Chapter
Four
NOT stopping on the hillside, but catching the girl's hand, Martha explained deftly, "I know, Leah. I know." Together they ran from the grove, their faces grim with the knowing.
Leah's voice, choking with tears, sobbed out as they ran, "When I awakened, Naomi had me take some lamb broth up to Lazarus. Mary had her head on his arm, and I thought they were just resting. But when she saw me, she told me to get you and said he was gone.
Martha slowed down their pace as Leah, between crying and running, could hardly catch her breath. Both women were aware of others on the street, moving, and rushing towards the main gate of her house. Word travels fast in such a small village, reflected Martha as she appraised the crowd and nodded a silent greeting to those who were ready to give the day to mourning. Martha made sure her face was covered by the mask of calm confidence. However, the fury raging underneath was definitely out of control and completely hidden from the neighbors and friends who were quietly observing her.
Inside she was seething with angry fires.
There is no mercy, no justice today. Death is my constant companion. Yahweh, where are You? Have you abandoned me? Her mind was spilling out one accusation after another. What was it King David had said? She fiercely tried to remember the words of the psalm she had committed to memory so long ago, and suddenly the whole text filled her mind. The lines surprised her with their apt fitness for the hour.
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My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelm me.
And I say, "O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
yea, I would wander afar.
I would lodge in the wilderness.
I would haste to find me a shelter
from the raging wind and tempest."
"I would give anything to fly away," she muttered as she reached her front gate.
"What did you say, my child?" Hannah asked. Her old face was lined with concern, and her voice was warm with tenderness.
"Nothing, Hannah," Martha said, putting her head down as she steered Leah past the small knot of women and into the main courtyard.
More words of David pushed into her mind as they entered the house and started for the staircase. The great room was already crowded with people, and to herself Martha voicelessly screamed:
Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying;
My throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God.
She reached the top of the stairs, and regaining some inner composure, mocked herself, and seethingly said, "Yes, David. I, too, seem to be 'waiting for my God.' " She began
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immediately to chastise herself for procrastinating so long in calling Jesus. Now it was all over. The Master hadn't reached Bethany in time, and the life of her brother had been spilled out, wasted, and once more the family sepulchre would mutely house yet another special love.
In Lazarus's room, everyone was resigned to simply wait for Martha. She felt slightly sick, and a coat of bitterness formed on her tongue. If they only knew how unsure and unsteady I am, they would wait for someone else, she thought tartly. Don't they know I'm not their strong stone for leaning? Still they were waiting, and she knew they were waiting for her. So she squared her shoulders, took a commanding breath of air, formed somewhere deep inside her a terribly intense determination, and strode into his room.
Naomi stood with Tabitha and Deborah just inside the doorway. Over by the window waited the sobbing Joseph. His back was toward the room, his head bowed, and his shoulders were shaking with his grief.
At first no one spoke, but then Mary, kneeling by Lazarus, sensed Martha's presence, uttered a small, anguished cry, jumped up to fling herself into Martha's arms, and overflowed with a rush of tears and words.
"He was so much better," Mary was talking and sobbing all at once. "You saw him, Martha. He was better. Then he asked me to sing. You know, like when we were children."
"Yes, like when we were children." Martha's tone was fragrant with bygone memories, and she hugged her sister closer.
"Then it was his turn. It was his turn," Mary dully repeated. She broke away and moved slightly to look down on Lazarus. "But, he was..." Then dropping down beside his pallet, she cried out, "Oh, Martha, he is dead. We have lost him."
For the second time Martha replied, "Yes." And she repeated Mary's words, "We have lost him." She bent down and lifted her sister to her feet. While she brushed some hair from Mary's eyes and forehead, Martha's sense of duty returned. She said with quiet authority, "Now I must prepare him for burial. I want you to get Lazarus's alabaster box from the large closet in the lower chamber. Do you think you can do that?"
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"Yes, of course, my sister." Mary wiped her face with a linen cloth. "Is there something else I might do?" she questioned as she reached the door.
Martha was standing by Lazarus's pallet. She looked down at him for a moment, then shook her head. "No, I think not," her words came out listlessly.
Mary disappeared, and Martha looked about the room. "Please go," she said with quiet dejection. Then, remembering, she added, "Joseph, I'll need some fresh well water, and, girls, you go with Naomi. She knows where the grave cloths are stored." No one moved; so she assured them that she was alright and she had much work to do if Lazarus was to be ready for burial by that afternoon.
Reluctantly they left with an inner denial keeping their pace slow and their walk stiff.
"Oh, Naomi," Martha called out, and the old woman lifted her head to catch each word. "I seem to remember seeing Hannah and Ruth in the courtyard. Ask them to come up and help me with this, will you?" Naomi shook her head and nodded yes as she left.
The window which earlier had let in the first rosy haze of dawn now shone brightly with sunshine. The tapestry was off to the side where Mary had hurriedly pulled it earlier, and the room was warming with the fresh breath of spring. Martha took the whole of the room into her heart and slowly examined the dear and familiar things.
The small carpets were exquisitely woven. Purposely she had selected the most colorful she could find to brighten up his room. The low, highly polished wooden table and matching reclining benches with their thick, scarlet silk cushions were comfortable yet sturdy and practical. On the gleaming white walls hung some imaginative but homemade tapestries. Martha had woven the basic cloths of linen flax into perfection, but Mary had embroidered them with tiny blue and brown birds and delicately wrought pink- and red-hued flowers.
The south wall was lined with cases for Lazarus's library. The large papyrus manuscript scrolls were carefully placed in the cases and numbered for quick access. Both Martha and Lazarus
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knew each scroll as if it were an old friend, for it was in this room Lazarus and she had learned to read. Only a select group of friends knew the extent of Martha's education, for educating a girl was simply not done by any Jewish family. Indeed, to learn reading and writing, Martha had to twist her father's arm, leg, and neck before he agreed. Even then the educating was done in this room and very secretively.
Education was available only for the male offspring. According to strict Jewish tradition, at age five a Jewish boy began studying. After learning to read and write, the boy was taught exclusively from the text of the Scriptures. Between the ages of ten and fifteen, he could go on to study traditional law of Mishna, and after fifteen, the pupil passed on to higher studies involving theological discussions.
So when they were very young, Martha recollected, their mother taught them some of the simple teachings of life, and by example they began to learn about their religious heritage.
When Rachel died, Naomi took up the teaching, dutifully carrying out all the ceremonies connected with the Sabbath, various festivals, and especially the Passover.
When Lazarus was a little past four years old, his father taught him a text of Scripture which contained some of the same letters which were in his Hebrew name. Both Lazarus and Martha had to memorize some of the psalms.
One of the rules of Jewish tradition said it was unlawful to live in a town where there was no school; so Josiah Ben Jochanan checked Bethany before he had their house built, and to his joy he found a small but flourishing school.
However, when Lazarus turned six and the time came for him to begin his compulsory education, he was not physically able to sit with the other boys in a semicircle around the teacher to learn.
Josiah had been torn with disappointment, but he determined in his heart that someway, somehow, his boy would study. No one in Bethany had heard of a teacher going to a pupil's house, but once Josiah thought of it, he did not rest until he had hired a young Jewish Pharisee as the boy's tutor.
At first, during the teaching sessions, Martha, having just
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turned eight, wove little squares of cloth on a tiny loom and occasionally listened. She was only casually interested and stayed mostly out of curiosity. She loved watching the way the young man's dark-bearded face moved when he talked. Much of what the rabbi taught was written in the scrolls, but a greater part of his teaching was memorized; so he was forever talking. She was especially delighted when he was excited or reciting something to her brother, Lazarus, because the rabbi's beard made funny flopping movements.
No one knew, not even Martha herself, when the delighted fascination with the bushy black beard ended and the serious, attentive listening began. Certainly the teacher never dreamed the girl was learning all those afternoons, or as he said later, he would have doubled his fee.
In the years that followed, Lazarus learned the text of the Old Testament, starting with the Book of Leviticus and the other books of the Pentateuch. Later he went on to the Prophets and other books with Martha following close behind.
After Martha began catching on to the ways of reading, she persuaded her father with such supplication that her education could be invaluable to him in case, the Lord forbid, anything happened to him, especially in view of Lazarus's frail condition. She argued someone should be able to read and write in the family. It was clear, even in their early childhood, that Mary would be extremely creative and talented with her hands and would probably excel musically, but Martha had been blessed with other talents.
Both Martha and Lazarus loved reading and the challenge of writing, and they spent considerable hours learning and absorbing their skills. In fact, reading the scrolls and printing, first on astraca, which was broken pieces of pottery and easily obtainable, and then with reed pens on papyrus sheets, were some of the few things Lazarus could do without his fragile body becoming overly taxed.
Martha acted as his encourager and motivator, and together they spent as many afternoons as Lazarus could physically tolerate enjoying the manuscripts.
Josiah didn't exactly know what to make of Martha's education.
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Women who could read and write were virtually unknown in his Jewish circle of friends although someone he knew had heard rumors that Greek and Roman women were occasionally educated. He was mildly amused that his man-child had been taught his education, while his daughter had "overheard" hers.
Later on, Martha's theological questions and answers, as they lingered over the evening meal, were so challenging that Josiah sometimes forgot she was a girl. Once he found himself slapping her on the back when she had made an astute point as if she were an old and familiar crony of his.
Her intellectual perceptions and mental alertness were, in some ways, a mild embarrassment. "After all," he conflicted to his brother Tobias in their shop one day, "I'd hope for great intellect from my son and, indeed, he has a fine mind, but from my daughter — ah..." and his voice trailed off. To Martha he had merely said, "You are a surprising package!" as he shook his head and finger lovingly at her.
Martha looked fondly at the wall cases holding all the scrolls and would have stood there longer, wrapped in the cocoon of her peaceful memories, had she not been startled by a discreet cough.
She whirled around to face Hannah and Ruth. Both women had helped with burial preparation before, and they rushed to her, embracing her with tears, not words. Martha was at once relieved and pleased with their willingness to help and their understanding stillness.
When they stepped back, Martha rolled up the wide sleeves of her wrinkled, soiled tunic, and, as if it were a signal, Ruth and Hannah attended to theirs.
Joseph, Naomi, and Mary all came, left their appropriate provisions, and, blinded by tears, wordlessly departed.
His entire body had to be ceremonially washed and cleaned; so with Ruth at Lazarus's head, Hannah on one side, and Martha on the other, they began their painful assignment. They worked as silently as the white, fleecy clouds that floated in the blue sky above their roof.
Martha uncovered Lazarus and busied herself by folding the thick coverlet. She placed it on the floor by the feet, and then
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gently, as if she did not want to awaken him, she slipped off the short undergarment she had put on him during the night, pulling it over his arms and head.
Now he lay before them naked and exposed. The dead have no defenses, but then I suppose it doesn't matter, she thought bleakly.
The modesty of Martha and the two women which forbade them to look upon nudity was set aside for the moment, and all of them gaped in disbelief at his collection of bones. Every part of him seemed to be held together by fragile patches of skin, Lazarus's eyes were nothing more than dark, sunken chasms, and his cheekbones protruded above his tangled beard. His ribs, like thin, bony fingers, showed clearly on each side of his chest. He was as white as marble except for the dark red scab-covered sores on his elbows, backsides, and heels. Their eyes could hold no more; so they straightened up and pulled away. Instinctively they pulled their veils over their faces, for they were almost overcome by the sores' foul and pungent stench, which rose above him and hung between him and the women like an invisible shield.
Ruth was the first to return to the tasks. She turned and brought the first of many basins of water close to his head, while Hannah prepared the towels by his side. Martha began to wash him.
She touched his wispy, slightly matted hair and ran her fingers through his thin beard. Unsuccessfully, Martha tried to remember what it looked like before this last illness had devastated it.
Hannah kept her head down, avoiding anyone's glance, and Ruth's tears kept cascading down her face and splashing noisily into the basin, but very few words were passed among them.
Martha, solemn and dry eyed, imparted short, tight-lipped instructions only when it was imperative. She would have kept up her disciplined control, at least outwardly, as she finished bathing each part of his body, had it not been for the sight of the alabaster box.
Her father, Josiah, had given each of them their own extravagantly beautiful box containing precious burial ointments.
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Under the richly veined, white stone lid were four cloth-wrapped glass vials.
Martha's composure began to crack and shatter when, out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the box on the low table where Mary had left it. However, after she undid the lid and broke off the end of the first vial and began spreading its highly perfumed contents over Lazarus's emaciated body, her calm gave way to utter chaos.
The potent, almost inebriating fragrance of the ointment, his body, now cool to her touch after being so fiery, the look of all his bones thinly disguised under his skin, and her overwhelming sense of loss all gathered together in a murky sea of grief and prepared to drown her. Martha fell across his body, and a fearful, terrifying darkness closed down upon her.
Somewhere in the dimness she thought she heard voices, and once she felt herself moving through the room, but the effort to speak was too great; so she lay submerged in her watery abyss.
"Martha, Martha, dear." It was Hannah bending over her and speaking louder than usual so Martha would hear.
"You are worn out. Just lie still and rest while we finish. You have not rested or eaten for so long that it is no wonder your strength fails."
It's true, Martha thought, making sense out of Hannah's words, but she tried anyway to get off the reclining bench. Firm hands stayed her, and Martha was too tired to protest.
By moving her head to the side, Martha could see the two women as they worked, winding the grave cloths around him. There was something wrong with his body, or was it the grave cloths? Martha turned her head away in the confusion of it all, and suddenly the memory of all the others she had wrapped paraded before her. The memories iced her veins with a chill, and even with her eyes firmly shut, she could clearly see Benjamin.
No, that's not Benjamin. It's Lazarus, her mind was spinning. Then she puzzled, Am I dreaming or is that my love over there
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on the pallet being wrapped? Martha struggled to force her eyes open, but when the effort failed, she called out frantically, "Benjamin, my beloved, my husband, is it you?" The dream, or whatever it was, did not change. She thought someone spoke to her, but it was a muffled voice, and she decided the figure was Benjamin after all, and not Lazarus. He lay very still as she wrapped the cloth around his body.
She was fourteen the first time she had heard Benjamin's name in connection with hers, and Martha had stiffened in amazement! Her father and her Uncle Tobias were talking. They were sitting on a rose-hued marble bench in the side gardens, under the shade of a larger flowering vine tree, when she accidentally came upon them and overheard her name. As it turned out, they were conversing about — of all things — arranging a marriage between herself and Tobias's son Benjamin!
Martha knew, as did every proper Jewish girl, someday a marriage would be arranged for her and for Mary, but somehow she hadn't dreamed it would be this year — the year of her fourteenth summer.
Her body had become a woman two years earlier, and her mind had awakened even before that, but there had only been shy glances to, or from, young men, including her cousin Benjamin!
For Mary it was a different jar of water, Martha clucked her tongue knowingly. Every eligible son in all of Bethany and even some in Jerusalem had seen Mary, and all wondered who would win her hand in marriage. No one had ever overlooked or ignored Mary's awe-inspiring face, her azure blue, angel eyes, the sunrise color of her hair, or her dazzling smile which devastated gloom and warmed even the coldest hearts. "Now, me," Martha half smiled, "I have other avenues of talent." The realizations consoled her — but not much, not often.
Many times she and Mary had seen Benjamin in Jerusalem, both at the shop and in Uncle Tobias's home, but Martha had said very few words to her young cousin. About the only thing she knew for certain was that she was four years younger than he and a half a head taller.
Even when the betrothal was announced in the synagogue,
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and she peeked out around the curtain which delineated the women's section from the men's, she still couldn't believe what both her eyes and ears told her.
"What frightens you, Martha dear?" her father questioned her the day after the Sabbath. She was no withering, wilting flower on a vine, but a strong girl; courageous and competent in any situation, her father reasoned, but the betrothal and coming marriage clearly filled her with dread — if not fear.
"I am not sure, my father," she responded, "but I think it is the thought of leaving Bethany and living in the city." It as an answer he could readily understand, for his love of the little town of Bethany burned strong within his breast.
He smiled warmly and put a protective arm around her as they walked down to the grove-garden. "I thought you might be worried about liking him — or even loving him," he smiled at her.
"No, you have often reminded me of the saying, 'Love comes after marriage, not before,' even though it did not happen that way between my mother and you," she said with a mischievous smile playing around the corners of her mouth.
His ears turned an instant bright scarlet. "You never did miss much, did you, my girl? Does that head of yours forget anything?" he laughed as he asked.
"Not too much," she said, playfully ducking her head in an attempt to be modest. "But I do know that when you left Jerusalem one bleak, cold day on a camel caravan to buy things in warm, sunny Capernaum, you came home with more than the seaport's imported goods, Galilean handcrafts, and sunshine! You came home with moonbeams and stars in your eyes. Uncle Tobias told me of it."
"What else did that old rascal tell you?"
"Only that he could get no work out of you until you went back and married the girl," Martha laughingly replied.
"So it was," said Josiah, grinning broadly. "It's true, our life's union was not arranged by our families, although Aunt Sarah had my cousin Dorcus all ready and eager. But you'll see, Martha, this marriage between you and Benjamin will work out exceptionally well. Perhaps even as well as your mother's and mine," he added, trying to assure her.
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Josiah continued because he thought she needed some added encouragement and said, "I've worked with him, you know." He leaned closer to her face as they walked through the flower beds in the grove. "While he is a bit reserved and quiet, he is a fine young man of honor and one who fearfully and respectfully worships Jehovah." Her father kept hoping his words would hasten Martha's acceptance of Benjamin, for he knew once she made up her mind things would go well.
"Father, it is not only moving to Jerusalem which troubles me; it is something else." Here she hesitated, afraid of offending the dearest person in her whole existence, but he urged her to go on. So she blurted out, "It is just that he is, at times, so clumsy." She lowered her eyes and bent her head to escape her father's incredulous look as she knew she had to do some further explaining before he would reach any understanding.
"I don't know how many times I have stood by and watched him drop and break something, stumble over a stool, or misjudge the opening of a doorway," she explained. Her father was beginning to make a stab at understanding, but he still stood staring at her.
"You know me well, dear Father, and I have very little patience with someone like that. I admire a person who does things with accuracy, who doesn't waste time or have delays — like you, Father." She added the last words, hoping the truth would penetrate.
It found its mark, and Josiah threw his head back and gave a short laugh.
"My dear child, Benjamin is not like that anymore. It is true, though, when he first came to us at the shop, he was an overeager-to-please apprentice in selling, and he caused us much bewilderment. He was always bumbling about, and he did knock over a few things. Once his elbow reduced a finely crafted pottery vase, worth many silver talents, into a hundred tiny pieces." Her father clenched his fist over his heart as if the memory still pained him.
"But, Martha," he continued, "Benjamin has matured, and age seems to have smoothed out the unexpected thrusts and turns of his arms and limbs. In fact, his footsteps are as cautious
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and well placed as those of a young lion. He is not as you remember him."
"I see," Martha replied gravely, meaning that what she could see was that the matter of her marriage had been settled, and she no longer had any real choice.
Two months after their conversation in the grove, the dowry settlement was agreed upon and paid, the slim ring of beaten gold given, and Martha, as she knew she would, married young Benjamin.
It was a wedding to be remembered, and no one who had been there ever forgot the day.
The noisy, ecstatic wedding procession, made up of young and old alike and headed by the nervous bridegroom, wound its way up the streets of Bethany to the bride's house. The hills rang of all the singing, dancing, and clowning which went on joyously around the pale-faced, colorfully dressed Benjamin. The festivities picked up considerably after they entered Josiah's courtyard. There, several young men added the beauty, and the noise, of four cymbals, two flutes, and one lute. Flowers were everywhere — spilling out of large jars, in garlands around the necks of the guests, or merely caught and held by waving hands.
The biggest commotion was in the people themselves. They were dressed in their finest rainbow-colored tunics, and their conversations were bursting with humorous tales and endless teasing. Their laughter, singing, and music floated into the house to Martha.
All morning her heart had pounded with vague fluttering of fearful expectation.
Martha had given in to Mary's insistent pleading and had used special ointments on her face and a heady perfume on her neck, but it was not to her liking or preference. She did it because it was simply easier to put it all on than to dampen Mary's enthusiastic cajoling.
Martha would have liked to have had some peace and quiet, but Mary was there constantly — noisy and bubbling like an early-spring brook. She brushed a sheen into Martha's hair and let it fall long and lustrous about Martha's shoulders as the bridal tradition decreed. Then, taking two front sections of hair from
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the center part, Mary brought the strands to the back of Martha's head and secured them with two gold combs. Skillfully her fingers moved precisely, and she wove tiny white flowers and fresh myrtle leaves into a fragrant wreath to crown Martha's dark, rich head of hair.
"You look as lovely as the rose of Sharon," effervesced Mary.
"I hope so."
Martha looked down at her dress and had to admit she liked it in spite of her edgy feelings. It was made of snow-white, imported silk that had been taken off the finest bolt ever seen in her father's shop.
Martha had fashioned it into a dress, but Mary with the help of Judith, Bethany's best seamstress, had inserted a breastplate of golden, woven fabric with an elaborate overwork of embroidered white flowers and tiny pearls. A gold sash completed the dress and matched the delicately made bridal sandals; so except for her veil, she was ready. "At least I look like I'm ready." Martha ventured.
She was still fidgety and concerned with her appearance, or was it just everything, when both girls heard the bridegroom's procession clamoring outside and knew the time had arrived.
Two young friends, Elizabeth and Vashti, came bounding unceremoniously through the doorway.
"He's here. Everyone is here...."
"Oh, Martha, your dress is beautiful."
Both girls, dressed in white, had been chosen along with Mary to serve Martha as bridal maidens, and their happy chattering reflected their high excitement over the honor.
Impatiently Elizabeth and Vashti waited while Mary arranged Martha's robin's-egg blue veil over her head and shoulders. Then with heads held high, they all escorted her to meet Benjamin. The girls passed the servants, who, approving, nodded and voiced their "ahs." They walked through the throng of people to the place of honor. The beautiful Grecian chair, surrounded with huge bronze pots filled with flowering tree branches, stood alone at the end of the room waiting for the intended bride and her maidens.
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Martha sat there like a young queen waiting for her king. But even when her father, Josiah, kissed her forehead and whispered she was beautiful, it did not assuage her terror. Her feeling of ridiculousness was unparalleled to anything she had ever felt in her whole fourteen years of living.
Benjamin's eyes avoided hers. Even on their hilarious, attention-getting walk from Bethany to his parents' house in Jerusalem, they remained close to each other, but their eyes never met.
Nothing it seemed, not even the extravagant ceremonial feast served to them under their special wedding canopy, the gifts lavished upon them, nor the lengthy blessings of the many toasts made to them complete with a heady, rich wine, could bridge their souls or entwine their hearts together.
Later, when Martha had been led to the bridal chamber by Mary and the other maidens, she sent them away without accepting their help to undress, and motionlessly she sat on the couch. She had only hints of gossip, unwillingly overheard in the marketplace, to prepare her for the rigors of womanhood on this couch, and she absentmindedly traced the bedding's design and patterns with her fingertips and fearfully considered the next hours.
Martha smiled now in her dark place of dreaming and remembered how needless her fears had been.
Benjamin — dear, gentle Benjamin — had finally come in to her, but so hesitantly, so haltingly, and so filled with his own fears that almost instantly she warmed to him. He was not trembling from the desire but from terror. With only a small glance at him to ease the moment, she unwound her veil and laid it aside. In the hazy glow of the small lamp above them, Benjamin perched nervously beside her, and his eyes were filled with quiet observation. When she had removed the tiny gold combs from her hair and the last of the wilted flower crown, he reached over and hesitatingly touched her rich, brown hair which cascaded around her shoulders. Its softness surprised him. It even gave him the courage to touch her face, but when he took her chin in his hands to speak to her, the smoothness of her skin and the deep, rich, brown of her eyes surprised him even more. He had never really
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looked at her before, but now — here, alone, and together — he found a loveliness which at once was as bewildering as it was wonderful. He wondered what other surprises were in store for him with this one.
"I am afraid that I shall, in some way, hurt you by this night," Benjamin softly explained as he held Martha's face gently in his hands. "I've no experience with a woman," he confessed, "and sometimes I am, well, you know — clumsy."
Martha took his hands from her face and wordlessly bent down before him. After she removed his sandals and her own, she stood up, slipped off the dress with its golden sash, and carefully laid it and all her undergarments on a low bench. When nothing more hid her ivory-colored skin, she turned and faced him without shyness.
He sat quite still, watching her with unconcealed wonderment. And when he said, "Martha, in our shop I have seen many beautiful things, but nothing will ever be as beautiful as what I have just witnessed," she more than willingly stepped over to him and yielded herself to his arms.
On their couch, in between their whispering and his kisses, Martha heard him say, "I pray I am not being clumsy."
She had never known or dreamed such delirious joy was obtainable for mere mortals of this world. As her body relinquished itself to his touch, Martha pressed her lips against his ear and rather fiercely whispered, "Oh, no, my love, you are not clumsy!" Nor was he.
Less than two new moons later, the bubbly of newly found, euphoric joyousness burst and shattered before her horrified, unbelieving eyes.
Benjamin and her father had been standing on a busy street in Jerusalem's bazaar talking with another merchant when a horse-drawn chariot, minus its Roman centurion driver, careened with the speed of a whirlwind, dragging, whirling, and scraping both her father and Benjamin to death under a fury of hooves and sharply spiked wheels.
Sometimes Martha could still hear their screams, but at this moment all the space in her mind was filled with thick silence. "Oh, dear Adonai, am I seeing a vision? Is this happening or am
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I having a dream?" Martha wondered. And then with tenacity she struggled to surface up through the misty haze, but all that would come clear were the pictures in her mind of the mutilated bodies of her husband and father. Martha remembered they had laid very still as she washed and wrapped them that day. "Yes, as still as Lazarus today," she whispered as she spiraled and slid backwards and downwards into her black, silent, and dreamless chamber.
Nor did she awaken or feel herself being carried down the stairs in Joseph's sturdy arms. online books christian books
