Uzziel was comfortable in the simple garment of a temple priest. The coarse, white cloth accentuated his red-streaked hair and long, well-groomed beard, also nearly white. Miriam said all the white caused him to look much older than he really was, perhaps even distinguished, but it still suited him well. Thinking of her made him smile.
Once on flat ground, his rapid pace across the courtyard made it hard for Josiah and Abram to keep up. They seemed to be distracted by everything around them, watching for any sign of danger within the city walls. When they reached the far side of the grassy courtyard and approached the main city gate, they were hailed from above. Gigantic wood doors, made of beams thirty feet long, groaned open to receive them.
The three men passed the sentinels posted inside the doors, expressing their appreciation, and the doors shut behind them. They followed the cobbled pathway across a second, much smaller, interior courtyard where several groups of soldiers were preparing arrows and other arms. Uzziel took the second street on the right that immediately began to ascend. Buildings bordering the street leaned in on them, getting closer with every step, until the width of the passage became barely wide enough to allow two horse-drawn carts to pass each other. The cobbled road steepened further.
Uzziel breathed more heavily as they continued on the sloped road. They crossed several intersecting streets and finally arrived at a beautifully crafted archway on the west side.
“Please come in,” Uzziel invited his bodyguards, who were now guests. “Would you join me for something to eat? Surely you’re hungry.”
The two Uzzahite soldiers said, “Yes, thank you,” almost in unison. At his direction, they sat down at the oak table centered in the main room of the residence. The smell of a hot breakfast wafted in from the brick oven in the adjoining chamber, making Uzziel’s mouth water.
A woman in her early fifties entered the room, looking quite surprised to see three of them there.
“Uzziel, I heard you come in, but I didn’t know you had guests with you!”
The soldiers politely introduced themselves as they stood up, and then at Uzziel’s insistence, sat again on the bench.
“I am sorry, dear, for the surprise.” Uzziel said, smiling. “Did you know it rained all through the night? I didn’t even notice. It left behind a nice fog to greet us this morning-couldn’t see a thing! The steps to the wall were slippery, too. Almost fell on my way up. Thanks to Abram, I didn’t fall-he caught me. The Gideonites are still there-I was quite disappointed to see them. I suppose they will not go away as I had hoped. It makes me wonder what they are eating for breakfast. I bet they raided everything they could from…”
Uzziel did not get the last sentence fully out before Miriam placed a hand on his arm, and he remembered to breathe.
“Sorry, dear. I’m so hungry!”
“I am glad… very glad, that I made extra today. Would you like some eggs? Isn’t it a beautiful day?” Miriam brushed her auburn hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. Her question was sincere, yet hollow, like an echo in an empty barrel. She didn’t wait for answers to either question. She placed four plates on the table and dished out scrambled eggs before Uzziel even had time to say, “Yes, thank you.”
Josiah and Abram were both young, strong men. Neither seemed to be married, or at least Uzziel did not think they were. But at one point in their breakfast conversation, Abram mentioned that his wife Esther had recently given birth to his first child, a boy. He commented on the wonderful blessings that had come into his life, expressing his desire never to lose them.
Uzziel was genuinely happy for Abram, but the conversation died as his eyes knowingly met Miriam’s. The charade Uzziel and Miriam had been playing was too difficult to keep up any longer, and a palpable despair settled over the couple. Josiah tried to comfort them.
“Your daughter will be fine. Surely the Great Creator will keep her safe.”
Uzziel sighed. “Yes, I pray that He will.” He reached for Miriam’s hands. They were cold, and she shivered as he pulled her closer. Dread clouded her eyes.
“My dear little Uzzah… I cannot lose another…” Miriam whispered.
“Miriam,” Uzziel said with a tremor in his voice. “Rachel will come back to us.”
Their eyes held each other’s for a long time, then Miriam stood, sniffling.
“Your food is going to get cold,” she chided as she returned to serving.
Josiah and Abram proved to have the ravenous appetites of youth. They cleared every serving bowl or platter of bread, fruit, eggs, and other items placed before them. Uzziel ate slowly, privately worrying about his daughter.
Abram wiped his mouth on his napkin and sincerely thanked the lady of the house for the wonderful meal and for inviting them to partake without any prior notice. Uzziel apologized again to his wife and kissed her hand as he rose from his seat, making her blush. Josiah and Abram stood as Uzziel hugged Miriam close to him.
“Rachel will be fine… she will be fine!” he whispered in her ear, trying to be optimistic.
Miriam sniffed.
“My prayers are with you,” Josiah said.
“And mine,” Abram added.
“I am most grateful for those prayers,” Miriam said as she escorted them to the door. “I’m praying too.”
The soldiers followed the temple priest out as Miriam shut the door, and Uzziel led the way back down the street. At the first intersection, they turned to the right onto Marketway, a cobblestone road higher on the sides than in the middle, a natural drainage ditch in the center. Waste water trickled downstream, carrying an occasional food scrap or piece of straw with it. Although the street was a permanent marketplace, most of the small tents and stands were not yet open on account of the early hour. Even though they were just passing through, Uzziel either waved or briefly chatted with almost every person they met, but Josiah and Abram were patient.
Leaving the marketplace, they crossed a large court, fenced in by buildings on two sides and a massive wall on the north end. Walls of brick and stone provided an immovable complement to the animal pens bordering the wide courtyard, all of which were filled to capacity with sheep destined for the temple just beyond the archway in the high wall. The sheep here were not tended by street vendors, but rather by priests who had the rotating assignment to care for them. All the temple herds had been gathered into the city when news of the approaching armies arrived, and once the courtyard pens had been stocked, the remaining animals were driven into the Karmel-Ramathaim Canyon to graze. There, they would be guarded until the hillsides around the city were again safe.
Arriving at the archway, the high priest and his bodyguards passed underneath and into view of the glorious white granite temple that loomed before them. Each stone used to build the magnificent structure was much lighter, even almost white, compared to the gray granite blocks used in every other wall or building of the city. The walls of the temple were smooth and somewhat reflective, but not so shiny that Aqua and Azure could be discerned in their surfaces. The blue orbs were just high enough in the sky to illuminate most of the temple grounds, which were no less striking than the building itself. Trees with ornately braided trunks, well-groomed shrubs, a stunning fountain on the west end of the plaza, and immense flower beds framed the building on all sides, except for the eastern porch. This area, an expanse larger than the temple itself, had been paved with gray granite flagstones so finely cut, so expertly coupled together, that a person would find it difficult to insert a knife blade between the stones.
The raised porch stood three steps above the rest of the grounds. At its center stood the Rock of Sacrifice-an altar that had been cut from a single massive block of white granite. At the time of the temple’s construction, it took a thousand men and several teams of horses to move the block down from the special quarry in the Karmel- Ramathaim Canyon. Stonemasons worked for several weeks on the rock to shape it, the craftsmanship unparalleled.
The altar featured recessed stairs to reach the top from the west, a large central depression for the fires that burned there every day, wide slots on the other three sides to allow for stoking the flames with additional cedar planks, and an iron grate seated into hewn notches in the top, providing the level surface where the sacrifices would be offered. Each corner of the symmetrical platform also had been carved into the shape of an ox horn-a symbol of both the sacrifices offered there and the Tribe of Uzzah.
Directly east of the Rock of Sacrifice was an octagon-shaped laver, or font, fed and drained by unseen aqueducts beneath the flagstones. Built into the platform, the recessed font enabled those who came for the ritual washing by immersion, or baptism, to descend into it. It was large enough for the priest and the initiate both to
