King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jerusalem.”
    “A Daughter of Asher, an aged and devout widow, who waits in prayer and fasting for the consolation of Israel.”
    Joachim sent his servants home, all but one, and spent the night on his knees in the Temple. At dawn he rode out towards the wilderness with only the one servant at his back : he took no food with him but a bag of locust-beans, and no drink but pure water in a goat-skin bottle. Onthe morning of the fifth day, as he passed over the border into Edom, he fell in with a company of tented Rechabites, or Kenites, a Canaanite tribe with whom the Jews had been allied since the days of Moses. He saluted them civilly and was for passing on, but the tribal chieftain restrained him. “You will not reach water before nightfall, my lord,” he said, “unless you ride throughout the heat of the day, which would be cruelty to your beasts, and this evening the Sabbath begins, when it will be unlawful for you to travel. Be the guest of Rahab’s Children until the Sabbath has ended.”
    Joachim turned aside, and presently the Rechabites, who were of the smith-guild, pitched their tents in a valley where there was a little water. When the chieftain saw the face of his guest, which until then had been covered up against the heat and dust, he cried out : “Aha, well met! Is this not Joachim of Cocheba to whose corn-lands we come yearly in the winter with our lyres to sing praises to the Lord? Our young men and women tumble about on your rich plough-land together and offer up prayers that the grain may sprout sturdily and be heavy in the ear.”
    Joachim answered : “And is this not Kenah, Chieftain of the Children of Rahab? Well met! Your craftsmen repair the mattocks, sickles, pruning-hooks, cauldrons and kettles of my labourers, and your work is excellent. But the annual invitation to perform your rustic rites on my land comes from my bailiff, not from myself ; he is a Canaanite, I am an Israelite.”
    Kenah laughed. “Since we Canaanites have the more ancient title to the land, it is only reasonable to suppose that we know best which rites will please the Deity of the land. You cannot complain of your harvest, surely ?”
    “The Lord has been most bountiful to me,” said Joachim, “and if your intercession has carried any weight with him, I should be ungrateful not to acknowledge it. But how am I to know whether I stand in your debt or not ?”
    “Your bailiff has rewarded us well with sacks of corn from your bins, and though you may be unaware of your debt to us, we are well disposed towards you. By the same token, most noble Joachim, it was only three nights ago that I had a dream of your coming. I dreamed that you freely presented to my people the Well of the Jawbone, near Cushan, the same well that your neighbour Reuben grudges you : you gave it to us for a perpetual possession. And in my dream you called it a gift well bestowed, for your heart was dancing with gladness. You would have given us seven such wells had you possessed them, and all the sheep that watered there besides.”
    Joachim was not pleased. He replied : “Some dreams are from God, noble Kenah, but some from God’s Adversary. How can I tell what reliance to lay upon your dream ?”
    “By waiting patiently.”
    “How many days must I be patient ?”
    “It still wants thirty-five of the appointed number, or so I was assured in my dream.”
    Here evidently, thought Joachim, was the promised sign. For how, except in a dream, could Kenah have learned of the forty days’ journey ordained by the prophetess?
    That night, in the black goat’s-hair tent, Joachim had no need to excuse himself from wine-drinking, for the Rechabites themselves are forbidden either to own vineyards or, except once a year at their five-day festival, when they also shave their heads, to consume any part of the grape—juice, seed or skin. But when he refrained from the tender mutton prepared for him, and from the little honey-cakes enriched with pistachio, and