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XXXIX Fifth day before the Kalends of Aprilis. First hour of the night. [Wednesday, March 28, c. 6:00 p.m.] As soon as I had finished writing I prepared to go to Beth-Haccerem. I reasoned that Menahem ben Mattia would likely have come to the city for the festival. But my person would impress on his servants the urgency of the matter. So little do I trust Pilate that I could not go to his people for an escort. Instead I told Phoebus and Callisthenes to prepare my litter and arm the bearers. I believed they would be more than sufficient escort on this sacred day, upon which even bandits must refrain from labor. We left at the sound of the morning music from the Temple. The streets were scarcely traveled at all; on this day the Jews go to the Temple before sunrise. The oblique light of the risen sun lay in great streaks across the dark rubble of Hinnom. Where the worker's camp had been, the rags had been entirely plucked from the gray earth. A lone man walked about, collecting the few palm leaves that had not been scavenged. To the west of the road, the trash heaps were still shadowed. A number of small fires burned there. A pack of dogs barked and ran at each other, fighting over some carcass. Where the road begins to climb again, I saw the posts used in the executions. All the crosspieces and bodies had been removed. Perhaps some of the posts had been taken down as well. Nine posts remained. So I counted the least number we murdered there. We climbed up to the Beer-Sheba road. We found it empty all the way to Beth-Haccerem. Neither did anyone stir there, save a single man -- certainly he was a non-Jew -- guarding a pen full of sheep and goats. The street was so quiet that a bitch lay in it, nursing her puppies. The blind gatekeeper was at her post. Even before her geese arrived with their admonishing chorus, she emerged from her little room as though she had awaited us. "Excellent lady." I can only presume that she smelled my perfume. "I am the Prefect's wife. Is your master present?" "He is not." "Has he gone to the city?" She has a palsied hand, which she holds limp at her waist. I now observed a tremor of this hand. She said, "As the Most High commands him." "I must inform your master of an urgent matter. Will he return today?" Her hesitation also betrayed her. "He has not said." "If he is in this house, I must warn you that my business is urgent. Do you understand me?" "Yes, excellent lady." Her hand quaked. "But he is not present. I will tell him that you have come." "Can you send someone to him?" "I can." "Tell him he must send his man to me at old Herod's Palace, to discuss a meeting between us. I will wait on him." "Yes, excellent lady." "Also tell him this. If he has information regarding my girl who was abducted here, it will be better for him to offer that information, then if we must come to him and ask him for it. Do you understand?" "Yes, excellent lady." So we left her and her geese, returning at once to the road. Out of the white city on the height before us rose the immense black column from the Temple altar. On this day every man must bring a sacrifice to be burned. I determined we would not go through the pit of Hinnom again. Rather, we would continue on the Beer-Sheba road, going around the far end of the valley. I did not want to pass that place where the innocent died. On the ridge opposite the city, where the paths separate, there are tombs cut into the scarp just below the road. These have been marked all around with white chalk, so that pilgrims will not stray there and suffer contamination from the dead. I looked down at those tombs. Two ravens pecked at an object lying on one of the white aprons. It was no more than fifty feet distant, fully lit by the sun. This object was a man's skull. No doubt the dogs had left it there. They had picked it so bare of scalp and sinew that only the birds could find a meal. The meatless sockets glared at me. The naked teeth presented a ghastly grin. So that mask of death mocked me and the justice to which I had contributed. Yet it also ridicules the justice of this god who claims to champion the poor and the innocent.
I returned here in the third hour, with some confidence that I would quickly hear from Menahem ben Mattia. But now the sun has set, and it is his silence that mocks me. I can hear only the singing and chants from the Lower City. That is the procession to the Temple of the first barley sheaves, which this year have been grown in a sheltered and irrigated plot. Thus does the barren earth deceive the god who has scorned it. |
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Contents Commentarii Appendix Glossary How to Use this Site Contact the Editors Copyright
(C) 2004 Michael Ennis
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Possibly the bodies had been removed before the previous sunset to avoid
grievously offending Jewish sensibilities during the Passover Sabbath.
However, little in Pilate's record reflects such a sensitivity. It is
more likely that some of the bodies were sold by the Roman soldiers and
removed by their families before the Passover Sabbath prohibited such labor;
those that went unpurchased were taken down by their executioners
during the night or early morning and left for the scavengers. 
Whatever was not eaten during the previous evening's Passover
feast had to be burned on the Temple altar the next morning, as
mandated in Exodus 12:10. 