And then one day the American archaeologist John Cullinane would discover the real psalm of Tell Makor. Each part of the tunnel would by then have been investigated by experts, who would cleverly deduce how the unknown builder must have operated: they would reason that he had punched two small tunnels through the rock, joining them somewhere near the middle, then broadening them out to absorb the error, but they would not be able to guess how he had established his pitch and headings underground, for age and lichen had dimmed the ceiling so that carvings which existed there were long overlooked. But on this day Cullinane would be walking through the tunnel guided by a cheap flashlight and his wandering eye would catch a kind of shadow on the rocks above. Calling for a ladder he would examine the damp roof, then summon his assistants. With infrared photography, with talcum powder and camel’s-hair brushes, the archaeologists would lay bare a dedication whose effect upon scholarship would be pronounced for several reasons. It would provide one of the earliest samples of Hebrew writing; establish an anchor for a sure chronology; and evoke from the past the figure of a real human being wrestling with problems. The same French philosopher would title this inscription “The Psalm of the Tunnel Builder,” under which title it would serve to summarize the age:
Jabaal of Makor built this David Tunnel. Using six flags he found the secret. Using white cords he probed the earth. Using iron from Accho he cut the rock. But without Meshab the Moabite nothing. Jabaal worked from the well and wandered. Meshab from the shaft and true. For Meshab was his brother and is now dead, slain by King David. From the heavens Yahweh directed. From the earth Baal. Praise to the gods who sustain us.
LEVEL
XI
The Voice of Gomer
Babylonian armament. Left: Iron spearhead cast in the city of Urartu (Ararat) on the northern shore of Lake Van in Asia Minor, 684 B.C.E., and traded southward to Babylonia in exchange for woven fabrics. Originally fitted to the end of a four-foot cedar stave imported from Tyre. Right: Helmet in the Assyrian style, made of hammered bronze fitted with bronze rivets, made in 653 B.C.E. in the city of Shushan (Susa), capital of Elam on the border between Babylonia and Persia and traditionally antagonistic to the former. Deposited at Makor in late summer, 605 B.C.E.
These were the generations when Yahweh smote his Hebrews, for still he found them a stiff-necked people.
To punish them he used the Assyrians. In 733 B.C.E. he unleashed Tiglath-pileser III from Nineveh, and of his depredations the Bible says: “In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria … and took Hazor, and Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them captive to Assyria.” In this onslaught 185,000 people were slain and 591 towns were ravaged, but not Makor, for the defenses erected by Jabaal the Hoopoe held off the invaders through a formidable siege until an agreement of suzerainty was worked out. But in 701 B.C.E. Sennacherib came out of the north, and of him the Bible says: “Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.” Even against this scourge Makor defended itself, protected by its David Tunnel, until at last the Assyrians appealed for negotiation, whereupon the community opened its zigzag gate voluntarily. At dawn Sennacherib entered the town; by noon he had assembled the tribute; and at dusk there was not a single house standing. Makor, gutted and burned, its walls thrown down in many places, had ceased to exist, and its Hebrew inhabitants were led away in slavery to join those Ten Tribes of the north who would henceforth be lost to history if not to legend: fanciful writers would try to prove that these lost Jews found new existence as Britons, Etruscans, Hindus, Japanese or Eskimos.
To castigate his Hebrews, Yahweh also used the Babylonians. In the year 612 B.C.E. this rising power humbled Nineveh, driving the Assyrians from the two rivers, and in 605 the mighty Nebuchadrezzar led his troops into one of the significant battles of history at Carchemish along the banks of the Euphrates. Of him the Bible says: “For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers.” And these things Nebuchadrezzar did.
And invariably Yahweh used the Egyptians to accomplish his purposes, throwing them sometimes against Assyria, sometimes against Babylonia, but always against the Hebrews, so that during these dynastic struggles the armies of Egypt were much seen in the Galilee; regardless of who the enemy was, the battles were apt to be fought here. For example, in 609 B.C.E. Josiah, one of the wisest kings the Hebrews were to produce, must have suffered a temporary derangement, for he entered a pact of mutual support on the side of upstart Babylon against established Egypt and Assyria. Of the pitiful battle that resulted the Bible says: “Necho king of Egypt came up to fight against Carchemish by Euphrates: and Judah went out against him.” The confrontation between Egyptian and Hebrew took place at Megiddo, that recurring site of Armageddon, and the good king Josiah was slain. Always the Egyptians Were a threat.
During these turbulent years the stubborn Family of Ur managed to maintain Makor as a minor outpost in no way comparable to its predecessors. Even the town wall, built by Jabaal the Hoopoe in the reign of King David, existed only in fragments, while the principal street, if it could be called such, ran from the main gate to the postern past a miserable collection of buildings. Where a score of enticing shops had once flourished, offering wares from all parts of the Mediterranean, two now offered little. Citizens eked out a frugal existence, for the luxury that had characterized the days of David and Solomon was no more.
At opposite ends of the Water Street stood two houses which summarized the new Makor. By the main gate, in a low, poorly built establishment that rambled over a considerable area and was kept to one floor because Makor could no longer afford timber, lived Jeremoth, scion of the Family of Ur and willing to serve as governor for whatever empire ruled the valleys. He was fifty-two years old, a resolute and crafty man whose ancestors, by one trick or another, had kept the town intact through the civil war that had destroyed the empire of King Solomon and through two hundred years of unremitting Phoenician, Aramaean, Assyrian and Egyptian pressures. In the mournful chaos of those years the Family of Ur had trimmed its banners to each new conqueror marching up to the battered walls. In siege, in pestilence and in terror the determined men of Ur had somehow managed to hold on to their olive trees south of the town and to some kind of governmental residence near the main gate.
Jeremoth, black-bearded, wiry and courageous beyond most of the men in his town, was governed by one fixed idea: this continuity of occupation must be preserved. If the erupting power of Babylon made war against Egypt inevitable, there would have to be war, and Makor would again be trapped between the armies; but if guile and persuasion could preserve the little town, then he was prepared to temporize with anyone. He had five daughters, four of them married to leading merchants and farmers, and he also had a group of brothers who were just as tough as he. Like many families in Makor they had relapsed into being Canaanites who worshiped Baal on the mountain back of the town, and as a well-disciplined unit they relied on the hope there would always be some trick whereby they could keep their holdings intact, diminished though they might be.
At the other end of the Water Street, cramped into a corner near the ruins of the postern gate, stood a small one-room house made of unbaked clay bricks. It had an earthen floor, no furniture, only one window, and the clinging smell of meanness and poverty. It was the home of Gomer the widow, a tall, gaunt woman of fifty-eight who had known a difficult life. An ugly girl, she had married late as the third wife of a miserable man who had derided her in public for being childless and who used her as a slave. After many years, and as t
he result of a scene she had tried to erase from her memory—Egyptian soldiers rioting inside the walls—she had become pregnant, and the wretched old man had suspected that the child was not his. In public he was afraid to challenge her lest he himself look foolish, but in the privacy of their mean home he had abused her; yet when he died it was she and not his earlier wives who tended to his burial.
She had only this one child, a son whom she had named Rimmon, after the pomegranate, hoping that like the seeds of that fruit he might have many children to send her line forward, and Rimmon had grown into a handsome young man of twenty-two whom the young girls of the town admired and who now held the job of supervising Governor Jeremoth’s olive grove. He and his mother were staunch supporters of Yahweh, the Hebrew god, but as a man who worked in the fields for a Canaanite, Rimmon found it prudent to worship Baal as well—a fact which he did not discuss with his mother.
Gomer was a gawky, forbidding woman. Her hair was not even a clean gray, which would have brought her respect; it was a muddy gray. Her eyes were not clear nor was her skin attractive. She had worked so hard that she walked with a stoop which made her seem older than she was, and the only thing about her that was appealing was her soft, quiet voice, hushed through half a century of obeying first her father, then her abusive husband, and finally her handsome son. She spoke quietly, as if she were still in the fields, living in the harvest booth with her father as he guarded the barley and the vines. In her long life those were the only days she remembered with affection, the happy days of harvest time when men built booths so as to be near the produce of their lands.
Now, in the year 606 B.C.E., in the days before Ethanim, the month of feasts—when heat from the desert spread over the land, when late grapes were ripening for the wine presses, and when great Egypt and Babylonia were getting ready to tear at each other while Greece gathered strength in the west—Gomer left her mean house by the postern gate, balanced a clay jug on her head, and descended the gaping shaft that cut into the earth not far from her home. By a considerable margin she was the oldest woman lugging water, and her long spare figure in tattered sackcloth looked out of place as she patiently went down the familiar steps in the company of young wives and slave girls. But since she had no slave or daughter-in-law to help her she was forced to fetch the water for herself.
She had descended to the well, had filled her jug and started her return journey, when she came to a section of the David Tunnel where the oil lamp that hung over the water could no longer be seen, yet where the daylight coming down the shaft brought little illumination, and in this dark passage she heard a voice saying to her, “Gomer, widow of Israel! Take your son up to Jerusalem, that he may cast his eyes upon my city.” She looked around to find who had spoken, but there was only darkness, and she thought that one of the younger women had hidden to taunt her, for often they made fun of her; but again the voice surrounded her, and this time she was certain that it could not belong to any woman. It said, “Gomer, let your son see Jerusalem.”
Not in fear but in bewilderment she left the tunnel and climbed the shaft, ignoring the calls of younger women who were descending by the other stairs, and in a kind of trance she sought for her son, but he had already gone to the olive press, so she put her jug down, went to the main gate and crossed the Damascus road, entering the olive grove belonging to Governor Jeremoth. After a few moments she saw her son working at the press, that ancient system of square stone pits cut into the solid rock and connected by lead pipes so that the settled oil could fall and filter of its own weight. Fortunately, she stopped before coming upon her son, for he was kneeling by the press and she realized that he was saying his morning prayers to Baal, pleading for a good run of oil. She waited until he was finished, disturbed that he should be trafficking with Baal on this particular morning, then went to him.
As always, when she came upon him suddenly, she was impressed anew with what she could only call his radiance: like many of the Hebrews he was blond and freckle-faced, tall and with a quick intelligence. As the son of a widow who was almost a pauper, he had worked in the fields all his life and could neither read nor write, but he had learned from his mother the cherished stories of his people, particularly the steps whereby Yahweh had revealed himself to the Hebrews. At twenty-two he was a young laborer in charge of the one operation which brought surplus money into Makor, so he prayed to Yahweh for moral guidance in the conduct of his life and to Baal for success in his daily work.
Under the fruitful trees Gomer asked, “Rimmon, have you made any plans for going up to Jerusalem?”
“No.”
“Have you ever wanted to go?”
“No.”
She said no more. Returning home she went about her business of trying to borrow some scraps of meat to make a lentil soup for the evening meal of her hungry son, but there was scarcely any food, so at midday she walked along the Water Street until she came to the rambling house in which Governor Jeremoth lived, and there she appealed to the various women living in the house for any sewing or mending jobs which they might have. None could be found, but the governor’s wife took pity on her and said, “My daughter Mikal has been asking for a new white robe in case she accompanies her father to Jerusalem for the feasts.” And she summoned Mikal, a small, dark girl of eighteen, about whom there was much speculation since she was not yet married. She was a lively girl, appreciated by men and women alike, for she had a merry laughter and a birdlike way of tilting her head to smile at whoever addressed her.
Mikal was pleased that the making of her new dress was to be turned over to Gomer, for she had found the older woman pleasant to work with: Gomer was never late, never unpleasant, never delinquent in getting the dress or the undergarment finished as planned. In addition, she had a peasant’s dignity, talking quietly of interesting matters as she worked, and on this fateful afternoon Mikal and Gomer renewed their pleasant friendship.
But next morning as the widow came back through the David Tunnel, her jug filled with water, she was halted as if a mighty hand were obstructing the passageway and a voice said to her, “For the salvation of the world it is essential that Rimmon see Jerusalem.”
Gomer tried to pass the barrier but could not; her feet were nailed to the tunnel floor. “Are you Yahweh?” she asked.
“I am that I am,” the voice replied, echoing from all sides. “And I command you: Take your son up to Jerusalem!”
The invisible barrier was removed, and after a few hesitant steps Gomer could see daylight coming from the shaft. She ran home and forced all thoughts of the tunnel from her mind. She worked upon Mikal’s white dress as if it were the sole undertaking in the world, and her preoccupation was so complete that she was able to bury all thought of Yahweh and Rimmon and Jerusalem. But in the evening, when the voice of cattle came to the gate, and when she could no longer see to thread the needle, she again asked her returning son if he wished to visit Jerusalem.
“No. That’s for priests.”
“You have no desire to see the City of David?”
“You’ve never seen it. Why should I?”
“I’ve always wanted to,” she said in the darkness.
“Why didn’t you go?”
“Can a widow go to Jerusalem? At the Feast of Tabernacles? Who would build her a booth?”
He could not see her face, but it had become transfused with yearning. Like many Hebrews of her generation she longed for Jerusalem as bees long for spring to open the flowers or as lions trapped in the valley hunger for the hills. It was the golden city, the site of the temple, the focus of worship, the target of longing. No other city in the world until the advent of Rome would have the profound effect upon its adherents that Jerusalem had upon the Hebrews, and this in spite of the evil days that had befallen the land. After the death of Solomon the vast empire of King David had degenerated into civil war, splitting into two separate nations, Israel on the north, with its capital at Samaria, and Judah in the south, with its capital at Jerusalem. B
ut with the conquests of Sennacherib the northern kingdom was practically exterminated, as the Bible says: “Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three years. In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.” However, a remnant of Hebrews continued to exist in towns like Makor, subservient to alien rulers and forbidden to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Even so, faithful northerners like Gomer still maintained the City of David as their earthly goal.
“For more than fifty years Jerusalem has been before my eyes,” Gomer said.
“I’m afraid you won’t see it now,” her son replied, not mockingly.
“Suppose I said tonight, ‘In the morning we shall go up to Jerusalem’?”
Rimmon laughed. “We have no money. I must watch the olive press and you must finish the garment.”
Those were Gomer’s ideas, too, and she sadly dismissed from her mind any plans for going to Jerusalem; but next morning in the David Tunnel she was stopped for the third time, and the voice said like the roar of a lion, “Gomer, widow of Israel, for the third time, take your son and go up to Jerusalem, or the penalty will rest upon your children’s children till the end of days.”
In the darkness she answered obediently, “I will take my son to Jerusalem, but may I halt here until the white dress is finished?”
There was a silence, as if the presence were spending his time in judging this humble request, and after a while the voice said, “You are a woman who earns her bread by sewing. For you it is proper first to finish the work and then to leave for Jerusalem.” And Yahweh bided his time.