Songs by a Foreign River
The river was brown. Not the clear, rushing gold of the Siloam, nor the deep, stone-lined channels of the Gihon. This was a slow, thick, muddy brown, sliding past Babylon’s walls with a smell of wet earth and rot. We…
From Abram to Exodus
The heat in the tent was a living thing, thick and drowsy with the smell of goat hair and dust. Old Eliab shifted on his cushion, his fingers tracing the worn wood of his lyre. Before him, the children of…
Sanctuary in the Slippery Place
The heat in Jerusalem that summer was a physical weight. It pressed down on the rooftops, shimmered over the stone streets, and turned the very air in the chamber where I sat into a thick, woolen blanket. I was Asaph,…
The Upheld
The rain had finally stopped, but the damp clung to everything in Jerusalem. It seeped into the stones of my house, a chill that no brazier could fully dispel. My illness was a quiet, persistent thing—a fever that came and…
The Oath at the Water Gate
The air in Jerusalem held a particular quality that morning—a dusty, golden heaviness, as if the very sunlight had weight. It was the weight of memory, of rubble once piled high now formed into a scarred but defiant wall. And…
The Chest and the Bloodied Stones
The stone dust hung in the air of the temple courtyard, a fine, golden haze in the late afternoon sun. It was the dust of renewal. Joash, king of Judah, watched as workmen, their forearms corded with muscle, fitted a…
The Shepherd’s Costly Count
The heat that summer was a thick, woolen blanket over Jerusalem. It lay heavy on the king’s shoulders, even in the shaded stone rooms of his palace. David, his beard now more silver than russet, felt the weight of years…
The Scribe’s Ledger of Peace
The sun, a pale wafer behind the morning haze, did little to warm the stone of the outer court. Adonijah ben Iddo, Senior Scribe of the Third Rank, felt the chill in his knuckles as he unrolled the latest dispatch…
Joshua’s List of Kings
The lamplight was failing. Joshua felt it in his bones more than he saw it—a deep, sedimented ache that had little to do with the cool evening air seeping through the goat-hair walls of his tent. Before him, spread on…
Holiness in the Wilderness Meal
The heat hadn’t broken with the setting sun. It rose from the flinty ground in waves, carrying the scent of dust and crushed sage, of animals and humanity, a vast camp breathing in the dusk. Eliab shifted his weight on…