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Pillar
of Fire PROLOGUE 1768 B.C., Egypt It was a nightmare that drove Pharaoh to visit the debtor’s prison. Royal protocol be cursed! Pharaoh was God in Egypt and when he wanted to speak with a man, he sent for him. And before he received his guests, he ordered them bathed in perfumed waters, rubbed in mineral oils until their skin glistened from head to toe, and dressed in robes befitting his royal presence. But none of Pharaoh’s magicians and wisemen could interpret the dream. He’d gotten no sleep, he had little appetite, and last night when the dream returned, as it had every night for two months, he was certain he’d lost his mind. Sometime in the wee hours between sleeplessness and insanity, Pharaoh’s butler suggested he see a Hebrew incarcerated in the debtor’s prison. Pharaoh departed the palace with such fury that he left his scepter on the bedroom mantle and his crown sitting on the head of an exquisitely cast bust that looked nothing like him. His only visible marks of royalty were a gold amulet around his neck and the ring he had worn since the day of his coronation. He went to the palace stables without changing from his sleeping attire—a kilt of blue silks and an open vest. He ordered his chariot hitched and his menservants to follow on horseback. Only seven were able to keep up with his rampage through the streets of Tanis. He dropped the reins at the first sight of the prison gates and stepped from the chariot before it came to a full stop. A rat skittered across the dungeon steps as a man emerged from the shadows. Pharaoh peered at him through the bars in the gate. “I will see the interpreter of dreams who was Potiphar’s servant. The Hebrew they call Joseph.” The man spoke between the iron bars. “I am Joseph.” He was thirty years old with piercing green eyes and deep black hair cut straight across his brow. He unlocked the latch, pushed open the gate and bowed. “You’re the prisoner?” Pharaoh stepped back. “What sort of man are you that the jailer entrusts you with the keys to your freedom?” Pharaoh’s servants arrived in time to usher Joseph away to the far side of the prison and prepare him for an audience with the king. They gave him a blade to shave his beard, and perfumed water and olive oil to clean himself. Before they let him stand before Pharaoh, they replaced his tattered robe with a brown leather kilt and a blue silk tunic. The pharaoh asked, “Will you interpret my dream?” Joseph set his gaze on him and in a calm, firm voice said, “It is God who will give you an answer of peace, not I.” A faint smile crossed Pharaoh’s lips. It was peace he had come for. He said, “In my dream I was standing on the bank of the river. Seven cows, fat-fleshed and strong, rose up from the Nile, and while they grazed along the banks, seven lean cows emerged out of the depths of the river and ate them.” Pharaoh told Joseph that seven ears of good corn grew up on a stalk and next to them seven ears of thin corn. When the dry east wind blasted the harvest and parched the ground, the seven thin ears devoured the seven good ears. Joseph interpreted the dream to mean that Egypt would be blessed with seven years of bounty followed by seven years of famine. He advised the king to find a discreet and wise man to oversee the collection of grain in the plentiful years and see that it was stored in reserve against the lean years. Pharaoh removed the gold amulet from his neck and placed it around Joseph’s, saying, “There is not a man in Egypt who has the spirit of God in him as you have.” He removed his ring, placed it on Joseph’s finger, and said, “With this I make you ruler over Egypt and by your word my people will be ruled. Only in the throne will I be greater than you.” Joseph became viceroy of Egypt and ruled for forty years. He married the gifted daughter of an Egyptian priest, and two sons were born to them—first Manasseh and later Ephraim. And though Joseph was great in Egypt, he never forgot he was the son of Jacob, a Hebrew. Before Joseph died, he left two treasures to his sons to establish their birthrights, just as Pharaoh’s ring and gold amulet established his own adoption into Egypt’s royal house. For Manasseh he prepared a codex of brass plates, a book smithed from a mixture of Egypt’s finest silver and copper. Upon its plates he inscribed the history of the Jews, from Adam down to the account of his own life. He entrusted them to Manasseh and charged him to record the prophecies of the Hebrew prophets. To Ephraim he gave his sword, a blade worth more than any amount of money, the same sword that had been passed down with other tokens of birthright through the generations from the time of Methuselah. Some even whispered that it had been given to Adam at the gates of Eden. It had come down through the centuries, touching the hands of Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob, the Usurper. He passed it on to his favored son Joseph, Viceroy of Egypt. It was smithed of the ancient and secret metal Phoenician blacksmiths called steel, a metal finer and stronger than brass. The hilt was cast of pure gold and decorated with jewels. Before Joseph died, he anointed the sword with olive oil, and because his sons had the royal blood of two nations in their veins, he blessed the blade and inscribed it with the words of his prayer, that this sword should never be sheathed again until the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and his Anointed One. Though Joseph ruled over Egyptians, he would be revered for centuries as the first monarch of the Hebrew nation, and his sword and plates of brass would stand forever as symbols of kingship. The national treasures of the House of Israel were established.
721 B.C., Samaria, Capital City of Northern Israel In the days when Israel was divided into two nations, the national treasures were retained by the kings of the Northern Kingdom. They were guarded at the royal palace until the kingdom fell to the armies of the Assyrians. The two princes of Northern Israel marched through the great palace hall. Their steps echoed in the vaulted chamber that for two hundred and thirty years was the glory of their divided kingdom. Only the small lamps along the walls were burning, their timid flames offering little to discourage the shadows that loomed around the tall granite pillars and Syrian tapestries. The great lamps hanging from the ceiling had been dark for a month. Olive oil was difficult to come by during the siege, to say nothing of food and water. When Israel’s army fell back to the capital city of Samaria, the princes called for an emergency meeting with their father, King Hoshea—an unusual family gathering at a time like this, but since the princes were also the king’s two most trusted generals, they had reason to meet. They went straight to Hoshea’s balcony and pointed out the campfires of the massing Assyrian army. A rampart of earth had been raised in front of the main gate and, despite a showering of arrows and spears, the enemy had wheeled a battering ram into place. The pounding could be heard as far away as Mount Ebal. Assyrian infantrymen hacked on the smaller gates, and cavalrymen were called in to relieve the foot soldiers tunneling under the city walls. The eldest prince said, “They’ve gotten through.” Hoshea asked, “Where?” “Their first tunnel came up just inside the west wall.” “How many?” “A few hundred soldiers so far, maybe more.” Cries of war filled the streets, and the clanging of swords on shields grew closer. “We have our men in place to defend the palace.” Hoshea gripped the balcony ledge. “It’s only a matter of time before all is lost.” “What are your orders, Father?” “Secure the relics.” King Hoshea scanned the darkness as flaming arrows arched over the walls. “We must preserve your birthrights.” He began to pace. “We’ll take the tunnel from the vaults to get outside the walls. From there we’ll head east over the mountains and follow the Jordan.” “To the Southern Kingdom?” “It’s our only hope.” “They won’t welcome us in Jerusalem.” “They
won’t turn us away.” Hoshea nodded to his sons. “Not if
we have the treasures with us. We’ll be They followed Hoshea into the main hall, then down four flights of stairs to the door of the royal vault. The sound of Assyrian soldiers breaking into the palace filtered down the stairwell. Cries of maidservants mixed with the fury of a sword fight in the main hall and Hoshea quickly locked the vault door behind them. The glow from a solitary lamp cast a yellow light on a pedestal in the center of the treasury, atop which sat the codex of brass plates, a record given to Manasseh one thousand years before. It contained the prophecies of Israel’s prophets and the genealogy of Joseph, who was Viceroy of Egypt, down to the reign of King Hoshea. On a red silk cloth next to the plates lay the royal sword Joseph gave to his son Ephraim. The relics had been passed from generation to generation for a millennium until they came to rest in this vault. Their possessor had natural claim to a royal birthright. Hoshea wrapped the relics in sackcloth and the men escaped the palace by a subterranean passage that emptied into a forest of cedar. The trees gave enough cover to reach the summit of Mount Gerizim without being seen. From there the three men could see the fire that consumed the capital city. The Northern Kingdom of Israel was no more, fallen to the Assyrians. Five days later, Hoshea and his sons arrived in Jerusalem with the relics. The ruler of the Southern Kingdom granted Hoshea a residence in the upper city and deeded him a thousand acres of land west of the capital, the largest single tract of land in all of Judah. It was suitable for growing olives, though nearly all of it sat uncultivated. When King Hoshea died, the younger son lured his brother into taking the thousand acres as an inheritance, while he kept the modest estate in the city—and the relics. It was an easy bargain; with no kingdom left to rule, the older brother gladly took the estate and agreed to his younger brother’s conditions, covenanting for full title to the land in exchange for the promise that his lineage and claim to the national treasures would forever remain their secret. Not even his children would know of their true birthright. As time passed, the younger of the two princes was acknowledged as the sole heir to the relics. What he did not know was that God would raise up a righteous descendant of Joseph through the loins of his elder brother—a chosen prophet who would deliver the relics to a new land of promise.
120 Years Later, Jerusalem The first time the Babylonians invaded, it was a short war that ended with a three-month siege of Jerusalem. Although the city was not destroyed in the conflict as it would be ten years later, it was not a peaceful takeover. There were fatalities on both sides and counted among the dead of the Jews were three heirs to the national treasures. They should not have perished in the conflict; they had no ties to the military except through their brother and son who survived them, a man by the name of Laban. Laban was the only cavalryman in his family. His older brothers and father did not share his passion for military life and made their fortunes in the gold trade. But this morning it was Laban, youngest of three sons, who drafted his family into service along with fifty other men, none of them soldiers. He assigned each a sturdy horse from the king’s stables and a sword from the commissary. They had little training and even less understanding of what they were about to face, with the Babylonian army surrounding the city and an oil fire burning the east gate to the ground. Laban rode past the motley column of conscripts, down past his father and two brothers. He wished them luck before charging the entire company to keep the Babylonian soldiers from entering the city by the east gate. At the crack of his whip they galloped out of the livery and onto King Street. Laban reined into stride behind them, but pulled up to watch his father and two brothers round the corner at the bottom of the hill, headed for Jerusalem’s lower city. He hadn’t told them the Babylonian army had already breached the east gate and massed two hundred men inside the walls. They were riding into an ambush, one he knew they would never escape. It was the last time Laban ever saw his family alive. A man dressed in a black robe appeared out of the shadows. “So, the treasures are now yours and yours alone.” He spoke with a voice that grated like nails on slate. The man’s long thin nose and sunken features stood out in the moonlight. It was Zadock, Chief Elder of the Jews, and his graying hair poked out from under his turban and hedged about his neck. He smoothed the pleats in his costly black dress. “You are the last living heir to the relics.” He grabbed the bridle and pulled Laban’s horse in close. “You are the only one left, aren’t you?” Laban sat straight in the saddle. There was a distant cousin, but with his father and brothers gone, Laban was the only one who knew the blood relative’s identity. The cousin himself didn’t know he was related. It was a carefully arranged plan devised by Laban’s great grandfather, the youngest prince of the Northern Kingdom. Laban nodded slowly, his eyes meeting Zadock’s penetrating stare. “There are no others.” “Be off with you, then.” Zadock let go of the bridle. “You must save the relics before the Babylonians reach your father’s treasury.” “They know?” “The Babylonians have their spies. They know where the most valuable spoils are hidden.” The sword and brass plates were legal proof, two witnesses testifying to Laban’s royal lineage, and today he would claim them his, as long as he kept them from falling to the Babylonians. He was the only direct, living descendant of that Joseph who interpreted Pharaoh’s dream. At least that was the story he would tell anyone who questioned his inheritance. Zadock slapped Laban’s horse on the rump. “Get to the relics before they’re taken.” |
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