The Balm and the Blade
The ink was thick, almost gritty, between his fingers. Jeremiah wiped them on the coarse weave of his robe, leaving greyish smudges on the brown wool. The afternoon light in his chamber at Anathoth was the colour of weak broth,…
Exile’s Echo, Potter’s Clay
The damp of this Babylonian earth seeps into my bones in a way the dust of Jerusalem never did. It’s a cold that has little to do with the weather. We light our fires, but they seem to give more…
From Dust to Dwelling Rain
The heat in Judah that year was a physical presence. It lay upon the land like a heavy wool blanket, pressing the scent of parched thyme and cracked earth into every crevice. In the hill country, the terraces that usually…
Vineyard Longing for Solomon
The heat lay heavy over the vineyard, a thick, golden blanket that made the very air seem to drink the light. Shulamith wiped her forearm across her brow, leaving a faint smudge of dust. The grapes hung in dense clusters,…
The Mud and the Mastery
The rain had finally stopped, but the mud remained. It clung to the sandals of the men coming down from the hills, a thick, sucking clay that mirrored the heaviness in Jotham’s heart. He walked slowly behind his father, Elidad,…
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…