Nahum’s Vision of Nineveh’s Fall
The air in Judah was dry that season, a parched stillness that seemed to press upon the hills. Nahum felt it in his bones before he saw it in his spirit. He had withdrawn to the shade of a rock…
Hosea’s Warning to Samaria
The air in Samaria held the peculiar thickness that comes before a storm, a damp, metallic taste that hinted at more than rain. Eliam shifted his weight on the rough stone of the city wall, his eyes scanning the horizon…
Sowing Wind, Reaping Whirlwind
The air in Samaria hung thick, a stew of dust, animal musk, and the sweet, cloying smell of burnt grain. It was the smell of prosperity, or so they told themselves. Eliab, an old scribe whose fingers were stained with…
The Mountains Drink Again
The rain had finally come. It wasn’t the gentle, life-giving rain of my youth, the kind that soaked into the terraces with a sigh. This was a violent, drenching torrent, sluicing down the rocky slopes of the mountains around Jerusalem,…
Ezekiel Bears Jerusalem’s Siege
The heat of the Babylonian sun was a physical weight. It pressed down on the flat rooftop of my house in Tel-abib, a weight I felt in my bones, a dry, baking pressure that made the very air seem to…
Clay and Promise in Exile
The heat in Babylon was a different kind of heat. It wasn’t the dry, familiar warmth of the Judean hills, but a thick, heavy thing that lay over the mud-brick houses and the strange, towering temples like a wool blanket….
The Crimson Treader’s Mercy
The memory of the winepress haunted Malachi’s old age. Not the neat stone troughs of his uncle’s vineyard outside Anathoth, where the grapes yielded their sweetness with a sigh. No, this was a different kind of pressing. He saw it…
Dust of Egypt, Fire of Zion
The heat in Jerusalem was a physical thing that summer. It lay upon the city like a woolen blanket soaked in brine, heavy and suffocating. The dust from the southern road, however, was a different kind of affliction. It arrived…
Song of Solomon’s Sunset Praise
The heat of the day was finally softening, the kind of late afternoon light that turns everything to honey and gold. We were walking, the dust of the path fine and pale on our sandals, leaving the formal gardens behind…
The Stone and the Share
The heat in the forge was a living thing. It pressed against Eliazar’s skin, a heavy, shimmering blanket that smelled of coal and scorched iron. He worked the bellows, the leather groaning, until the heart of the fire glowed a…