Elijah (32 page)

The king lay unmoved with his face to the wall. She sat on the bed. “My husband and king,” she asked with tenderness, “why are you so distraught?”

He did not move.

“My king, surely nothing has happened that cannot be remedied. Why have you shut yourself off from me?” The queen laid her head on his shoulder. “Ahab, please. Don’t be sullen. Uncover your head and tell me what is wrong.”

Ahab pulled the pillows away and threw them violently against the wall. “Naboth refuses to sell me his field.”

Jezebel laughed softly, but she caught herself as Ahab turned toward her, his face flushed and angry. Quickly she asked, “Why did he refuse to give you the land?”

“I made him every offer. I told him I would trade him a better field or pay him more than it is worth. He would not even bargain.”

Jezebel rose and walked to the center of the room. She turned toward him and spoke sternly. “I fear that you are following the way of Yahweh.”

Ahab swung his legs over the mattress and blurted his words. “Naboth is within the law. It is his ancestral land. He has the right to keep the field.” He slammed his fist into the bed.

The queen did not speak. She felt a sense of indignation rise in her. “Ahab,” she called with a tone of authority, “who is king of Israel?”

“What kind of question is that?” Ahab responded angrily.

“Are you king of Israel or not?” Jezebel asked.

Ahab looked at her hard.

“Come and eat,” the queen smiled. “Melkart has ways of serving kings and queens. I will get the land for you.” She extended her hand to Ahab.

His look softened and he shook his head. “How can you be so cocksure?”

“Because I know my God.” She waved her fingers to offer her hand. “I will get you the land, then I will give it to you as a gift. Now, come with me and eat.”

Ahab shrugged his shoulders and rose from the bed.

The next morning Jezebel went to her business chamber early. She called for parchment and wrote a single letter to be circulated to the leading men of Jezreel. She handed it to the courier with express instructions to wait until each man on the list read the letter, then to carry it to the next man. Naboth was not on the list.

Within a week, the men on the list had called a three-day fast for Jezreel. The people responded with obedience. They had no real choice but to trust their leaders. Such a fast as this announced that the city stood in danger of calamity. The unknown cause must be discovered and rectified during the fast.

In each home, under candlelight, each family talked of the fast’s meaning. Who had breached God’s law so severely as to bring the entire city into danger? Did the councilmen think Ben-hadad was going to attack? Was the drought to begin again? They mused over past events. They searched their own lives. They looked at their neighbors with suspicion. Their stomachs growled with hunger. The men gathered in the marketplace to argue the possibilities. The women gossiped at the city’s wells. Through it all, the councilmen maintained a glum silence, while Naboth wondered why he was not consulted before the announcement.

On the evening of the third day the men of Jezreel met in solemn assembly in the judgment hall. To his surprise, Naboth was given the seat of high honor at the center of the head table. He wondered why. Yet had he not been a leading citizen for years? Perhaps he was to be honored for past service.

Other councilmen took their places on either side of him up and down the long table. The townsmen crowded into the room to sit on the hard benches. The bustle of robes and low chatter was subdued by solemn concern, for tonight the impending crisis would be announced, or perhaps discovered, and solutions would be sought.

A priest arose and began his chant.

Happy is the man whose disobedience is forgiven,

Whose sin is put away!

Happy is a man when the Lord lays no guilt to his

account, and in his spirit there is no deceit.
¹

The assembled people responded with a loud, “Amen.” The priest continued, his monotonous chant hardly changing in pitch, reciting every inflection just as it had been determined by long custom. The people knew every word well, and where to interrupt with the proper response.

While I refused to speak, my body wasted away

With moaning all the day long.

For day and night thy hand was upon me,

the sap in me dried up as in summer drought.

“It is true, O God,” the people shouted, filling the brief time space allotted by the priest.

Then I declared my sin, I did not conceal my guilt.

I said, “With sorrow I will confess

my disobedience to the Lord”;

Then thou didst remit the penalty of my sin.

“We confess, O God.”

So every faithful heart shall pray to thee in the

hour of anxiety, when great floods threaten.

Thou art a refuge for me from distress

so that it cannot touch me;

thou dost guard me and enfold me in salvation

beyond all reach of harm.

“God is merciful.”

I will teach you, and guide you in the way you should go.

I will keep you under my eye.

Do not behave like horse or mule, unreasoning creatures,

whose course must be checked with bit and bridle.

“Heal our hearts, O God.”

Many are the torments of the ungodly;

but unfailing love enfolds him who trusts in the Lord.

Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous men,

and sing aloud, all men of upright heart.
¹

“Rejoice in the Lord, for he is merciful.”

The priest paused and raised his hands upward. The people joined him immediately as he recited the Shema, his voice pitched higher than usual. All of them spoke in monotone, dropping their voices at the end of each phrase, “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh is our God, one Lord.”

The priest sat down. An elder seated beside Naboth rose. He spoke as though his words were memorized. “People of Jezreel,” he began, “we have met here in solemn assembly to seek the word of Yahweh as to our sin, to purge our sin and petition our God to remove the calamity that faces us. But before we proceed, the council has determined to honor a man who has served our city well.” He caught Naboth by the arm to beckon him to his feet.

As if on signal, two men rose from the back of the hall and started forward. One of them shouted, “A moment, my lord.”

The elder feigned surprise. Naboth looked at his host in anticipation. The two men sat on the bench in front of the table, as accusers were required to do, directly across from Naboth.

“This man deserves no honor, my lord,” one of them said.

Naboth sat down, his brow wrinkled, but satisfied to let the elder handle the interruption.

The accuser continued. “My companion and I are here to tell the whole assembly the cause of the fast. It is Naboth who brings threat of disaster to Jezreel.”

“You have an accusation to make against Naboth?” the elder asked. He glanced nervously at the accused.

“Naboth has cursed Yahweh and the king. By law, he must be stoned. This is the cause of the calamity.”

“Your charge is serious. Are you certain?” the elder interrupted.

“In the presence of my companion and myself, after King Ahab talked to Naboth about buying his vineyard, Naboth cursed the king. To curse God’s anointed one is to curse Yahweh himself.”

“You need not inform the council of the law. Do you swear to the truth of your charge?”

Naboth pulled himself to his feet and leaned angrily toward the men. “You lie!” he shouted. “Never have I cursed the king. I do not know you!”

“We heard him in the marketplace. This man is not worthy of honor. He is worthy only to be stoned for his blasphemy.”

The elder shouted his question again over Naboth’s protests. “The law requires two witnesses to such a crime. Do both of you swear you tell the truth?”

“Yes, we swear,” the men answered simultaneously. “We are witnesses, both of us.”

Induced by the fast and the tension it created, the pent-up emotion of the people exploded. Yahweh had given the answer to the distress. Naboth was the guilty on. “Stone him!” someone shouted. Several young men pulled the table out of the way and rushed at Naboth, whose screams of protest were lost in the din. He flailed at them, but a blow by one of the larger men sent him sprawling. Naboth’s sons struggled toward their father, screaming at the young men to leave him alone, swinging indiscriminately at all who caught at their clothing.

The hysteria spread. Other men joined the melee. Naboth whimpered with disbelief. His sons were surrounded by men who caught their legs and arms and pummeled their faces and bodies. The crowd moved toward the door and out into the street, carrying the dazed Naboth and the struggling sons with them. Someone shouted that the law required the whole family to be stoned. Another voice took up the call for Naboth’s wife. A crowd of men moved toward the house to fetch her.

The scene lasted only minutes. Naboth and his sons were carried by their arms and legs outside the city walls and thrown into a gully. The first stone caught the back of Naboth’s shoulder, then another one broke his hand as he covered his face. The three men were unconscious by the time their wife and mother was shoved headlong down the low hill to join them. Her clothes were ripped away, shamefully exposing her aged breasts. The men aimed their rocks at her exposure. She pulled herself mutely to her knees, the screaming gone, and called her husband’s name. The crowd paused for a moment. She tried to crawl toward him. A man shouted and threw a rock with deadly aim. She collapsed. A pool of blood quickly formed under her head. The rocks continued, thrown with all the strength the men could muster as they tried to outdo their fellows in zeal and marksmanship. Soon the bodies were half covered with the sharp stones. One son’s cheek was torn back in jagged red edges over one eye. Blood streamed from a severed artery in Naboth’s neck. The soft thuds continued long after the cries had stopped.

The last sounds were of rocks clattering on rocks, thrown with less fury and less aim than before. The crowd grew silent. Slowly, men turned toward the city gates. The shocked ones left first, the more morbid later. The last man threw the last rock with all his fury, as though to confirm the righteousness of his cause.

Naboth’s daughters cowered in their homes, crying hysterically, their doors guarded by their husbands against the mob that had forgotten them.

An hour later Jezebel received word that the deed was done. She went to Ahab. “See, Melkart wins his battles. Naboth and all his heirs are dead. The vineyard is yours.”

Ahab looked at her, his brow wrinkled. His smile ignored his heart.

Chapter Sixteen

The Gulf of Aqabah stretched long and deeply blue between two rows of incredibly desolate hills. The eastern range across the gulf was higher and shut from sight the ugliness of the Arabian desert. Elijah stood in the mouth of the Wadi Sa’deh, where it emptied out from its narrow, deep ravine onto the mile-wide gravel plain that sloped gradually to the sea. He could see as far north as Ras el-Burka, the small headland that jutted a few yards into the gulf.

It was the fourth day since he left Mount Horeb. He was used to the southern wilderness now, so the journey was not difficult, though unpleasant. He had followed the route of the Exodus, as described to him by the old man of Kadesh, but he had moved much faster than his forefathers could have done with their herds and children and belongings.

He was glad to be out of the hills, able to travel now on level land beside clear water. The sun still was hot, the glare from the white beach was unpleasant, but the way was infinitely better than the soft, dry dune sand and the incessant climbing in and out of wadis.

A cluster of palm trees at the edge of the water marked the fountain the old man had told him about. Elijah started toward it, leaving the larger rocks near the cliff. As he neared the water the rocks became smaller until, near the palms and along the shore of the gulf, the soil was composed mainly of fine gravel and sand.

The well was eight or ten feet deep, the water brackish. Its mildly sulfurous odor teased his nostrils, but he lowered the attached vessel anyway to fill his waterpouch. The old man had cautioned him that he would find no more good water until he came to Ezion-geber.

Elijah slung the waterpouch across his shoulder and turned north. He walked along the shore, feeling the coolness of the waves as they wrapped around his feet, then retreated to gather themselves for the next onrush. To his left the western hills rose high, their gray granite cliffs dismal in the midday heat. He had tried all during the four days of travel to reconcile the conflict between God’s judgment and his announcement that he would speak gently in the hearts of men. God’s judgment was a prophet’s stock in trade. He could understand that. Sin must be dealt with. Moreover, sin led to the wrongs that permeated Israel now. Men who tread on other men, who live from their agonies, must be stopped. Israel’s history with God had shown that Yahweh’s way was the way of repentance. But the people would not repent, so judgment was the only recourse. Yes, he understood judgment.