She led Leah down the stairs and through the crowded streets to a gate that led out of the city. Leah recognized it as the one she had come through earlier with her family. At the thought of facing her father, she began to cry again. “It’s my fault . . . it’s all my fault!”
“Why is it your fault, Leah?” She told the woman what had happened, and when she finished, the woman said, “The Holy One will deal with the wicked priests in His time. But what happened to your brother wasn’t your fault. The Scriptures say, ‘Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.’”
Leah knew it was true. “Gideon has always had a fiery temper,” she said.
As soon as they entered Cousin Samuel’s neighborhood, Leah saw her little brother playing in the lane with Samuel’s sons. “Matthew!” she cried as she ran toward him. “Where’s Abba? Tell him to come quickly!” In the panic and confusion that followed, Leah forgot all about the woman who had helped her. When she finally remembered and turned to thank her, the woman had vanished.
All the color drained from Abba’s face as Leah explained through her tears how Gideon had been arrested. “Stay in the house,” he ordered. “Saul and I will go back to the fortress and find him.”
Leah tried to pray while she waited, but she didn’t know what to say to God. Didn’t she need to bring a sacrifice or an offering before she had the right to ask anything of Him? She heard her mother sobbing in the next room.
The sun was setting by the time Abba and Saul finally returned, supporting Gideon between them. “The Romans beat him with rods,” Saul said, “his punishment for assault and attempted theft.” Gideon moaned as they laid him on his stomach on the floor of Samuel’s dingy storage room.
“Get some water and tend his wounds,” Abba said gruffly.
“I’m sorry,” Leah wept as she knelt beside him. “Oh, Gideon, I’m so sorry. . . .”
CHAPTER 9
TEL DEGANIA EXCAVATION—1999
A
bby pulled her Bible and book of devotions from her backpack and settled down in a patch of shade with them to take her morning break. It was secluded and peaceful on this side of the dig site, with birds singing in the grove of fruit trees below the tel and the glittering blue waters of the lake barely visible in the distance. She opened her Bible and read the day’s passage from Psalm 66:
For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver . . . You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance
.
The devotional explained how God sometimes uses difficult circumstances to accomplish His purposes and draw people closer to Him. It was the same thing Hannah’s husband had said—that what others intended for harm, God could use for good. Abby still wondered what good could come from adultery and divorce. And she wondered, as she had every day, what she should do when she returned home.
Should she take the legalistic approach like the Pharisees, divorcing Mark for breaking his marriage vows, then withdrawing from her enemies and starting over someplace else? Someplace where she wouldn’t have to hear the shocked whispers behind her back or endure the pitying looks?
Or, like the Sadducees, should she compromise with her enemies, amicably dividing up the household goods with Mark, and find another man to take Mark’s place? Right now the thought of allowing herself to trust another man was too overwhelming for Abby to contemplate. She hadn’t been one of the popular girls in high school, with dozens of boyfriends and dates. Studious and shy in college, she discovered she had much in common with quiet Mark MacLeod when they met while working at Turkey Run State Park one summer. Surrounded by the forest they both loved so much, falling in love had been as effortless as falling in step with each other on the wooded paths.
The Zealots had chosen to fight, and although Abby didn’t want Mark back and wasn’t interested in fighting with Lind-sey Cook over him, she wondered if she should continue to fight
with
Mark, dragging out the divorce, suing him for the house and every cent he owned. But what good would money do her—or a house in which every floorboard creaked with memories?
Then there was Jesus’ solution. Hannah still hadn’t discussed what that was yet.
As Abby was about to close her Bible she noticed a strange series of markings on the page, as if certain letters and groups of letters had been underlined. She had noticed similar marks a few days ago in another place and had thought they were misprints. She tilted the page to the light to see if these were also typos, but the ink was dark blue, not black. When she flipped to the next page she could see the indentations a pen had made when it had been pressed down. How odd. This Bible was brand-new, a present from Emily. Had her daughter made the marks? If so, what did they mean? She hadn’t underlined verses or even whole words—just random letters. Abby decided to ask Emily about them the next time she sent an email message.
Abby thought about Emily’s last email letter as she walked back to the dig site to resume work.
Daddy came to church with me on Sunday
, Emily had written.
I introduced him to my pastor, and they’re going to meet for coffee tomorrow night to talk. . . .
Mark was going to sit down for coffee and talk? He never talked. He didn’t have time. Throughout their last year of marriage, he’d simply swept into the house to change his clothes or to sleep or to check his mail. The rest of the time he was always busy working fifty or sixty hours a week—at least he’d said he was working. Abby felt her anger building again, churning her stomach like a stormy sea. How could God bring something good out of this?
Hannah was at Abby’s work site when she got back, discussing something with Ari. The vans had left the hotel this morning without Dr. Voss and Hannah—which Abby had thought was strange. Now Hannah beckoned to Abby when she saw her.
“I was just telling Ari the bad news. Dr. Voss hasn’t been feeling well these past few days, which is why he didn’t come with us to Jerusalem. When he complained of chest pains yesterday, Ramona and I finally convinced him to go to the hospital for tests. The bottom line is, he needs bypass surgery. He and Ramona are flying home to Colorado today.”
“Will he be all right?” Abby asked.
“With surgery, the doctors expect him to fully recover. But now I’m going to need someone to take over for him.” She turned to Ari, but before she had a chance to ask, he held up his hands in protest.
“No, Hannah. Not me.”
“But the work on the Roman villa has barely begun and—”
Ari answered her in a rapid burst of Hebrew, but it was clear to Abby from his expression and his tone of voice that he was refusing. It seemed odd that he wouldn’t want to help out, especially since his specialty was the Roman era. Perhaps he was reluctant to elbow into Dr. Voss’s territory.
“Please, Ari. As a favor to me,” Hannah begged. “You know how important this dig is to me. I can’t find anyone else at this late date . . . I’ll lose my funding.”
“I told you, I can’t.”
“But no one else is half as qualified as you are. Please.”
Ari looked away, raking his fingers through his dusty hair as he stared off into the distance for a long moment. “Do you know what a difficult position you’re placing me in?” he finally asked.
“Yes, I know. And you know that I wouldn’t ask if I had any other choice. Listen, you won’t have to write any reports. Give me your notes at the end of the season and I’ll write them for you.”
When Ari turned, he had a pained expression on his face. “Hannah . . .”
“Please
, Ari.” She reached up to touch his shoulder, and a silent acknowledgment of affection and respect passed between them.
“All right,” he said quietly. He glanced at Abby. “But I would like my team from this area to move with me.”
Abby wondered about Ari’s request as she and the four college students gathered all their tools and equipment, then transported them by wheelbarrow across the mound to the far side of the village. There had been little rapport built between Ari and his team, let alone friendship. Why would he request that they all move along with him? But as Abby got caught up in the students’ excitement, she finally decided that it didn’t matter. They all knew that the chances of finding significant artifacts—even buried treasure—were much greater in the sprawling Roman-style villa than they had been in Leah’s house. Everyone was eager to begin.
“I assume you know all your fellow volunteers by now,” Hannah said when Abby and the others arrived at the new site, “but I want you to meet my good Palestinian friend, Mar-wan Ashrawi. I’ve hired him to help out with some of the heavy manual labor.”
He gave a little wave, smiling slightly. He was a nice-looking man in his early thirties, with a square, clean-shaven face and a high, smooth forehead. Abby saw the biceps of a weight lifter beneath Marwan’s sweat-stained T-shirt and wondered if it was from lifting rocks or weights.
“Marwan is a little shy,” Hannah added, “but if you get to know him, you’ll find that he likes to practice his English.”
In the next few weeks, the volunteers began making spectacular finds under Ari’s guidance—traces of decorated stucco walls; a hand mirror, comb, and other delicate toiletry articles; shards of ivory and Roman glass from furnishings and glassware. The difference between this elegant, spacious home and Leah’s tiny hovel was dramatic. So was the change in Ari Bazak.
His enthusiasm became contagious as he climbed down into the pits to sweat and labor alongside his workers. He began to join in their conversation and laughter for the first time all summer and even took part in Hannah’s daily lectures, adding extra tidbits of his own knowledge to hers. He became friendly and personable with everyone on the site—everyone, that is, except the Palestinian worker, Marwan. Whenever Ari and Marwan got within a few yards of each other, the tension between them made everyone uncomfortable.
“Who do you think might have owned this house, Ari?” Abby asked as they worked side by side one morning. He was teaching her how to recover and preserve the fine remnants of painted stucco that had once decorated the walls of the main reception hall.
“It could have been a wealthy landowner or a merchant,” he said, swatting at a pesky swarm of gnats. “Or it could have been the local Roman tax collector’s house. Degania was near a main caravan route, a convenient place for . . . eh, how do you say? . . . a customs booth.”
“Why did everyone hate tax collectors back then?” Abby asked. “The New Testament talks about them as if they were the scum of the earth. I mean, I don’t like to pay taxes either, but I don’t take it out on the poor guy who works for the IRS.”
“It was because most tax collectors cheated the people. It was an insult for Jews to pay taxes to their enemies in the first place, but the collectors took even more money than the Romans demanded, getting rich in the process. Do you remember when the Pharisees asked Jesus if it was all right to pay taxes to Caesar?”
“I think so. . . . Is that when Jesus asked whose picture was on the coin and said give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s?”
“Yes. His enemies were trying to trap Him, and He knew it. If He said they should pay taxes to Rome, it would anger His followers, but if He said no, don’t pay, his enemies could report him to the Romans for teaching the people to rebel. Jesus’ answer was as wise as Solomon’s was when he told the two women to divide the baby in half. His enemies were so amazed they walked away.”
Abby had grown accustomed to hearing Hannah talk about Jesus, so it took her a moment to realize how extraordinary it was for Ari to mention Him. Before she could react, they were interrupted by a shout from one of the students digging in a nearby storage room.
“Dr. Bazak, come here! We found a bunch of painted pottery!”
“Let’s go see.” Ari offered Abby his hand to help her up. The smudges of dirt on his face made him look as endearing as a schoolboy.
The excited students showed them broken pieces of plates and bowls, all exquisitely painted. More remnants were still half-buried in a pile, as if the storeroom had once held a china cupboard. Ari handed Abby a potsherd. Unlike the chunky pieces they’d found in Leah’s house, it was lightweight and delicate, with leaves and geometric designs painted in black on the brownish red clay.
“This is Nabatean pottery,” Ari said as he carefully fitted two large sections together. “It’s well known for its beauty and workmanship. We rarely find it unbroken because it is so fragile. Leave everything where it is and go get Dr. Rahov,” he told the students. “Tell her to bring the camera.”
“Oh my! It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Hannah said when she arrived at the site. Her face seemed radiant. “God bless those clever Nabateans!”
Abby remembered that Hannah had met her husband while excavating Nabatean ruins. She kept forgetting to ask Hannah if she would have a chance to meet Jake this summer, but now wasn’t the time. Hannah was busy snapping dozens of photographs, from every possible angle, to document their find.
Two days later, it was Abby’s turn to make a discovery. While digging in the main reception hall, she found a slab of wood buried beneath the collapsed wall that Marwan was helping her remove. The board was about the size and shape of a book, with a narrow, raised border all around it like a frame. Remnants of a crumbly substance coated one side. She was carefully cleaning the frame with a toothbrush when she noticed something carved into the wood. Abby studied it closely, then stared in disbelief. It looked like the same three Hebrew letters she had found on the weaver’s shuttle in the other house. She quickly called for Ari.
“Am I seeing things?” she asked. “Does that say what I think it does?”
Ari took his eyeglasses from his pocket to peer at it. “Yes . . .” he breathed. “It says
Leah
. . . Unbelievable!”
“What is this thing anyway?” she asked while they waited for Hannah to arrive. “What did I find?”
“It looks like a writing tablet. It would have been coated with wax—that’s what this yellowish stuff is. When you wanted to write something, you carved into the wax, then you scraped it clean to erase it. Children used it like . . . how do you say . . . ?”