Ur
Terah lay sprawled on the clay floor, blood gushing from his nose. Angry with himself for thinking he could accomplish something beyond his strength, he also dreaded that Belessunu would see him like this at the most vulnerable time of her life. He attempted to get to his knees, but now nothing worked.
He tried holding his nostrils shut, hoping the blood would clot, but no. Terah hunched himself into a position where he could support his ravaged face in the crook of his arm, but all that served was to soak his sleeve with blood. It was all he could do to stanch his tears. Chief officer of the king of the realm, in authority over everyone but Nimrod himself, and here he lay, decimated and blubbering in an expanding puddle of his own blood.
Terah looked bad enough before this last disaster. He could have calmed his wife, assured her he would heal in due time and return to full health. But now he couldn’t be sure. And would she ever be able to erase from her memory the sight of him lying here?
Terah simply could not move. If Ikuppi and Wedum ever did arrive with Belessunu, she would have to be their top priority until Yadidatum could superintend the birth. Only then would they be able to somehow collect him from the floor and get him cleaned up again. The last thing he wanted was to distract his wife from her own ordeal. He just hoped he hadn’t already caused her some irreversible trauma.
Terah tried to slow his breathing and his heart, which seemed to thunder against the floor. He raised his chin so he could see his entire array of idols on the table. “So this is what you have wrought? Your servant lies here in abject humiliation, despite that only hours ago you told me my salvation drew nigh. I should curse and reject the lot of you!”
But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Did they not have the power to put him to death for such blasphemy?
What was this now? A rumbling beneath him! Did that portend the return of the chariot with his cherished one? Terah heard no wheels, no hooves. He felt only the movement beneath him. The idols began to wobble and pitch, then to topple. This was their answer to his profane challenge? Must he humbly beseech their forgiveness yet again? He was already prostrate!
But then it struck him. When the promise of his deliverance had been impressed deep in Terah’s soul the night before—and proved true when he discovered the cave that saved his life—it had come not in response to his prayers to the gods. He had been praying to the God of his forefathers and his wife, the deity she referred to as the one true God.
The shifting of the earth deepened, and the idols knocked into each other and rolled off the table, shattering as they hit the floor. “Is this You, God of Noah?”
And Terah was transported to the same conviction he’d felt in the night when it seemed God had spoken directly to him. Now, deep inside, he sensed, felt, a pronouncement, as if God Himself said, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
“Unclean!” Terah keened. “Unworthy! Lord, forgive me or strike me dead!”
The earth stopped quaking. The idols lay in waste like Terah. For an instant he had believed. Had God forgiven him, proved by the fact that he remained alive? He couldn’t be sure. And as quickly as his faith in the one true God came, it also fled. Terah felt guilty about the state of the idols in pieces all around him. He must be careful not to further offend them if he had allowed another god to invade his home.
Terah prayed to the shards on the floor. “I will repair each and every one of you and return you to your places of reverence.”
The chariot rattled to a stop and from outside came the frantic voices of Ikuppi and Wedum.