On the Walls of Jericho

I am a night sentry on the walls of Jericho. I have lived here since birth, but this is my first deployment.

I am proud to be a watchman for the City of Palms. It is one of the great cities of the world. The walls are high and thick enough for two chariots to drive side-by-side along the top. As the sun goes down at the beginning of my watch, I can survey the land from my post – beyond the Jordan to the sunrise, to the wooded highlands toward the sunset, to the white shores and pale blue water of the Salt Sea in the south. When darkness falls, I see myriads and myriads of stars in a black sky that never ends and a moon so close and so big I feel I could touch it.

The gates are strong. Twelve soldiers always stand ready in the double guardhouses at each of the eight city gates, three soldiers on each side on the ground floor and three on each side of the story above. I have been told the wood of the doors came from trees brought down from the high country of the Lebanon, trees tall enough to touch the clouds. The iron bars of the gates are immovable.

The walls and gates are gashed by the arrows and spears and rams of attacking armies, but no army has entered into the city. I do not think any army could. They will stand forever.

Jericho has secret powers greater than the power of walls. I learned as a boy that we are descendants of the Rephaim, the giant kings who once dwelt in this land, who built the walls of this city by lifting large stones by hand and carrying tree trunks from the Lebanon on their shoulders, each stride a furlong.

The Rephaim were the greatest warriors since the first times of the world. Four men could not have carried their shields. Their spears were as thick as battering rams, with iron points a cubit-and-a-half long and weighing ten talents. Before each battle, they cut gashes in their arms and legs to paint their faces and streak their hair with their own blood. They went to battle robed in the skin of defeated enemies, made necklaces of enemies’ bones, and skreiched out furious airs on boneflutes. As they marched, they shrieked a song of battle that froze the blood of their enemies and scattered them like sheep.

They were as relentless and pitiless as a storm. They cared nothing for wounds. Their attack did not end when an enemy died, but they hacked and slashed at their naked bodies, tore off limbs, gutted still-living bodies and pulled out their bowels, drank enemy blood and ate their roasted livers. After a battle, I am told, the field would be littered with gaping heads, twitching arms and legs, pulverized skulls, and glistening bodies from which all the skin had been stripped away. The Rephaim would return to the city walls in triumph, slathered with gore and blood, which they did not wash off for three days.

The last of the Rephaim died long ago, but they are with us still. Their tombs have an honored place in the high city of Jericho, next to the temple of Yareakh. When an enemy attacks the city, the priests process through the tombs, summoning the Rephaim with prayers and chants and clouds of incense. I am told the kings of old rise as a dark mist that seems to swallow everything into nothing. I have been told you can still hear their boneflutes and shrieks and the sound of spirits marching, more terrifying than the sound of the largest army of flesh.

I have been thinking of the Rephaim since I awoke today. For many weeks, priests have been gathering at the high city, gliding through the streets like spirits in bright white robes. Priests perform the evening offerings every evening, but things are different now. By the time I got to the walls at sunset, hundreds of priests were massed in the temple court. Some stood in the glow of towering altar fires, others moved among the tombs in a solemn procession. Something is happening. I think they are about to summon the kings of the dead. I think I know why.

Three moons ago, the day guards spied people coming from wilderness to assemble near Moab on the bank of the Jordan toward the sunrise. Day after day more came. They do not look like an army. There are women and children and cattle among them, and the men look like shepherds not soldiers. They pitched thousands of tents around a large tent rich enough to be the tent of a king.

Several weeks ago, the captain of the day-watch told us two spies had entered our city. They came through the gates unseen, but were seen in the city square. They are hidden somewhere, but the king has sent soldiers to capture them. They will be found and dealt with. We think – my fellow guards and I – that the spies came from that people across the river. That multitude of shepherds is planning to enter our land. I wonder if they will be foolish enough to attack Jericho.

In the days of our fathers, strange tales reached Jericho from the land of Mizraim. The great river turned to blood. Mizraim was filled with frogs and locusts, and darkness covered the land for many days. Many children died in a night of terror, and the Great House himself perished, drowned in the sea.

At that time, a company of slaves left Mizraim and marched into the desert. They passed through the Sea of Reeds, led by a god with a name like the hiss of flame. Long before, their fathers dwelt in our land, and the word spread that they planned to return. Then they melted into the wilderness and were never seen or heard of again.

I fear the people on the bank of the Jordan is that same company of slaves from Mizraim. It is impossible. So many people could not live for forty years in the Arabah. There is no water, no bread or meat. They would have died of thirst and hunger many years ago. It is impossible, yet who else could this great multitude be? When I think on this, my heart melts. They look like flesh and blood, but can flesh and blood live on sand and air? Who could they be but the slaves of Mizraim returned from the grave?

Two weeks ago, at the changing of the watch, we found the day guards white with fear. When they told us what happened that day, we were afraid. For some days, the people on the far side of Jordan had been preparing to move. We thought they might be going back into the wilderness, or toward Mizraim. But early on that morning, a man dressed in garments of light and crowned with gold led a procession from the camp toward the river. Behind him were eight men in white robes, bearing on their shoulders an object covered with a cloth of pure blue. As soon as their feet touched the river, the water stopped flowing, even though it was great with spring floods. A path of dry ground appeared, and the people – men, women, and children – began to rush through the valley of water. On that day two weeks ago, I saw them in the light of evening, no longer camped on the plains of Moab, but settled on the plain of Jericho. I thought again they must be the slaves of Mizraim, and I wondered greatly. Who is this people who rise up from the wilderness and pass like spirits through the river?

Now today, at dawn near the end of our watch, I saw a stream of men coming from the camp toward Jericho. In the center was the man in garments of light – a priest, I think – and the men in white carrying the covered object on their shoulders. They were silent except for the sound of thousands of feet in the dust. Then over the footsteps I heard a long blast of shofars. Then they were silent again as they began marching around the base of our walls.

I make myself laugh and say to myself we have nothing to fear. No company of slaves from Mizraim can breach our walls, even if they are the spirits of those who died in the wilderness. We have our walls and gates and our priests can summon the terrors of the Rephaim of old. It will take more than a shofar to capture Jericho.