Elijah (16 page)

“Then how, Yahweh, will you show the people that you control the rain?” The prophet looked up into the cloudless sky, as though an answer might be written there. But the dull blue expanse was empty. The afternoon sun, ringed with ever-widening halos of heat, drew shimmering waves from the little plain in front of him.

“And now I must go to Zarephath,” he sighed, “to hide in the home of a widow.” The word from Yahweh had been vivid, but he still was not sure whether God had spoken to him in a dream or out loud while he was awake. Zarephath was a long way from his wadi, above Tyre on the coast of the Great Sea, in the nation of Jezebel’s birth. “Well,” he chuckled, “Ahab will never think to look for me there.”

The ravens had not come this morning or the day before, and the pool was becoming stagnant as it dried up.

He looked again at the Pride of Jordan. To journey north for thirty miles or so to the Sea of Chinnereth through that jungle was too dangerous, with its snakes and wild beasts. But if he traveled by the road that ran along the plain he surely would be seen by someone desperate enough for the drought to end to report his presence to Ahab’s searchers. The ancient King’s Highway, high above and behind him on the tableland of Gilead, was the most dangerous of all.

He decided to travel the first distance at night. Once at the Sea of Chinnereth he could move up its east side, which was in the country of Aram-Damascus. Then he would have to skirt wide around Dan, a journey that would take him along the base of Mount Hermon and up into Coele-Syria, the valley between the Lebanons.

As Elijah began his journey he noted that the ground was very hard, unsoftened by the October rains. The plain had not been planted. He crossed the familiar wadi beds each in turn, each usually swelled in the fall by several small springs, but now only their main channels held a trickle of water. Narrow strips and patches along their banks were broken up and planted in wheat, the farmers hoping to irrigate tiny crops should the drought continue.

Normally, wheat fields stood on several levels of the wadi’s chasm. The farmers planted them a few days apart so they would not ripen all at once. Now, he knew, the little fields were hard and barren.
What goes on in the homes of the farmers during a drought?
he wondered.
Do the men reassure their wives? Do they pray for rain? Do they talk of how they will stretch their food? Can they make love while they fear what harvest time will bring?
Elijah was not a farmer, though his people, as sheepherders, were close to the land. They moved their flocks to wherever the grass was best. A year of drought was hard on them, and the tribes would fight over water holes, but they were mobile and better able to survive a famine, even with the hardness of it.

He made his bed before daybreak, expertly criss-crossing branches in a sidr tree to form an arbor as protection from the sun. He slept fitfully under it as his mind refused to rest. When he awoke to stare at the cane arbor, he wondered what was most important, that men and women and children live without hunger or that Israel throw off the Baal worship. But Yahweh had spoken, and he would not waver from his commission.

Elijah had traveled most of the next night by the time he approached the sea. The prophet could make out only a glow, but he knew instinctively that the light was from a ring of torches that surrounded the ancient pagan site of Beth-yerah where the Jordan emerges from the sea.

He gritted his teeth, the rage against Melkart and Asherah burning away the tinge of doubt he felt in his dreams. The passions the Israelites aroused at the altar of Beth-yerah would not be satisfied either with a night of orgy or the return of rain. Once the people became committed to power, they themselves would produce a greater famine for the poor than the drought ever could. “Yes,” he whispered between clenched teeth, “better a short famine of rain than a lifelong famine of bare existence while the poor watch the power increase their luxury.”

He crossed into Aram-Damascus soon and was in less danger from Ahab, since King Ben-hadad was the Israelite king’s archenemy. Nevertheless, Yahweh’s curse by the mouth of his prophet would be well known here and the people as anxious as Israel for the drought to end. But he was not known by sight, so careful travel during the day still was possible.

Elijah stood on the beach for a moment, then gave himself over to the invitation. He stepped into the water, bent over, and splashed some of it onto his face. Then he waded farther out and broke into a swim. The water was not cold once he adjusted to it. Turning back toward the shore, he made the distance in a few strokes. Revived, the dust rinsed from his clothes and body, he strode back onto the red lava soil and sat on a black rock.

The morning sun shoved the shadows downward from the hills that rose to the west. A single lark began to sing, then was joined by another and another until the new morning was filled with their silvery joy. The reflection of Mount Hermon took shape in the clear water, and Elijah noticed fishermen at work some distance from the shore. Their trade would become increasingly important as the drought continued.

The prophet found a secluded spot in one of the several wadis that ran east from the sea. He slept only three hours, then resumed his journey. He moved faster in the day, skirting the impassable Jordan above the sea by climbing to the high tableland to the east.

The dark red soil of Bashan stretched as far as he could see. Below him, hid in the twelve-hundred-foot-deep chasm, the black rocks beat the Jordan’s wild torrent into foam. The vast twin ranges of the Lebanon mountains rose awesomely directly north. The peaks of Mount Hermon filled the sky. Across the valley of Coele-Syria to the west was Mount Lebanon. Through the wild gorges, steep cliffs, and torturous rivers and wadis he must travel to Zarephath. He forced the trip from his mind. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other until the journey’s end.

The sun shining directly from the west was hard, and as he turned east his shadow fell long before him. He could see a long distance across the treeless plain. Sheep grazed in distant clumps on the brown grass. Beyond them was a cluster of black goathair tents. He headed toward them to claim the hospitality that traditionally was extended to the traveler.

Barking dogs announced Elijah’s approach to the tents soon enough for the ruling sheik to meet him on the plain. By the time they arrived at the door of the largest tent, wine was ready and poured. Happily and gratefully, Elijah drank his first taste of wine since he spent the night with Rejab many months before.

The sheik was not fond of Israelites, but, as custom required, he made Elijah a welcome guest, the more because he was a prophet. Discourtesy to a prophet was not at all wise, even if the prophet served another god.

When Elijah revealed who he was, the sheik looked at him in stunned horror, but he quickly regained control of himself, then avoided any reference to Yahweh or to the drought. There was no point in antagonizing a prophet who, just possibly, really was in control of the weather. But on the next day, after Elijah left, the leaders of the clan would talk long about the battle of the heavens.

The evening meal, though quickly prepared, was sumptuous. Elijah slept well that night, though the strangeness of sleeping on a mat under cover of a tent caused him some difficulties at first. The next morning, after a breakfast of breadcakes and goat’s milk, the sheik provided the prophet with a pouch of nuts and bread, and a skin of water. “Your journey will be dry today,” he insisted “and the food will last you for two days.” Then, just as Elijah was departing, the sheik asked—half begging, half demanding—for a blessing.

“You have been kind to Yahweh’s prophet,” Elijah answered, “and though the drought will continue, may Yahweh guide you to good pastures and running water, and may you come through the drought without the loss of a single sheep or goat.” Elijah’s voice grew stern then. “But I adjure you in the name of Yahweh that you tell no one that you have seen me. If you do, all that I have blessed you with will be removed and the drought will render you poor.”

The sheik nodded his thanks and understanding of the condition.

Elijah hoped to reach the Beth-gad road and spend the night somewhere below the summit of Mount Hermon. The cool daytime weather of the early winter made for comfortable walking, but he was glad he would not have to sleep in the open here on the plain, for the winds that blow in from the desert at night are quite cold.

Three hours later the prophet neared the border of Israel again. Beth-gad was only four miles to the west, down the steep hill that starts just beyond the strange Lake Phiala. It was an ancient city of gods, and though now part of Israel, Baal was the god most fervently worshiped. Elijah felt the rage build up again inside his chest. He could guess what was taking place that moment at the shrines around the headwaters of the Banias, one of the sources of the Jordan.

An extensive social scheme had developed to accommodate the tragedies that occurred around such shrines. The offspring that came from the sexual unions were set apart as holy, partly revered, partly disdained, to spend their lives wandering from shrine to shrine or, if they were more fortunate, to serve as priest to a wealthy family or even perhaps in a temple. But the real tragedy was the child who, perhaps stoic, perhaps screaming, certainly terrified, was sacrificed to appease Melkart or Asherah in hopes that Baal would reverse the family’s bad fortune.

There would be more of that, Elijah knew, as the drought continued. Desperately religious parents, groping for some way to call Baal’s attention to their plight, would make the supreme sacrifice to prove their allegiance to their god. At times an entire city would organize a mass ritual of child sacrifice. At the end of such a day the streams that ran below the altars would be red with blood, and the smell of burned flesh would fill the air. Parents would watch in stunned silence until grief tore shrieks of despair from the mother’s throats and the fathers would clench their teeth to remain strong while tears welled from their eyes to flow down cheeks of faith.

Elijah turned his face upward. “Is this the only way, my Lord?” he asked. “Must children die because of the drought?” But he knew God’s answer even as he talked, for Yahweh had spent long years coping with the problem. The prophet looked northeast toward Damascus. Child sacrifice was a way of life there—at the beginning or end of a military campaign, at the start of the planting season, whenever the spring or winter rains were a little late in coming. And child sacrifice had seared the consciences of the people so long that they became cruel, like Nahash who demanded of every man of Jabesh-gilead that he yield to having one of his eyes put out.

Baal had the great advantage of building on superstitions. There below him, at Beth-gad, the headwaters of the river came gushing from a cave at the foot of a great iron-red sheer limestone cliff. Only the gods can provide water, the ancient Canaanites had believed, so this spot where water suddenly is plentiful must be holy to the gods. And is that not Mount Hermon that towers above, the very citadel of the gods? Does not mist come from its summits? Do not its slopes hold snow all the year around?

Yahweh would not claim such a home, and since he does not, it must be because the god at Beth-gad is stronger, at least here, than Yahweh. And now the Baal priests claimed the spot for Melkart and Asherah, so Baal must be the strongest of all.

Yahweh, then, must be weak, with his demands that the widow and orphan be cared for, that the foreigner be treated with compassion, that every man be given a piece of land to be his own, that a man and wife dedicate their entire lives to each other, that in business dealings men must be fair and honorable.

The prophet resumed his journey, tired more from his thoughts than from his walk. Shortly, he would be climbing upward, into the evergreen oaks of Hermon’s lower ridge, to pass shrine after shrine—or rather, small temples, some thirty to fifty feet long—strewn all along the base of the great mountain. At every one of them, pilgrims or nearby farmers prayed and sacrificed animals to entice Baal to send rain.

Ten miles later, toward evening, Elijah gained the road from Beth-gad to Hermon’s summit. The night would not be pleasant, though the small trees and bushes that lined each semblance of a wadi would divert the chill winds. But his mantle was warm and he would sleep well enough.