Gods And Kings (18 page)

“When will I have an audience with the Assyrian emperor?” Ahaz asked. He saw Jephia suppress a smile, and it infuriated him. “That’s the reason I’ve traveled here!” he shouted. “We have a treaty to sign.We’re allies.”

Jephia responded to his outburst calmly. “When all of the other vassal kings have arrived, Tiglath-Pileser will summon all of you at once. You must stay here until then. I will stay with you and see to your needs.” He bowed slightly.

Ahaz was accustomed to servants who cowered before him in fear, and Jephia’s lack of servility angered him. The man’s manners were outwardly correct, but every time he spoke the word “vassal” his contempt was ill concealed. Ahaz didn’t want Jephia’s assistance. He turned his back on him and summoned his own valet.

“I would like to bathe and then rest awhile,” he said. He smiled with satisfaction as his servants leaped into action, bustling around the tent to wait on him. “You’re excused,” he told Jephia.

Several tedious days passed as Ahaz rested from his journey, and he quickly became bored. He had plenty of excellent food and wine but nothing to do except grow more nervous and impatient as he waited for the Assyrian monarch to summon him. Yet he was determined not to ask Jephia about the delay, hating the translator’s mocking smile and the way he explained everything as if Ahaz were a child.

When a message finally arrived at Ahaz’s tent, he called Jephia to interpret it. The slave read it through silently, and his eyebrows lifted in mild surprise. “The Rabshekah has sent for you. All the other vassal kings have arrived. I’m to conduct you on a tour of Damascus, then you’ll meet your
ally,
Tiglath-Pileser.”

“Finally,” Ahaz sighed. “I’ll need some time to get ready and—” “No,” Jephia said, shaking his head. “The Rabshekah has summoned you. You must come at once.” There was a stern note of warning in his voice that Ahaz didn’t miss. He glared at Jephia for a moment, then hurried into his tent, changing his robes as quickly as he could.

He reappeared a few minutes later, and they mounted his chariot riding in silence to the ruined city. Ahaz struggled to conceal his shock and horror as he saw evidence of the Assyrians’ atrocities. On either side of the road that led to the main gate, row after row of bodies hung from tall stakes.

“The emperor would like you to meet the chief elders of Damascus,” Jephia said. “They were impaled alive and left to die, watching the destruction of their city.”

Ahaz gazed straight ahead, holding a linen handkerchief over his mouth to keep from vomiting. A sign above the gate read:
This is the fate of the enemies of Assyria
.

“The scribes take a head count,” Jephia explained, pointing to a grisly mound, “and the soldiers are paid accordingly.”

“They could have picked a better route for visitors to take,” Ahaz said. “We shouldn’t have to look at all this.”

Jephia stared at him, shaking his head. “You still don’t understand, do you, King Ahaz ben Jotham?”

“Understand what?”

“Why do you think all these corpses were left here? Why do you think you were invited to Damascus in the first place?”

“The emperor and I are allies—”

“No,” Jephia said sharply. “This isn’t going to be a meeting of ‘allies,’ as you so naively believe. This summons was carefully planned as a warning to all the vassal nations like yours. Tiglath-Pileser knows that you’ll never dream of rebelling against him after you’ve seen what happened to Damascus. He doesn’t want your friendship, King of Judah. He wants your fear and submission.”

Ahaz shook his head as if he could shake aside Jephia’s words.“No … I don’t believe …”

“He wants your tribute, King Ahaz—now and for the rest of your life. He knows that no matter how much he demands, you’ll beat it out of the backs of your people rather than see Jerusalem end up this way.”

Ahaz stood paralyzed. He wanted to call Jephia a liar, but as he stood before the gate, watching the other vassal kings approach, he knew that Jephia was telling the truth. He felt like a fool for not realizing it before. He leaned against the side of his chariot, shaken and dazed. Then, with agonizing clarity, he recalled Isaiah’s parting words:
“The Lord Almighty has told me of the destruction decreed against this whole land.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Ahaz said quietly. But Jephia shook his head.

“You’ll see it all.”

Ahaz rode through the rubble-strewn streets of Damascus in gloomy silence, the sights around him a vague blur. But Jephia continued with his grim narration, pausing to point to a group of naked men and women with shorn heads, picking through the wreckage.

“These are the survivors of another city in a distant part of the Assyrian empire, deported here to rebuild Damascus while their own land is rebuilt by strangers. That’s the Assyrian way.”

“The Assyrian way,” Ahaz repeated softly. He was beginning to understand the full extent of Assyria’s brutal power and military might. His nation would become a puppet kingdom in the vast Assyrian Empire, and there was nothing he could do but pay homage.

“That mound ahead is where the temple once stood,” Jephia said, gesturing to a man-made hill, the highest point in the city. “We’ll have to walk from here. The streets are choked with debris from the temple.”

Ahaz climbed from the chariot and followed Jephia, weaving around massive stones that had once been part of the Aramean temple. He was grimy with sweat and with the sooty dust that seemed to cover the entire land. When he paused to catch his breath and mop his face, he saw the other vassal kings making their way up the slopes of the temple mound behind him.

“Why are we all assembling here?”

“You must all pay homage to the Assyrian gods, confessing that they’re superior to your own nation’s gods.”

Ahaz nodded, too numb to argue, and followed Jephia to the top of the hill. Not one stone of the former temple remained upon another, and the paved courtyard was bare except for a massive bronze altar standing in the center. Pictures of Assyria’s gods decorated all four sides of it, but the central figure on each panel was the god Assur—a warrior armed with a bow and riding a winged sun. Ahaz and the other kings gathered around the altar while the Assyrian priests led the animals forward to be sacrificed. Jephia translated the priests’ incantations for him:

“All praise to Assur, who has led us to victory over our enemies. All praise to Assur, who has wielded his judgment over them. All praise to Assur, who has made Assyria the most powerful nation in all the earth. All praise to Assur and his representative among us, Emperor Tiglath-Pileser.”

Dread overwhelmed Ahaz as he bowed in homage with the other kings to proclaim Assur’s sovereignty over his own God. He remembered how Yahweh had punished his grandfather, King Uzziah, and he was terrified of angering Him. But he was every bit as terrified of the Assyrians. He had no choice but to kneel in the dust beside the others and proclaim, “Yahweh, the God of Judah, bows before Assur.”

The ceremony continued in a dizzying whirl of chanting and bloodshed until the combined heat of the sun and the giant altar nauseated Ahaz. He wished it would end. He wanted to lie down alone in his tent and try to weave the fraying strands of his life back together. But when the ritual finally ended, Jephia turned to him with a mocking smile.

“And now you’ll finally meet your
ally,
Tiglath-Pileser.”

Ahaz looked down at his robes, filthy with sweat and dust.

“Dressed like this?”

Jephia merely smiled and led the way through the rubble to the former king’s palace, one of the few buildings in the city that was still intact. The emperor’s canopied throne stood on the palace steps, and the visiting kings were ordered to assemble on the street below it. The Assyrian emperor wore a long purple tunic of richly embroidered silk and a tall conical cap decorated with golden threads. The jewels that adorned his fingers and wrists glinted in the sun. A dozen slaves fanned him with palm fronds.

Ahaz stood below the throne in the dizzying heat, wishing he could lie down somewhere with a glass of wine to cool his thirst.“What happens now?” he asked Jephia.

“First, there will be a procession of captives. Then all the vassal kings will take part in a ceremony to pledge their submission.” Jephia had pronounced the word
vassal
with his usual contempt, but it no longer bothered Ahaz. He understood the reality of what it meant, and he knew that he’d been a fool to believe himself the emperor’s equal.

The procession began with squadrons from the Assyrian army.Ahaz watched as row after row of black-bearded warriors passed before him, their weapons flashing in the sun. Then the cavalry followed, with more horses than he’d ever seen together in his life. Still more warriors rode past in chariots, then the battering rams and siege towers paraded past. Ahaz remembered the fierce beating Jerusalem’s walls had suffered during the siege a few months before, yet the weapons the Arameans had used against him were child’s toys compared to the Assyrians’ arsenal. Jerusalem’s aging walls would topple in a matter of months under their assault.

Wave after wave of Assyrian soldiers marched past, until it seemed to Ahaz that the entire population of Judah must have paraded before him. Then came the plundered treasures of Damascus, heaped in golden piles on hundreds of wagons. Ahaz had never seen so much wealth, and it made his own gift to the Assyrian monarch seem worthless. The Aramean prisoners of war staggered behind the riches that had once belonged to them, led by the king and his nobles and princes. They wore only chains around their ankles as their captors led them through the streets by bridles that pierced their nostrils and lips.

When the captives reached the palace steps, the Assyrian emperor rose and unsheathed his sword to begin the long punishment of the defeated king. Ahaz watched in horror as the Assyrians staked the captives to the ground by their wrists and ankles and slowly tortured them to death. Clearly, the Assyrians were skilled at prolonging their victims’ suffering as long as possible. Shock and fear overwhelmed Ahaz as the agonized screams went on and on. When he was unable to endure another moment, he pushed to the rear of the crowd, fell to his knees, and vomited.

More than ever, Ahaz longed to be back in his palace in Jerusalem and away from the Assyrians’ horrible butchery. He wished he had never called upon this bloodthirsty emperor for assistance. As his nausea finally subsided, Ahaz remembered Isaiah’s warning:
“You have entered into a covenant with death.”

Ahaz wiped his eyes and mouth and struggled to his feet, aware that he had to return and watch the rest. He looked up and saw Jephia waiting for him, and for the first time he saw a hint of compassion in the interpreter’s eyes. The tortures finally ended, but the cries of the dying men resounded in Ahaz’s mind for a very long time.

“Now the vassal kings and their attendants will line up to pay homage to Tiglath-Pileser,” Jephia told him, “assembling in order of importance and power.” Ahaz was humiliated to find himself among the least important. As he waited in line, trembling with fear, he wondered how he had ever imagined himself sitting with the Assyrian emperor as an equal, signing treaties and discussing the nations of the world.

At last he walked forward, his knees threatening to buckle beneath him. “I am Ahaz ben Jotham, King of Judah and Jerusalem—Your Majesty’s humble servant and vassal.” He fell before the king with his forehead pressed to the ground, as all the other kings had bowed. The dust of Damascus filled his nostrils and throat. When he felt the touch of the royal scepter, he rose again, resisting the urge to wipe the dirt from his forehead and robes. He understood what he was—a pathetic puppet king, sworn to serve the Assyrians for the rest of his life. And if he rebelled or failed to send tribute, his punishment would be the same as the tortured king’s had been.

“Is it over now?” he asked Jephia. “May I return to my tent?”

Jephia shook his head. “The king has invited you to a banquet in his honor. You can’t refuse his invitation.”

They followed the others inside the palace, into a huge banquet hall decorated with tapestries depicting the many nations in the Assyrian Empire. Dancers whirled across a platform to the music of an orchestra while hundreds of slaves stood beside the tables, ready to serve the kings. Ahaz was led to his seat at the lowest-ranking table where meat dishes, breads, vegetables, and fruits of all kinds lay spread before him. The food repulsed him. He felt only an unquenchable thirst.

Near his table slaves poured wine into a huge bowl, then ground a mixture of leaves and seeds into a fine powder and stirred it into the wine. When they finally served it, Ahaz gulped it down. The slaves replenished his cup as quickly as he emptied it.

It was meant to be an extravagant feast, but Ahaz couldn’t enjoy it. He couldn’t forget the horrors he had witnessed that day or the withering dread he’d felt as he’d bowed before the Assyrian king. He swallowed another cupful of wine and stared at the linen tablecloth as the noise and merriment roared in his ears.

Gradually, Ahaz felt the wine taking effect, and it seemed as though the room began to sway with the music. He liked the sensation at first, but as he looked up at one of the tapestries on the wall, he was startled to see that the figures on it had somehow come to life and were dancing in front of him. He shut his eyes to blot out the strange image, but swirls of light and color appeared before him in the darkness, spinning crazily. His head felt as if it might shatter into a thousand pieces.

He quickly opened his eyes but had trouble focusing them. As he fumbled for his glass of wine, his hand seemed to suddenly detach from his wrist and float through the air. Ahaz grabbed the glass with both hands and gulped another drink as he fought to control his splintering mind. When he tried to set down the empty glass, it slipped from his grasp and crashed to the floor.

“What’s happening to me?” he cried, clutching his head.

“It’s the wine,” Jephia told him. His voice seemed to come from a distant corner of the room. “The Assyrians mix powerful drugs with their wine and allow the gods to take them on a journey into the world of the spirits. It’s part of their worship.”