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…
Aaron’s Priestly Burden
The dawn was a pale scratch of light over the eastern hills, too weak yet to burn away the chill clinging to the floor of the desert. Inside the Tent of Meeting, the air hung still and dense, carrying the…
The Priest’s Diagnosis
The air in the chamber was still and close, smelling of dust, old wool, and the faint, sharp scent of myrrh from the anointing oil kept in a clay jar on a high shelf. Ahiam, son of Levi, shifted on…
The Weight of the Law
The heat hadn’t lifted. It clung to the valley floor, a heavy wool blanket soaked in the day’s sun, smelling of dust and trampled grass and the lingering scent of thousands of cookfires. I sat on a low rock outside…
Torn Tunic, Silent Current
The air in Potiphar’s house was thick, a stew of baking dust from the courtyard and the faint, clinging scent of myrrh from the master’s chambers. Joseph moved through it, a silhouette against the white glare of the midday sun….
The First Drops Fell
The air changed first. It wasn’tt a gradual shift. One afternoon, the breeze that usually carried the scent of dry grass and distant livestock turned heavy, tasting of damp stone and deep earth. Noah stood in the doorway of the…
The Beast’s Mark and the Empty Hands
The memory comes to me not as a vision, but as a weight. It sits in the gut, this knowledge, a cold stone of having witnessed. I was on the Patmos shore, but not the one of gulls and fishermen….
The Ground of Faith
The sun baked the white stones of the synagogue courtyard, turning the air thick and sluggish. Elazar, a linen merchant whose forearms bore the faint, silvery scars from a childhood accident, wiped his brow with a sleeve. He’d come early,…
Children of the Day
The oil lamp in Marcellus’s house guttered, throwing nervous shadows against the damp plaster wall. A chill, carrying the scent of the Aegean and night-blooming jasmine, seeped through the shuttered window. Around the rough-hewn table, the small assembly leaned in,…