Acsah and I braved want and lean years to make our home in the Southland, so
many years ago. We belonged to each other, and we settled there with many of the
men who had served Joshua and Caleb at my side. We had a few sheep, goats,
donkeys, tools, and weapons. On the other hand, Acsah and I hardly knew each
other before our wedding day, and none of us who settled in the Southland knew
anything about building houses or raising crops because we had dwelt in tents
and herded sheep and goats.
The Lord blessed our love and it grew. I quickly learned that Acsah possessed
all the shrewdness and far-sightedness of her father. Whereas a vague longing to
marry Acsah had sustained me, I had not really thought beyond that goal and I
would have been happy as a shepherd. Acsah gave my life direction because she
understood and shared Caleb's vision of what Israel should become. Because of
Acsah, I became a better leader in peace than in war, and she blessed me with
three fine sons, Ahilud, Khermesh, and Sheal.
The Lord had also sent us Rifaz, and he followed Acsah and me to the Southland.
Rifaz had learned the crafts of building and the skills of farming from both
Egyptians and Canaanites. Acsah and most of the other women had learned the lore
of herbs and wild plants in the wilderness. They knew which trees bear fruit in
their season, and which herbs were good for greens or spices and balms. We can
show you a use for every part of anything that grows in the Southland. Mind you,
we must be thrifty because robbing the wilderness without thought for others
makes it a wasteland. We care for the few trees we have instead of hacking them
all down for firewood or charcoal, and our plane trees by the spring make a dome
of shade that refreshes us in the summer when we gather for a feast. We wouldn't
dream of turning our goats or sheep loose to eat every green shoot down to the
ground, lest they eat the hills bare and leave no home for wild things. Our care
means that we have willows for osiers to weave baskets, and we can hear the call
of the quail in their nesting places on the hillsides. We may hunt a few quail,
partridges, bustards, or even an ibex now and then, but we take care to leave
enough to breed and multiply. (nice paragraph)
We began our first year by planting a garden of herbs and vegetables, and
tilling plots on the valley floors for barley and rye. Rifaz showed us how to
use the stones we cleared from our plots to make terraces and stone barriers
across valleys to catch the winter rains and make them sink into the earth. We
cut thorny acacias for fences to keep the goats out of our plots, and we planted
hedges to break the winds and give us firewood. Rifaz showed us where to dig
cisterns and how to make plaster to seal them so that we would always have
water. Because of Rifaz, all the men of Judah learned better ways of husbandry
than they could have learned by copying or hiring the Canaanites. In time, we
prospered far more than the rest of Israel.
Some of our people learned how to grow fruit trees from grafts and cuttings. Do
you know grafted trees bear sooner and better than trees grown from seed? Your
wild almonds are bitter, but ours are sweet and we also have pomegranates,
apricots, olives, and pistachios. The scent of their blossoms in the spring
fills the air like a balm for a weary soul, and in the droning of the bees I
hear a song of praise for the beauty of the earth.
Little by little and room by room, we helped each other build houses and we left
our tents. Although our houses had only one room at first, we learned to build
them far better than the huts the Canaanites lived in with their swine and dogs.
You'll see that we have built our houses stout and strong, and we have plastered
them to make them cool in summer, and warm and dry in winter. We added rooms as
the years passed and our families grew until four or more rooms enclose a court
with a cistern and a fig tree. Some of us even have a grapevine growing on
trellises for summer shade, and each one of us has a house built on love. We
also care for one another. One man's joy makes us all rejoice, and another's
loss makes us grieve.
We weren't alone in what we have done. Caleb spent the rest of his years in
traveling around all the parts of the Highlands and Southland that the people of
Judah and Simeon claimed. He grew fat from sharing in our harvest feasts, and
his girth made his laugh bigger than ever when he traded stories with old
friends. He enjoyed watching his children's children grow up, and he thought of
the children of his friends as his children's children. He called my sons the
"young ravens," and taught them tales of war. Caleb also made sure that no one
lacked food after a bad winter when the rains failed. He let us know when other
families needed help, and we used him as a messenger to share fresh ideas or
good seeds and cuttings. Because of Caleb, our whole part of Israel has grown
strong together. He has slept with his fathers for twenty years now, but his
sons Kenash and Gedawr follow in his way, like me. Rifaz died the year after
Caleb when his health failed. He left no sons of his own, but he was like a
father to our three sons.
Rains fail as often as not in the Southland, no matter how much we long and pray
for them, and in dry years we have had to trade with the people of the plains
for wheat and barley. We have seen locusts strip everything bare too, but the
sons of Amalek and Midian have never been able to get the better of us. Those
desert dwellers grew jealous when they saw how we made our dear Southland
blossom and yield harvests, and they have tried to raid us. We always stop them
because our young men serve as eyes and ears for everyone. They would gladly
learn the ways of scoffers and idlers like so many in Israel today, but we teach
them the ways Joshua and Caleb taught us in our youth. They learn the ways of
war and the paths of the Negev, and they travel to every city and village,
making sure no stranger comes or goes unseen. A goat cannot stray without our
knowing, and a lion cannot step foot in our land without being seen, much less
an enemy.
Caleb also gave the Levites of the sons of Kohath tracts of land for their own
close to Hebron. They care for the tomb of Abraham at Hebron, and they serve as
teachers and healers among us. We invited a Levite to live with us at Debir, and
his son still lives there. The Levites teach everyone about the Lord and his
covenant with Israel, and they lead us in renewing every day our own covenant to
serve the Lord. They have showed us how to live every single day of our lives as
a prayer of praise and thanksgiving.
Perhaps it is as well that I shall not live long enough to go back to the
Southland, because Acsah sleeps with her father. A fever took her from me five
winters ago, although she had a wisdom and a strength greater than a man's.
Acsah loved all that's best and right, and for these she would fight. She killed
herself by tending me when I lay ill. Now Kermesh and Sheal have also gone and
only Ahilud, my firstborn is left. Acsah's spirit lives on in Ahilud and his
sons, praise the Lord, and the day has come for me to join her.
I don't grieve for myself, Ehud, because the Lord has blessed me, but it
troubles me that so few others in the house of Israel have found peace and rest
in this good land.
A generation has passed since Israel inherited this good land, this land the
Lord gave us after he swept aside mighty kings of the pagans like thistledown.
The Lord let the Egyptians keep our enemies in bondage while he gave us a
generation of rest from war to make ourselves strong, but what has come to pass?
The other tribes reaped what they didn't sow. They lived off the plunder and the
fat of the land their fathers won, but they have given nothing back to the land.
Therefore Israel's might has melted away like the mists of morning, and dried up
like pools in the desert beneath the summer sun. The Lord brought us into a
bountiful land with fields of deep soil, vineyards and orchards.
See for yourself how the fruits of victory have withered! They turned to dust,
and now famine stalks this land of milk and honey. Have you not looked at
Ephraim and walked through Manasseh and seen with your own eyes how they have
given up the tents of victory to dwell in hovels in the midst of ruins amid
scavenging dogs and pigs? They gave themselves into the bonds of slothfulness
and took upon themselves the chains of idleness.
Our enemies gave Israel no rest. Among them, I’m sad to say, was my own brother,
Kenabi. He wanted revenge because of Acsah and he would have stopped our wedding
if he could. Everyone wanted to stone him or anyone else who might try to cause
trouble, so we kept men on watch. Kenabi and a few of his men became robbers and
roamed Israel as outlaws for years until at last someone chased them into the
land of the Kushu.
We then heard that Shikha and the king of Jerusalem took refuge with the
Aramaeans after escaping from us. There Shikha began plotting his return. I
heard they carried him in a litter wherever he went, like a huge black spider
spinning a web of evil to take back his kingdom. Arbok's woman found her way to
Shikha after we freed her at Debir. She became just as dangerous as Shikha, and
she helped him get back into Jerusalem.
I never really knew the full story of how Shikha captured Jerusalem. Your father
and most of the other Benjaminites had left Jerusalem and spread out to begin
farming their lands. They didn't have enough soldiers left in Jerusalem to
defend it when the Yevusites surprised them.
We didn't know at the time, but Shikha stirred up the Yevusites and got them to
turn against Israel. Once he had made himself secure in Jerusalem, he built a
web of fear there and throughout the highlands. He would wring gold and silver
out of people by threatening them, and he used that gold with more threats to
spread fear and cause trouble. I still rue the day Caleb let him go. Do you know
Shikha began to send out men to collect taxes for him? Those who did not pay, he
killed. We constantly had to send men to keep them and his raiders out of the
Southland.
You may wonder, Ehud, how Israel could let such things happen. Once the twelve
tribes had taken their places in this land, we didn't see much of each other and
we knew little about events elsewhere. Although Caleb taught us to watch out for
one another in the Southland, the rest of Israel had no leaders like him. They
went their own way and didn't care what might happen in the next valley. Raiders
could sneak in, kill a family or two, and vanish without their knowing. Any man
who began to show signs of becoming a leader had to watch out for loose women.
We now know that Shikha sent those women all through the land to entice older
men into doing foolish and wicked things that would disgrace them. Shame was
worse than death.
That fate befell my friend Haddar, who fought with us in the battle of Ai, Heap
of Ruins. He became a leader of a hundred after the battle of Ai and he was
close to Joshua and the very kind of man that Shikha wanted to break. May he
rest in peace.
Shikha also caused other troubles and saw that Benjaminites got the blame for
them--murders, thefts, and rapes. They never knew when some angry fellow might
turn up yelling for blood and bringing friends to help him.
If I know Shikha, he sent gold to Cushan-rishathaim, king of the Kushu, a
warlike Aramaean tribe, to persuade him to cause trouble for Israel. Whatever
the reason, it did not surprise me when men from your northern tribes came to me
for help.
