“Easy, Joshua. It’s only me, Asher.”
Joshua’s heart continued to pound even after he saw that Asher was alone, unarmed. “How did you find me?”
“You were dressed like a Moabite, and this was the only caravan from Moab.”
“What do you want?”
“We can’t talk here,” Asher whispered. “Follow me.”
Joshua remembered Jerimoth’s warning that a reward might be offered for his capture. He might be walking into a trap. He braced his legs to run and glanced around, planning his escape route if soldiers suddenly appeared. The main entrances would be guarded. Maybe he could lose his pursuers in the back lanes of the marketplace. But how would he get through the city gates? He didn’t have Maki to help him this time. As his heart crashed against his ribs, Joshua’s raspy breathing raced to keep pace with it.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Asher. Tell me what you want.”
“It’s Rabbi Gershom. He asked to see you.”
“You told someone else I was here in Jerusalem?” Joshua’s panic soared at the thought of a servant overhearing Asher.
“I only told the rabbi. You know you can trust him, Joshua.”
Yes, Joshua knew that he could. Rabbi Gershom, his most demanding instructor, had taught the Torah to him and Manasseh for twelve years. He had demanded excellence, and Joshua had always worked hard to please him. Rabbi Gershom was wise, God-fearing, and exacting, and he could make Joshua feel as if he had done something wrong even when he hadn’t. But when Joshua did transgress, such as the time Manasseh had convinced him to skip their lessons and go for a walk, the grave look of disappointment on the rabbi’s face had been much worse than any rebuke he might have given. Being ill with a breathing attack afterward seemed like a minor punishment compared to what Joshua deserved. Now, when he remembered what he had done to his hair and beard, his hand flew to his face self-consciously.
“Why didn’t the rabbi come here with you?” he asked.
“He can’t. He’s too weak to walk. He’s been bedridden for several months now. He’s dying, Joshua.”
Rabbi Gershom dying. The words made no sense. Gershom was a huge bear of a man, taller than Joshua’s father, with a body like the trunk of an oak tree and thick, hairy arms and legs. Bushy black brows jutted over his dark eyes, eyes that pinned you like hot, iron nails. Even his voice roared, bearlike, as he thundered the words of God’s holy Law. Joshua could never imagine Rabbi Gershom too weak to leave his bed. Asher might sooner ask him to imagine the Great Sea going dry.
“Please, Joshua. You would help the rabbi rest in peace.”
Joshua realized that they were almost all gone—all the faithful ones of King Hezekiah’s generation, the ones who had witnessed Yahweh’s miracles: his father, Rabbi Isaiah, King Hezekiah, the high priest, Amasai the Levite, Lord Shebna, Joah the scribe, and now Rabbi Gershom. Who would take their places? Joshua thought of the next generation. Hadad was a drunkard. Asher trembled helplessly behind the walls of his father’s house. Joel, the high priest’s successor, was in exile, working as a scribe in Moab. Joshua himself labored in foreign fields and temples.
“All right,” he finally said. “Lead the way.”
A deep uneasiness filled Joshua as he followed Asher up the hill to Gershom’s house. He lived just below the king’s palace and the Temple Mount, not far from Joshua’s old house. Joshua had avoided this part of town, fearing the memories. Flickers of winter lightning flashed in the deserted streets, but it was too far away to hear the answering thunder.
The rabbi’s house was dark and shuttered. Asher led the way inside without knocking. A solitary oil lamp burned on a stand beside Rabbi Gershom’s bed. He lay propped on cushions with his eyes closed, but he opened them as Joshua entered the room. Joshua recognized the thick brows and gimlet eyes, but they were on the wrong face, the wrong body—on a man half the size of the bearlike Gershom. His dark, swarthy skin was as pale as parchment. Joshua stared, and Gershom stared back, until Joshua realized that the rabbi hadn’t recognized him. He touched his sideburns as if he could make them grow back.
“I’m sorry, Rabbi. It’s me . . . Joshua ben Eliakim.”
“Yes, I see that now. Please, sit down.” The rabbi’s bed was a thick pallet of straw on the floor, covered with rugs. He motioned to a pile of cushions on the floor beside him, and Joshua sat down, crosslegged. Asher went out, leaving them alone.
“It seems we’ve traded bodies, young Joshua. You have grown strong and brown, while now I am the one who is thin and pale.” He smiled slightly, and Joshua looked away to hide his sudden tears. He had never known Rabbi Gershom to smile, much less attempt a small joke. “So, my son. Now you have come back to us, a changed man.”
Joshua cleared his throat. “I came back for my fiancée, but—”
“Asher has told me the story. I’m sorry.” The compassion in Gershom’s eyes stunned Joshua more than the smile had. This wasn’t the same stern man who had been his teacher for so many years. Gershom was a changed man. He reached for Joshua’s hand and covered it with his own huge one. “But even in something as painful as this, Yahweh’s will must be accomplished.”
Joshua’s face hardened at the mention of Yahweh. “I don’t know if I believe in God anymore, Rabbi.” He didn’t care if he shocked Gershom or disappointed him. In fact, he hoped the rabbi would throw him out of the house. He could deal with Gershom’s anger, but compassion and understanding from a man who was obviously dying was too painful to endure.
“Of course you believe in Yahweh!” Gershom said. “You wouldn’t be this angry with Him if you doubted His existence.”
Joshua realized that it was true. He wasn’t angry at fate or at circumstances but at a Person—Yahweh. The God his fathers had trusted and worshiped and served. The God who had inexplicably abandoned him.
“I have every right to be angry.”
“You’re angry, Joshua, because Yahweh’s actions don’t fit your image of Him. The idol you’ve made won’t do your bidding.”
“But the Torah promises that if we observe God’s commandments we will live. ‘He whose walk is blameless is kept safe.’ My father—”
“Is your idol limited to one verse? Does that sum up all of your beliefs? Don’t you see? Yahweh had to destroy your limited image of Him so you would worship Him as the sovereign God. We are put here to do His bidding, not the other way around.”
Joshua didn’t want to hear any of this. He wanted to leave. But even in the dim lamplight, Gershom’s eyes and voice and words had pinioned him, and he couldn’t move. The rabbi was forcing Joshua’s feet to find their footing, to seek solid ground after floundering in bitterness and uncertainty for so long.
“I understand your anger, son. You have suffered a great deal for one so young. But that only means that Yahweh has a great purpose for your life.”
“My life had a purpose before Yahweh abandoned me!”
“Every great man God has used first suffered adversity and seeming abandonment. Think of Jacob, running from Esau’s death threats; Joseph, sold into slavery and unjustly imprisoned; Moses, fleeing Pharaoh’s palace to tend sheep for forty years; or King David, hiding from Saul’s jealous rages. Yahweh deals with our pride and our selfsufficiency through adversity. And, oh yes, my young friend, you had plenty of both. In adversity our intellectual knowledge becomes actual knowledge. You’ve learned these words . . . say them with me: ‘Even though I walk . . .”’
“ ‘. . . Through the valley of the shadow of death,’ ” Joshua recited, “ ‘I will fear no evil, for you are with me. . . .”’
“Yes, Joshua. And now that you and I are walking through that valley, we will learn if it is true. Adversity is the testing ground of our faith. God has to risk losing you forever to your anger and bitterness in order to have you for His true son. Anyone can believe and sing praises on the Temple Mount when the sun is shining, but true praise is sung in the darkest valley when the Accuser tells you to curse God for making you suffer so much pain. If you can still praise your Father’s goodness, even in the darkness, then you are His son indeed.”
Joshua stood, his body rigid with anger. “Then I guess I failed the test. I failed God and I failed you. Yahweh’s risk didn’t pay off. He
has
lost me!”
Rabbi Gershom laughed out loud. The sound of it—unexpected and unfamiliar—stunned Joshua. He slid to the floor again.
When the rabbi’s laughter ended, he wiped his eyes. “You fail to convince me, Joshua ben Eliakim. You have your faults, but being a quitter was never one of them. I’ve seen you wrestle with a difficult interpretation of the Law long after your friend Manasseh gave up— working late into the night, wasting gallons of lamp oil, so your father told me. But to give up on Yahweh before He gives you an answer for your suffering? I know you too well.”
“You’re right! I do have questions for God! Like, why did He allow Abba to die? Abba loved God. He served Him faithfully. Why—?”
“Hold it. Stop right there.” Gershom held up his hand, the stern teacher, once again. “You are not asking a valid question, and so Yahweh is not obligated to answer it.”
“I have a right to know why Yahweh allowed my father to die!”
“No, you don’t. You have no right at all. What Yahweh asks of your father is Eliakim’s business, not yours. Just as it’s none of your business why Yahweh has me lying here on a bed of pain, wasting away.”
“He was my father!”
“Yes. And so was I.”
Joshua clenched his fists, clinging to his anger like a drowning man clings to a plank. It was the only thing that kept him afloat, preventing him from sinking even further into sorrow and loss. God was taking everyone—his father, his grandfather, Yael, and now Rabbi Gershom. “I’m not supposed to ask why?” he said, his voice shaking.
“You may certainly question Yahweh, but ask the right questions, Joshua. Ask Him what He wants to teach you through this suffering. Ask which of your faults, like pride or self-sufficiency or selfrighteousness, He’s trying to purge from you. Ask which of His eternal qualities, like love and compassion and forgiveness, He wants to burn into your heart. Yes, go ahead, ask questions! Ask why He gave you the talents and gifts that He did—your excellent mind, your ability to lead others. Ask Him what He wants you to do with your life.
“Your friend Manasseh has been asking the wrong questions, as well. He also wanted to know why God allowed his father to die after all the good things Hezekiah had done. Yahweh longed to use Manasseh’s grief to draw him to himself, to teach Manasseh to lean on Him as he had once leaned on his father. But Manasseh wanted easy answers. He didn’t want to wrestle with God, and so he answered the questions himself. He decided that Isaiah and your father had killed King Hezekiah. Now sin and bloodshed and suffering have multiplied from Manasseh’s mistake. And he’s still looking for easy answers. Instead of asking God how he should live each day, he’s asking sorcerers and mediums what his future is going to be. Have you seen what King Manasseh has done to our nation?”
“I can’t move around freely, Rabbi. It isn’t safe.”
“Manasseh practices all the sins of his grandfather, King Ahaz: idolatry, witchcraft, divination, sorcery. Sometimes I think, this can’t be Hezekiah’s son! How devastated that godly man would be if he saw the evil in his child’s heart!”
Joshua choked back his shame. What would Abba say if he saw the hatred and bitterness in his son’s heart? Joshua leaned his elbows on his thighs and rested his forehead in his hands. “What do you expect from me, Rabbi? Manasseh won’t listen to me anymore.”
“The Torah says, ‘Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—one that brings on misery by its decrees? They band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.’ Earlier the psalmist also asks this question, ‘Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?’ ”
“You expect me to oppose the king? How? I can’t undo all the evil Manasseh has done. What do you want from me?”
“There’s a scroll on that table over there. Can you reach it? Yes, that one. Now, unroll it and read it to me.”
Joshua removed the linen covering and unrolled the scroll, recognizing the precise script of the Temple scribes. But it was a long scroll, much longer than any of the books of the Torah. He found the beginning and read, “‘The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah son of Amoz saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah—”’ He stopped in amazement. “These are Isaiah’s prophecies?”
“Yes. An entire lifetime of oracles. A few years ago Isaiah asked the scribes to make a copy of his original scrolls for safekeeping. I want you to take it with you when you leave Jerusalem.”
“But why? What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Manasseh confiscated all of Isaiah’s original writings. Keep this copy safe until all this madness ends.”
“And then what?”
“A valid question. I expect Yahweh will tell you if you ask Him.”
Joshua laid the scroll on the bed beside the rabbi. “I can’t take this. I’m not going back to Moab. I’m leaving for Egypt tomorrow with the caravan.”
“So. You’ve decided to run away from God instead of running to Him?”
“I’ve tried, Rabbi! I’ve cried out to God for answers! He hasn’t
200
given me any!”
“With all that you’ve suffered, I suspect that your own cries of pain are still drowning out the voice of God. He’s waiting for you to let Him shine the light of His presence in the darkness of your fear and grief. But you’re not desperate for that light yet.”
“You think I enjoy this suffering?”
“No, but you’re still looking for a way to cure it yourself. You thought that coming back and marrying Yael would make you happy again, and it might have for a while. But the only thing that will ever make you feel whole again is a sense of Yahweh’s presence in your life.”
“He abandoned me, Rabbi, not the other way around!”
“That’s not quite true. How earnestly did you seek God’s presence before all this happened, when you had your old life?”
“I read the Torah, I prayed, I kept all the sacrifices, obeyed all the laws—”
Gershom’s eyes pinned Joshua. “Did you have a daily sense of His presence? Or did you live in the afterglow of your father’s and grandfather’s relationships with God? Think about it. They brought an awareness of God into your life. They were the ones who impressed His commandments on your heart and talked about them when you sat at home and when you walked along, when you lay down and when you got up. When did you ever have to seek Yahweh’s face before this tragedy happened? In whose strength were you living: God’s or yours?”