The Prophet

This piece was published at Joyful! on February 22nd.

The Prophet

He was known only as the prophet from the moment he entered our land until he left it. He arrived wearing long, filthy rags, barefoot, and holding a wooden staff. The dust from countless miles caked his garb, and his legs were black with dirt. His skin was as brown as a nut shell, his dark hair fell down his back in a tangled mess. He had the eye of wisdom and the aura of the divine. It is not known who first called him the prophet, but the title became him. Yet, he spoke not of things that are to come or of things hidden, but he only claimed that that which is not is. His claims were backed with power.

The day he first arrived word came to us in the heart of the village that a man had been seen just over the ridge heading this way. His description aroused our superstitions, our fears, and our excitement. The morning meal had just finished and the whole village was full of hustle and bustle as people prepared to go out to the fields. It seemed at first as if the news barely made a ripple, but the village did not empty out as usual. Everyone was taking longer than needed on the most mundane tasks, and no matter the task, a moment or two was found every few seconds to look out towards the ridge. As time passed, the pretense of work disappeared, all the menial chores were finished, and the men and women openly waited, looking out towards the ridge. We stood there in the arid air of late summer, the harsh glances of sun-beaten brows guardedly anticipating the advent of this strange wayfarer. The dust on the ridge whipped up in the wind, and the blue sky stood empty behind it.

After some moments a shift was sensed through the crowd; the dust settled on the ridge top, and a black shape started to define itself against the blue sky. The whole village began to seep forward to meet the newcomer, but as the gap closed between us, we saw that this man was not robed in the strange garments of an itinerant mystic but in the woven shawl of our own people. We recognized the stride of the miller‘s son, Keren, a sober youth. Once nearer, he called out to us, “The stranger met up with the shepherds, they’ve taken him to Abiezer’s hut.” This caused a fuss . The village stirred up into a commotion, questions and exclamations being pronounced left and right. Finally, one of the elders, Shem Tov, stepped forward. Raising his arms in a dignified manner, he shouted over the crowd, “Be silent!”

He turned to Keren, “Did you see the man?”

“Not close-up,” answered Keren.

“What did he want?” someone shouted.

“Why has he gone to the home that fool? He’ll find only that hell has sent its servants here, too,” someone else put in.

“Please, please,” Shem Tov called out, “if Keren did not have a chance to see the man close up, he surely would not have been able to speak with him. Now, there is much work to be done today. We have wasted enough time on this matter already. We will surely see this man in our village come nightfall.”

With that statement we returned to our respective tasks, yet the day did not pass into night without incident, as Shem Tov thought. A couple hours into our work, a rumour came to our ears that something miraculous had happened at Abiezer’s hut. The madman, they said, who spoke only nonsense and spat on holy truth was healed. He acted now as any man of subdued and sensible spirit. Moreover, he was going to the temple to make veneration for this gracious healing. Immediately all work stopped. No man or woman was able to resist the calling that beckoned them to witness these unforeseeable happenings.

We came back to the village and saw Abiezer walking down from the ridge, some shepherds in his wake. He walked with the confidence and assurance. To his right stalked the unreadable migrant. His face was set like stone, and his eyes glinted with detachment and disinterest. It was impossible to say who filled us with more awe, Abiezer, whose eyes glinted with a light of humane intelligence never before seen, or the prophet, whose very demeanour was rank with otherworldliness. As Abiezer came forward into the village the way before him was made clear; the villagers gave him, and that prophet, a wide berth. Abiezer arrived in front of the temple and halted. The elders were assembled before him.

“I present myself now,” he began, “as the custom demands, to show that I have become clean. I humbly ask, therefore, that my name be reentered into the temple register.”

Shem Tov stepped forward as speaker for the elders. “There will be some questions as to the nature of your miraculous healing before we can grant your request. Would the man who caused this healing come before me?”

The prophet came and stood right in front of Shem Tov, towering over him. He held out his staff at arms length and rested it in the dirt, saying, “I am he.”

“Very well,” Shem Tov peered suspiciously into the prophet’s eyes, “By what magic have you done this? On what authority do you pervert and subvert the laws of nature?”

“My power is grounded in and comes from the authority of God. By His faith was this man healed, and by His grace I was chosen, though unworthy, to be the vehicle for this declaration of His glory. God has done this among you, and you must ask yourselves why? Know that the Kingdom of God is near. Let each look into his own heart and see if he has cause to tremble. Only your sins will keep you from the holy presence.”

The crowd began to shuffle and shift with discomfort, but Shem Tov was unabashed. “What sins do you mean?” There was overt hostility in his voice. “We are a faithful, law-abiding community, not some brood of vipers that you may spit at with venomous speeches.”

Abiezer looked at Shem Tov pleadingly. “Please, Shem Tov, do not speak in such a manner. This man is my benefactor. He deserves honour.”

Shem Tov looked with disgust at Abiezer. “My honour is reserved for the lord of Heaven. Here, we follow the word of God, not that of filthy pilgrims.”

“You may follow the word,” the prophet shook his head, “but you know nothing of it’s spirit.” The crowd exploded with mixtures of shock and outrage, and Shem Tov looked around in horror. “How dare you? I see now, you are a sorcerer, a worker of evil magicks. Be gone both of you.”

“But my petition?” cried Abiezer.

“You have no petition. We want nothing to do with you;” Shem Tov waved them away rudely, “you are both malefactors.”

“Be wary, man,” said the prophet, “God does not look kindly on those who lead his children astray.”

“This is not God for whom you speak; it is an agent of chaos. You twist truth to your own ends.”

“It is God for whom I speak!” the prophet screamed.

“Then show us,” Ravit, a farmer’s wife, yelled from the crowd, “my daughter is ill, cure her, prophet. Show us that God has anointed you.” We began to shout our assent for her proposal.

“You fools,” the prophet cast down his head, “God does not work at your whims, but for your needs.”

Shem Tov began to chuckle. “You have been trapped by this simple woman’s question. Why would God not want to heal her daughter? Why him,” he gestured toward Abiezer, “and not her? This is not justice, it is not love, and it is not fair. Now we see that you truly are from the devil himself. You have come to divide us and to spread doubt with your sorcery.”

The prophet looked around at all of us. There was a sadness in his eye, a resignation. “I see that this gift is wasted on you. You see power and think only of what you have to gain, not of what you have to learn. You see God and think not of how you can serve, but of how He can. Yes, this is a wicked and sinful generation.” He walked to the edge of the crowd, shook the dust off his feet, and said, “I leave you now. May God have mercy on your souls.”

Abiezer ran to the edge of the crowd, then he turned around. He looked at all of us hesitantly, “I was born here. My fathers have lived here for thirteen generations. I was your brother. And now you send me away because I have been blessed. You ridicule me that my life has improved. I pity you. I have found a higher calling, but where does that leave you? Farewell.” With that Abiezer ran up the ridge after the prophet. They were never seen or heard from again.

Many said that we were well to be rid of them, that they had done nothing but disrupt the peace and harmony of our lives. Indeed, all are thankful publicly for the failure of the prophet’s attempts to tip our lives into an abyss of hysteria where God was unfair, unreliable, and unjust; and where His power was thrown about like some indiscriminate force of nature. “God has his realm and we have ours, let’s keep the two separate.” the argument goes, “What good is a God who does not follow the laws he laid down.” Some of us, however, are in doubt. When we do have misgivings, we look out to the ridge, with the sun hanging over it, and we wonder. In the back of our minds we worry that God really did come knocking and that we refused him.