Elijah (29 page)

He left the barren chalk hills soon and entered a stretch of desert that supported rare clumps of scrub and even, in the wadis, more aggressive growth. But though the small trees and winter-dead grass of the dry wadis appeared as oases in comparison to the desert’s bleakness, the region was forbidding. The bare stretches of rock-littered gray and tan wilderness shouted its awesome warning to travelers to seek directions before journeying into the great and terrible Sinai Desert.

Those who survived the wilderness sought those directions carefully at one of the towns or cities that lay on its perimeter, like Beersheba or Kadesh-barnea. The traveler would question until he knew every landmark, every trail, every watering place, every controlling Bedouin tribe and its leaders. The prophet, then, had double reason for going through Kadesh, to seek directions and to start his pilgrimage at the site where Israel itself languished for much of her forty years of cursed wandering.

By the time Elijah reached the sprawling town dusk was dissolving into darkness. He was disappointed at first at the smallness of the ancient settlement until, the next morning, he discovered that the city was spread in wide-ranging clusters up and down the wide Wadi el Qudeirat and its tributaries, each cluster concentrated near or around a rock-sided well. The town had no strong buildings to form a center, only a ramshackle marketplace that, later in the morning, was filled with desert Bedouins and the almost-alike Judeans of Kadesh. They were desert toughened, darker than their kinsmen to the north, due surely to the ferocity of the sun.

Kadesh was on the very edge of the terrible wilderness, the last outpost between the vengeful desert and the dew-tempered hills and wadis that stretched north and west. His forefathers lived on the edge of existence for forty years.
Now
, he thought,
they have chosen again to live on the edge of existence in their wanderings of the spirit
.

To the south the wilderness began in earnest. Elijah looked out toward the Tih, the Wilderness of the Wandering, shielding his eyes from the glare. That is the hardest way to Mount Horeb, though the shortest.
Perhaps,
he thought,
the harder way is the better way for the wandering soul. Forty years Israel wandered, ten times four years.

The holy significance of the number was apparent. Ten was the number of human completeness, four was the cosmic number to symbolize the world. The forty-year period then had its divine purpose—to bring God’s people to completeness.

Elijah started down the north slope of the hill into the Wadi el Ain. His journey, the journey that would be too great for him without the sustaining food provided by God, would be in that great wilderness. He would stretch his journey to Horeb to last forty days, a day for a year. Perhaps Yahweh would do in his soul what he did with Israel.

Once in the valley the prophet sought out an elderly Judean for directions. They sat for more than two hours under a terebinth tree. The old man was glad to share his knowledge with a traveler, especially with a prophet of Yahweh on a pilgrimage to Mount Horeb. He described the wilderness in great detail. When Elijah bade the man good-bye, he started his journey with confidence.

Elijah spent the days exploring the region. He examined every slight valley and camped beside every waterhole, forcing his mind back into the minds of his forefathers, to think as they thought, to see life as they saw it. He struggled to grasp the secret of the disbelief and weakness that forced their wilderness wandering, then he struggled to grasp the secret of the faith and fierce commitment that made their children a conquering nation.

He walked the trackless expanse of the Tih, the vast plain west of the Wilderness of Paran, and wondered at the black flint, worn glass smooth by the wind-driven sand, thickly strewn across the gravel plain, a mixture of black against harsh white. He felt the flint slip underfoot and cut into his sandals, and his legs ached from the short, ineffective steps he was forced to take.

He scooped dirt from wadi junctures to uncover the hidden water of the
temails
, and filled his waterpouch time and again with the yellow, brackish fluid that appeared when sand was scooped from the right place. He wandered over the Tih for hours at a time without seeing a single shrub. He wondered at the tiny snails that sealed themselves airtight onto the rare plants that grew erratically along wadis. At the appearance of the equally rare rainy season the snails would come to life again.

The prophet traveled east to explore the Wilderness of Paran, part of the terrible plateau that broke farther east into eerie, craggy mountains in their plunge to the Arabah. He tried to guess where his forefathers may have traveled, where they pastured their flocks, and where they pitched their tents. He felt the hardness of the arid region, and felt the sun burn into his already deeply tanned skin. When he ran out of water he felt the spittle dry salty on his lips, to leave them swollen and cracked. He felt the fiery burning of a parched throat and the heavy weight of disobeying limbs and the fear of hallucinations in a land that did not care.

He watched the colors of gray and white desert turn to hues of reddish browns and more distinct grays, and saw the sandstone hills turn into rainbows brushed by the rising and setting sun. He felt the breathtaking heat of the still
hamsin
and shivered under the heavy and penetrating cold of the nights. He looked forward each day to the relief of the late afternoon breeze that rarely failed to come.

He ate sparingly, to allow the fast to do its work in his soul. When he did eat, it was the pleasantly acrid, fleshy-leafed
gataf
plant.

The days were too agonizing to pass quickly. They lingered long, the nights longer, to melt one into the next with an ever-increasing sameness. Toward the end he knew he had discovered the source both of weakness and strength that drained one generation and shaped the next. The desert that proved too hard for a generation of slaves formed of their children a generation of warriors.

He found that secret, but he did not find the answer to his own life. Mount Carmel still loomed as one of Israel’s great miracles, and the Israelites still followed other gods.

During his wanderings he had worked his way farther south into the wilderness, so that on the morning when he determined to move on to Mount Horeb he stood on the southern rim of the Tih. The air was quite cold, and the prophet shivered even under the warmth of his mantle. The enormous plateau cut its triangular point through the heartland of Sinai. Then it stopped, with abruptness, to fall away all along its cliffs to a wide sandstone plain, the Debbet er Ramleh. Its mountains were low and rare, broad at their tops, with bizarre shapes, its valleys sheer-walled and narrow.

Beyond the sandstone range rose the blue-hard granite mountains, the majesty of all Sinai. They were a chaotic mass, with sharp ridges and snowcapped peaks that clawed upward to tear at the sky. Mount Horeb was straight ahead, two days’ journey away, the highest point on the peninsula. The slightly lower but unbowing Mount Serbal rose to dominate the range to the west of God’s mountain.

Elijah was thinner now, his skin looking older from his fast, with slight hollows under his cheekbones. His limb muscles were sinewy rather than rounded, his dark eyes and hair more prominent than ever before. He moved down the trail with resolute determination, his mind forcing his body, his body obeying with strength drawn from the mind, obeying because the mind would not let the body stop. The body was beyond fatigue, unfeeling, a vehicle only to carry the mind.

But the endurance of the body passed into the mind. The mind would not be still. It darted catlike from thought to thought, finely tuned by the desert fast to recall details of the prophet’s life and of Israel’s history. Yet for all its discipline and recall it could not quiet the prophet’s foreboding spirit. The soul was as exhausted as the body, forced on to Horeb only by the dominating mind.

He was in a different world now, the sickly-green herbage of the valley that would through a maze of barren ridges looking rich in comparison to the Tih. Large thorny trees grew spasmodically along the bottom and lower sides of the narrow valley. The walls rose sharply on both sides, perpendicular at places.

By late afternoon he arrived at the large Wadi Feiran, the route the ancient Israelites followed inland from the Red Sea during the Exodus. The floor was of white sand, smooth in places, stone-littered in others. The mountains rose in irregular patterns from each side, their height tempered by the wadi’s wideness.

He turned east. His mind projected into the valley a scene, almost a mirage in its reality, of thousands of newly-freed slaves shuffling along the path of dust and stone, their fear dominating their hope, their bickering eclipsing their faith, led by a man determined to free them against their will. It was here, in Sinai, not many miles up the wadi, that Moses had faced some of his most trying hours. But in those hours, Elijah’s mind insisted to his sick soul and tired body, Moses heard God most decisively.

By midafternoon of the next day the prophet could contain his excitement no longer. He broke into a run, his sandals kicking up spurs of dust where his toes propelled him forward. He ran hard for a few minutes, then settled into an easier stride. The valley was splotched with vegetation, thin-trunked acacia trees with their flat tops of tangled branches, palms ringed along their bottoms with wild new growth from fallen seeds, and gnarl-trunked terebinths. He passed all of it without notice, nor did he notice the peaks, rising ever higher and more imposing as he moved south. He ran erect, his legs pumping in their short-stepped way, his arms moving in rhythm to his stride, his eyes fixed only on the wadi as an obstacle to surmount.

Elijah maintained his pace for four miles, then, as he rounded a bend, Mount Horeb came into view. He stopped, his hands at his sides, his breath coming in deep, fast gulps. The base of the mountain was hidden by outcroppings and turns of the wadi, but the bald ridge rose in steep precipices all the more imposing because the prophet had not noticed the increasing height and strength of the range.

He fell to his knees, his arms limp to his sides, still with his face raised to the Mount of God. Its high crags scraped hard knuckles against the sky. The Mount of God indeed was awesomely majestic, powerful, immovable, but it did not speak. No thundercloud hung over its blue-shouldered height. No crevice opened up to speak. No message was etched on its rocky cliffs. The excitement drained from him then. He felt empty, unable to express either his sense of shame or his anger. Yet he knew from a lifetime of experience with God that Yahweh often does not speak when his servant expects him to. Disappointed, yet confident that Yahweh would speak in his own time, the prophet rose to complete his journey.

In thirty minutes he came to the plain where Israel assembled to hear the reading of the Law. The prophet looked up the two-mile length of the Plain of Rahah. The whole nation could be accommodated by its wideness.

He turned to face the Mount of Safsafeh. It was not the highest peak in the range, but it was imposing. Elijah surveyed the holy mountain carefully, trying to set every detail in its proper place in history. Moses could have stood on any of a number of ridges on the lower part of Safsafeh as he read the Law to the assembled Israelites. And a select group of tribal leaders could have stood on the semicircular mound that ran along the base to form an amphitheater, a favored position from which to hear the solemn words.

A peaklike ridge caught the prophet’s eye. It was a miniature of the whole mount itself. Though less than halfway up, it claimed a majesty of its own.
A perfect place for a golden calf
, he thought,
a limited view but an easier climb. It is the nature of men to settle for less than Yahweh can offer.

His sense of despondency returned. How must Moses have felt at that moment when he came down the mountain with the stone tablets heavy in his arms, only to see the golden calf standing on the lower hill? Moses had his miracles, too, and yet his people worshiped other gods.

Elijah stared at Safsafeh into the evening, until its sunset-pinked walls turned dark and he turned with a shiver to find his shelter for the night. All of those miracles and more did not keep the Israelites from abandoning Yahweh for their golden calf.

Chapter Fifteen

During the next several days Elijah explored the region. Water was plentiful, perhaps more than anywhere in Sinai. He found running streams in four of the valleys that ran in and around Mount Horeb. A wide basin, beautiful and rich, dipped high up into the center of the mountain. The range had several basins, in fact, with a variety of grass, herbs, and trees, all unseen from below.

On successive days he climbed the various peaks, each time expecting a message from Yahweh, each time caught only in his own thoughts. He scaled Mount Safsafeh first, trying to recapture Moses’ experience. There was a small basin part of the way up, where Moses may have left the elders of Israel to continue to climb alone.

The long, high ridge behind Safsafeh, Elijah concluded, was where Moses must have received the Law. A small cave would offer protection to the lawgiver during his forty days on the mountain, and not far away was a cleft large enough for a man to crawl into. Perhaps the cleft was where Moses caught a glimpse of God. The summit itself rose even higher, precipitously; perhaps at its peak Moses received Yahweh’s law.