The Gospel According to the Son

12

At the summit, the rocks stood about like tombs, and the steps between were treacherous. It was midday. The heat of the sun was on me.

I sat in the shadow of a great stone and looked out on the lands of Israel, upon Galilee to the north and Judea to the south. The haze had a golden hue, and I wondered whether one could even see the spires of gold that rose above the hills of the holy city. But I did not think long on Jerusalem; living without food for a day, I was hungry.

Yet I also knew why the Lord had sent me to the summit of this mountain. For it was not enough to be His son and cousin to John the Baptist. I had to pass through trials, and the first test must be not to eat. Even as I said to myself, "I will take no food until sundown," the Lord replied.

I did not see Him, nor did I feel His presence other than His voice (which was in my ear), but He said: "You will fast until I tell you to eat."

So I was without food for that day and the next. And by the fifth day, when the pangs of my stomach had given way to a solemn emptiness of spirit, I felt weak and no longer knew if I had the strength to climb down from this mountain. So I said aloud, "How long, O Lord?" and He replied, "Long. It will be long."

Since I was not there to dispute Him but to follow His will, fasting grew easier. I shielded myself from the sun and came to love the taste of water and the wisdom that is found in the shade of large rocks (until they grow too cold at night for any wisdom). And the air of night was cold. No plants grew on the summit of this mountain. Which was just as well. For there were hours when I could have chewed on their thorns.

In the second week, I had visions of King David and knew that he had committed a great sin. I could not recall the offense, but I did remember that he had been punished, and on his death the Lord had appeared to the son of David, King Solomon, and asked: "What shall I give thee?"

And Solomon replied: "O Lord my God, I know not how to go out nor to come in, and Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted. Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart that I may discern between good and bad."

And I recalled how this speech had so pleased the Lord that He said to Solomon: "Because thou hast not asked for a long life nor for riches nor begged for the death of thine enemies but asked for discernment in judgment, then, behold, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart."

And God gave Solomon all that he had not asked for, both riches and honors, until there were no kings as great as Solomon in those days.

But now the voice of the Lord was saying to me: "Solomon did not keep My Commandments. Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. All people came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, in that he exceeded all the kings of the earth. And these kings brought him silver, ivory, apes, and pea-cocks. But," said the Lord to my ear, "King Solomon loved many strange women: the daughter of Pharaoh and the women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Sedonians, and the Hittites, whereas I had said unto the children of Israel, 'Ye shall not go in to them. For surely they will turn your heart toward their gods.' But Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and when Solomon was old, his heart was not perfect with Me. I had given him too many gifts. So," said the Lord, "I will not give you riches. And you will never tarry with a woman, or you shall lose the Lord."

He had given me Solomon's sins on which to meditate, and that was an advantage not given to Solomon. I, being without food, had no desire for a woman, nor did I feel at odds with the Lord's decision. My fast continued.

The prophets were often with me in these weeks: Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Daniel and Ezekiel. I could recall their words as if they were my own. Before long, I had a dream that made me one with the prophet Elijah, and in this dream I had contests with the prophets of Baal. More than forty such pagan prophets had come to my mountain to sacrifice a bullock, but first they destroyed the Lord's altar on the summit. Then they lacerated themselves with knives to show their devotion to Baal. Blood spurted from the wounds of these prophets and they cried aloud, yet the god Baal could not speak.

Seeing that Baal was silent in my presence, I put twelve large stones on end, to stand for the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel, after which I restored the altar of the Lord. Then I dug a trench around the stones and put wood on the altar and cut the bullock into pieces, laying the raw flesh upon the wood. And then I poured four barrels of water on the sacrifice until this water ran into the trench.

And the fire of the Lord blazed through the meat of the bullock and the sopping wood and the wet stones and licked up all the water that was in the trench. And I beheaded these forty prophets of Baal with a sword, and only then did I awake.

Now it came to me that I was not Elijah but only dreaming of the scroll of Elijah, and the dream had been there to tell me that my fast must continue for forty days and forty nights. For if I did not change my ways or the people of Israel did not change theirs, then all of us were in danger of God's final judgment.

So could I also see how my youth had passed with more thought given to the wood under my tools than to my people. Nor had I listened when Joseph would say: "All share in the sinfulness of Israel because we do not work hard enough to overcome it."

I was yet to learn that I would care about sinners more than for the pious, but now I was content to quote the words of Isaiah to myself: "Though Thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant shall return." And there, near to the sixth week of my fast, full of the spirit of Isaiah, I hoped that with the aid of this remnant of good Jews I might recover all that had been lost in the nation. So I would repeat the sayings of Isaiah aloud, speaking even into the eye of the sun until my eyes burned and I was obliged to return to the shade. I pondered the prayers I would use with sinners and decided that I would tell them, even as had Isaiah: " 'Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings; relieve the oppressed.' "

And it was the fortieth day. As evening came, the Lord said to me, "Tomorrow you may step down from the mountain and take food." Hunger came back to me on these words, and I was ravenous.

Yet even as I was thinking of what I would eat, the Lord said, "Tonight, remain on the mountain. A visitor will come."