King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (60 page)

John, who had been assisting Peter, went back to the end of the street to find Jesus and the rest of the party. Before long they were all sitting down together, staff in hand, shoes on feet, to eat the Passover according to the ancient custom : the whole lamb with no bones broken, the bitter endives, the sweet sauce, the unleavened bread of affliction. Jesus, as head of the household, said the prescribed Grace : “Blessed be Thou, the Eternal, our God, the King of the World, who hast sanctified us by Thy commands and hath ordained that we eat the Passover.”

The meal began with the First Cup, which he blessed, adding : “This is the last wine which I shall drink before the Kingdom is established !” The disciples cheered boisterously ; the smell of the roast meat after more than a year’s abstinence excited them wonderfully, as the treadmill ass kicks up his heels and brays on being turned loose into a green meadow. Only Judas caught the undertone of grief in his master’s words, and only he noticed that Jesus ate the meat with concealed loathing ; in sympathy, his own spirit plunged into black despair.
Praise ye the Lord
he could not sing, and he longed for the Second Cup to warm his chilled inwards.

John, as the youngest member of the household, asked Jesus the prescribed
questions, and when
Israel out of Egypt
had been uproariously chanted through, Jesus took a cake of Passover bread—round, tough, thin as paper, and hot from the side of the clay oven—tore it in pieces and distributed it. He said : “So would my enemies use me. Yet eat of it, eat of my mangled body, for I was born in the House of Bread.” Then he reached for the flagon and poured out the Second Cup, saying : “So would my enemies use me. Yet drink of it, drink of my living blood, for I was reared in the House of Wine.”

All the disciples, except Judas, heedlessly ate and drank what he gave them ; but Judas asked himself in horror : “What is this? Are we to eat abominable food at our God’s own Feast, as the Greeks eat the body and drink the blood of their god in the Mysteries ?” He set the cup to his lips and accepted the bread, but neither ate nor drank.

“Lord,” said Peter, “you did not end your story of the tenants and the vineyard. Dared they kill the owner’s son ?”

“He was killed and his body was thrown over the wall.”

All at once they were suddenly aware of his sorrow. Conversation flagged and died away at his end of the table, though at the other end Thaddaeus and Simon of Cana continued to argue in loud voices as to which of them would be given the more responsible appointment in the promised Kingdom. Suddenly they found themselves shouting at each other in a hushed room, and broke off in embarrassment. All eyes were now fixed expectantly upon Jesus. He waited for a good while longer, slowly running his finger round the rim of the wine-cup, and at last broke the silence : “One of you twelve shall kill me !”

There was a general gasp. Every man’s cheek burned with the flush of accused innocence, and they gazed incredulously at one another.

“One of you shall kill me, one of you who dips his hand into this dish ; as it is written in the psalm : ‘My familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who has eaten bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me.’ ”

The disciples asked : “Is it I? Is it I ?”

He stared back at them with unseeing eyes, and muttered darkly : “At a goodly price you have valued me !”

At these words Judas’s heart gave a sudden leap ; a fierce beam shone through his head and he understood everything.

This account of the Passover supper must be interrupted by a more ancient story without which it is wholly unintelligible ; it may be found, somewhat obscurely told, in the long poem which forms the last chapters of the Book of Zechariah. The author of the poem, who lived in the age of the Seleucids, is to be distinguished from the author of the earlier chapters, who lived shortly after the Babylonian Captivity. In the prologue he relates how, suddenly obeying a prophetic call, he bound himself to the service of Jehovah by a vow, exchanged his urban dress for a rough pastoral garment—the traditional dress of Jehovah’s prophets—and carved himself two pastoral staffs which he called
Grace
and
Concord
. Armed with these staffs, he went out to feed the flock : that is to say, he
preached repentance to the people in the style of his predecessors, prophesying Jehovah’s mercy if they turned to him, and his hot displeasure if they would not. From the earliest times the prophets had been loyal assistants of the priesthood : while the priests calmly and deftly performed the Temple sacrifices and attended to their other ritual obligations, the prophets ran up and down the country passionately exhorting the people to moral virtue. But not even Zechariah’s fellow-prophets had remained faithful to the pure worship of Jehovah : the Seleucid overlords of the Jews had so popularized the rites of the Olympian Gods and of the Queen of Heaven that it had become almost extinct. Zechariah found himself alone and preaching to deaf ears.

He grew exasperated, and cried out in the market-place : “I will not feed this flock! Thus says the Lord : ‘Let the sick beasts die, and let those that are caught in the thicket perish and, for all I care, let the remainder devour one another.’ ” Displaying his staffof
Grace
, he publicly snapped it in two and went up to the Temple to vow himself as a Temple Slave, never again to tread the profane streets of the City. He told the priests at the Treasury : “I have come to devote myself to God. At what price do you value me ?”

They answered scornfully : “For a man in the prime of life who gives himself to our God, the price is fixed by the Law at fifty shekels of the Sanctuary weight ; and for a woman at thirty. However, according to the eighth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of Leviticus we are permitted to reduce the price paid to inferior persons. Come now, worthless shepherd, we value you at thirty shekels ; for indeed you have chattered as idly as a woman.”

They weighed him out thirty shekels of the Sanctuary weight (heavier than the contemporary Phoenician shekel) and handed them to him, saying : “Go now to the High Priest and register your vow.”

Zechariah was enraged. “At a goodly price you have valued me !” As he stood undecided, with the thirty shekels in one hand and his remaining staff in the other, there in the Temple itself he saw a Gibeonite potter, whose trade was to make drinking-vessels, dabbling clay with his bare feet ; for the Gibeonites, though an unclean Canaanite guild, were at that time employed as Temple craftsmen. His rage seethed over. He threw the thirty shekels at the potter’s feet for him to tread into the clay—a symbolic act admirably expressive of his feelings—and ran in fury out of the Temple, still a free man, and still a prophet.

On reaching the market-place, he summoned the people with a shout and then broke his other staff, called
Concord
, crying out as he did so : “For Judah and the rest of Israel I proclaim discord in the name of the Lord !”

At this point the prologue ends and the poem proper begins. In a vision Zechariah sees himself playing a terrible part under divine orders : impersonating the Worthless Shepherd who neither goes in search of lost lambs, nor feeds the sick beast that cannot stand on its legs to graze, nor rescues the beast caught in a thicket—the Worthless Shepherd who
neglects all his duties and (like the Temple Levite) feeds sumptuously and complacently on roast flesh—eats “both the flesh and the fat.” A frightful paradox : he sees himself preaching falsely in God’s name, and in pure love of God taking all the people’s sins upon himself.

Then occur the lines—I quote the original text, confused in the Greek version :

Woe to my worthless shepherd, who has forsaken the flock. His right arm shall utterly wither and his right eye be utterly dimmed. Sword, awake against this shepherd, though he is my friend! Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered! But for those that are humble-hearted my chastisement shall be a loving one.

He sees himself preaching falsely in the very Courts of the Temple, trying to stir the people to shame, until at last his own father and mother cry out : “You have spoken lies in the name of Jehovah—you shall not live !” and thrust him through.

This act breaks the spell of evil. The people are suddenly moved to repentance, and Jehovah proves merciful. A fountain of Grace gushes up in Jerusalem for the removal of sin and uncleanness. The idols are thrown down, and all the false prophets who have taken part in the worship of the Queen of Heaven, of Tammuz, Dionysus and Zeus, are hounded from the City. Zechariah sees them taking refuge in the suburban villages, and there pretending to be simple cattle-men, explaining the wounds which they have dealt themselves in their Orgies as inflicted in a brawl in a friend’s house. Meanwhile, “they shall look upon him whom they pierced” : the people of Jerusalem gaze down upon the corpse of the dead man and understand him at last : he has saved them from destruction by his provocative falsehoods. They mourn him as bitterly as if he were an only son.

Thereupon the Day of the Lord dawns frightfully. All the nations of the world march against Jerusalem, the City is taken, the houses rifled, the women ravished and half the population carried off into captivity. But the Son of God suddenly manifests himself ; and his feet bestride the Mount of Olives, which splits in two. The faithful ones, preserved from slaughter, take refuge in his shadow. That day the sky is darkened into a twilight, but at evening it clears again and living waters—a metaphor interpreted by the Pharisees as meaning “divine doctrine”—flow out from the City eastward to the Dead Sea and westward to the Mediterranean Sea. Two-thirds of the nation have perished ; but the remaining part is refined, as gold and silver are refined in the fire. Jehovah says : “It is my people,” and they : “It is our God.”

With Jerusalem saved by this miracle, Jehovah strikes all the City’s oppressors with a plague. They fight one another furiously and myriads perish, but at last strife ceases for very exhaustion, and the plague is stayed. Their poor remnants are converted and every year go up to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. The plague has also stricken the horses and mules that wore brass moon-amulets in honour of the
Queen of Heaven, and every one of these is dead. All is now clean and holy throughout the City : Canaanite potters are no longer found in the Temple, and the horses and mules display Jehovah’s name on the bells that jingle from their collars, bells as holy as those sewn on the High Priest’s robes.

Thus the poem ends ; but Zechariah never dared to translate this vision into action, and it had therefore become a prophecy awaiting fulfilment.

“Jesus intends to fulfil it !” Judas cried to himself. “He is now impersonating the Worthless Shepherd, the false prophet who neglects his pastoral duties to go out in the name of Jehovah to mislead the people in the very Courts of the Temple.” And he recalled the words of Amos :

“I raised up your sons to be prophets and Nazirites, but you gave them wine to drink and commanded them not to prophesy. I am weighed down under your iniquities as a cart under a load of sheaves. Therefore the swift of foot shall lose their swiftness, the strong shall not increase his strength, nor shall the powerful one deliver himself. And in that day he who is strongest-hearted of the mighty ones shall flee away naked,” says the Lord.

All that had puzzled and grieved him was now explained at last : the revelry that Jesus had led in the club-house ; his cursing of the fig-tree ; his forcible purging of the Temple ; his refusal to acknowledge the authority of Jehovah ; his abandonment of a sincere message announcing the imminent Kingdom of God in favour of a false message announcing a revival of the blood-thirsty Davidic monarchy ; and now this idolatrous eucharist! Clearly, he had resolved upon self-destruction, upon becoming the scape-goat that should bear away the sins of the whole people. He had combined in himself Zechariah’s prophecy of the Shepherd and Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant—the Marred Man, the Man of Sorrows who would go to his death as a willing sacrifice and be numbered among the sinners. To be numbered among the sinners is to commit sin, and the Man of Sorrows must sin grievously in order to take the iniquity of all the people upon him : it was the very consciousness of grievous sin that would make him a Man of Sorrows.

But how could Jesus’s mother and father thrust him through? Then Judas remembered what Jesus had said in the tax-gathere’s house at Capernaum : “A prophet has no father, mother or brothers, except his fellow-prophets.” Was he then inciting his own disciples to turn against him and destroy him as a false prophet, so that when the people of Jerusalem looked on his pierced body they would understand at last, and repent, and thus precipitate the Pangs of the Messiah?

Judas sat dazed, weeping with his head between his hands. He tried to persuade himself that he was mistaken, but the next words which Jesus spoke made all plain beyond possibility of doubt. He called down the table to the disciples at the further end : “Children, when I sent you out two and two without staff, wallet or shoes, did you want for anything ?”

“Never, Lord.”

“Those days are gone. Now you can no longer count on the Lord’s protection. Let every man take a staff, wallet and a purse too, if he has one. And if there is no money in it, let him sell his pastoral mantle and
buy a sword
.” He turned, looked Judas full in the face and said in a low voice : “For it is written : ‘He was numbered among the sinners’ ; and through me let the End be brought about !”

Peter came over to John, who was reclining next to Jesus, and whispered in his ear : “I can bear this no longer. Dear brother, ask who is the traitor who is to kill him.” For neither Peter nor any other disciple but Judas alone understood that Jesus was issuing an order, not levelling an accusation.

John leaned his head affectionately on Jesus’s breast and quietly passed on the question. For answer, Jesus dipped a piece of bread in sweet sauce and pointedly handed it to Judas, saying as he did so : “What must be done, do quickly !”