Visha loves Judah. It isn't home. It isn't even the best of cities that she and Gilit have wandered in the course of peddling his politics, their wares, and their morals (though she has a certain affinity for its free-wheeling sprawl, loath as she is to pin herself in with walls). The reason she loves it is that like Moab Judah is a city where Gilit has grown familiar enough with his colleagues to abandon his usual safeguards and teach as he once taught her-- his lost shepherd girl wandering Moab's market stalls. When they come here, Visha can sit, smooth out her robes, and lean into the growling din of his voice as smilingly as though it were the blessed winter sun come to thaw things over.
He sits at the center of a ring of men with his back to the hall's entrance. He speaks in a hush, almost as though he can still hear the words of his people's covenants and communion with their Lord echoing in the eaves of the place. His black eyes glitter. He leans over his spread knees, an elbow propped on each thigh as he illustrates each of his points with sweeping, open-handed gestures. He speaks of tragedy, a people losing its God and its ways, but there is the humor of one who has lived to its end coloring his voice. He offers no bows, no apologies, no concessions. No, he merely speaks:
'Now, what we must keep before our mind always is the fact that we need not be led by a foreigner or another man's god to be misled. While Moses was on the Mount, Aaron fashioned an idol. But it was not a foreign god. He was only trying to draw our Yahweh into a form he could understand. How could he turn his face to our Lord and make such an error? We have to read deeper into the situation to find our answers. Moses restored the people by bringing them the law, our covenants. And it was the practice of these covenants that set their hearts right, not chanting the right god's name or the right doctrine. The practice of the covenants, together, this is how we draw Yahweh to rest among us in the temple. What we cannot comprehend we must feel if we are not to project our own limited desires and understanding onto Him. I think all of this is the indispensable background we need before we can speak about what dangers foreign influences present to us.'
There is a man lean as a spring rabbit lounging next to Gilit's perch, fanning himself with a scrap from a scroll he ruined earlier that day. He is no priest or commentator, merely a scribe with beautiful calligraphy. But there are things one picks up in the trade. So he drawls, lazily from beneath drooping eyelids: 'Alright, then. What is wrong with saying that many prophets have dwelt as happily and prosperously as they pleased in serving foreigners in foreign lands just by keeping our traditions in their own self-administered districts and wards? So long as we are allowed to keep our own laws and we have a temple to feel Yahweh's presence in what could the problem be? If people don't want to subjugate themselves to Yahweh's will they won't, no matter who leads. If anything, should our people enter leadership they will be corrupted by the same things that corrupted our past leaders... I might add, by the way, that your reading of Aaron's idol is not uncontroversial, although perhaps that's because it's too subtle for a sermon.'
Gilit nods enthusiastically. 'This is a good question. There is one trend that reads past prophet's orders not to wed with outsiders as mere paranoia, or as an extraordinary means to curb our people's vices when they were at their worst. But I say to you, it goes deeper than that. If we share our daily business, our leisure, and our families with foreigners who do not keep our laws, then no matter how devout we are in our hearts we will be torn. We will have commitments to them, also. We will begin to weigh our time and our wealth. We will say to ourselves "If I am to live in peace with them, then this much must be for them, but it will be okay because I shall leave more for my Lord." But each concession we make will distract us so much more. Yahweh's voice is quiet. It is no wonder that so often our prophets must flee to the wilderness to hear it. If half our lives are outside the world of our laws, it will be harder and harder to hear it. We have to worry not for the devout who will always keep our Lord in their hearts, but the weak who have trouble hearing him to begin with. As foreigners move in what can they do but accommodate them, are we not a people of great hospitality? In that situation, what can they do but be distracted? And can they help that then they won't hear our God?'
'Forgive me, but!' A young priests whose face is ruddy from grinning at all the world in his eagerness to please and his gratitude that the world is so pleased hops to his feet, shaking his head. A rope strains to hold his robes around his bulging waist. Gilit worries tenderly over this one. Gershom, that's his name. 'Then why do you fight with the elder priests when they say we should only reserve so many parcels of land or shops in the city for foreigners?'
Avishag narrows her eyes in sympathy where she sits a few feet away. She well understands Gershom's confusion. So often Gilit does not get to fully explain himself, and he can agree with neither of Judah's two camps about the expanding trade and social relationships that the wider world has formed with Judea. The crafty old merchant-- he knows how incomplete Gershom's all too eager education has been, since it was left to the mercy of a few sporadic, winding, and respectful debates Gilit has had with priests.
'Ahhh,' Gilit beams, in a rare spirit of merriment. 'Why do you think that is?' He only beams the wider as Gershom cries 'Come now, don't play games with us, brother--' and another priest makes to give sarcastic reply.
Neither he nor they could have expected what would happen next.
He sits at the center of a ring of men with his back to the hall's entrance. He speaks in a hush, almost as though he can still hear the words of his people's covenants and communion with their Lord echoing in the eaves of the place. His black eyes glitter. He leans over his spread knees, an elbow propped on each thigh as he illustrates each of his points with sweeping, open-handed gestures. He speaks of tragedy, a people losing its God and its ways, but there is the humor of one who has lived to its end coloring his voice. He offers no bows, no apologies, no concessions. No, he merely speaks:
'Now, what we must keep before our mind always is the fact that we need not be led by a foreigner or another man's god to be misled. While Moses was on the Mount, Aaron fashioned an idol. But it was not a foreign god. He was only trying to draw our Yahweh into a form he could understand. How could he turn his face to our Lord and make such an error? We have to read deeper into the situation to find our answers. Moses restored the people by bringing them the law, our covenants. And it was the practice of these covenants that set their hearts right, not chanting the right god's name or the right doctrine. The practice of the covenants, together, this is how we draw Yahweh to rest among us in the temple. What we cannot comprehend we must feel if we are not to project our own limited desires and understanding onto Him. I think all of this is the indispensable background we need before we can speak about what dangers foreign influences present to us.'
There is a man lean as a spring rabbit lounging next to Gilit's perch, fanning himself with a scrap from a scroll he ruined earlier that day. He is no priest or commentator, merely a scribe with beautiful calligraphy. But there are things one picks up in the trade. So he drawls, lazily from beneath drooping eyelids: 'Alright, then. What is wrong with saying that many prophets have dwelt as happily and prosperously as they pleased in serving foreigners in foreign lands just by keeping our traditions in their own self-administered districts and wards? So long as we are allowed to keep our own laws and we have a temple to feel Yahweh's presence in what could the problem be? If people don't want to subjugate themselves to Yahweh's will they won't, no matter who leads. If anything, should our people enter leadership they will be corrupted by the same things that corrupted our past leaders... I might add, by the way, that your reading of Aaron's idol is not uncontroversial, although perhaps that's because it's too subtle for a sermon.'
Gilit nods enthusiastically. 'This is a good question. There is one trend that reads past prophet's orders not to wed with outsiders as mere paranoia, or as an extraordinary means to curb our people's vices when they were at their worst. But I say to you, it goes deeper than that. If we share our daily business, our leisure, and our families with foreigners who do not keep our laws, then no matter how devout we are in our hearts we will be torn. We will have commitments to them, also. We will begin to weigh our time and our wealth. We will say to ourselves "If I am to live in peace with them, then this much must be for them, but it will be okay because I shall leave more for my Lord." But each concession we make will distract us so much more. Yahweh's voice is quiet. It is no wonder that so often our prophets must flee to the wilderness to hear it. If half our lives are outside the world of our laws, it will be harder and harder to hear it. We have to worry not for the devout who will always keep our Lord in their hearts, but the weak who have trouble hearing him to begin with. As foreigners move in what can they do but accommodate them, are we not a people of great hospitality? In that situation, what can they do but be distracted? And can they help that then they won't hear our God?'
'Forgive me, but!' A young priests whose face is ruddy from grinning at all the world in his eagerness to please and his gratitude that the world is so pleased hops to his feet, shaking his head. A rope strains to hold his robes around his bulging waist. Gilit worries tenderly over this one. Gershom, that's his name. 'Then why do you fight with the elder priests when they say we should only reserve so many parcels of land or shops in the city for foreigners?'
Avishag narrows her eyes in sympathy where she sits a few feet away. She well understands Gershom's confusion. So often Gilit does not get to fully explain himself, and he can agree with neither of Judah's two camps about the expanding trade and social relationships that the wider world has formed with Judea. The crafty old merchant-- he knows how incomplete Gershom's all too eager education has been, since it was left to the mercy of a few sporadic, winding, and respectful debates Gilit has had with priests.
'Ahhh,' Gilit beams, in a rare spirit of merriment. 'Why do you think that is?' He only beams the wider as Gershom cries 'Come now, don't play games with us, brother--' and another priest makes to give sarcastic reply.
Neither he nor they could have expected what would happen next.