The Strength of His Hand (33 page)

“He should be clean when everyone sees him. Don’t you want to be proud of what a lovely son you have?”

He talked soothingly as he edged closer, crouching down. He slid the basin of water toward her, then waited. He could hear his son making a soft grunting sound as he struggled to breathe. He had been born almost a month too soon.

“We have a new son, Jerusha—someone for Jerimoth and Tirza to play with. Have they seen their little brother yet? Let’s make him pretty before they come in to see him, all right?” He dipped a cloth in the water and wrung it out, then tried to wash his son’s arm. Jerusha coiled back, snatching the baby out of his reach.

“Here. You do it, Jerusha. You make our new son all pretty and clean.” He pressed the cloth into Jerusha’s hand. She looked down at the baby in her arms. Slowly she began to wash him: first one arm, then the other one, then his body and legs. Her eyes shone with tears as she gently smoothed the water over his head. It was covered with curly dark hair like Eliakim’s. He watched her study each tiny finger and toe; then she bent to kiss the baby’s forehead.

“He’s beautiful, Jerusha. I’m so proud of you. Before you know it, he’ll be running all over the house like our other two children, racing in and out … banging doors … begging Abba for horsey rides… .” Eliakim paused to wipe away a tear that had rolled down his face. He hadn’t realized that he was crying.

“What shall we name him, Jerusha?”

Suddenly she looked up at him, and her eyes had lost their wild look. She was almost herself again, but still terribly frightened. Slowly, carefully, as if she were a wild bird that might fly away, Eliakim reached out to take her hand.

“I love you, Jerusha.”

“Eliakim?” Her voice sounded very small, as if it came from far away.

“Yes, it’s me. Can I see our new son?”

She eased her tight grip on the baby, and Eliakim carefully crept closer until he could see his tiny face, red and wrinkly like his other two children’s had been. He was frighteningly small and not breathing quite right, but he was alive. Eliakim slid his arm around Jerusha’s shoulder as he sat down beside her.

“He’s beautiful, Jerusha. And I love both of you so much.” For a moment she gazed at him as if he was a stranger; then a flicker of recognition crossed her face.

“Eliakim?”

“Yes, my love.”

“Please don’t let him take my baby.”

“No one is ever going to take my son away from you.”

“But he’s here … I saw him. I saw Iddina. And he took my baby once before.”

Eliakim felt a chill pass through him as he recognized the name:
“I am Iddina, Rabshekah to Emperor Sennacherib.”

God of Abraham, it couldn’t be! Out of hundreds of thousands of Assyrian soldiers, was Iddina the officer who had captured Jerusha?

If Eliakim had known who Iddina was when he’d faced him that morning, he would have killed him with his bare hands.

He wrapped his arms around Jerusha and their baby and held them close. “We’ll name him Joshua—the Lord saves—because no one is ever going to hurt you or our son. We’re going to be safe, I promise you. God is going to take care of all of us.”

__________

Iddina prowled restlessly around the Assyrian camp, reviewing the day’s events in his mind. He should be inside the city of Jerusalem right now, not locked outside the gates.

He had assured Sennacherib that he could force a surrender. Now what was he supposed to do? A siege of this mountain fortress would take months, and there wasn’t time for it. The emperor wanted to move on to Egypt. The surrender of Judah should be over with by now.

He recalled Sennacherib’s words:
“I made King Hezekiah a prisoner
in Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage,”
but that wasn’t good enough for Iddina. Why hadn’t the foolish king of Judah surrendered to him? He had hoped that his terrifying speech would cause the citizens on the wall to revolt, and he couldn’t understand their loyalty to Hezekiah under such hopeless circumstances. Iddina had defeated all of Judah’s allies except for the Egyptians, and they would prove too weak to help, as Hezekiah would soon see. But what galled Iddina the most was Hezekiah’s refusal to answer his summons. The king had sent his second-in-command instead of coming out himself! What a preposterous bluff! Surely he must know he was already defeated. Well, this puny king and his officials would soon experience Assyria’s power. They would show the proper fear when he tortured them and staked them to the ground to be flayed alive! Let them cry out to their imageless god then!

Gradually the routine sounds of army camp had a calming effect on Iddina, soothing his rage. The night sky was clear, and the brilliant moon illuminated the valley like daylight. He loved war: the camaraderie around the campfires, the sound of soldiers sharpening their swords against stones, the keen alertness and bravado of young soldiers out to prove themselves.

When he heard the laughter and shouts of soldiers playing a game, he followed the sound to the garbage dump on the edge of camp. Four young soldiers armed with slings cavorted like boys in the moonlight. As Iddina walked closer, the laughter abruptly stopped, and the four men froze at attention. Iddina usually loved the power and fear he inflicted on others, but for the first time he found he missed the companionship of his fellow soldiers.

“As you were,” he said, but his presence had unnerved them. “What’s going on?”

“We were practicing, sir. Shooting rats.” The soldier edged nervously toward a clearing a few feet away and bent to retrieve his prey. Rats were a common sight near the camp dumps, but the one that the soldier held aloft by the tail was the biggest Iddina had ever seen. The rat was plump and well-fed, its long gray tail as fat as his finger, its black eyes glimmering like onyx stones in the moonlight. Iddina glimpsed two rows of pointed teeth as the soldier flung the rat onto a three-foot-high mound of garbage.

Iddina was about to move on and leave the soldiers to their fun when it struck him as unusual for the garbage mound to be so large after only one day in camp. He walked closer and saw that it wasn’t garbage, but a large pile of dead rats. He detected movement in the pile, convulsive twitches of the dead, or perhaps a few rats that weren’t quite dead. As he stared, the other soldiers scooped up three more dead rats and tossed them on top. Iddina guessed there were close to fifty rats on the mound.

“How long have you been out here shooting?” he asked.

Their spokesmen cleared his throat nervously as if unsure if he faced rebuke. “Only a little while, sir—since dark.”

“You’re lying. You couldn’t possibly have killed this many rats in such a short time, even if you’re excellent marksmen.”

“But there are thousands of them around camp, sir. It didn’t take long at all.”

“We were wondering what kind of filthy people these Judeans were that they’d tolerate this many rats so close to the city,” another soldier added.

“Would you care to try for one, sir?” The soldier handed Iddina a square of soft leather with thongs attached to each side. Iddina hefted the sling, remembering the long hours he’d spent practicing in his youth, learning to time the swing, letting go at the precise moment to send the stone hurtling to its mark. He remembered the feel of the loaded sling whirling through the air, the sound it made as it rushed past his ear, the satisfying thud when the stone struck its target. He had spent hours practicing, planning, concentrating on each step until the sling had become an extension of his arm and the entire process was as natural and uncalculated as breathing. He had become a superior slingman, and he knew he would never lose his skill. When the soldier offered him a stone, Iddina took it.

“Watch the clearing over there, sir.” The lad pointed to a patch of moonlight some thirty feet away, where another soldier tossed bits of rotting meat.

Iddina wrapped one of the thongs around his wrist and across his palm, dropped the stone into the sling, and began swinging it above his head. He glimpsed the awe in the soldiers’ eyes at his skill. Almost before the meat touched the ground, five huge rats darted from the shadows to fight over it. Iddina had only seconds to release the loosened thong from his fingers and send the stone to its mark. But in the split second when he should have let go, he suddenly recalled the Philistine priests’ bizarre story—Judah’s unseen God had once sent an army of rats to destroy His enemies.

The unsettling thought caused Iddina’s hand to falter, and he released the stone a heartbeat too late. By the time it thudded to the ground, the rats had retreated into the shadows.

There were no cheers from the watching soldiers nor the usual groans after a near-miss. They stood tense and silent as Iddina handed the sling back to its owner. Then he stalked away to his tent.

Late that night Iddina lay on his mat in the darkness, unable to sleep. What bothered him more than the fact that he had missed was the unfamiliar twinge of superstitious fear that had caused it. It was so much like the terror that had haunted him most of his childhood, a fear he thought he had long outgrown. He remembered lying awake like this, terrified of his father’s avenging spirit and the demons that would accompany him. He recalled his frenzied offerings to appease the gods, the dozens of spirit houses he had built to pacify them, the amulets and charms he had made to ward off unseen horrors. He had become the bravest warrior, the finest marksman, the swiftest swordsman so that he would never need to be afraid again. He had conquered his fear by conquering the gods of the spirit world and placing their images where he could see and control them. But now he faced an unseen god whose image he couldn’t seize and control, a god who sent an army of rats to guard his golden throne in Jerusalem.

As he lay in the darkness, Iddina suddenly felt the warm brush of a furry body move past his face. He froze, listening and alert. Now he heard more of them, skittering across the floor of his tent, gnawing on his leather sandal straps, squealing softly as they fought over a discarded morsel of food. He slowly turned his head and stared in horror at the floor of his tent. It had come alive in the moonlight, a writhing carpet of furry creatures. His skin crawled as if they slithered across his body.

With his heart hammering against his ribs, he slowly reached beside him for his dagger. Another rat glided past his arm. He shuddered as he brushed aside the large rat that perched on top of his dagger, gnawing the leather-wrapped handle grip. He picked up his weapon.

Then with lightning speed, Iddina sat up, crying out with fury as he pitched the knife into the center of the wiggling mass of animals beside him. He heard a flurry of squeals and skittering movements as the rats fled in all directions, brushing over his bare feet and past his legs. Their feral smell filled his nostrils, making him gag.

In the aftermath of their flight, one high-pitched squeal continued to sound. Iddina lit a lamp and saw the rat that his dagger had pinioned. It struggled futilely for several more seconds before it finally twitched convulsively, then lay still. Iddina stared at it in disbelief. He had never seen a rat so large. Like the others at the dump, it was as plump and healthy as a household pet.

Iddina set the lamp on the floor and pulled his knife out of the rat’s body. He wiped the blood off on its fur, then sat cross-legged with the rat in front of him. He had come too far, been through too many battles, to feel like a superstitious child again, but he couldn’t ignore the chill of fear that slithered through his veins.

Slowly, reverently, he cut his prey into pieces, setting aside a limp gray foot, the three-inch tip of snaking tail, a clump of bristly whiskers, a piece of jawbone with a row of pointed teeth. Then, as he had done so often as a boy, he fashioned the pieces into an amulet and tied them to a long leather thong. When he finished, he knotted the thong around his neck and slipped the amulet beneath his tunic. Then he crawled back into bed, his hands still sticky with the rat’s blood.

Iddina knew he could defeat any god foolish enough to confront him, especially with an army as pitiful as Judah’s. But he didn’t know what strategy to use against an unseen god who sent an army of rats.
Fight fair, god of Judah!
he wanted to shout.
Fight the way you’re supposed
to fight, with warriors and weapons—not slithering vermin!

He left the lamp burning beside the dissected rat to keep the others at bay, but Iddina lay wide awake until dawn, stunned by the unfamiliar strength of his fear.

25

“Y
OUR
M
AJESTY
… Your Majesty, wake up.” Hezekiah opened his eyes to find General Benjamin crouching beside him, shaking him. “Are you awake, my lord?”

“Yes … I guess so …” But it took Hezekiah a few moments to shake off the fuzziness of sleep. When he did, he was startled to discover that he had fallen asleep leaning against the parapet on top of the city wall.

For the past five days since the Assyrians had surrounded Jerusalem, Hezekiah had barely slept. The Assyrians hadn’t begun to attack the city yet. Instead, they sat in the valley looking up at the frightened people crowded on top of the walls—watching, waiting, playing their deadly game of nerves. The Rabshekah probably hoped his terrifying words would grow and swell in the Judeans’ hearts like yeast in a batch of flour, until the pressure of their fear forced them to surrender.

Hezekiah had spent each day fasting, praying, walking among his people, encouraging them to trust God and not to surrender. He had spent the long nights on top of the city wall, unable to sleep, watching for the nightly signal fires, waiting for word that the Egyptians were coming, wondering what was happening to the rest of his nation. Late last night, exhaustion had caused him to fall asleep while looking down on the Assyrian camp.

Across the valley, a pale, cold sun struggled to rise behind the bank of clouds that hid the Mount of Olives from view. Hezekiah rolled his head to ease the stiffness in his neck. “Is it time for the morning sacrifice?” he asked, still dazed.

General Benjamin shook his head. “Not yet. But take a look down there, Your Majesty.”