Charles Reznikoff, in a mood to add to the Apocryphal Four Books of the Maccabees, here presents us with his own “fifth book.” He bases his prose-poem narrative on accounts given by Josephus, in his The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews.
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I
Gaza of the Philistines was still a great city: the Arabs of the wilderness traded there for pottery and knives; and caravans from Egypt stopped in Gaza because of its many wells of fresh water and the gardens on every side. But its inhabitants were no longer a warlike people. Even the speech they once spoke had long been forgotten; Nehemiah, three hundred years before, heard the last of it in Ashdod.
The army of Judea pitched their tents on the sand dunes between Gaza and the sea and in the groves of olive trees—under a sky alive with kites and vultures. Above the camp bristling with spears was the blue standard: a lion rampant embroidered upon it and the motto of the Hasmoneans, “Who is like You among the mighty, Lord?”
Then the soldiers of the king of Judea walked the narrow streets and entered the temples of the new gods of Gaza which were the gods of the Greeks and had failed it. And the Jews spoke of Samson who, blinded, did grind in its prison; of how the Israelites had once hidden in caves and holes from the Philistines; and the Jews praised the Lord of Hosts, blessed be His name!
The king of Judea put to death the chief men of the city in their temple of Apollo and razed Gaza—wall and towers, temples and dwellings—he razed it to the ground, and came back to Jerusalem: through crowds waving palm branches and greeting him with the clash of cymbals and shouts of praise.
But at the feast in the court of the king’s palace, amidst the huzzas, the soldiers heard a sharp dissenting voice—an old man berating the king: “Enough for you, Alexander Jannai, the crown of David, and leave the miter of the high priest! Even if you had the right to wear it, it is not to be worn at a feast like this and by one whose hands have shed much blood!”
The king sat grinding his teeth while men and officers shouted. The captains of the mercenaries—not Jewish at all and eager to show devotion—had hands on hilts, when the king in a loud voice cried: “Peace!” At the word slaves rushed into the courtyard and some began handing about cakes of fresh bread in baskets while others poured the red wine into cups. Still others brought leather bottles of wine and left them on the tables, and many a cruse of oil for the salted herbs, and lumps of figs and dates.
Along the wall of the courtyard
the pomegranate trees were in blossom;
doves murmured in the branches
and, on the barren ground,
dust swirled about the blue wings.
The dancing girls began the dances
of Alexandria and Antioch,
moving hands and fingers, shoulders and
body,
but feet hardly at all;
watching them, the soldiers were soon joking
and breaking out into song.Bearded men in the hall of the palace:
gaping at the good flooring
of heavy cedar boards; at the walls—
four rows of white stone,
the top carved into trees and plants
so skillfully
branches and leaves seemed to move.
“Judea is grain, Galilee straw,
and all beyond—chaff!”Narrow square forehead, a Long curved nose
thick at the nostrils,
thick lips but a well-formed mouth, a strong
jaw,
a long black beard, heavy black eyebrows
and keen—but narrow—black eyes:
the king of Judea came in,
a goblet of red wine in his hand,
walking unsteadily
in shoes of soft red leather.In the courtyard they were singing
the Song of Deborah:
The river Kishon swept them away
the ancient river, the river Kishon
O my soul
you have trodden down strength!
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II
Walking in the gardens of the king, “Do you really suppose,” one of the women of the court said mockingly, “that God gave the Law to Moses in the clouds and smoke of a mountain? That the Books of Moses, dreary with genealogies and laws, may be likened for knowledge to Aristotle, for wisdom and beauty of speech to Plato?”
Her nose was small and straight and her eyes
blue,
her lips full and her chin round;
a Jewess and yet with her red hair and blue
eyes
a very daughter of the Amorites.
The red hair, glinting with gold dust,
was bound in a snood
over which the hair tumbled
in ringlets;
and little golden bells were about her ankles.
She wore a necklace of the coins of Judea, showing spokes of a wheel and a galley at sea: curious symbols for a nation in the hills. But apt enough for the ambition of its king—or for a scattered people. Her companion reached for her hand but she drew it away while her eyes led him on. She looked at him sideways, turning her head ever so slightly and smiling the while; and then, suddenly, looked him full in the face, her own face very earnest, and her wide-open eyes shining with a thousand points of blue light.
“The Pharisees,” she said, “teach the Unwritten Law, and yet the Book of Deuteronomy says plainly: ‘You shall not add to the word which I command you.’” And she mocked at the Pharisees for a belief in angels: in body like the wind or like the flames of fire! And for the teaching that the dead will live again: “As grass,” she said, “will grow on a paved street.”
In the moonlight they looked down upon the pavement of flat roofs on the slopes before them: the white houses of Jerusalem crowded together with its narrow winding streets of stairs and steep lanes. “The king and all men of sense,” she said, “see the hope of our country in making it rich and strong. Such a country as Parthia would wish for as an ally. Or Rome.”
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III
The Feast of Booths is a festival of thanksgiving for what has been gathered from threshing-floor and wine-press; and the people made themselves booths—as they are commanded in the Torah—of the branches of thick trees and of palms and of the willows of the brook: everyone upon the roof of his house or in his court that they might remember how they had lived in booths when the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt.
And Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims who had come with their sacrifices to see Alexander Jannai, the king and high priest, sacrifice for the nation: a crush of joyous people on the stairs of the streets, holding palm leaves and branches of willows and twigs of myrtle as well as citrons—symbols of the fruit of a goodly tree with which to rejoice before the Lord. The king, in his purple robe of high priest with its fringe of golden bells and pomegranates—a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, his broad girdle embroidered with flowers and threads of gold, wore the high priest’s breastplate of twelve precious stones, each cut with the name of a tribe of Israel, and on his linen cap the triple crown with its whorl of golden leaves.
In the days of the prophet Samuel, when he judged the people in Mizpah, the Israelites drew water and poured it out before the Lord for rain. Now the land of Israel, unlike Egypt, is watered by rain, and on the Feast of Booths after the long summer the Pharisees, many living in the mean quarters of the cities, held much by this libation: their own small cisterns almost dry. Three blasts on the ram’s horn greeted the procession bringing water from the fountain of Siloam to the Water Gate; and the worshippers watched the king, as high priest, take the golden flask up to the great altar and turn to the golden basins—one for water and the other for wine. But Alexander Jannai poured the water on the ground and, as some reported, upon his feet: out of contempt, perhaps, for the Pharisees.
The Pharisees pelted the king with citrons. Straightway the king and high priest, grandson of Simon and grand-nephew of Judah the Maccabee, sent for his mercenaries—heathen from the mountains of Asia Minor—who had been drawn up beyond the walls of the Temple.
With stony faces and naked swords
they ran into the sacred grounds
cutting down the worshippers.Bodies of young and old were lying
everywhere:
holiday garments stained with blood
and blood gathering in pools
on the stone flags of the court and flowing
into
the gutters
over the scattered palm leaves
and branches of willows
and the twigs of myrtle.That night there were no lamps, no candles,
in the Women’s Court of the Temple—
so many burning
every courtyard in the city used to be alight;
no pious men danced
with burning torches in their hands
singing to the Lord, while the Levites on
the steps
played on harps and lutes, sounded their
cymbals and trumpets,
answering psalm with psalm; and every heart
was glad.
So that it was a saying:
he who did not see this
never saw true rejoicing.
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IV
Demetrius of Damascus, with the Pharisees to help him, was ready enough to war against Alexander Jannai; and the army of the king scattered in flight. Alexander Jannai, too, fled into the mountains. Then the Pharisees with Demetrius left him, not to march farther into Judea against fellow Jews and a Jewish king.
Pharisees still troublesome in the cities and countryside were brought to Jerusalem in chains; and Alexander Jannai’s workmen set up rows of crosses in a place beyond the city for the punishment Palestine had learnt from the Macedonian kings of Syria. (But it was rumored that the king would set the Pharisees free as Joseph once freed his brothers in Egypt.) Two or three days before the festival of Passover the Pharisees were brought from their dungeons, befouled and dreadfully pale, and with them their kin imprisoned also; and all were led beyond the city into the bright sunshine among the blossoms of the spring.
The spectators began to weep and sob as the prisoners were halted in the wood of crosses. One of the Pharisees was heard saying: “How beautiful the world is! I had hardly noticed it.” And the man’s companion said: “It is written in the Song of Songs: ‘love is as strong as death.’ If a man dies for love of God, thinking with all his might only of the Lord, will he feel his wounds?”
Stoning, burning, strangling, or the sword: none of “the four deaths” of Jewish law has the pain of crucifixion. But it was die custom of the Jews to have the condemned drink of wine and frankincense and go to his death benumbed. Without more ado, however, the executioners began hoisting the Pharisees upon the crosses and driving the shrieking nails through hands and feet; seized upon wives and children to cut their throats.
Above, from the gardens of the king,
the king and his courtiers and their women
sat watching the executions.
Wine and baskets of fruit and cakes
were brought to the tables;
and, as they ate and drank,
they sang the songs of love and the drinking
songs
of Alexandria and Damascus.
The sky was bright and blue that day
and at evening a deeper blue
as star after star began to shine.
The guards who were to watch the Pharisees
twisting in their slow death
gathered in a hollow
out of the wind.
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V
An officer of the Jews besieging Ragab saw in a growing cloud of dust a heavy litter and the horsemen riding slowly on all sides. The queen! He went into the king’s tent with steps that fell softly on the carpet. Alexander Jannai lay under a sealskin, bony forehead and black hair wet with sweat, trembling for cold in the heat of noon; his hands on the covering plucking at the fur.
The leather curtains of the litter parted although the heavy wheels had not come to a stop, and the queen stepped out before anyone could help her to the ground. The officers caught a glimpse of a round rouged face, wet with tears, under the long veil flowing in the wind as she went towards the king’s tent with a quick firm tread.
It was said, afterwards, that the dying king advised Salome, his queen, to make her peace with the Pharisees. Be this as it may, she sent for her brother, ben-Shatah, who had sat in the Sanhedrin and had answered the king: “The Wisdom that I serve makes me your equal.” She sent also for the other leaders of the Pharisees—in exile among the Arabs and in Egypt; and queen and Pharisees ruled the land.
Many quoted the psalm: “weeping may
lodge for a night
but joy comes in the morning.”
Yet some said: not a palm tree in Judea
to which the horse of a Persian would not
be tied,
and not a coffin in the land
from which the horse of a Mede
would not be eating straw.
The Pharisees gave Alexander Jannai a burial worthy of a better king. His tomb with its round turret—the roof curving inward to a spire—is in the valley to the east of Jerusalem among the cedars.
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VI
The wall about the Temple—towards the north—had heavy square towers and a dry moat before it. Pompey sent for his engines, the catapults and battering-rams that were at Tyre; and his soldiers began building a bank between his camp and the wall; and beams and boulders and bundles of twigs were thrown into the moat daily. Nor did the Romans wait for the siege engines but were building others, cutting down all the trees of the neighborhood—“the trees of gladness” as a poet of the Jews had called them.
The pounding of the battering-rams against a corner of the tower, tallest of all, from which the archers guarded the entrance to the Temple, was beginning to show in cracks between the heavy stones. On a Sabbath, under the blows of the ram, the tower crashed. Brass trumpets sounding the attack, the waiting Romans scrambled over the great stones and through the cloud of dust: first, a son of Sulla with a great force behind him. Elsewhere, along the wall, centurions and their men were climbing it on the scaling-ladders.
Pompey stopped to smile at an inscription in Greek beside the gate—“No foreigner may pass. The guilt for his death will be his own!”—and entered the court of the Temple, followed by his trumpeter. The Jews defending the Temple who did not fall at the breach or on the wall were driven into a corner of the great court and were leaping from the wall into a ravine to die upon the rocks below.
The priests and Levites went about the Sabbath service as if that Sabbath were like any other (so, during the siege, they had offered the sacrifices twice a day—let rocks and arrows fall where they might). The offerings were carried on in silence; in caps of linen and long linen coats and broad girdles embroidered with flowers, scarlet, purple and blue. Frantic like the fish that eat men when blood is in the water, the armored Romans turned upon the priests and Levites and killed them.
The Romans went into the Temple: gazed at the golden candlestick, almost the height of a man, with its seven heavy branches; at the table of gold on which the loaves of the shewbread lay; and at the chests in which were heaped spices and the half-shekels sent by Jews everywhere to buy the sacrifices. And Pompey went behind the heavy curtain of fine linen, embroidered with blue, purple and scarlet flowers, into the gloom of the Holy of Holies, sword in hand, to see the God of the Jews—and found an empty room.
Then the legions marched away from
Jerusalem:at the head of each
rode a tribune
with red or black plumes on his helmet;
behind each tribune, on foot, the first
centurion
with the legion’s eagle of silver or bronze on
a staff;
stocky soldier trudging beside stocky soldier,
sinewy men
used to hard work, plain living and pain.Their leather coats, heavy with bands of
iron or brass,
over sleeveless woolen shirts;
a greave of bronze on the right leg
(for this was the forward leg in battle),
and their feet in heavy sandals;
a heavy square shield of wood plated with
iron
hung at each man’s left (the badge of his
cohort,
a bright wreath or a thunderbolt, perhaps,
painted about the boss,
but now, on the march, under a leather
cover);at his right, hanging from a shoulder belt,
the short heavy sword, two-edged and
pointed,
good for thrusting; his heavy spear—square
wooden shaft and its iron taken apart—
on the legionary’s shoulder; has helmet of
iron or leather with bands of brass
hanging on his breast; and his other belong-
ings in bundles:
woolen cloak, a pan for baking, a handmill,
perhaps, and his ration of grain for a
number of days,
saw, spade, and ax, a sickle, cord, and
baskets,
all tied to the long forked stick on his shoul-
der, too—
the stick soldiers jokingly called “my mule.”The legion’s horses and mules followed it
with its heavy tents of leather and the scal-
ing-ladders,
and mule after mule laden with sacks of
grain;
then cattle and sheep in droves and the carts
of the merchants.
After the legions came the Spanish soldiers
in jerkins of leather
with small round targets instead of heavy
shields; barefoot Numidians carrying
darts;
men from the Balearic Islands with slings;
and archers from Crete and Syria without
shields or helmets
but with heavy sleeves of leather;
and last lumbered the engines
that had broken down the great tower of
the Temple
and the walls of many cities and great
fortresses.Now with this legion, now with that,
Pompey rode among the young noblemen
who had come from Rome to study the art
of war.
His lictor, scribe, and servants followed him,
and his trumpeter
with the horn of a wild-ox and silver mouth-
piece,
and a standard-bearer
with Pompey’s white standard
and his name on it in red.The river Kishon swept them away
the ancient river, the river Kishon.
O my soul,
you have trodden down strength!
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