THE PROMISED WAR

Rahab and her family were indeed spared death and allowed to live outside the Israelite camp at Gilgal. She almost immediately married Salmon, the son of Nahshon. Rahab shortly thereafter gave birth to a son they named Boaz. Deker wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, and for the time being buried it in his heart. When Boaz had grown, he married a woman named Ruth and they had a son, Obed, who had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David.

David became the king of Israel, fulfilling the prophecy of the six-pointed conjunction of stars in the heavens that Rahab had pointed out to Deker that night on her terrace so long ago. Fourteen generations later, from the line of David, came Jesus, whom his Roman executioners called the “King of the Jews” and whose cousin John the Baptist called the “Passover Lamb” who would take away the sins of the world.

Tracing Rahab’s bloodline to Christ made Deker think back to the scarlet cord in Rahab’s window, and to her faith that Yahweh would “pass over” her sins as the Angel of Death had passed over the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. Her faith had been rewarded, and so had Salmon’s.

But would his? Deker wondered.

Salmon’s curious friend Achan bin-Zerah wasn’t as fortunate. He apparently had defied General Bin-Nun’s herem,or ban, on keeping any spoils from Jericho by pocketing two hundred shekels of gold and silver during the pillage instead of turning them over to the Treasury of Yahweh. Bin-Nun figured this out days later when he sent a small unit of thirty-six troops drawn from a single division to capture the town of Ai. A small and easy target compared to Jericho, to be sure, but the Israelites were ambushed and killed. After another face-to-face meeting with Yahweh, Bin-Nun used a mass form of divination—casting lots—to identify Achan as the cause, and had him stoned to death along with his wife, children, sheep and every breathing thing he owned. Then Bin-Nun had them burned and buried under the pile of rocks used to kill them.

From then on, Joshua, the son of Nun, moved from one victory to another in his quest to claim the Promised Land for Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. He split Canaan in two, first taking out the southern kingdoms before turning his attention to the more powerful northern kingdoms. He even gave Phineas a sign to remember forever when, according to the book of Joshua, the sun stood still for an extra day so the Israelites could kill more enemies in a decisive victory. Only Jerusalem remained untaken.

Deker knew that Bin-Nun’s plan to cut the land of Canaan in half was the very strategy that modern Israel’s Arab enemies had long harbored for wiping the Jewish state off the map. To avoid such a fate while he was in charge, Bin-Nun focused on defending Israel’s moral boundaries even more than her natural ones. He was especially concerned about the threat of other religions in Canaan, which ultimately came to roost with King Solomon, who for all his wisdom allowed the influence of his many foreign wives to persuade him to turn the six-pointed Star of David into the official emblem of the state.

“But as for me and my family,” Joshua bin-Nun proudly declared, “we will serve the Lord.”

Finally, before he died, Bin-Nun signed a treaty in which Israel pledged to honor other nationalities in Canaan who honored Yahweh. He signed it at Shechem, the place where God first promised Abraham the land of Canaan.

Surely this must have pleased Rahab.

Reading through these historical documents, Deker had even begun to at least understand the rationale behind Bin-Nun’s strategy of incinerating entire cities and every man, woman, child and animal that breathed inside their walls. Due to the tuberculosis the doctors had discovered in his lungs at Hadassah Medical Center, Deker did some research and learned that archaeologists had also discovered history’s earliest evidence of TB in ancient bones buried under Jericho. Such airborne diseases were rampant in ancient times. Israel, therefore, faced an existential threat any time she came into contact with her enemies. Incineration was the only insurance to counter the threat in that age.

So at least Bin-Nun had had his reasons. And so, perhaps, did Israel today.

All the same, Deker knew he would never be able to erase from his mind that first horrific glimpse of twenty- four thousand blackened corpses strung out among a golden sea of shittah trees.

53

GILGAL

The sun beat down ever hotter as Deker approached the site of his latest candidate for Gilgal. This one had a familiar grade with a few ancient redbud trees bent in a way Deker had seen only once before. Deker was still consumed by an obsession for the truth that his discharge from the IDF and the offer to rejoin the Americans had only inflamed.

He took a shovel and started digging, continuing long after the sun went down and the moon came up.

Then he struck something.

He shined a light on the slab of rock and felt his heart jump when he saw the seal engraved on the surface: the sign of Judah.

It was one of the dolmen stones, but considerably smaller—maybe half of its original size, as though it had been cut or broken in two.

He felt a surge of hope and spent the next two hours digging around the slab, ultimately using his Jeep’s winch to pull it out and reveal the silo beneath it.

The silo was still filled with grain so old and cracked, it was like dust. Simply inhaling made him breathe it in and he coughed. He tied a cloth around his mouth like a surgical mask and dug through it until he struck something else.

It was a small bronze box with a crescent moon on it.

Just like Rahab’s jewelry box.

His heart skipped a beat.

He blew away the dust and cracked open the box.

As soon as he saw what was inside, he fell to his knees, weeping for no reason he could name. A moment later, after he had composed himself, he removed it.

His IDF tag with the Star of David.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Emily Bestler and Simon Lipskar, my editor and agent, for your support and friendship. To Judith Curr, Louise Burke and Carolyn Reidy, my publishers, who make it all possible. To Sarah Branham, Laura Stern, David Brown and the rest of the Atria, Pocket and Simon & Schuster family, my deepest thanks and respect to you all—you are the best in publishing.

To members in various intelligence communities who provided me with their unique perspectives about the three-thousand-year-old struggle that forms the backdrop to The Promised War, your humanity impresses as much as your expertise. To historians such as Richard A. Gabriel, whose works helped me reconcile the ancient biblical and military accounts of the events described in my novel, thank you for invaluable insights.

To those rabbis and scholars with whom I consulted, thank you for sharing your consensus that there is no consensus whenever such an esteemed group gathers. Thank you in advance for overlooking the inevitable errors and contradictions of my fictional account of the ancient siege of Jericho—they are mine and mine alone. Most of all, thank you for showing the humility of students still searching and stretching for meaning in a world that seems to deny its existence.

To my wife, Laura, who loves me for who I am, and to our boys, Alex and Jake, whom we love so dearly, thank you for being the joy in my journey through life.