Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

We waited in silence as she went on.

“Many saw what happened. But they didn’t know the reason for it. Some of the priests knew. And they sent word to me. Our kinsmen were told, and they told other kinsmen and some came to the Essenes and told. And I was told.”

All were dazed by this terrible news. My mother leaned forward and put her head on the shoulder of Elizabeth, and Elizabeth held her. But then Elizabeth drew herself up, and so did my mother, and Elizabeth spoke on.

“The kinsmen of Zechariah, all of them priests, saw to his burial with his ancestors,” she said. “And do you think I have gone into the Temple since? Not till you came to Jerusalem. Not till the tyrant was dead, and gone to eternal fire. Not till the stories of Yeshua and John were forgotten, and what do we find when we go before the Lord?”

No one dared to answer her.

“He goes to the Essenes and soon. There he will be hidden. Now you take your leave of me and go on to Nazareth before more bandits come through here. I have nothing for them to take. I’m old and John is little, and they’ll leave us in peace. But I won’t see you again. No. And surely John is meant to hear the voice of the Lord. He is consecrated to the Lord, and the Essenes know that he is under the vow. And they will take care of him and he’ll study until the time comes for him. Now you, you go.”

Chapter 9

Herod’s soldiers, the bandits, the man killed in the Temple, my cousin killed in the Temple, a priest killed searching for the whereabouts of a child, and my cousin was the child.

Yeshua and John. Why was he foretold, and why were we linked, and behind it all was the great question: What had happened in Bethlehem? What had happened, and was it the thing that had made my family go to Egypt where I’d lived all my life?

But I couldn’t think now except in bursts of curiosity and fear. The fear became part of my thinking. The fear became part of the story. My cousin Zechariah, a priest with gray hairs, being kicked by the soldiers of Herod. And here we were in the village that was filled with the angry voices of those who’d been robbed by the bandits, and expected more of the same.

We found our beasts still tethered on the outskirts. An old woman without teeth stood there laughing.

“They tried to steal them!” she cried. “But the animals wouldn’t move.” She bowed her head and slapped her knees as she laughed. “They couldn’t make them move.” And an old man who was sitting in the dirt beside a small house was laughing too.

“They stole my shawl,” he cried out. “I said to them, ‘Go on, brother, take it!’ ” He waved his hand and he laughed and laughed.

We loaded our bundles quickly, put Cleopas firmly in place, and Aunt Mary in place, and then my mother took Elizabeth in her arms and they cried.

Little John stood there staring at me.

“We’ll go around Jericho and on through the valley home,” Joseph said to all of us.

When my mother finally came, we set off.

Little Salome and I went ahead with James, and some of the other cousins followed.

Cleopas began to sing.

“But who are the Essenes?” Little Salome asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard what you heard. How could I know?”

James said: “They don’t hold with the priesthood in the Temple. They believe they have the true priesthood. They are the descendants of Zadok. They wait until they can purify the Temple. They dress in white; they pray together. They live apart.”

“Are they good or are they bad?” Little Salome asked.

“They’re good enough for our kindred,” said James. “How can we know? There are Pharisees, there are the priests, there are the Essenes. We all say the prayer, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One.’ ”

We murmured the prayer after him in Hebrew as he’d said it. We said it every day always in the morning when we rose and in the evening. I hardly thought about it. When we said it everything stopped, and we said it with a true heart.

I didn’t want to say anything about the things that troubled me. A bad feeling came over me that James knew all about it, and I didn’t want to say anything with Little Salome there. My feelings grew darker and darker and the fear was there, very near.

We were moving fast it seemed to me, down and down through the mountains, and the plain was spread out and beautiful in the sunlight with palm trees everywhere, even though smoke was still pouring up from the burnt places, and there were many houses on all sides. It wasn’t hard to see that people everywhere were going on with what they had to do as if the bandits had never come.

Bands of pilgrims passed us, some singing, and some were on horseback, and they had cheerful greetings for us.

We drew near villages where children were playing, and we could smell the cooking food.

“You see,” said my mother, as if she knew my thoughts, “it will be this way all the way to Nazareth. These robbers, they come and they go, but we are who we are.” She smiled at me and it seemed I’d never be afraid again.

“Do they really fight for the freedom of the Holy Land?” Little Salome asked. She was looking to the men now for an answer, as we were somewhat drawn together.

Cleopas laughed at the question. He rubbed her head.

“Little daughter, if men want to fight, they find a reason,” he said. “Men have been fighting for the freedom of the Holy Land by raiding the villages whenever they want to for hundreds of years.”

Joseph merely shook his head.

Alphaeus reached out to gather Little Salome up to him.

“You don’t worry,” he said. “Once it was Cyrus the King who watched over us, now it’s Augustus Caesar. We don’t care, because the Lord in Heaven is the only King we know in our hearts, and what man thinks he is King here on Earth, we don’t care.”

“But David was King of Israel,” I said. “David was King, and Solomon after him. And King Josiah, he was a great King of Israel. We’ve known this for as long as we’ve known anything. And we’re the House of David, and the Lord said to David, ‘I will make you reign over Israel forever.’ Isn’t that so?”

“Forever…” Alphaeus said. “But who is to judge the ways of the Lord? The Lord will keep his promise to David in the Lord’s way.”

He looked away as he spoke. We were in the valley now. The crowd of those coming out of the mountains was large. We pressed together. “Forever …what is forever in the mind of the Lord?” he said. “A thousand years is nothing but a moment to the Lord.”

“A King will come?” I asked.

Joseph turned and looked at me.

“The Lord keeps his promises to Israel,” said Alphaeus, “but how and when and in what way we don’t know.”

“Do angels come only in Israel?” Little Salome asked.

“No,” said Joseph. “They come anywhere and everywhere and whenever they want.”

“Why did we have to go to Egypt?” asked Little Salome. “Why did King Herod’s men—.”

“This is no time to tell you,” said Joseph.

My mother spoke up. “There will come a time, a time to tell you everything slowly so that you understand. But now is not that time.”

I knew they would say this, or words like it. But there had been a chance, and I was glad that Little Salome had spoken up. I didn’t know where my older cousins, Silas and Justus, had gone, or any of the others, or what they thought of what Elizabeth had said. Maybe those older boys knew things, surely they knew things. Maybe Silas knew.

I dropped back slowly in the press of the family, until I was walking close to my uncle Cleopas on the donkey.

Cleopas had heard us talking, I was sure of it. Had anyone made me promise not to ask him questions? I didn’t think so.

“I pray I live to tell you things,” said Cleopas.

But no sooner had he spoken these words, than Joseph stepped back beside him, and began to walk with us and he said quickly: