King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) Read Online Free PDF

from the scented junkets, Kenah asked him : “Alas, most noble Joachim, are you sick? Or are you used to daintier food than ours? Or have we unwittingly offended you in some way, that you refuse to eat with us ?”
    “No, but I have a vow. Give me locust-beans and I will eat greedily.”
    The servant fetched him locust-beans. As they sat in peace together after they had eaten, a young man, Kenah’s sister’s son, seized his lyre and sang to it in a loud voice. In his song he prophesied that Hannah, the wife of an Heir of David, would presently conceive and bear a child, a child famous for many ages. Hannah would be one with Sarai of the silver face who had been long barren and laughed to hear the angel’s assurance to Father Abraham that she would presently bear him a child. Hannah would also be one with Rachel of the crisp curls, who likewise was barren at first, yet became the mother of the patriarchs Joseph and Benjamin, and through them the ancestress of countless thousands of the Lord God’s Israelitish people.
    The spirit of the lyre stirred in the singer and he seemed to swell before their eyes as in a changed voice he chanted of a certain mighty hunter, a red hairy king, whom three hundred and sixty-five valiant men followed into battle : how he rode in his ass-chariot over that very border in the days gone by and drove out the usurping giants from the pleasant valley of Hebron and from the Oaks of Mamre, beloved of Rahab. His garments were stained red with wine, and panthers bounded by his side, sweet of breath. The shoes on his feet were of dolphin-skin, a fir wand was in his hand, and a fawn-skin mantle covered his shoulders. Nimrod he was called. And another of his names was Jerahmeel, the beloved of the Moon.
    Then the Kenite sang over and over again : “Glory, glory, glory to the land of Edom, for the Hairy One shall come again, breaking the yoke to which his smooth brother, the supplanter, has subjected him !”
    He ceased singing but continued to thrum the strings meditatively. Joachim asked : “This Nimrod whom you celebrate, he is surely not the same Nimrod of whom the Scriptures tell ?”
    “I sing only what the singing lyre puts into my mouth.” He prophesied again : “Nimrod shall come once more. He shall soar aloft upon his eight gryphon wings, he shall make the mountains smoke with his fury—Nimrod, known to the three queens. Cry ha! for Nimrod, who is named Jerahmeel, and ha! for the three queens, each with her thrice forty maidens of honour! The first queen bore him and reared him ; the second loved him and slew him ; the third anointed him and laid him to rest in the House of Spirals. His soul was carried in her ark across the water to the first queen once again. It was five days’ sail in the ark of acacia-wood across the water. It was five days’ sail from the Land of the Unborn. To the City of Birth it was a five days’ sail ; five sea-beasts drew the ark along to the sound of music. There the queen bore him, and named him Jerahmeel, the Moon’s beloved.”
    He was singing a parable of the Sun, who turns about in his sacred year through three Egyptian seasons of one hundred and twenty days apiece. At midsummer he burns with destructive passion, and at midwinter, enfeebled by time, comes to the five days that are left over, crosses the gap, and turns about again ; when he becomes a child, his own son Jerahmeel. Both Jerahmeel and Nimrod were titles of Kozi, the red hairy Sun-god of the Edomites, but a smooth-faced Israelitish Moon-god had long usurped his glory. This usurpation was justified in the myth of Jacob and Esau, and also plainly established in the calendar of the Jews —who now let their year turn with the Moon, not with the Sun as in ancient days.
    Joachim said : “This child born to Hannah, will it be male or female? Prophesy again.”
    The Kenite, still radiant with the spirit of the lyre, answered : “Who can prophesy whether the Sun or the Moon was first created?