“Why, from the oracle, how else?” Elim said. The oracle at Michmash was an ancient terebinth tree whose branches were hung with silver bells which, before the coming of Yahweh, had been shaped like fishtailed gods or goddesses with swelling breasts. Now they were merely bells; nevertheless, they managed to speak to the satisfaction of the priests.
“We shall go to this tree and hear for ourselves,” Saul announced. He was not at ease with his god and he could not risk offending a priest even a priest like Elim.
They followed Saul from the tent Ahinoam leaning on Jonathan less for support than affection, since the mere sight of him, neither wounded nor melancholy, had rested her from her ride. He is pleased to see me, she thought, he is pleased at Israel’s victory. But the joy which radiates from his body — I feel it like the warmth from a brazier-why, one would think that an angel had talked to him!
The oracular tree reminded Ahinoam of Samuel-old, brittle, skeletal, and lonely in its decay. It had died in a drought when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Tabernacle from Sblloh, but bells still hung on its ancient branches, metal fruit on moldering limbs. Silent at first, they began to speak with the rise of the evening breeze. Even Ahinoam could hear the unwonted harshness in their tone. Usually they sang like crickets, but now they croaked like frogs.
Saul looked to Elim. “What do they say?” Deeply religious, he had not lost faith in Yahweh; rather, he feared that Yahweh had lost faith in him.
“Let the king discover and punish the transgressor.”
Saul sighed and the years seemed to rest on his shoulders like a mantle of snow. Was this the ardent man she had loved at the well in Endor, he who had left his fields to raise the siege of Jabesh-Gilead and unite a divided country? It sometimes seemed to her that except for leading an army, which, with the help of Jonathan and an able cousin named Abner, he did with a skill amounting to genius, he hardly possessed the energy to sigh. It was her one satisfaction that he could no longer be an impassioned lover to Rizpah.
“Whoever has broken my commandment must die,” Saul said, like a priest reciting a ritual. “Is it a servant among the baggage train?”
Again, the croak of the bells, a medley of fat warty toads.
“A warrior?”
A listening silence fell upon the camp, and not only around the tree. Ahinoam saw that the warriors camped among the neighboring trees were watching the priest as raptly as the king and his retinue. They were starved in the midst of plenty. Their fires blazed readily to receive the calf or the lamb.
Their wineskins bulged with the juice of the grape and the pomegranate.
“One of my warriors?”
The tree resounded like the trumpet blast of an attacking army.
“But I have three thousand men! How shall I know the transgressor?”
“Let the king look to himself and his own family.” Elim could not conceal his glee. He was known to resent Jonathan, Abner, Michal-all of those close to the king except Rizpah, with whom he liked to converse about the price of grain or a sickness among the herds.
A soldier and in the king’s family… Only Jonathan of Saul’s four sons had fought in the battle of Michmash. The other three sons, mere boys and much too young to fight, had remained in Gibeah.
“Jonathan, my son-” It was more a protestation than an accusation. Then, to Elim with growing wrath: “Do you dare to accuse my own firstborn?”
Saul’s rages, which often preceded his madness, were the terror of Israel. He was known to hurl spears or demolish a tent or a room. Elim’s confidence forsook him. He shrank like a threatened spider.
“The tree, not I, accuses.”
“Perhaps I am guilty,” said Jonathan. “I was not in the camp when my father delivered his edict. I have eaten no meat and drunk no liquid except water. But in the forest beside the desert-”
“What has my son eaten besides meat?”
“In the forest I came on a nest of bees. I ate of the honeycomb.”
Everyone knew that Jonathan was loved by the bees. Often they led him to their hives and spun joyously when he partook of their wealth. It was whispered that Ahinoam had brought him, as a small child, from the island of Crete, where the bees built nests in the eaves of the ruined palaces, and the old demigods, the men with the legs of sheep, the women who lived in trees, danced by the light of the harvest moon and coupled to the piping of flutes and the clashing of cymbals. (It was whispered that he was not Saul’s son.)
Saul’s voice went dead, like a discarded lyre. “It was enough. Jonathan must die.”
The words were hushed but irrevocable; at first they stunned instead of infuriated Ahinoam. Kings did not sentence their sons to death for eating a honeycomb.
“Then I must die.”
“Die?” she cried. “What nonsense is this you speak, my son?”
“The sentence is Yahweh’s,” said Elim.
Anger flared in Ahinoam like a signal torch; against both of her men, the father too quick to condemn, the son too quick to accept.
She addressed Saul so clearly and contemptuously that most of the camp overheard her.
“Then you must also kill your queen. She has no wish to remain the wife of a king who would sacrifice his own son.”
Even doting Rizpah protested the sentence. A foreigner like Ahinoam, she could not conceive the strength of an Israelite’s oath to his god. “Surely my lord would not slay his firstborn and his finest warrior!”
“Abraham would have slain Isaac if the Lord had not stayed his hand,” Saul’s face was white and expressionless. It seemed to be hewn from the hard and savage hills which overlooked the Dead Sea like skulls. Even as she despised him, Ahinoam felt his pain and pitied him for his perplexity. He was a man with too many loves: his farm, his country, Yahweh, Rizpah, Jonathan, Michal… When they warred with each other, they weakened his will and allowed the demon of madness to enter his mouth and lurk in his brain, an invisible parasite.
“The Lord has demanded a sacrifice,” a voice said so softly that its very softness compelled like wrath or indignation. “Let me die in Jonathan’s place. I am only his armor-bearer. In the heat of summer, when our swords are turned again into plowshares, I till the fields beside my brothers or tread the grapes. I have seven brothers. I will be no loss to Israel. Only to my mother and perhaps-perhaps-to Jonathan, who has treated me always like a brother. Jonathan whom I 1-love.” The boy stumbled over his words. He was not used to speaking to his king.
More than a king had heard him. The host of Israel, the men around the campfires, the guards patrolling the camp, shouted their indignation:
“Accept Nathan, spare Jonathan!
“It is Yahweh’s will, or why did he walk with Jonathan oh the slopes of Michmash?”
Saul looked doubtfully to Elim. “Is such a thing possible?”
“The Lord has been known to accept a scapegoat.”
Jonathan’s face was fixed with resolution. “It is I who have offended Yahweh. It is I who must suffer the punishment Not my friend, who has loved me well and saved me from Philistine arrows and the bite of vipers.”
“Enough of this, Elim. Ask the oracle if Yahweh will accept a substitute,” demanded Saul.
The wind sang sulkily through the branches, the bells cooed like a flock of turtledoves, as if the tree remembered a greener time, a youth when she wore a mantle of fine-spun leaves instead of metal bells and received the rain like the sweet embrace of love.
“So be it,” said Elim, grimacing disappointment. “Let Nathan die in place of Jonathan.”
“It shall be done,” said Saul. Large tears welled in his eyes; tears of gratitude.
Everyone looked to Nathan. A plump-cheeked boy with a slow, drawling voice, he was neither bright nor brave. But he was Jonathan’s friend, and Jonathan hugged him with a desperate tenderness.
It was Saul who separated the youths. “It is time, my son,” he said to Nathan.
Jonathan thrust himself between Nathan and Saul. “You are not to have him,” he said to his father in a low but deadly voice. “He is my friend.”
“Would you question the ways of Yahweh?”
“Yes, my father, I question his ways. Or rather, the manner in which you interpret them. I would worship a pitying Brother or Mother instead of a heartless Father who hurls thunderbolts to vent his displeasure and kills young boys for the mistakes of their masters.”
