Eliakim gripped the bars of his prison cell and stared out into the blackness, his eyes straining for any pinpoint of light. He knew from the distant shofars that the Sabbath had begun. Unless Yahweh provided a miracle, tomorrow he would die.
“Talk to me, Eliakim.” Isaiah’s voice echoed in the void behind him. “The darkness is bad enough—let’s not make it worse by enduring it in silence.” Eliakim slowly turned around and leaned against the bars.
“I have no idea what to say.”
“Well, we can always talk about our doubts and our fears. Yahweh knows them all anyway.”
“I can’t believe you struggle with doubts, Rabbi.”
“Nonsense. Of course I do. In fact, right now I’m wondering what I might have done differently to avoid involving you.”
“I think it’s the other way around. I was responsible for training Manasseh. I raised him after King Hezekiah died. I think I must have failed somehow, to—”
“Don’t lay his guilt on yourself, Eliakim. You raised Manasseh faithfully, according to God’s Law. But once he became an adult it was up to him to choose whether or not he would follow God’s teaching. He alone is responsible for his actions.”
Eliakim nodded, then realized that Isaiah couldn’t possibly see him. He groped in the darkness toward Isaiah’s voice and sank to the cell floor to sit beside him.
“I’m so worried about my family. Jerusha . . . my children. There wasn’t any warning. I didn’t have a chance to make sure they were safe. If Manasseh would kill Abba, then . . .”
“Have you committed your family to God? Have you placed them in His hands?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave them there. Don’t take the burden on your own shoulders again. No matter what happens, they are safe in Him.”
Eliakim closed his eyes, fighting his tears. “Joshua is only twentytwo. He has an entire lifetime ahead of him. Lately he’s been halfcrazy in love with Amasai’s daughter.” Eliakim managed a small smile, remembering Joshua’s mournful yearning. “I know we’re not supposed to play favorites with our children, but Joshua is very special to me. He died in my arms when he was a baby . . . and I breathed my own life into him. He was a miracle baby, born while the Assyrian army surrounded Jerusalem. He has always been so bright and quick, so sincere about following God’s Law, so eager to live righteously. Ever since he was a child he wanted to work for the king—to follow in my footsteps. I had no idea that following my path would lead him here.”
“Eliakim, your son isn’t here in prison with us. If King Manasseh had arrested him, don’t you think that he would be?”
The thought comforted Eliakim for the moment. “Are we really going to die tomorrow?” he asked.
“As the psalmist has written, ‘All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.’ If this is our time, Eliakim, Yahweh is ready to receive us.”
“The king must have gone crazy, accusing you of cursing Hezekiah. Where did he get such an insane notion? Is Hezekiah’s son really capable of . . . of torturing you to death?”
“We’ll learn the answer tomorrow.”
Eliakim ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “Are you afraid to die, Rabbi?”
Isaiah let out a long sigh. “Yes, I fear the pain of death—but not death itself.”
Eliakim leaned his head against the stone wall. “Am I wrong to pray that Manasseh won’t go through with this?”
“No, I’m praying the same thing.”
“I’ve known Manasseh since he was a baby. I rejoiced with his father and mother when he was born. I watched him grow and mature. How can he accuse me of conspiring against him? I’ve worked my entire life to build this nation so that he would have something to inherit. I don’t deserve this, and neither do you.”
“Do you hate him?” Isaiah asked.
“I . . . I hate what he’s doing to us.”
“Can you forgive him, Eliakim?”
“I—”
“No, don’t answer right away. Search your heart first.” Isaiah laid his hand on Eliakim’s arm. “King Manasseh brutally murdered your father. He twisted our words and our motives so he could falsely accuse us and condemn us to death. Tomorrow morning he will execute us. Do you wish for revenge? Do you want to see Manasseh pay for what he has done to us and to your father?”
“God, help me,” Eliakim whispered. “Yes.”
“Yes,” Isaiah echoed. “Yes, so do I.” For a moment neither of them spoke and a deep silence filled the underground cell.
“But we must forgive him,” Isaiah said at last. “‘The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.’ As His chosen people, we bear His image. We, too, must forgive.”
“How, Rabbi?”
“We must not wish for vengeance. ‘Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ Don’t let Manasseh rob you of a lifetime of righteous living by hoarding hatred for him in your heart. There is no place for evil in the presence of a Holy God. Can you imagine yourself standing before Yahweh’s throne tomorrow, asking for His grace, with the ugliness of hatred staining your heart? We must kneel before Him and confess our sin of unforgiveness, confess our hatred and our desire for revenge. Then we must let go of it, asking God to remove it from our hearts. We must choose to cancel the debt of justice that Manasseh owes us. If we do that, you and I will be free.We can go to our Father in peace. We can behold Him face-to-face.”
Deep in his heart Eliakim clung to the hope of a miracle. Maybe God would change Manasseh’s heart. Maybe he and Isaiah would be spared.
It would be easy to forgive Manasseh if forgiving him would allow Eliakim to return to his home and to his family; if he could lie down tonight beside Jerusha again, watch Joshua marry the girl he loved, hold his new grandchild in his arms. If he could continue living the full life he had lived until two days ago, Eliakim would find it much easier not to wish for revenge. But to trust God in the darkness, when the dawn might bring his death . . . this was the most difficult thing Eliakim had ever done. He knelt in his prison cell beside Isaiah and pressed his forehead to the stone floor.
“ ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart,’ ” he whispered. “‘Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. . . .”’
Miriam sat on the floor of her shuttered house and sorted through the basket of barley to remove the twigs and stones. It seemed strange
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that the grandson of Abba’s wealthy master lay propped against her hearth with his wrists and ankles bound, wrapped in her blanket. She hoped he wouldn’t start talking again or trying to bribe Nathan into setting him free. Nathan might do anything for a price. But Miriam believed her father’s story. Abba wouldn’t lie to her. She would keep Joshua tied until Abba came back.
It worried Miriam that Master Joshua wasn’t breathing right. He sounded as if he had just run up a steep hill and couldn’t catch his breath. Miriam stole glances at him from time to time as she rinsed the barley and cut up leeks to make their meal. Sometimes he was watching her, too, and it embarrassed her. She had given Abba her outer robe, which left only her undertunic. She tried to stay on the opposite side of the room so he couldn’t see her. It was dark with the window shuttered. Mattan or Nathan could give him water.
But when the barley was ready, Miriam had to go near him to put the pot on the fire to cook. She knelt beside him warily and poked the coals to rekindle them, then added another stick of wood and made a place for the pot among the embers.
“Miriam, please help me.” His voice was a weak whisper.
“Are you hungry?”
“Let me go home.”
His face was flushed, and he was sweating. Maybe he was too hot by the fire. But no, he was shivering. She touched his brow.
“You have a fever.”
“I need a physician.”
“I can’t pay for a physician.”
“I can . . . my family can. Please . . . send one of your brothers to get my father.”
“Abba said your father is in the palace dungeon.”
Joshua moaned and shook his head from side to side. “He’s not . . . can’t be. . . .”
“My abba doesn’t lie.”
He closed his eyes in defeat, then seemed too weak to open them again. Forgetting her fear and embarrassment, Miriam studied him up close. He would be very handsome if he weren’t so pale and ill. Dark circles rimmed his eyes like bruises. Without thinking, she brushed his curly black hair off his forehead. It felt soft and clean, not greasy and matted like her own hair. But he was burning with fever. What if he died? She couldn’t let him die. Abba had risked his life to save him. Her father was depending on her. Miriam had once nursed her brothers through a terrible fever. She knew what to do.
“Nathan, draw another basin of water from the cistern,” she ordered. “Mattan, bring me every clean rag you can find.” The man moaned as she gently eased him down, resting his head in her lap. “Now, both of you go gather some eucalyptus branches. We need to burn them to freshen the air.”
“But it’s the Sabbath,” Nathan said. “We’ll get in trouble if we’re caught gathering wood on the Sabbath.”
“Then don’t get caught.” Her brother enjoyed the thrill of danger. Miriam knew he would get the wood.
After they left, Miriam spent the next hour patiently bathing Master Joshua’s face and arms and chest with cold water from the cistern. He slept fitfully, and his coughing came from deep in his chest. As she worked, she learned every feature of his aristocratic face by heart: his wide, high forehead; his thick, gently arched brows; his full lower lip; his curly, black beard. When he briefly opened his eyes, she saw that they were so dark she could barely tell where the black centers began and ended.
She had never been so close to a man before, except for Abba. The men Mama brought home were usually drunk, and Miriam stayed away from them, especially after one of them had tried to paw her. She studied Master Joshua’s hands as she bathed them, admiring his long, perfect fingers and immaculate nails. They were smooth rich-man hands, not chapped and rough like her own. She knew from the lavishly embroidered robe and fine linen tunic hanging on the rope above the hearth that he was telling the truth when he said his family had money. What would it be like to be a rich man’s wife?
Before long the boys returned with eucalyptus branches bundled inside their cloaks. They threw them on the fire, filling the room with a pungent aroma, cleansing the air in the stuffy shack. After Miriam had bathed Joshua’s body in cool water for a long time, his fever seemed much better, his breathing easier. She finally moved his head off her lap and rose to tend the fire and stir the barley broth. His eyes blinked open.
“Yael?” he whispered. “Don’t go, Yael.”
Had he forgotten that her name was Miriam? Or was he calling someone else—maybe his wife? She felt a stab of jealousy that she couldn’t explain or understand. She knelt beside him again and tenderly caressed his cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
Miriam hurried outside for a few more sticks of firewood, not wanting to be away from him for too long. Suddenly she thought of her mother’s many boyfriends. Miriam had never understood what drew Mama to them or why she would leave her children alone for weeks at a time to go away with them. But now Miriam felt an inexplicable attraction to this man and wondered how she could convince Master Joshua to take her away with him when he left.
She went back inside and tended the fire, stirring the broth so it wouldn’t burn. Then she knelt beside him again and lifted his bound hands in hers. He opened his eyes.
“Yael?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m right here.”
W
HEN ELIAKIM HEARD
the king’s soldiers descending the stairs, fear gripped him. Heart-pounding fear. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t catch his breath. His limbs trembled like a man with palsy, and he had to lean against the wall in order to stand. He helped Isaiah to his feet, and they huddled together, blinking in the blinding torchlight.
The soldiers unlocked the door and herded them out of the cell. Eliakim’s knees could scarcely hold him, making it difficult to climb the steep, uneven stairs.
He emerged from the lower darkness to palace hallways awash in golden sunlight. The dazzling brightness made his eyes water after nearly two days of total blindness. Eliakim could have walked sightlessly through these familiar corridors without the soldiers leading him. They took him as far as the throne room doors and stopped.
While he waited to be summoned inside, Eliakim remembered the first time he had approached these forbidding doors. He had been awestruck to be summoned by King Hezekiah, astounded to learn that he would work for him. Eliakim thought of all that he and Hezekiah had accomplished together: building the walls, digging the tunnel, confronting the Assyrians, reforming their nation. Hezekiah had become his closest friend, yet now his son—only a few years younger than Hezekiah had been when they first met—was accusing Eliakim of treason and betrayal. He couldn’t believe it. Surely Manasseh wouldn’t go through with this. He wouldn’t execute his father’s trusted friends.
The double doors swung open. The soldiers led Eliakim and Isaiah inside. The throne room was empty except for King Manasseh, seated on the throne, and a cross-eyed stranger with his arm in a sling who sat beside him in Eliakim’s seat.
Manasseh seemed so young and insecure to Eliakim; his fine features were permeated with uncertainty. After two days of blindness, Eliakim’s eyes seemed to suddenly open and he saw that the king was a deeply troubled young man. What was Manasseh so afraid of?
He looked small and lost on Hezekiah’s enormous throne. Manasseh had inherited Hephzibah’s slight frame and would probably never reach his father’s imposing stature. Suddenly Eliakim understood the true root of the king’s paranoia. Manasseh would have to live up to Hezekiah’s stature in the eyes of his nation. That explained his desperate need to know his future and to learn if Yahweh would perform miracles for him, too.
If only Eliakim could sit down with him, talk calmly to him, convince him, somehow, that all of life was a walk by faith. King Hezekiah had experienced fear and doubt and failure, as well. Eliakim wanted to reassure Manasseh that if he leaned on Yahweh in faith, he would be able to build confidence in himself. He stepped forward.