Chapter Fifty-One

Judah

Not content to leave Timotheus free to create further trouble for Israel, we pursued him. The Amorites had encamped around the city of Raphana, which lay on the far side of a stream. I sent scouts to spy out the enemy camp, and when they returned we learned that hundreds of neighboring Arabs had joined Timotheus in hope of plundering the Jews. After studying the situation, I became convinced they were waiting for us.

Clearly, the Gentiles hoped to overawe the army of Israel by their great numbers and the strength of their location. But after three years and many battles, HaShem had made us confident. We did not even bother to establish a camp but crossed the stream and attacked straightaway. The Gentiles quailed before our direct assault, and many fled. We soundly defeated those who remained.

The deserters ran to Ashtoreth Carnaim and took refuge in the famous temple of the Queen of Heaven. Johanan wanted to leave them alone, but I suspected Timotheus had gone with them and I did not want him to slip through my grasp again.

So we followed immediately. Completely focused on the enemy, we captured Ashtoreth Carnaim and set the pagan temple aflame. Timotheus, I later learned, perished in that fire.

As we made camp and celebrated our victory, I acted on a lesson I had learned from an earlier excursion. Unwilling for the survivors at Raphana to suffer the vengeance of neighboring Arabs and Amorites, I urged them to join us on the journey home. “Come live in Jerusalem,” I urged them, “where your neighbors will be brothers.”

I was pleased to see that most of the city’s inhabitants joined our company. We lingered two days to give the people time to gather their belongings and livestock, then we set out for the holy city.

Our journey was slow, for our caravan included not only the army of Israel, but dozens of families who would build new homes in Judea. Traveling slowly made me nervous, because we made a large and ponderous target.

We marched southwest, toward the Jordan and the fortress of Ephron. We would have to pass through that city to reach Judea, yet the people of Ephron were not willing to open their gates.

I called out with a friendly message. “Let us pass through your land to get to ours. We will not harm you; we will simply pass through on foot.”

No one responded. Instead, stalwart young men with weapons appeared atop the walls. Even from where we stood, we could hear the sound of stones being stacked behind the gates. They were not only refusing to let us pass, they were also refusing to let us drink and water our livestock.

I folded my arms and considered the situation. The inhabitants of Ephron had to know that refusing hospitality in a hot and arid land was a grievous affront, for life depended on water. Without it, we would all suffer, and we could lose many lives during our trek across the desert.

“What should we do?” Jonathan shaded his eyes as he studied the men on the wall. “We don’t have weapons to take down a fortress.”

“We will call on Adonai,” I answered, “and He will supply what we need to build them.”

I instructed our company to establish a camp on the plain. I invited the families to rest in the shade of our tents while the army of Israel built catapults and cut logs that could be used for battering rams. By midafternoon, we moved forward to assault the gates and walls. After battering the city for several hours, the gates fell. With swords unsheathed, we entered the city and put the hardhearted men of Ephron to death.

We spent the night within the city walls. The next day we filled our pitchers and waterskins and marched through the fortress, exiting at the south side. I placed Jonathan at the rear of the procession to make sure we did not lose any of our families, and a few days later we were climbing the ascent to Jerusalem, singing the psalms of David as we advanced. When we finally arrived within the holy city, our company—families and soldiers alike—walked together toward the Temple to offer sacrifices for our deliverance and safe journey.

But before we approached the Temple, I went in search of my wife.

Within a few days of our return, Simon and his army of three thousand arrived in Jerusalem with another group of emigrating families. Simon’s campaign to fight invaders from Tyre, Sidon, and Accho had been successful, the captive Jews had been released, and three thousand Gentile invaders had been slain.

Longing for security and safety, the Jewish families in the area hastened to join Simon, so we had more new arrivals to live in Jerusalem and share the work of rebuilding the city.

Both expeditions, mine and Simon’s, returned without the loss of a single man. Adonai had been our sword and our shield.

But while we were away, all had not gone well in our capital. Though the young men I left in charge were warned not to attempt any offensive military action, Azarias and Joseph ben Zacharias did not heed our words. Craving fame and success, they concocted a plan to win victories of their own.

“The two of them,” one of the priests explained, “said, ‘Let us also get us a name and go fight the heathen that are round about us.’”

“So,” another priest concluded, “they undertook an expedition you would never have endorsed, Judah. And they were not victorious.”

I exhaled through tight lips. I had learned that most of my brother Jews, none of whom had been born to the sword, could wage battle against trained soldiers only if they held defensive positions on high ground or behind boulders. In my early days, I would never have dared to meet a professional army on flat, open ground.

Yet Azarias and Joseph ben Zacharias had mustered the remnant of my men and advanced against Gorgias, one of Antiochus’s best generals. Gorgias had entrenched his army in Jamnia, a town at the top of a round hill above the Valley of Sorek. Gorgias held the high ground with professional warriors.

When the general looked out and saw Azarias and Joseph advancing with the Israelite army on the open plain, he ordered his men to sweep down from the mountain, swords flaring and hooves thundering. Two thousand men of Israel died that day, and Gorgias’s army pursued the survivors across the plain into the Judean hills.

When word of the defeat reached Jerusalem, the city’s governing council censured the young captains for acting out of disobedience and pride. “Moreover,” one priest sternly noted, “these two men came not of the seed of those by whose hand deliverance was given to Israel.”

A shiver ran up my spine when I heard about the priest’s remark. The notion that HaShem had selected my family to deliver Israel . . . the thought left me profoundly shaken. In His sovereignty, HaShem had chosen to use the line of Hasmon for a divine purpose: He had anointed us to deliver Israel from the Seleucids and the Hellenes, who would destroy us by their laws and their idolatrous influence.

In that moment I felt the mantle of responsibility more heavily than at any time. I knew anything we brothers might do or say had the potential to influence countless others.

Never in my life have I felt so honored and so humbled. I hurried away to find Leah, certain she would understand.

A few months later, Leah and I were resting at home in Modein when a messenger brought another scroll from Antioch. Fearful that the king was about to launch another campaign against Israel, I broke the seal and recognized Philander’s scrawling script. I carefully read the letter:

My dear friend, the Hammerhead:

I bring you news from far away Persia where our king has been waging war in an effort to fill his empty treasury. The king heard that Elymais in Persia was famous for its wealth, particularly its temple, where the great Alexander reportedly left golden shields, breastplates, and weapons.

So Antiochus attempted to plunder the city, but could not, for the men of the area had been warned and successfully withstood him. So in great grief our king departed Elymais and went to Babylon. When he had made camp, a messenger reported that the king’s armies in Judea had been routed. Antiochus learned that Lysias had gone first with a strong force, but had turned and fled before the Jews, and thus the Jews had grown strong from the arms, supplies, and abundant spoils they took from the king’s army. He heard that the Jews had torn down the statue of Zeus he erected on the altar in Jerusalem and that they had rebuilt the sanctuary’s high walls, along with the city of Beth-zur. He also heard that Timotheus, one of his servants, had been killed by your army.

You have been busy, my friend, and your God has blessed you.

When our proud king heard this news, he became enraged. He commanded his chariot driver to prepare for a drive without ceasing, for Antiochus determined to go to Jerusalem and make it a burying ground for all the Jews.

But your God, Adonai Almighty, smote the king with an incurable and invisible plague. As soon as he had uttered those brash words, a pain of the bowels came upon him, and torments of the inward parts, and that most justly, for he had tortured other men’s bowels with many strange sufferings.

Yet Antiochus did not cease from bragging, but was still filled with pride, breathing out fire in his rage against the Jews, commanding his driver to make haste on the journey. But after a while he fell down from his chariot and was much pained in all his body.

And so it was that he who thought he could command the waves of the sea and weigh the high mountains in a balance was thrown to the ground and dragged in a horse litter, displaying the manifest power of a righteous God to all who looked on him.

Worms rose out of the body of this wicked man, and as he yet lived, his flesh fell away. The stench of his body was unbearable even to his generals.

So the man who thought he could reach to the stars of heaven could not be tolerated by even his servants due to his intolerable stink.

He took to his bed and became sick from grief, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned. He lay abed many days because deep grief gripped him, and he concluded he was dying. So he called all his friends and said, “Sleep departs from my eyes and I am downhearted with worry. I said to myself, ‘To what distress have I come? And into what a great flood I now am plunged! For I was kind and beloved in my power.’”

But then Antiochus remembered the evils he had done in Jerusalem—seizing all her vessels of silver and gold, and seeking to destroy the inhabitants of Judah without good reason. And he said, “I know it is because of this that these evils have come upon me; and behold, I am perishing of deep grief in a strange land.”

Finally, being plagued without remedy, he began to forget his great pride and to come to a more complete knowledge of himself. Afflicted by the scourge of God, he came to the place where he could not abide his own smell. And he said, “It is fit to be subject unto God, and a man who is mortal should not think of himself as if he were God.” He also vowed unto the Lord, begging Him to have mercy and saying that he would set Jerusalem at liberty.

And as touching the Jews, whom he had judged not worthy so much as to be buried, but to be cast out with their children to be devoured of the fowls and wild beasts, he would make them all equals to the citizens of Athens. And the holy Temple, which before he had spoiled, he would garnish with goodly gifts, and restore all the holy vessels with many more, and out of his own revenue defray the charges belonging to the sacrifices. Yes, and that he would become a Jew himself, and go through all the inhabited world and declare the power of God.

But even with all this, his pains did not cease, for the just judgment of God was upon him. Therefore, despairing of his health, he wrote to the Jews a letter, which you will find copied herein. I trust you will know how to deliver it to those who need to hear.

Then he called for Philip, one of his friends, and made him ruler over all his kingdom. He gave him the crown and his robe and the signet, that he might guide Antiochus the king’s son and bring him up to be king.

Thus the murderer and blasphemer having suffered most grievously, so died he a miserable death in a strange country in the mountains.

May your God keep and defend you, friend.

Philander

I set aside the first parchment and found another letter, penned by a different hand:

Antiochus, king and governor, to the good Jews his citizens:

For you I wish much joy, health, and prosperity:

If you and your children fare well, and if your affairs are to your contentment, I give very great thanks to God, having my hope in heaven.

As for me, I was weak or else I would have remembered kindly your honor and good will returning out of Persia, and being taken with a grievous disease I thought it necessary to care for the common safety of all:

Not distrusting mine health, but having great hope to escape this sickness. But considering that even my father, at what time he led an army into the high countries, appointed a successor to the end that, if any things fell out contrary to expectation, or if any grievous tidings were brought, they of the land, knowing to whom the state was left, might not be troubled:

Again, considering how the princes that are borderers and neighbors unto my kingdom wait for opportunities, and expect what shall be the event, I have appointed my son Antiochus king, whom I often committed and commended unto many of you when I went up into the high provinces; to whom I have written as follows:

“Therefore I pray and request you to remember the benefits that I have done unto you generally, and in special, and that every man will be still faithful to me and my son.

For I am persuaded that he, understanding my mind, will favorably and graciously yield to your desires.”

“And it is signed with the king’s name.”

I lowered the parchment and looked at Leah, who had been listening as she prepared dinner. “We should celebrate,” I said, my voice creaking in the room. “The king had a change of heart, and his plans for evil against Israel are finished.”

Leah exhaled slowly. “If his plans are finished,” she said, setting a stewpot on the table, “then why are our people still under constant attack in Jerusalem? The Gentiles in the citadel seem not to know that their king is dead. Just the other day I heard that a man and his mother were attacked as they entered the courtyard for the morning sacrifice. Others have been killed as they tried to worship. What good is the king’s death if his hatred still lives in Jerusalem?”

“Surely this will cease in—”

“Not unless you stop it, Judah. Besides,” she continued as she stirred the ladle in her pot, “the king has a son, and the son will be brought up by men who are like the king. Our troubles are not over.”

I tugged at my beard, weighing her words. My wife was certainly right about one thing—the Gentiles and renegade Jews who lived in the citadel continued to harass and harm our people, especially when they visited the Temple. We would never be free to worship until those rebels had been removed.

Well enough, then. I would remove them.

But first we would celebrate, and then I would find a way to thank Philander.