl mourning at the altar of the fiery god, he moved into a front position among the crowd and saw for the first time the tall priestess Libamah appear through the temple doors, a living goddess moving with more than human grace. In her spun robes she was lovelier than any woman he had encountered in the desert, and when the priest finished undressing her so that she stood fully revealed, he gasped with a delight he had not imagined possible.

  Timna left the weeping slave girl and moved into the crowd just as her husband realized that some man in the audience was about to be nominated to lie with the dazzling priestess, and she watched with incredulity as Joktan leaned forward, his mouth agape, staring like a small boy as the lithe prostitute completed her dance. With her feet apart Libamah waited for the priests to indicate her mate for that day, and in that moment of hesitation Timna saw with horror that Joktan’s lips were moving and he was praying, “El, let it be me!” And when a pottery maker from the town leaped onto the steps to fulfill the demands of the rite, Joktan stared at the proceedings with such intensity that Timna, who had seen that look before, could guess what heated imagini
ngs were racing through his mind. And the solitary altar under the oak tree was remembered no more.

  LEVEL

  XIII

  An Old Man and His God

  Two clay pots thrown on a potter’s wheel and fired at 880° centigrade at Makor, 1427 B.C.E. Bodies light red in color. Left pot decorated on inside with dark red and yellow stripes in slip. Right pot on outside with slip in same colors. All colors darkened by absorption of ash laid down during a conflagration in midsummer, 1419 B.C.E.

  The sun-swept desert was as silent as the heavens on a night when there are no falling stars. The only sound was a soft rustle on the sand as a serpent, reacting to some unspecified fear, left the sun to seek the protection of a tall rock. A few goats grazed silently among the scattered boulders, finding shreds of grass where none seemed to exist, and two gray dogs from the encampment moved silently to keep the goats from roaming far. Like the snake, they were apprehensive and kept looking not at the goats but at some mysterious thing that moved they knew not where.

  Then came a rustling sound from a bush—a tumbleweed kind of bush, half as big as a man, which ran and twisted across the desert when it dried—and the two dogs looked sharply, as if a hyena had come creeping in to snatch a goat, but still they did not bark, for they knew that the trembling in the bush was caused by no animal.

  A light began to glow in the branches but no smoke came, nor flame either, and the bush shook as if it were determined to tear itself loose now, this hot afternoon, and go tumbling across the desert, even though no wind was blowing. As both the light and the trembling increased, a voice came, speaking gently and with persuasion.

  “Zadok?” All was silent. “Zadok?” The dogs leaned forward. “Zadok?”

  From behind the rock to which the serpent had fled an old man appeared—bareheaded, lean and leathery from his more than sixty years in the sun. He had an untrimmed beard that reached his chest, and wore a coarse robe of knotted wool and heavy sandals; he carried a shepherd’s stave but did not lean upon it. Cautiously he moved out from the rock and like a reluctant child took his place before the burning bush.

  “El-Shaddai, I am here.”

  “Three times have I called you, Zadok,” the voice said.

  “I was afraid. Have you come to punish me?”

  “I should,” the voice said gently. “For you have disobeyed me.”

  “I was afraid to leave the desert.”

  “This time you must go.”

  “To the west?”

  “Yes. The fields are waiting.”

  “How will I know where?”

  “Tomorrow at dusk your son Epher and his brother Ibsha will return from spying out the land. They will show you.”

  “Are we to occupy the land?”

  “Fields that you did not cultivate shall be yours and olive presses that you did not build. The walls of the town shall open to receive you and the gods of the place you shall respect.”

  “These things I will do.”

  “But remember the curse that shall be upon you if you worship those other gods. Or fail to observe my instructions. I am El-Shaddai.”

  “I shall remember, I and my sons, and the sons of my sons.”

  The trembling of the bush ceased and the light began to fade, whereupon he prostrated himself and cried, “El-Shaddai, El-Shaddai! Forgive me for not having obeyed you.” And as the light retreated the voice said, “Sleep in the shade, Zadok. You are a tired old man.”

  “Will I live to see the fields of promise?”

  “You shall see them and you shall occupy them and on the eve of victory I shall speak with you for the last time.”

  There was silence, and that day the hyena did not come.

  As in all times, these were years when El-Shaddai had power to command and men had free will to accept or reject his commands as their consciences dictated; therefore Zadok carefully considered the fact that his god had ordered him to sleep but decided that he might better spend his time on tasks which he must complete if his clan was to cross enemy territory. Finding a place in the shade of the tall rock, he chipped away at the big end of a flint nodule, building a smoothed platform from which he could later knock off a series of sharp knife blades to be fitted into wooden hafts which some of his sons were carving, and as he huddled over his flint, like a young apprentice taking care not to ruin the nodule, he epitomized his history. For the past three thousand years copper tools had been known in these regions, and at least two thousand years ago smithies in the towns had discovered that if they mixed one part of tin to nine parts of copper they could produce bronze, which was harder than either of the original component metals used alone. With this bronze the townsmen were now making tools of subtle precision and weapons of power. In the towns, life had been revolutionized; but this old man still clung to his flints, making from them whatever tools and weapons his people required. He used flint not only because he could get it for nothing—whereas bronze tools cost dearly in hides—but also because he knew that if his god had intended his Hebrews to use bronze he would have put it in the world for them and not have asked them to mix metals, which was a suspicious occupation and an evidence of human arrogance.

  To all problems the old man reacted in the same way: there was an ancient truth that had been proved by long years of usage and there was innovation which might lead men into unknown regions, and he was determined to keep his people secure in the old ways. He preferred the practical thing done in the practical manner. His people worked harder than most, so their flocks prospered. His women spent long hours making cloth, so his men dressed better than other nomads. He taught diligence in all things and reverence, too, so the families about him multiplied. And since his people were content to live within the protection of El-Shaddai, they were happy and creative.

  For if the old man who led them was practical, sitting on his ankles and working his flint to that richly satisfying moment when he could begin tapping with his small stone hammer, flaking off one sharp knife blade after another—the reward for having done one’s preliminary work carefully—he was also a spiritual man whose tired eyes could see beyond the desert to those invisible summits of the imagination where cool air existed and where the one god, El-Shaddai, lived. In later generations people who spoke other languages would translate this old Semitic name, which actually meant he of the mountain, as God Almighty, for through devious changes El-Shaddai was destined to mature into that god whom much of the world would worship. But in these fateful days, when the little group of Hebrews camped waiting for the signal to march westward, El-Shaddai was the god of no one but themselves; they were not even certain that he had continued as the god of those other Hebrews who had moved on to distant areas like Egypt. But of one thing Zadok was sure. El-Shaddai personally determined the destiny of this group, for of all the peoples available to him in the teeming area between the Euphrates and the Nile, he had chosen these Hebrews as his predilected people, and they lived within his embrace, enjoying security that others did not know.

  He was a most difficult god to understand. He was incorporeal, yet he spoke. He was invisible, yet he could move as a pillar of fire. He was all-powerful, yet he tolerated the lesser gods of the Canaanites. He controlled the lives of men, yet he encouraged them to exercise their own judgment. He was benevolent, yet he could command the extinction of an entire town—as he had done with the town of Timri when Zadok had been a child of seven. He lived in all places, yet he was peculiarly the god of this one group of Hebrews. He was a jealous god, yet he allowed non-Hebrews to worship whatever lesser gods they pleased.

  As Zadok chipped away at his flint, he knew that the mountain in which El-Shaddai was supposed to live did not exist in any ordinary sense of the word, for it would be offensive to imagine so powerful a god as limited to one specific place, with a tent, a couch and a concubine; no sensible man would commit himself to a god so restricted. El-Shaddai was a deity of such all-pervasive power that he must not be tied down to one mountain, unless t
hat mountain were like the god himself—distant and everywhere, above and below, not seen, not touched, never dying and never living, a one god towering over all others, who existed in a mountain of the imagination so vast that it encompassed the entire earth and the starry heavens beyond.

  It was his possession of this god that had caused Zadok his recent fear, for the old man sensed that such a deity could never have been conceived by men who lived in a town, nor by settled farmers who occupied river valleys where growing seasons had to be protected by propitiating seen gods who lived in known places over which they exercised a limited jurisdiction. Such settled people required seen gods to whom they could return; they needed statues and temples. But nomads who lived at the mercy of the desert, who set forth on a journey from one water hole to the unseen next, taking with them as an act of faith all they owned and everyone they loved, trusting blindly that the path had been ordained for them and that after many days of near-death they would find the appointed well where it was supposed to be … such nomads had to trust a god who saw the entire desert and the hills beyond. Reliance upon El-Shaddai, the unseen, the unknown, was a religion requiring the most exquisite faith, for at no point in their lives could these lonely travelers be sure; men often came to water holes that were dry. They could only trust that if they treated El-Shaddai with respect, if they attuned their whistling harps to his, he would bring them home safely through the bleak and empty spaces.

  Looking up from his flints, Zadok turned his face toward the silent bush and said, as if reporting to a trusted advisor from his camp, “El-Shaddai, I am at last prepared to take my people to the west.” The bush said nothing.

  For fifty-seven years, beginning as a child, Zadok son of Zebul had been speaking with El-Shaddai, and in accordance with instructions from the solitary god, had kept his clan in the desert while others had left for the south on adventures that would be long remembered. Centuries earlier the patriarch of all, Abraham, and his son Isaac had moved down into Egypt, where now their descendants languished in slavery. The clan of Lot had settled the country of Moab, while the sons of Esau had conquered Edom. Lately the clan of Naphtali had swung off to occupy the hill country of the west, but Zadok had kept his group in the northern desert, listening for the clear word of El-Shaddai that would take him out of the lonely desert and into the land of promise.