Song in the Cave
The waiting, I think, is the worst of it. Not the heat, though the sun beats the rock into a griddle and the air shimmers like a veil of cheap glass. Not the thirst, though your tongue swells and sticks…
Shepherd Under Majestic Stars
The air tasted of dust and distance. Eliav’s cloak was a thin defense against the chill seeping up from the stones of the hillside. His flock, a smattering of wooly shadows, huddled together, their occasional bleats the only sound breaking…
Bildad’s Unyielding Verdict
The heat was a physical presence in the air, a weight that pressed down on the shoulders and made every breath taste of dust. Bildad the Shuhite shifted on the rug, his joints aching from days of sitting in this…
The Weight of Remembering
The air was cold that morning, a sharp, dry chill that came down from the hills around Jerusalem. It bit through the thin linen of their robes, but the people standing in the square before the Water Gate did not…
The Prodigals’ Return
The air in Jerusalem that morning held the peculiar weight of washed stone and old dust. It was cool, the kind of chill that clings to shadowed places just before the sun asserts itself. The people had been gathering since…
The Arrow of Half-Hearted Victory
The air in Samaria tasted of dust and defeat. It was a taste King Jehoahaz had known for most of his seventeen-year reign, a fine powder that settled on the tongue and hinted at barren fields and empty storehouses. He…
Solomon’s Prayer for Wisdom
The air in the chamber was still and heavy, thick with the scent of cedar and myrrh. Solomon, son of David, felt the weight of the crown not as gold upon his brow, but as a stone upon his chest….
The Outrage at Gibeah
The heat had settled into the stones of Bethlehem, a heavy, woolen blanket by late afternoon. Levite. The title meant little here in Judah, away from the hill country of Ephraim that was his home. He shifted on the small…
Joshua’s Northern Campaign
The rain had not stopped for three days. It was a cold, persistent rain, the kind that seeped into leather and wool, that turned the ground of the camp at Merom into a churning bog of mud and trampled grass….
The Cost of Covenant
The sun hung low and angry over the valley, baking the stones until they shimmered. It was the third year of the drought, and the thirst had moved from the land into the souls of the people. We’d crossed the…