God Is Disappointed In You (10 page)

After conquering Judah, the Babylonians annihilated Jerusalem, tearing down the city walls, razing the Temple, stealing its treasure and forcing all its brightest, prettiest, and richest people to move to Babylon. The Jews lived in exile for fifty years before Babylon was itself gobbled up by the Persian Empire.
 

The Persian king, Cyrus, didn’t see any reason why people should be forced to live in Babylon against their will, so he let the Jews return to their homeland. In fact, he picked up the bill for their return trip. What a nice young man!

Despite this perk, hardly anyone wanted to return to the Promised Land. The whole place was in ruins, there were weeds everywhere, and they had all become accustomed to the good life in Babylon.
 

Cyrus thought he could lure them back to their homeland if he rebuilt the temple. So he sent a party of Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild it.
 

This didn’t make the neighboring kingdoms very happy. The last thing they wanted was an exciting new tourist attraction in the next country over. In order to keep the temple from being rebuilt, they turned to the most devastating tactic of the ancient world:
the letter-writing campaign:

Dear King of Persia, Master of a Hundred Nations,

Greetings from the Trans-Euphrates! First off, we just wanted to say how much we LOVE the Persian Empire. These are exciting times, and we look forward to many years of rewarding subjugation. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to be as on board with Persian rule as we are. We recently heard that the Jews (and jeez, I really hate to be a snitch!) are rebuilding the walls to their city. Do you know if they’re allowed to do that? I thought they were just supposed to be rebuilding their temple. It seems odd that they would be rebuilding their city walls instead. Unless, of course, they were planning some sort of revolt. Just saying. Hey, maybe that’s something you want to look into!

Signed,

Your loyal subjects and biggest fans

When the king got the letter, he called a halt to all construction until the building inspector could look into it. After years of delay, when it became clear that the Jews weren’t planning a revolt, work on the temple was allowed to resume, which prompted yet another letter.

Dearest Ruler of Heaven and Earth, Lord of the Ants and the Birds and All That,

Hello again from the Trans-Euphrates! Hey, I just wanted to give you a heads up: we were driving through Judah last weekend, and couldn’t help but notice that the Jews are back at work on their temple. When we asked to see their building permit, they didn’t have one, but said that one was on file back in Persia. Is that true? Hate to be a stickler, but maybe they should stop work on the temple until the permit can be verified?

Signed,

Concerned citizens

Work on the temple was delayed once again while the king retrieved the correct permits from the archives. Sick of being bothered by these people, the king sent them a response:
Dear Friends in the Trans-Euphrates,

After a long, exhaustive search, we have located the permit you requested and found it to be in working order. I’m saddened that the legality of this temple’s construction is causing you so many sleepless nights. I really don’t want this matter to weigh on your minds anymore, so from here on out, work on the temple will continue unabated, and if anyone sends me another letter or tries to stop the construction in any way, I will pull a beam out of their house and impale them on it.

Hopefully this will finally put your concerns to rest.

Signed,

Your Loving Monarch

Work on the temple continued undisturbed. The King of Persia then sent a letter to one of his Jewish scribes, named Ezra.
 

Dear Ezra,
 

Persia recognizes that a valued and motivated workforce is the key to a successful empire. That is why we are committed to celebrating our subjects’ unique cultures and religious beliefs.
 

Unfortunately, we seem to be experiencing some challenges in convincing your people to reclaim their rich and vibrant way of life. Here in the Persian Empire, we believe that citizenship begins with education and ends with empowerment. To that end, we would like you to lead a coterie of priests, judges, and artists back to Jerusalem to rediscover old traditions, foster your religious identity, and promote your ancestral homeland as a place of inclusion and opportunity.
 

To help you get started, please accept the enclosed four tons of silver, eighteen tons of wheat, and six hundred gallons of wine.

In Commitment to Excellence Through Diversity and Empowerment,The King of Persia

Excited to see the land he’d grown up hearing so much about, Ezra eagerly took the king up on his offer.

Now, as any seasoned traveler will tell you, when you romanticize a place in your mind, you’re bound to be disappointed when you get there. And this is what happened to Ezra. When he finally got back to Jerusalem, he was shocked.
The place was a wreck. The Jews who were still living there had gotten incredibly sloppy in their religious observances and nothing seemed to be done by the book. And worst of all, the men had all taken to marrying pagans. This last one drove Ezra apeshit, a point he drove home by pulling his beard right off with his bare hands. 

“Have you people learned nothing?” He screamed, chin still hurting from his beard-pull. “The whole reason God allowed us to be conquered in the first place was because we started worshiping foreign gods. And the reason we started worshiping foreign gods was because we started messing around with foreign women. Now, here we are, given a second chance after fifty years in exile, and what are you doing? You’re starting the cycle all over again!”

“Okay, okay, you’re right,” the men shouted back. “We’ve sinned. We married foreign women, and got a little kinky with their gods. But the damage is done. We have
kids
with these women now. What do you want us to do about it?”

“There’s only one thing to do,” Ezra replied. “You have to send them away. Your pagan wives, your little pagan kids. It’s a shitty thing to do, I know, but it’s your own fault for disobeying the law in the first place.”

“What? Send them away? Now? Are you crazy? It’s raining! They can’t go out on a night like this. Besides, these are our families we’re talking about. We need time to say good-bye.”

“Yeah!” someone else shouted, “Ever hear of closure?”

Ezra reluctantly agreed. “All right, you can wait until the good weather returns. But then you’ve got to get rid of them.”

The day came when the skies cleared and the sun came out.
All the men who’d married foreign women lined their families up, gave them sack lunches, and tearfully sent them on the road out to God knows where.

“I’m not a hard man,” Ezra explained, “but it’s my job to rebuild our people, to recreate our way of life. If I had done nothing, our blood, our customs, our religion would have been compromised and watered down until we were just another group of freeballing shepherds.”

“Sometimes diversity means getting rid of people who aren’t like you.”

Nehemiah lived a comfortable life in Persia. He was King Artaxerxes’ cup-bearer. Whenever the king got peckish, Nehemiah would bring him a tray of roast quail tongues or hand-slain gazelle. When the king asked for wine, Nehemiah would bring him a woody red or a buttery white. And whenever the king was having a bad day, Nehemiah would crack jokes or say something validating about his hair. The two men were as close as lips and teeth.

Nehemiah was Jewish, and was excited to return to his people’s homeland, even though he’d been born and raised in Babylon. Nehemiah asked the king if he could take some vacation time to go help rebuild Jerusalem’s walls. He was such a cool boss, that the king not only let Nehemiah go, but put him in charge of the city.
 

Nehemiah used this adventure to take a crack at writing his memoirs:

The Homecoming

by Nehemiah

It felt good to be back home. Even though ‘home’ was someplace I’d never been before. One day I was picking out table settings, the next I was running a city. Having been a servant all my life, it felt awkward to suddenly be The Man. Speaking metaphorically, of course. Being a eunuch, I have no dick or balls worth speaking of.
 

First, let me explain something to you: a city is basically a species of animal. A city without walls is like a turtle without a shell. A city without watchtowers is like a cat without eyes. A city without a gate is like a cow without a mouth.

We built walls, we built watchtowers. Needing a mouth, we built the Fish Gate, so the food could flow in. Needing an ass, we built the Dung Gate, so the shit could flow out. Rebuilding a city is like resurrecting a dead animal. You not only need to bring it back to life, you have to keep the wolves and coyotes away while you do it.

When the neighboring countries noticed we were rebuilding the city walls, they laughed us off. But as the wall grew taller, the laughter was replaced by threats. Every week, a new message would arrive, threatening war if we continued working on the walls.
 

Stopping work on the wall was out of the question. We all agreed that we had come too far to quit, whatever the cost. And yet, I knew these were not idle threats. So I had to take half my work force off them wall, arm them and use them as guards. With only half the workforce building the wall, this meant everyone had to work double shifts. Despite their heroism and sacrifice, I knew my builders couldn’t carry on much longer like that.
 

Things got worse. I learned that many of my workers, who had literally poured their blood and sweat into that wall, were forced to mortgage their homes and go into debt, just so they could afford to work on the wall. So when I heard that our own merchants and noblemen were taking advantage, raising interest rates and foreclosing on homes, I totally lost my shit.
 

These were heroes, building the wall and guarding the city from attack, protecting these greedy assholes who were then charging them for the privilege. I gathered all the lenders together in a room and I told these guys that if they wanted to live in our city when the wall was finished, then all this subprime mortgage shit would have to stop, NOW. What’s the point of guarding against a foreign invasion when you’re being enslaved from within?

Although the invasion never came, the foreign kings still tried to stop me from completing the wall. They sent me a letter vaguely accusing me of walling off the city so I could become king and lead a revolt against Persia. They summoned me to a series of hearings to discuss the matter. I saw no point in trying to talk them out of believing rumors they themselves had made up. I had too much work to do, anyway, so I ignored them.

Soon afterward, a man came running up and said there was a group of armed men coming to kill me. He pleaded with me to hide in the temple. “Hurry, run to the temple!” He pleaded. “There’s a gang of mercenaries right outside the city! Quick, hide in the Temple! Seriously, they’re coming! Oh my God, they’re huge! They’ve got swords and these huge axe things and everything!”

I wasn’t sure why he was so eager to see me hide in the temple, but something about the situation just didn’t smell right, so I simply kept working. Later on, I figured out what he was trying to do. The neighboring kings had learned about an obscure Jewish law that eunuchs aren’t allowed in the temple. If they could trick me into going inside the temple, they thought I would be stoned to death or something.
 

After two months of danger, sleep deprivation, and hard work the walls of Jerusalem had been rebuilt. And all because I followed one simple maxim: when in doubt, keep working.
 

It might seem a little trite, all this trouble over a stupid wall. But you’ve got to understand, it was the wall that finally allowed people to return to Jerusalem without having to worry about being overrun by thieves, marauders, and rapists. A few hardscrabble pioneers can make a go of it in a lawless wasteland, but if you want the artists, priests, and scribes to come, then you need a wall to protect them. And those are the people who create your culture, write your history. It might be construction workers who build your nation, and soldiers who guard it, but it’s the nerds who make it a civilization.