Chapter 2

Shepherds Field

I hurried through the grassy pasturelands, last night’s rain soaking my leather sandals. The morning sun shone on the meadows that comprised Shepherds Field.

My purpose was to choose a lamb from the flock and take it to Jerusalem as an offering. My religion taught me that I could not approach God, especially on a matter as critical as my wife’s life, without making an offering. But I had another reason for going to Shepherds Field. My father would be there, and I needed him now. Before I journeyed to Jerusalem today, I would seek his counsel and his strength.

As I put more distance between Beit Sahour and me, I glanced northward toward Mount Hermon and imagined that its high snow fields were melting. I hoped Judea would soon shake loose from the grasp of an unusually cold and wet winter. The new grass, emerging wild flowers, and the arrival of newborn lambs heralded the beginning of spring.

Within the previous month, lambing season had ended at Migdal Eder on the outskirts of Bethlehem, and recently we shepherds had led our flock back to the meadows near Beit Sahour. The move, somewhat premature for the season, had been calculated to provide me quick access to my wife in anticipation of the birth of our child. But on this springtime day which should have held so much promise, I had no cause to rejoice. I might hear the bleating of newborn lambs in the fields, but I would not hear the sound of new life in Beit Sahour.

I picked up my pace, urgently needing to find my father and then hurry to the temple to pray.

When I came within sight of the meadow, I scanned it for my father but did not see him. I knew the area well; I had been raised here. I headed toward a point on the north ridge covered with olive trees. That was the place where we tended our flock.

We shepherds were seven in number, most of us from the same family: my father, five others, and me. If my child were a son and if he were to live, he would have become part of this group, a thought that tortured me now. For as I climbed the ridge, I knew I could not save him; but I hoped that if I could get to the temple in time, I might be able to petition God to save his mother.

Breathlessly, I approached the scattered grazing flock. Standing guard was my uncle Reuben, Ephraim’s father, a heavily bearded Goliath of a man, dressed in a striped woolen tunic the color of earthenware. Hearing my advance, Reuben instinctively raised his staff. I called out to him, “Uncle Reuben, it is I.”

“Joshua?” Reuben peered through the morning mist. When he recognized me, he set his staff back upon the ground. I knew from painful experience that if I surprised him, he might fell me with a single blow of his staff or a rock from his sling.

As I drew closer, he said, “You startled me, Nephew.” Then with characteristic concern he quickly asked, “Is Miriam going to be all right?” Despite Reuben’s rugged appearance, he was a man of great compassion. I shook my head in answer to his question.

He frowned. “She’s not well?”

“No,” I answered. “Where is my father?”

Reuben gestured toward a nearby cave that we used as a shelter. I thanked my uncle and started for the cave. My quick movement troubled the flock, but with a word from me, the sheep settled down. I moved with purpose. No delay could be worth Miriam’s death, and that was a possibility I could not entertain.

As I moved toward the shepherds’ cave, I passed the sheepfold where my companions had bedded the flock the previous night. The sheepfold was in one of the many shallow limestone caves that dotted the landscape. Within a stone’s throw was the shepherds’ cave.

As I approached, I called out to my father, and presently, a sinewy figure emerged. Framed in the cave’s entrance, my father stretched, pressing his hands into the small of his back, and winced. His body bore the scars of wounds that he had suffered while fighting off predators. Despite his age, he was still strong enough to rebuff a lion. When my father saw me, he hurried toward me. “What news do you have of Miriam? Is she bleeding again?”

I lowered my head and nodded.

He said, “We have been concerned since the moment Ephraim came for you. We have been praying all through the night.”

My eyes became moist in a most unmanly way. “Last night Miriam’s labor began,” I said, choking out the words.

My father considered my words, and his question echoed Esther’s concern. “It’s too soon, isn’t it?” When I didn’t respond, he cleared his throat and asked, “And the baby?”

“The child has not moved for two days,” I said.

My father began to pace. “Then we must pray much harder for Miriam.”

“I know,” I said, walking with him. “That is my purpose. Leah and the women are with Miriam.” I struggled to say the words, each one an effort. “Miriam is very weak.” When I couldn’t continue, my father wrapped me in his arms and held me until I could compose myself. At length I dried my eyes and said, “Miriam sent me to pray.” I gestured in the direction of Jerusalem.

My father understood. He said, “Nothing else could have torn you from her. Not now.”

Once again tears were my response. Leaving Miriam had felt as if I were abandoning her, and turning away from her was certainly the hardest thing I had ever done. Only her request and our mutual hope that God might hear and answer my prayer of faith could have caused me to leave her.

I looked into my father’s eyes and said, “When I left her this morning, she quoted your proverb: ‘In the safety of his fold, God will bless us today.’” I paused as if to test the validity of the saying.

My father’s expression spoke of a sudden realization that all his teachings hung on this moment. He put an arm around my shoulder and guided me away from the cave and toward the privacy of the pasture where the sheep were grazing. “It’s more than a saying,” he answered. “It came into my mind on the darkest and, remarkably, the brightest day of my life.”

“The day you lost Mother?” I said, already knowing that my answer was correct.

Father nodded. “And the same day that I first held you in my arms.” He guided me to the summit of the hill overlooking the meadow. As we walked he said, “I had imagined that I knew something about pain. It had been my companion for most of my life. As a child I lost my father, which forced me to become my mother’s sole support. Later, I lost a sister to leprosy. Then I watched my brother die from the Romans’ scourging, a small mercy that saved him from crucifixion. But the worst pain I ever felt was when your mother died.”

I knew this part of the story; it had always made me feel as though I needed to apologize. I was alive because my mother had given her life to bear me, and the unhappy coincidence of Miriam’s present condition did not escape me now. Perhaps my countenance dimmed when my father mentioned the recollection, for he quickly added, “On the other hand, I never experienced such joy as on that day.” Facing me squarely, he said, “You are my greatest joy, Joshua.” He held me in his gaze, not allowing me to look away; it was as though he intended to sear the sincerity of his statement into my soul.

When I offered a slight nod, he continued. “On that day, I took you here into the fields that I loved so much. I came here to cry unto God for help. And so I climbed, just as we are doing now.”

I had never heard this part of the story. I looked toward the top of the hill. “Where are we going?”

My father answered by pointing to a pile of rocks located there. The expression on his face told me it held special significance. From the meadow below, as I tended the sheep, I had often noticed the rocks, but I had never considered it as anything more than another pile of rocks that were common to the area. Now my father’s reverence for the pile seemed to suggest that it was something more—something sacred, like a monument or an altar. I was suddenly seized with the fear that my father was about to use this pile of rocks to preach to me, and for that I did not have time. I looked to the sun, rising toward the point of mid-morning, and then anxiously toward Jerusalem, searching my mind for a way to excuse myself.

Before I could speak, he continued with his story. “My pain was unbearable that day. My heart was broken, and I did not think it could be mended. But despite my agony, I could not deny that God loved me. I needed only to look into your face to see the evidence of that love. Somewhere in my suffocating grief, I knew that I had never been abandoned before and that God surely would not do so now in my darkest hour. So the question remained: Would I abandon Him?” Gesturing toward the pile of rocks, my father said, “And so I built it.”

I did not understand.

My father took me by the arm, guiding me around the structure with evident admiration. He reverently placed his hand on the pile of rocks and said, “This is my Ebenezer.”

Sudden understanding shot through me. In a distant moment of desperation, when our fathers had twice been defeated by the Philistines and had lost the ark of the covenant to their enemies, they had pleaded with God for help. Their vital prayer invoked the intervention of heaven and provided them courage. They rose up to fight again, defeated the Philistines, and took back the ark. To commemorate that victorious battle, the prophet Samuel set up a marker stone and named it Ebenezer or “Stone of Help.”

With astonishment, I said to my father, “You built an Ebenezer?”

He nodded. “This is where God helped me that day. This place is where I cried my allegiance to Him: ‘Nothing could cause me to forsake thee.’ And it was on that day that I wrote my proverb of faith: ‘God created today for us, to live and to love—in the safety of His fold, God will bless us today.’”

My father looked into my eyes. “Joshua, if the worst happens, will you cry your allegiance to God today?”

I slumped to my knees and began to weep. I could not answer honestly. If God were to take my wife from me, I did not know if I would understand. I did not know if I could continue to believe in such a being, one whom I had been taught was all-powerful and yet one who failed to save my sweet Miriam. I feared that I might forever accuse Him of abandoning us when we needed Him the most. I was ashamed that I did not possess my father’s courage and faith. Through tears I answered, “I am not that brave.”

My father knelt beside me, embraced me in his arms, and wept. “You are brave, Joshua,” he said, “and I believe in you. I will pray that God helps you today.”

When we descended the mount, I surveyed the rough Judean landscape and tried to take strength from it. This was the land of promise that God had given his chosen people. It was a harsh, unforgiving land that nevertheless had been envied and overrun by our enemies over the years, most recently by the Romans. And yet this land and its people had endured again and again by rallying around the covenants of our fathers. This land was the land of patriarchs and prophets, kings and priests of God. Over the centuries, the combined consciousness of nations had been riveted on this land.

As I gazed out over our flock of sheep, I felt a sense of resolve and realized that my father had given me what I had needed from him. Now standing a little taller, I said, “I know what I must do.”

My father seemed to understand. He asked, “Which lamb will you choose for your offering?” But I supposed he already knew the answer. Nearly a year before, when I had been guarding the sheep, a jackal had leapt the wall of the sheepfold and charged a newborn lamb. Its mother had defended the lamb with her life. The entire event took only moments, but by the time I had rushed to rescue the pair, the ewe was dead. Thereafter, I took the lamb and raised it as my own. I gave it a name: Amit, meaning “friend.”

As the lamb grew, he became as dear to me as if he were my child. I sheltered him, cared for him, and calmed him. Once, I thought I had lost him. He had fallen into a crevice at night. I called for him, but he did not respond. Resorting to another form of communication, I struck the ground three times with my staff, turned it upside down, made a cup of my hand, and cooed through it, my voice running along the staff and out to the lamb. I called for him in this manner all through the night before I heard his “baa, baa.”

I left my flock with the other shepherds to find my lost lamb. I followed the sound of his bleating and found him, balanced precariously on a rock ledge deep in the crevice. Leaning over, I called down to him, “Don’t be afraid, Amit. I am coming. Did you think you were lost? Did you think I had forgotten about you? I will always come for you.”

After I had rescued Amit, I gathered him in my arms, kissed him, set him on my shoulders, and carried him home. When I returned to the fold, the other sheep came running to us. Oh, how they loved Amit. On that day, I cried out my gratitude to God for having helped me find my little lost lamb.

Feeling profound sorrow, I gazed at Amit now. I had not intended to raise him to be sacrificed on the altar of the temple. But now, knowing what was at stake, I felt I had no other choice. My father had taught me that true faith and worship require offering the best and most precious things to God. So, with a sense of purpose and yet with great sadness, I called Amit to me. When my little lamb bounded to me, bleating and happy, I lifted him into my arms, nuzzled him gently, and set him on my shoulders. I looked at my father with grief and yet with determination. He nodded. We understood each other. With that, he handed me a purse filled with a few coins and a scrip containing a little food. “For your journey,” he said.

I thanked him and glanced back toward the high place where my father’s Ebenezer stood. Then I turned my face toward Jerusalem.