The Book of God

Chapter One\ Abraham\ An old man entered his tent, dropping the door flap behind him. In the darkness he knelt slowly before a clay firepot, very tired. He blew on a coal until it glowed, then he bore the spark to the wick of a saucer lamp. It made a soft nodding flame. The man's face was lean and wounded and streaked with the dust of recent travel. He began to unroll a straw mat for sleeping but paused halfway, lost in thought.\ Altogether the tent was rectangular, sewn of goatskins and everywhere patched with fresher skins of the goat. Across the middle a reed screen hung from three poles, dividing the space into two compartments, one for the man, one for his wife. These two were all that dwelt in the tent. There were neither children nor grandchildren. There never had been.\ A vagrant wind slapped the side of the tent so that it billowed inward, but the man didn't move. He was gazing into the finger-flame of the lamp.\ Old man. Perhaps eighty years old. Nevertheless, this present weariness did not come from age. In fact, the man had a small wiry body as light and as tough as leather. Nor was his eye diminished. It watched with a steadfast grey light, awaiting interpretation. It was not an old eye, but a patient one.\ Not age, then. Rather, the man was made weary by this day's travel and yesterday's war.\ His only relative in the entire land of Canaan even from the Euphrates River in the east to the Nile in Egypt was a nephew who had chosen the easier life. Though the old man himself lived in tents, Lot, his nephew, dwelt in the cities of the Jordan valley, the watered places, fertile places, desirable, sweet and green. But lately four kings of the north had attacked and defeated five cities of the valley. One of these was Sodom, the city Lot had chosen. Among the prisoners whom the northern kings carried away, then, was Lot.\ As soon as the old man heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he armed three hundred and eighteen of his own men, mounted donkeys, and pursued the enemy with a light and secret speed. In the night he divided his forces. He surprised the northern kings by striking from two sides at once. He routed them. He drove them home. And all their plunder, all their prisoners he brought back to the cities that had been defeated: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, Zoar. Lot was free again, and again he chose Sodom for his dwelling though the men of the place had a reputation for extreme wickedness.\ That was yesterday.\ Today the king of Sodom had offered the old man all the plunder he'd returned, but the old man refused.\ Today the Priest-King Melchizedek had come forth with bread and wine to honor the old man, and he honored him saying:\ Blessed are you!\ Blessed, too, be the God most high who delivers your foe into your hand!\ And today the old man had come back to his tents, again, near the oaks of Mamre, tired.\ Today, in the evening, his wife had baked him a barley cake, though he ate scarcely anything and she herself ate nothing at all.\ "Is the young man safe, then?" she had asked.\ "Yes," he told her.\ "And his children?" she said, looking dead level at her husband. "How are the children of the man who lives within the walls of houses?"\ "Safe," said the man.\ "They are home, then?" she said. "Lot sits contented among his children, then? Lot looks upon the consolation of his old age, then, because he has an uncle who saves him when his own choices get him into trouble?"\ The old man said nothing.\ "Because he has a good uncle?" she continued. "A generous uncle? An uncle whose wife never did put the first bite of barley cake into the mouth of her own child?"\ It was then that the old man arose and left his food unfinished. He trudged through the dusk to his own side of the tent and entered and pulled the flap down behind himself and lit the lamp and fell to staring at the single flame, the straw mat only half unrolled in front of him. He was very tired. He was kneeling, sitting back on his heels. He maintained that same posture, unwinking, unsleeping, through the entire first watch of the night. All sound had long since ceased outside. The encampment slept. His wife, finally, had fallen asleep on the other side of the reed screen. She was sleeping alone.\ Then, in the middle of that night, God spoke.\ Fear not, Abram, God said, calling the old man by name. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great.\ Abram did not move. He did not so much as shift his eye from the orange lamp-flame. But his jaw tightened.\ God said, Abram, northward of this place, southward and eastward and westward all the land as far as you can see I will give to you and to your descendants forever.\ Still motionless and so softly that the wind outside concealed the sound of it even from his own ears, Abram breathed these words: "So you have said. So you have said. But what, O Lord God, can you give us as long as we continue childless?"\ A wind took hold of the tent-flap and lifted it like a linen. The lamp-flame guttered and went out.\ God said, Come. Abram, come outside.\ On his hands and knees the old man obeyed.\ God said, Raise your eyes to heaven. Look to the stars, Abram. Count them. Can you count them?\ The old man said, "No. I cannot count them. They are too many."\ Even so many, said the Lord God, shall be your descendants upon the earth.\ With the same gaze as he had earlier turned upon the lamp-flame Abram gazed toward heaven. Now there was no wind at all. The air was absolutely still. Nothing moved in the land, except that the man could hear the sighing of his old wife inside her compartment.\ He said, "Is it required then that a slave born within my household must be my heir?"\ God said, Your own son shall be your heir.\ Abram said, "How shall I know that? How can I know, when you have given us no offspring?"

Table of Contents Part One The Ancestors1. Abraham2. Rebekah3. Jacob4. Joseph Part Two The Covenant5. Moses6. Sinai7. The Children of Israel Part Three The Wars of the Lord8. Joshua 9. Ehud10. Deborah11. Gideon12. Jephthah13. Samson14. The Levite's Concubine Part Four Kings15. Saul16. David17. Solomon Part Five Prophets18. The Man of God from Judah19. Elijah20. Amos, Hosea21. Isaiah22. Jeremiah Part Six Letters from Exile23. Ahikam Utters a Curse24. Ahikam Must Make a Decision25. Ahikam in Jerusalem Part Seven The Yearning26. My Messenger27. Nehemiah28. Ezra29. The Yearning Part Eight The Messiah30. Zechariah 31. Mary 428 32. John the Son of Zechariah 457 33. Andrew 471 34. Mary Magdalene 491 35. Simon Peter 516 36. Son of Father 535 37. To Jerusalem 548 38. Jesus 577 39. The New Covenant 605Epilogue 631

\ Christianity Today'Whether the stories are familiar from childhood or encountered here for the first time, you will be struck by their palpable power. And the sweep of the narrative, like a vast fresco, allows us to see the big picture of God's providence in a way that we rarely do in our fragmented reading of Scripture...exhilarating, but also disturbing.' -- Christianity Today \ \ \ \ \ Financial Times'[Wangerin's] aim was to produce a clean, continuous story free of repetitions and genealogies, and to add in bits of cultural and historical background based on his own travels and scholarship. Sometimes he switches the narrational perspective so as to veiw biblical events through the eyes of minor characters. In all this he succeeds....' -- Financial Times \ \ \ Time Out'Powers along with great stamina for hundreds of pages....The pain of the crucifixion itself is memorably conveyed in terms of lungs, ribs, separating bones. Terse and punchy...it will be read and enjoyed.' -- Time Out \ \ \ \ \ Glasgow Herald'Reads like 'Gone With the Wind' (of the Holy Spirit) or 'Pride and Prejudice' (plus prophets). Wangerin has done for the biblical kings what Shakespeare did for Macbeth and Richard III....Imaginative, stimulating and fresh....Bubbles with creativity but above all is the work of a craftsman.' -- Glasgow Herald \ \ \ \ \ Belfast Telegraph'An immensely readable and well-organized text and may be an acceptable and more enticing alternative for some people, especially those who -- like me -- always meant to get around to reading all of the original.' -- Belfast Telegraph \ \ \ \ \ Manchester Evening News'Considering what he has attempted, Walt does a remarkably good job, and he writes a lot of conventional scholarship in the form of narrative.' -- Manchester Evening News \ \ \ \ \ Church Times'I was hooked...passages such as the account of Solomon's reign, seem to me to work exceptionally well....' -- Church Times \ \ \ \ \ Time Out'Powers along with great stamina for hundreds of pages....The pain of the crucifixion itself is memorably conveyed in terms of lungs, ribs, separating bones. Terse and punchy...it will be read and enjoyed.' -- Time Out\ \ \ \ \ Financial Times'[Wangerin's] aim was to produce a clean, continuous story free of repetitions and genealogies, and to add in bits of cultural and historical background based on his own travels and scholarship. Sometimes he switches the narrational perspective so as to veiw biblical events through the eyes of minor characters. In all this he succeeds....' -- Financial Times\ \ \ \ \ Glasgow Herald'Reads like 'Gone With the Wind' (of the Holy Spirit) or 'Pride and Prejudice' (plus prophets). Wangerin has done for the biblical kings what Shakespeare did for Macbeth and Richard III....Imaginative, stimulating and fresh....Bubbles with creativity but above all is the work of a craftsman.' -- Glasgow Herald\ \ \ \ \ Christianity Today'Whether the stories are familiar from childhood or encountered here for the first time, you will be struck by their palpable power. And the sweep of the narrative, like a vast fresco, allows us to see the big picture of God's providence in a way that we rarely do in our fragmented reading of Scripture...exhilarating, but also disturbing.' -- Christianity Today\ \ \ \ \ Church Times'I was hooked...passages such as the account of Solomon's reign, seem to me to work exceptionally well....' -- Church Times\ \ \ \ \ Belfast Telegraph'An immensely readable and well-organized text and may be an acceptable and more enticing alternative for some people, especially those who -- like me -- always meant to get around to reading all of the original.' -- Belfast Telegraph\ \ \ \ \ Manchester Evening News'Considering what he has attempted, Walt does a remarkably good job, and he writes a lot of conventional scholarship in the form of narrative.' -- Manchester Evening News\ \