The Lamp of Darkness by - (most recommended books TXT) 📖

“Lev!” Yonaton dropped the sheaves in his hands and ran out to meet me. I held onto Yonaton’s embrace for a long time, my arms wrapped tightly around his back. After being thrown out by my aunt and Uriel’s cool reception, being held by an enthusiastic friend felt like coming home.

“Are you back to play for the disciples?” Yonaton asked.

“Yes, and Master Uriel says I can help you with the harvest too.”

“We could use it. Come meet my father and sisters.” All eyes were on me as we approached their donkey cart. “This is my friend Lev. He came to help us with the harvest.”

“You are welcome, Lev. I’m Baruch ben Naftali. Yonaton told us much about you.” Baruch had a strong, stocky build and deliberate speech, giving me the impression that he didn’t talk much. But he met my eyes with a sincere smile.

“These are my little sisters, Yael and Naomi.”

I waved to the girls. Naomi blushed and turned away, but Yael, the younger, continued to stare.

“So what can I do?”

“Right now we need to load the grain onto the cart and bring it to the threshing floor.” Yonaton swiped the back of his arm across his sweaty forehead. “What made you come back?”

I glanced toward his father and sisters, who worked near me in a tight group. “I’ll tell you later.” I collected a bunch of crackling sheaves and tossed them onto the cart. Yonaton’s eyes burned with curiosity, but he held his tongue.

I had never harvested grains before. The sheaves of summer wheat were light, and the bending and stretching felt good. As I warmed up, I quietly sang an old shepherding song. Yonaton picked up the tune and joined in, and even Baruch started to hum along. Seeing that the song wasn’t a disturbance, I let my voice soar.

I arrived at the farm the next day to find Yonaton absent from the fields. “Morning, Lev.” Baruch pointed to the hilltop overlooking the farm. “Yonaton’s at the threshing floor. You can join him there.”

“I thought we weren’t starting threshing until tomorrow?”

Baruch scanned the western sky. “The morning clouds keep getting darker and burning off later in the day. The sooner we start threshing, the more we’ll be able to save when…if the rains come.” He sighed and returned to gathering the cut wheat.

I climbed up the terraced hillside, past dusty grapevines, and through a grove of olive trees until I reached the broad threshing floor at the very top.

“Good, you’re here.” Yonaton raised his voice over the wind. “This is a lot easier with two people. You want to lead the team or ride the sled?”

Now that’s an easy choice. “I’ll ride the sled.”

Yonaton hopped off the threshing sled and circled around to the front of the oxen, taking the reins. Until I arrived, he’d been goading and steering the oxen from behind while weighing down the sled himself.

“I thought farm work was going to be hard,” I said, lounging on the sled. “I think I might just take a nap.”

Yonaton laughed while spreading more grain on the ground before the oxen. “Go ahead. Enjoy your time on the sled. We’ll be winnowing soon enough.”

“In the meantime, I’ll lend you my weight.” I closed my eyes, my body vibrating as the flint on the underside of the sled cut into the grain beneath.

Yonaton slowly led the oxen around the threshing floor twice in silence. When he spoke, his voice was tight. “One of Yambalya’s priests came by this morning.”

“What?” I sat up, my eyes wide. “When?”

“Not long before you came. One of the Queen’s soldiers was with him too.”

“What soldiers?”

“You remember all those soldiers that came down from Tzidon with King Ethbaal for the wedding? I guess he left some of them behind. I recognized the cedar tree symbol on his tunic.”

“What happened?”

“The priest was happy we were bringing in the harvest early. He said we were showing proper fear of the mighty Baal. Then he pulled out a statue and told us we should humble ourselves before Baal so he’d hold off the rains until we finished.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“No. My father didn’t either. The priest wasn’t pleased, but he didn’t say anything. The soldier kept fingering his sword, but he never pulled it out. He spat on the ground and followed the priest away. As soon as they left, my father told me to start threshing.”

I thought back to my conversation with Baruch—now it made more sense. Yes, the clouds were gathering unusually early, but apparently, that wasn’t the only thing pushing him to salvage whatever grain he could.

My mind kept returning to the priest of the Baal and the soldier of Tzidon as I settled down in my spot under the pomegranate tree the next morning. Would they also come to this valley? Surely they would know to steer clear of a prophet of Israel. Wouldn’t they?

Though the music was better when I played with Daniel, Zim, and Yonaton, my bond with the disciples strengthened now that I was alone. At a nod from my master, I launched into my opening nigun. Although I’d played it countless times before, I immediately sensed something different. The rhythmic breathing of the disciples rippled through the air, and the space around them seemed to contract and expand with each breath. As the nigun came back around to its opening note, the sun shone through a break in the clouds, and the disciples collapsed as one, quivering and shaking as if a great wind tossed their bodies like dry leaves in a storm.

My jaw dropped. Uriel stood above the disciples, his face angled upward. “For so many souls to rise together is rare, but it does happen. You felt them go?”

I nodded without a word.

Uriel peered deeply into my eyes. “What is the shadow on your heart, Lev?”

The two of us had hardly spoken since my return three days earlier, but my master was right. Following the tears, my heart was no longer blocked—it ached instead. The aching wasn’t just painful; it felt as though my heart wanted to speak to me, but in a language I didn’t understand.

“You can put down the kinnor. They can no longer hear you.”

I placed the instrument on the ground slowly in order to gather my thoughts. I pictured Yambalya drawing his knife across his chest and the faces of the farmers the following morning at the wedding. Baruch had the same expression yesterday. They all reflected the same thing: fear.

A priest came to my house with the most important man in the community, but assured Uncle Menachem that bowing down was his own free choice. Now another priest visited Yonaton’s family with a soldier at his side—they were getting bolder. As their power grew, would they tolerate resistance? Yambalya’s booming laughter rang in my ears.

“Master, the power of the Baal is spreading throughout the Kingdom. What will the people do? What will happen to those who refuse to bow? What will happen to you and the rest of the prophets?”

I’d thought he might be afraid, but his eyes betrayed no fear. I thought my question might anger him, but there was no anger there either. I saw only sadness. Uriel sighed. “I do not know what will be, Lev, not for the people nor for the prophets. The visions I have received lately have all been of the present. I see nothing of the future.”

“What will you do?”

“As I have always done.”

“But won’t they try to stop you?” My voice was sharper than I intended. “Queen Izevel has her own soldiers. I saw them in Shomron. They’re traveling around with the priests, trying to scare people into bowing down to the Baal. Do you think they’ll allow you to travel and speak against them?”

“For now, yes. Their power is only growing, even while the prophets are yet free to travel and denounce them. Open conflict would force the people to choose between us, and they are still seen as foreigners. They will not fight openly until they are certain they hold the hearts of the people. If a struggle is to start sooner, it will be because we begin it.”

“And you don’t think that will happen?”

“Pitting fear against fear will not bring us the goal we seek.”

“What do the other prophets say? Does Master Yosef agree?”

Uriel hesitated. “He is less inclined to this way of thinking than I. But I believe he too would prefer to avoid a conflict. For now.”

“So then what will happen?”

“I do not know, Lev.”

How could a prophet not know?

My master’s wrinkled hand rested on my shoulder. “Lev, you must know there is only one truth. The same hand that fashioned the light also made the darkness.”

We remained in silence while a breeze shook the leaves of the pomegranate tree and the disciples rattled with the strength of their vision. The image of Queen Izevel bowing before the Baal and beckoning with her long hands to King Ahav came to mind. “Why would the Holy One create darkness?”

Uriel sighed. “Without darkness, there is no choice. Our bodies may grow without darkness, but our souls cannot.”

“But if there is just darkness—”

“Then we could not grow either. There must be a balance for our choices to be real. That is why the disciples have progressed so quickly since the wedding. The soul is a spark, but sparks do not shine in the bright light of day. As darkness deepens, the soul reveals its hidden light.”

The disciples began to surface from their visions. Their trembling ceased, and the tension of life returned to their bodies. Two of them rose unsteadily to their feet, two remained sitting, and one fell flat on his back, exhausted. “What did you see?” Uriel asked softly.

“The rain will come in three days’ time,” one of the standing disciples replied.

“Did you all receive the same vision?”

The others nodded in agreement.

“Very well. Lev, you are excused from playing for us for the next few days to help Yonaton’s family complete the harvest.”

I grabbed my kinnor and raced toward the farm.

By the third day, the winds whipped across the fields. The family’s cattle bunched on the leeward side of the stone cottage, their great eyes wild.

Yonaton’s father wasn’t complaining—we needed wind for winnowing, and better too much than not enough. Normally, they winnowed on the threshing floor, the highest point on the farm. But this time, we hauled the grain down to a more sheltered area so that the gusts wouldn’t carry away the harvest.

The effort of winnowing more than made up for the ease of riding the threshing sled. The winnowing fork reached above my head. With it, I hoisted the threshed stalks of grain and threw them as high as I could into the air. The wind did the rest; heavy kernels of grain fell to the ground first, while husks and chaff blew further away, where Yonaton’s sisters gathered the debris to use for animal feed and fuel.

Between the back-breaking work and the whistling wind, Yonaton and I gave up trying to talk. When a flash of lightning blazed against the dark skies in the distance, we exchanged a knowing glance and stepped up our pace.

The lightning had barely faded from our vision when Baruch ran over. “Stop winnowing. Gather as much grain as you can. Get it in before it gets wet.” Baruch took the fork, tossing the threshed stalks by himself while the rest of us gathered grain and carried it to shelter. I kept gaping as Baruch worked the grain pile, tirelessly throwing it into the air, getting through