Yoav turned to his two soldiers. “I’m going to follow him, make sure he doesn’t make another try for the border. Wait here until Yochanan dies.”
“And Uriel?” one of the soldiers asked.
“King Omri grants the prophets leave to go where they will.” Yoav kicked his horse to pursue Shimon, but as soon as he was out of sight of the others, he turned his horse and galloped toward Mitzpah.
I scowled, feeling no sympathy for my parents’ murderer. “He got what he deserved.”
Uriel’s cheeks were lined with wet tracks. “What he deserved? Perhaps. But could any of us survive in a world where we receive that which we deserve?”
“Wouldn’t that be justice?”
“Yes, it would. But when the Holy One created the world in strict justice, it could not stand. Where only judgment reigns, creation crumbles.”
“So Yoav lived because there’s no justice?”
“There is justice, but tempered with mercy. We stand on the merit of what could be and are not judged solely by what is.”
My fists clenched. “He killed my parents.”
“Indeed, and I cursed him for it.”
“So where was your mercy then?”
Shimon flinched at the question. This wasn’t the way to address my master, but at the moment I didn’t care.
Uriel held out his hands to me. “You must understand: we are all vessels for the light of the Holy One. As we expand mercy in ourselves, it expands in the world. So too the opposite. As we judge, judgment increases in the world, and we are often the first to endure its strictures.” Uriel dropped his hands and turned back to the fire.
The blaze had collapsed into a pile of glowing embers. In the silence, Uriel’s words held me. During Shimon’s tale, I’d been focused on myself, hardly noticing the prophet’s pain. I assumed Uriel cried for my father, his lost friend. But in the silence that followed, I began to understand.
Ovadia said two nights earlier that it was essential to rescue Uriel. Not because of what he could do, but because of what he’d been through—because of what he’d become. Had this been the transformation? Had Uriel grown from a vessel of strict judgment to one of mercy? Was this the reason that he, alone among the prophets, could heal a nation shattered by Eliyahu’s judgment?
I remembered Uriel’s words from earlier that week. “A curse brings pain without regard to who receives it. It falls upon the guilty and the innocent alike. Even the one who invokes the curse is not spared its destruction.”
Back at Shiloh, sitting with Zim the morning after the festival, I was shocked to learn that Uriel’s son served the Golden Calf his father despised. Didn’t Zim say he left his father’s path ten years ago, exactly when I lost my parents?
“Master?” I trembled. “When you cursed Yoav, were you judged as well?” The prophet’s composure broke as a sob shook his chest. “Indeed.” His head dropped between his knees, and he trembled with grief.
Shimon’s mouth stood agape—he must not have known this part of the story.
“At the same time that Yoav’s wife died, my wife left the world. By then, I had reached Jerusalem and did not know until I returned weeks later. My son was forced to bury his mother alone.”
Comprehension dawned on Shimon’s face. “That is why he left the Way and turned toward the Calf?”
“So he says. As you know, I spent my life traveling among the people. I was often away, and he resented it. He said that burying his mother alone was the final act that compelled him to leave my path. But even he does not know the full truth, that it was my curse that drove him from me.”
“But, Master,” I said, “You’re not from the family of priests that Yeravaum appointed to replace the kohanim, are you?”
Uriel shook his head.
Shimon explained, “This was during the Civil War. Remember what I told you about King Omri. He deliberated on the people’s reaction to each of his decisions. Having the son of the great prophet as his priest would increase his stature in the eyes of the nation and help him achieve the throne. When Omri learned that Master Uriel’s son Gershon had separated from his father, he moved quickly to offer him the position before King Tivni could win his loyalty.”
The prophet’s wail echoed from between his knees. “Three families destroyed on a single day!”
Hillel said: Do not believe in yourself until the day you die.
Pirkei Avot 2:5
19
The Final Journey
The full moon blazed like a beacon in the western sky when we set out from the cave. Three days had passed in silence, each of us lost in contemplation in some corner of the small cave. For me, the time was spent digesting Shimon’s tale, dwelling on the panic etched on my parents’ faces, the eerie sound of their voices, and the image of their brutal deaths—details I’d never before been able to recall. The rebound of Uriel’s curse upon his own family struck Shimon harder than I would have imagined. He no longer handled or even examined the captured sword while we remained in the cave. Nevertheless, when it was time to depart for our journey toward Dotan, he retrieved the sword and sheathed it around his waist.
Once on the road, we would just be pilgrims traveling home from the festival, but in the hills, we were potential prey. We trekked under cover of night to limit the risk of detection, but the cloudless sky and the moon’s silvery brilliance nevertheless exposed us to prying eyes. There was nothing we could do about that: the festival always fell at the full moon. Uriel scanned the hilltops as we walked. I likewise searched the dark horizon for the outline of a soldier, but saw nothing.
We stopped well before dawn, hiding a stone’s throw from the road in a thick clump of bushes. I lay down, my eyes heavy with drowsiness, my fears of discovery insufficient to hold off sleep.
A steady rumbling woke me; it sounded like the echo of a thunderclap off distant hills. I opened my eyes to sunbeams filtering through the thick branches above. “What’s that noise?”
“Horses,” Uriel replied. “Thirty at least, from the sound of it, being driven hard. The King and his escort.”
“Ovadia will be with them?”
“I expect so. You may go back to sleep; we still have a long wait.”
I sat up and pulled on my tunic. Anticipation had set in; sleep was no longer an option. The rumbling grew louder until the troop of horses thundered past, their dark shapes barely visible through gaps in the leaves.
Other horsemen followed the King’s escort, riding past in ones and twos; then those on donkeys ambled past in small groups. The sun hung mid-sky when a thin stream of hardy farmers, in a hurry to return to their fields, appeared. Before long, the road was thick with travelers, ranging from boys newly of age to old men, who passed by in waves, talking and laughing as they went.
