Wings of Refuge (39 page)

Overcome with grief, Rebeccah lay down on the mound where her husband was buried and wept. Leah left her there to mourn and returned to the grisly task of picking among the rubble to strip the dead of their weapons. The mangled bodies that lay among the collapsed homes repulsed her, but she forced herself to search them, sometimes gleaning rations from their belts as well as knives and swords. Most of them looked so young to her—no older than her daughter, Elizabeth—and she had difficulty seeing them as her enemies. They had been mere boys, alive and vibrant just a short time ago.

The silence among the dead was so profound that Leah jumped back when a sudden sound startled her. The moan had come from a soldier lying at her feet. His bloodied head and torso protruded from the rubble of stones, his legs and lower body crushed and pinned beneath them. Leah knew he wouldn’t live, and she also knew from his agonized moans that he was suffering. His right hand groped in the dirt, and she saw the deep grooves that his fingers had made as they sought his sword. It lay where he’d dropped it, just inches from his fingertips. He turned his head to look up at her as she crouched beside him. There was no anger or hatred in his eyes, only pain and silent pleading. Leah stood and pushed the sword toward his hand with her foot. Then she turned and quickly hurried away.

“God, you must be so sick of this,” she wept as she staggered away from the ruins. “You must be so sick of the carnage our hatred reaps.” She couldn’t bear to think that God’s Son had suffered the very worst of it, enduring the brutality of execution in a frail human body to redeem the people He loved. “I pray that it was worth it, Lord. I pray that those you’ve redeemed will spread your Kingdom to the ends of the earth.”

She spent the rest of the day treating the injured, doing the best she could with limited water and scant medical supplies. As she wrapped a bandage around Gideon’s wounded hand, he discussed the Zealots’ next move with the remaining leaders.

“The Romans aren’t used to defeat,” he warned. “They lost a lot of men today, and when they return it will be for revenge.”

“Maybe we should send someone out to discuss terms of surrender.”

Gideon shook his head. “They’ll never accept surrender now. Not after suffering such a humiliating defeat.”

“A siege will kill the last of us,” one of the elders said. “We’ve already run out of food. The old and the weak are dying every day.”

“They’re the lucky ones,” someone murmured.

“Isn’t there a way we could escape? Down the cliffs, after dark?”

Gideon raked his uninjured hand through his hair. “I don’t see how. The fact that Gamla is impregnable—the fact that the Romans couldn’t get in—also means that we can’t get out. They’re standing guard at the base of the mountain, remember.”

“Well, I would still like to try.” One man stood to his feet and several others quickly joined him. “I’m taking my family down the ravine as soon as it’s dark.”

“Me too.”

“You’ll never make it,” Gideon warned. “Those paths are treacherous . . . one false step and you’ll fall to your death.”

“I’ll take my chances. Better that the mountain kills us than hunger or the Romans.”

Gideon shrugged and gestured toward the door. “Go, then. Good luck to you.”

Leah counted a dozen men who decided to risk escape.

“The rest of us have no choice but to man the breaches and wait for the next attack,” Gideon said when they were gone. “We’ll hold them off as long as we can—until every last one of us is dead.”

But the attack they expected didn’t come the next day or the next. The strain grew nearly unbearable as everyone waited to die. During the day, Leah and the strongest women and children collected ballista stones and formed a chain of volunteers to pass them up to the citadel so they could be hurled down upon their attackers. At night she listened to the sounds that carried on the wind from the Roman camp and tried to ignore the aroma of roasting meat and warm camp-fires that traveled on the wind along with them.

She slept restlessly, the constant gnawing of fear and hunger nudging her awake. When she saw a brilliant half-moon lighting the sky on the third night, Leah got up and went outside to gaze up at the stars. She thought of Elizabeth and Judah and prayed that they were safe in Antioch.

Would her land ever be at peace again? Would Elizabeth ever be able to return to the villa in Degania she had inherited from her father? Thinking about Reuben’s will, Leah suddenly realized that his documents needed to be in a safer place—a place where they wouldn’t burn if the Romans put Gamla to the torch. A place where they might one day be found.

She quietly slipped back into the house and retrieved the earthenware jar, then carefully made her way down the hill through Gamla’s silent streets. The door to the synagogue stood open. Inside, the moon shone through the collapsed roof like a pale lantern. She found a broken chunk of beam from the roof and began scratching a hole in the unfinished dirt floor with it, stopping to rest often as her strength waned.

At last the hole was deep enough. Leah carefully lowered the jar into it, then stopped when she had a sudden thought. Wandering into the rear of the synagogue, she searched the adjoining storerooms until she found what she was looking for—a pen and ink. She also found a handful of parched grain someone had overlooked in a broken jar, and she tucked the precious kernels into a fold of her robe. Returning to her task, Leah’s tears silently fell as she wrote God’s promise to her people, from memory, on the back of Reuben’s will. Then she scooped dirt over the jar and buried it in the earth.

When she emerged from the synagogue, a voice called out to her from the top of the guard tower. “Who goes there?” She recognized it as Saul’s.

“It’s me . . . Leah. May I come up?” She had to lean against the walls twice to rest, too weak to climb the stairs.

Saul and two other men were in the tower, but he was the only one who was awake. Leah gave him some of the grain she’d scavenged, and they talked quietly for a while. Saul reminisced about the flock of sheep he had once tended on the hills outside Degania. Leah talked about Yeshua, the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for His sheep.

When the other men began to stir, Leah knew it was time for her to go. “Do you know where I can find Gideon?” she asked. “I want to give him the rest of this grain.”

“Down there,” Saul said, pointing to the breach the Romans had made in the wall. Leah prayed with her brother and held him tightly, feeling the strength that still remained in Saul’s brawny arms. Then she left.

She found Gideon sitting alone, leaning against the crumbled wall, staring up at the moon. “What are you doing here, Leah?” he said as she knelt beside him. His voice was soft, as if he lacked the strength to speak louder.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“No . . . I mean what are you doing here . . . in Gamla? Why didn’t you leave Degania with your friends that night, when you had the chance?”

Leah didn’t answer. Instead, she carefully unfolded her robe and brushed the scavenged grain into the palm of her hand, then held it out to him. “Here. This is for you.”

Tears glistened in his eyes as he stared at the grain in wonder. Then he shook his head and folded her hand closed around her prize. “Why, Leah?” he whispered. “I killed your husband.”

“I know.” Leah swallowed, then whispered the hardest words she’d ever spoken in her life. “I forgive you.”

Gideon slowly shook his head. “That’s what I don’t understand. How can you?” He closed his eyes, biting his lip as tears rolled down his cheek.

“I can forgive you because my own sins have been forgiven.”

“But why did you stay with me? Now you’re going to die in this terrible place.”

“I stayed so you would see what God is like. He’s a God who loves us and forgives us even though our sin killed His Son.”

Gideon swiped his hand across his eyes, but his tears kept falling. “Here we are in the same place, facing the same end very soon, and I realize, too late, that you were right—I’ve been fighting for the wrong kingdom. I’m losing, Leah. Everything is crashing down around me, like the prophet said. ‘You have shed man’s blood. . . . shaming your own house and forfeiting your life. The stones of the wall will cry out.’ This is the end of our nation. These fallen stones will bear testimony to God’s judgment.”

“But that’s not the end of the prophecy,” Leah told him. “A couple verses later it says,’the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.’ The kingdom Yeshua died to bring will fill the whole earth one day. And you and I can be part of that kingdom if we accept the Messiah’s sacrifice.”

“I don’t deserve His forgiveness. I—”

Suddenly there was a sickening rumble, and the earth trembled beneath them. Above them on the crest of the hill, the guard tower where Saul stood watch teetered, then toppled to the ground like a child’s toy, falling in a heap of rubble and dust.

“NO!” Leah screamed. “Saul!”

Gideon ran up the hill ahead of her, coughing in the choking dust as he pawed wildly through the debris, calling Saul’s name. Archers on the wall fired in vain at the Roman sappers who had undermined the tower’s foundation during the night. They ran unscathed into the darkness.

Leah helped Gideon dig, working frantically, the rough stones and splintered beams drawing blood as they gouged her skin. But there was no hope. When they found Saul and the other two men, their broken bodies were as limp as rag dolls.

Gideon cradled his dead brother in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he wept. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. . . .”

The Romans waited until dawn to attack. There were no battle cries or trumpets this time, but Leah heard the tramp of thousands of feet as the soldiers marched across the neck of land to Gamla.

“To arms!” one of the Zealots manning the breaches shouted. They stood to fight their enemies, but the Roman forces mowed them down like ripe wheat. The cries and moans of the dying seemed to echo off the hills as Gamla’s streets ran with blood once again and smoke curled from the burning synagogue. Leah fled to the citadel with the last of the refugees and helped them roll rocks and hurl stones down on their attackers. For a time, they seemed to be holding the Romans at bay. Then a fall storm blew in and the weather turned against them. The driving wind and rain blew in the defenders’ faces and foiled their archers’ aim, and it carried with it a hail of Roman arrows that they couldn’t stand against.

Leah fled to the center of the mound as chaos surrounded her. She knew that this was the end. In front of her, Roman soldiers stormed the citadel, overrunning it. Some of the defenders fought to the very end, taking more Romans to the grave along with them. Others begged for mercy and died at the end of a merciless Roman sword. Behind Leah, people were trying to scramble down the side of the ravine in panic. Many lost their footing and tumbled to their death, others trampled each other in their rush to escape.

Leah slowly dropped to her knees. As she closed her eyes, waiting for the end she knew would come, she felt at peace.

“My Abba in heaven,” she prayed. “May your name be hallowed in the earth through my life and even in my death. May your will be done here on earth, just as you have decreed it should be in heaven. Provide for our needs this day . . . and please forgive our sins, as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us. . . .”

THE GOLAN HEIGHTS, ISRAEL—1999

A
bby clung to the grab bar in the backseat of Ari’s car as it hurtled down the rutted road. Intrigued by Hannah’s story and the documents with Leah and Reuben ben Johanan’s names, she had stayed up late into the night, reading Josephus’ account of the battle of Gamla. “Do you think we could tour Gamla on one of our days off?” she had asked Hannah.

“Sure. It isn’t far. I’ll ask Ari to drive us.”

Now he stopped the car in a crude dirt parking lot at the end of the road. The sweeping view of the rugged hills and distant purple-rimmed lake took Abby’s breath away. The camel-backed ridge was easy to spot, but the narrow trail leading down to it looked much too difficult for Hannah to traverse. Abby wondered if she had made a mistake in asking to come here, but Hannah was already climbing out of the car with her canes. Abby quickly scrambled out to help her.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Hannah asked Ari. He had remained behind the wheel of his car.

“No, thanks.”

Ari had been coldly silent throughout their short drive, and now he stared out of his side window, not looking at either of them.

“Suit yourself,” Hannah said, shrugging.

Hannah led the way down the trail, pointing out all the sights that Abby had just read about like a proud grandmother showing snapshots of her grandchildren. Abby saw the hole that the Roman battering rams had made in the city wall, the crumbled remains of the round tower. Catapult stones the size of bowling balls were heaped in piles everywhere.

“We found more than a thousand ballista stones,” Hannah told her, “and 1,600 arrowheads. That should give you an idea of the ferocity of the battle. According to Josephus, Gamla fell to the Romans on November 10,
A.D
. 67.”

Abby and Hannah sat down to rest on the synagogue’s beautifully preserved benches. Hannah pointed to the spot where she had found the cache of documents that had once belonged to Reuben ben Johanan.

“We worked on preserving and translating them all that winter,” she said. “One of them was Reuben’s will, in which he left all his goods and property to his wife and daughter. It soon became clear after examining all the other papers that he had died beforehand, and that his widow had come to Gamla for refuge during the invasion. She must have buried the jar here for safekeeping.”

Hannah gazed into the distance, silent for a moment as the gentle breeze blew her dark hair across her face. “Finding those papers changed everything for me. I’m not sure if I can explain how, but they helped me come to terms with my grief. The woman who had buried them and the woman who had discovered them were both widows with a young daughter to raise. Nearly two thousand years separated us, yet our paths crossed and we were both changed forever at the same place, here on the Golan Heights.”