The Strength of His Hand (27 page)

Jerusha’s hand faltered for a moment as she poured from the pitcher, and Hephzibah glimpsed the terrible fear that she was struggling against. Hephzibah knew how cruel her words had been and how much pain she was causing Jerusha, but she didn’t know how else to drive her away. She didn’t want kindness and friendship. She didn’t deserve them. “What will happen to your faith in God, Jerusha, when the Assyrians kill your husband?”

Jerusha swallowed hard. “God protected Jerusalem once before,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Judah was spared when the Assyrians invaded Israel, remember?”

“Why weren’t
you
spared? Why did He allow all those terrible things to happen to you? If He’s a good God, why doesn’t He do something about all the evil in the world?”

“He does,” Jerusha said angrily. “God asks His people to stand up and fight against it. That’s why King Hezekiah is raising an army to fight the Assyrians. God asks each one of us to do our part in the war against evil, in our own way. He asked me to come here to see you because I know exactly how the evil one can tempt you to such despair that you’d want to end your own life.” Tears filled Jerusha’s eyes as she gestured to the table of food. “This is my way of fighting the evil in this world.”

Hephzibah stood. “I want you to go now.”

“But I want to be your friend,” Jerusha said, shaking her head. “I just want to spend time with you, talk with you, weep with you.” She stood and opened her arms.

Hephzibah longed to be held, but she folded her arms tightly across her chest, fighting the urge. She didn’t believe in second chances. Jerusha and Isaiah were trying to keep her hope alive, and Hephzibah didn’t want to hope. Nothing good could possibly come of it, only despair and sickness of heart when that hope was finally dashed.

“I want you to go,” Hephzibah repeated. Jerusha didn’t move. “All right, I’ll eat something,” Hephzibah said, stuffing food into her mouth. It was difficult to swallow beside the lump of grief in her throat. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, “There, are you happy? You’ve had your own way—I bathed and I washed my hair and I ate. Now go home.”

“Hephzibah, please—”

“You’re hurting me more than you’re helping me, don’t you see?

Leave me alone and don’t ever come here again!” She turned her back as Jerusha quietly gathered up her things and put them in her basket. Hephzibah kept her back turned as Jerusha left, closing the door behind her.

21

A
S TWILIGHT FELL, General Jonadab
slumped against the parapet on top of the city wall and closed his eyes. In a few minutes the sky would turn dark enough to send a message by signal fire to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem. He wished he had better news to tell the king than that he had failed, that the Assyrians would soon demolish his fortified city of Mizpeh.

Nothing had gone as Jonadab had thought it would. The defense of Judah, which he had planned and prepared for, had collapsed in shambles. Thousands of Assyrians had poured through the mountain passes into Judean territory, destroying everything in their path. Without reinforcements, the Judean army could only huddle inside their fortifications and wait for the Egyptian army’s help.

The wall beneath Jonadab shook with the rhythmic pounding of a battering ram. Like a thudding heartbeat, it never ceased day or night. He felt the wall shuddering, weakening with each powerful blow. In the waning light he watched his aide approach, skirting along the top of the wall, bending low.

“How much more pounding do you think this wall can take?” the man asked, crouching beside Jonadab.

“Not much more. Is the millstone ready?”

“They’re bringing it now. Are we going to throw it off after dark?”

“It’s our only chance. The Assyrians keep the battering rams too well protected in daylight.”

“Their archers are deadly, sir.”

“I know. I’m tired of watching row after row of our finest soldiers fall every time we peer over the wall to take aim. No more.”

Jonadab’s troops had suffered such devastating losses that he had finally ordered them not to return the enemy’s fire. The Assyrians stood below in orderly rows, archers in front, artillerymen with sling stones behind. Each row fired, then knelt to reload in routine, lethal fashion.

“The flaming torches didn’t work?” his aide asked.

Jonadab shook his head, his face grim. “The Assyrians were ready for them. They doused the flames before the battering rams even caught fire. Listen—hear that?” In the silence between each pounding blow, the clear sound of hammer and chisel chipping against stone rang out in the night.

“What is that?”

“They’ve got sappers working to enlarge the hole the battering rams have made. They’re right below us. We can’t even see them, let alone stop them.”

“Persistent, aren’t they? What’s their hurry?”

Jonadab rubbed his eyes. “From the time Sennacherib made his first strike against Babylon, his strategy has been to move so quickly that the allies wouldn’t have time to rescue each other. It’s working, too.”

“Where are the Egyptians? Why aren’t they here helping us, General?”

“I’d give my right eye to know. We could have defended the mountain passes with their help and kept the Assyrians out of Judah. Now the enemy has broken through, and we’re no match for them alone.”

Jonadab rose to a crouch as a knot of soldiers came into view, rolling and heaving a huge millstone toward him. Then, raising his shield to protect his head, he stood and peered over the wall at the battering ram below him. As he gauged his target, a sling stone whizzed past his head.

“General, look out!”

A second stone bounced off the edge of his shield, smashing into the side of his face. Jonadab’s aide grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down behind the wall.

“General, you’re hit!”

“No, I’m all right. It’s just a nick.” But the fist-sized rock had stunned him momentarily, and his cheek stung painfully as he wiped away the blood with his fingers. “Roll the millstone over here,” he said when he had recovered. “That cursed battering ram is right below us. And maybe we can flatten a few of those mongrels with the chisels while we’re at it.”

They rolled the millstone into place, then Jonadab signaled to his archers to line up on either side of him and create a diversion. A hail of Assyrian arrows and sling stones followed their meager volley, and even in the fading daylight Jonadab saw too many of his Judean soldiers falling under the onslaught.

“Okay, heave!” Jonadab put his shoulder to the huge millstone and helped shove it through the embrasure in the wall, frustration and bitterness fueling his strength. The stone tottered off the edge and disappeared. A moment later, anguished cries and the satisfying sound of crunching metal and wood came from below as the stone smashed into its target. Jonadab grabbed his shield and peered over to look. The millstone had crushed the armored section around the workers and broken the battering ram’s protruding beam clean off.

“Bull’s-eye!” he shouted. “It’s out of business for good!” He ducked behind the wall again as a heavy round of arrows and stones pounded into his shield, nearly knocking it from his grasp. “They’re not too happy about it, either,” he said, grinning. The weary Judeans cheered. But the celebration ended quickly when one of the sweating men who had helped roll the millstone to the top of the wall suddenly stood up. “I’ve got to see this.”

“No!” Jonadab cried. He dove forward to tackle the man around the knees, but he was too late. Two Assyrian arrows had already punctured the man’s chest. The soldier’s friends knelt beside him, cursing and weeping helplessly as he died. “How can they shoot like that in the dark?” Jonadab mumbled.

He watched soberly as the soldiers tended to the other wounded and dying archers, aware of the undisturbed stillness now that the pounding had ceased and the wall no longer trembled beneath his feet. But thirty feet below, the faint clang of chisels meant that the sappers had resumed their work, finishing the job that the ruined battering ram had begun. It might take them longer, but those cursed heathens would accomplish their goal.

Jonadab longed to give up, to lie down and recover the three nights of sleep he’d lost. But he had to hold the besieged city as long as he possibly could. He had to hang on until Egyptian reinforcements arrived. Together, they could still drive the Assyrians back.

When all the wounded had been tended, he signaled to his aide, and they crept away. “How is the Assyrian ramp progressing?” he asked.

“Quickly. Much too quickly.”

“I want to see it.” The two men skirted the top of the wall, crouching low. All along the way, Jonadab saw his Judean soldiers huddling miserably behind the parapet with their weapons lying idly beside them. Many of them—too many of them—wore bandages from earlier skirmishes. They were losing. Everyone knew it. In a matter of hours the Assyrians would breach the walls, and hundreds of thousands of them would pour inside. Outnumbered, the Judean defenders would be slaughtered.

Jonadab’s aide stopped when they reached the section of the wall where the Assyrians were constructing their earthworks. “It’s right down there, sir.”

“Prepare some torches. We’ll throw them over the side as a diversion instead of risking more of our archers.” His men retrieved bundles of tightly wrapped straw soaked in oil, manufactured by the women and children of the besieged city. When Jonadab gave the signal, the soldiers lit the torches and hurled them over the wall in a steady volley of flames. Then he carefully raised his shield and gazed down at the scene below.

Progress on the ramp had proceeded so quickly that he could scarcely believe his eyes. It was nearly three-quarters finished! He saw laborers scattering to avoid the rain of torches and realized that the Assyrians had continued to work on the ramp even though the sun had set. Under clear, starlit skies and a brilliant moon, they could work throughout the night. He stared down in angry disbelief until a shower of stones and arrows forced him to duck down.

“Curse them all! How could they make that much progress? Can’t we stop them?”

“They keep up a steady covering fire to protect the workers, General.” “Then fire on the workers!”

“Our men won’t do that, sir. The Assyrians are using captured Judean slaves to build the earthworks. We’d be killing our own people.”

Jonadab closed his eyes and leaned against the wall. It shuddered beneath him as another Assyrian battering ram pounded into the wall nearby. Exhaustion and despair tore into Jonadab like a pack of wild beasts clinging to his throat. He no longer had the strength to shake them off.

“There must be something we can do. We have plenty of food supplies… . They’re showering us with so much ammunition we have plenty to return fire… . If we can just hold out a little longer …” He rubbed his burning eyes as his voice trailed off.

“Sir, what about the signal fire? Maybe we can find out when Pharaoh is sending reinforcements.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.” He hauled his aching body upright and followed his aide along the top of the wall to the signal tower, avoiding the frightened eyes of the soldiers they passed. These boys weren’t seasoned warriors like the Assyrians. They were farmers and shepherds, young men barely old enough to grow beards. They should be home plowing their fields and flirting with the village girls, not facing battle-hardened professionals who outnumbered them ten to one. He wanted to weep at the injustice of such a mismatched fight.

As he wearily climbed the stairs to the tower, Jonadab looked up at a perfect twilight sky, slowly fading from deep purple to black. At least he had managed to hold the Assyrians at bay for another day. He silently prayed for one more.

“What’s the message, sir?” the signalman asked.

Should he tell King Hezekiah the truth? That Mizpeh, one of his strongest fortified cities, would probably fall before tomorrow night? And if Mizpeh couldn’t hold out against the Assyrians, even with Jonadab commanding its defense, then none of the other fortified cities stood a chance of surviving, either—including Jerusalem. Its defenses contained weaknesses, too, and in time the Assyrians would find them and exploit them. He remembered Eliakim’s warning and knew that he had been right—they had greatly underestimated their enemy and overestimated their allies.

Jonadab peered through the narrow slit at the valley below, where fields and vineyards once stood. The shadowy forms of Assyrian tents stretched toward the horizon in every direction, dotted with flickering campfires. Tiny Judah didn’t stand a chance. The signalman was waiting for his message.

“Tell them …” Jonadab sighed. “Tell them we’re still under heavy enemy attack, that we’re waiting for the Egyptians—but that we will defend Mizpeh to the very last man.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me know if you get a reply. I’ll be in the command bunker.”

The moon perched on the horizon, illuminating the city streets as Jonadab climbed down from the wall and made his way to his command post. With so much light, the Assyrians would prod the slaves to continue building the earthworks throughout the night. The battering rams would also hammer relentlessly, with a fresh shift of archers covering for them. Jonadab could feel the pounding blows deep in his gut, even though he no longer stood on the wall.

Sennacherib’s lightning campaign would continue to rage all night while the city of Mizpeh huddled in uneasy slumber. Without Egyptian help, he couldn’t possibly stop them. Jonadab sank onto the bench behind the plank table in his bunker and rested his head in his hands.

He was trying to think of a way to halt the construction of the earthworks without killing the Judean slaves, when he fell into an exhausted sleep.

He awoke in a daze when his aide shook his shoulder. The light of early dawn filled the bunker along with the sound of heavy fighting. “General! One of the battering rams has breached the south wall near the gate! They’ve finished the ramp, too! Assyrians are pouring into the city!”

Jonadab scrambled to his feet, unsheathing his sword, willing his stiff legs and groggy mind to move faster. “Divide all the troops!”