Paradise King

INTRODUCTION

Listen, and I will tell you a story of the Earthen King who ruled in the garden when the world was young. Those were the green days, when Dawn grew like the grass, and the voice of archangels, far off and as beautiful, as silver horns blew in the east, remained in the skies of the world. The tombs not yet cut in Caanan, the lords not yet on their horses in Anshan, nor yet a watchfire burning in Nubia.

The unconquerable armies of Alexander the Great could not silence this word, nor the fastidious masons of Babylon fashion a stone curtain to keep it out. It has survived deluge and famine, persecution like a fierce corona from the sun, and scrutiny by the finest lens, and it whispers to you now a most holy dare.

Go, and look.

Come, and see.

Our story begins as the first man felt the arms of Yaweh God holding him close over hay fields and, wet earth, and open country. The smell of untamed land brought low by neither man nor beast lifted the mans senses, and Adam he was, opened his eyes.

A mountain lie ahead, nameless, its shoulders wreathed with snow. And beyond, green country, blazing with light! And Yaweh God hummed in Adams ear” We’re going up there”

“Come away son, the rain is over. Flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come. The figs are ripe, and the vines are blooming.”

Was there anyone there to observe the two standing side by side, no one would fail to see a Father and His son. God, the pinnacle of Love, and Adam, in which that love burned more fiercely than a crucible of molten steel. God’s breath had made him a Soul. But his love would make him a king.

God led Adam past Sycamore and spirits, blazing like sparks, past trees that grew in heaven alone. Through the woods, to the most holy place, and Yaweh God said “Behold”

Before them upon a green lawn, two trees grew. Their trunks as twin scions, alike. Their leaves, however, were most distinct.

One tree, said God, is life. The other, knowledge. Both good and bad. But there was a note in Father God’s voice, Adam had not heard before. Love, certainly. But not the same burning love. More like a fawn, grazing on the grass. A vulnerable love.

“Of the tree of Knowledge, the fruit you must not eat. If you eat it, you will die.”

God looked into Adams face. He did not say “Be patient and you will have everything”. He did not say “In time, my son”. He should not have had to.

Instead, he told Adam “You are a priest over this Garden. Tend to it, and make it good. Come, and lets see what your soul can do.”

Yaweh God and Adam named the various creatures of the earth, and gave them purpose. The horse, a worker and partner. The hummingbird to sip of nectar, joyful as an angel. The aurochs to be burdened and the smallest creeping thing to alarm and be alarmed by all.

But Adam, as time went on and he observed the universe above, grew needful. Need is not sin and neither is weakness. And God was most wise, so thus came Woman.

Stately, full of good humor, with hands of healing, wide in the shoulder and the hip, a shape like granite worn to velvet by water. A gaze as far off as the first morning star, but near as a kiss. No object of desire, but a Queen.

With the sound of a great horn, Yaweh God stood above these two and ordered them to be fruitful and multiply. To fill the earth with the template of the garden, and to continue his work.

How much tame came afterward is not for us to know. A day? Years? Centuries? The good time seemed like a flash of lightning, illuminative and appalling. But gone and snuffed out like a whisper into a chasm without walls, a senseless void we would dare not tread under the revealing lamp of hindsight. Hindsight, the only gift you can only gain by treading on its thread and unraveling the garment of its wisdom. Adam and Eve did not have the gift of Hindsight, when the sorcerer came.

It came like a seraph into eden, not on wings of glory and duty, but over the wall as a thief and burglar for which there was no precedent. It saw, faintly ahead, the two trees. And the humans were there as well. The seraph saw them and snarled. Then he put on his lovliness and advanced.

God remembers the intruder well. He says of it, “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God, and adorned with every precious stone.” “Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.”

The enemy came through the trees, and saw the royal pair. It hissed, for dust they were. He had seen the stars that made them blaze and die, and he had seen the dust gathered together and brought to life again, yet THEY WOULD RULE?

The seraph composed itself. Deception and falsehood clung to it like poisonous vapor. “Did God indeed say ‘you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” It was the woman the serpent addressed.

To which the woman replied “No, he said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, or you will surely die.

The seraph shook despite itself. “No. NO. NO NO. You won’t die. Not certainly. Though that is a risk. The devil lowered its voice. “God knows that when you eat of it, you’ll be like Him. You’ll know. You’ll know Good and Evil. You’ll see things as they really are. Trust no one but yourself, hold to your own counsel, and mine.”

You know what happened. Eve took the fruit. As she reached out her hand, Adam was there. Would that I could say he stopped her. A word only, is all it would have taken. But Adam failed her in that moment, complicit as if his own flesh had done the deed. And indeed it had, as he so proudly declared her to be of his flesh earlier. They ate together.

And they knew. They knew everything at once. Adam saw Eve’s eyes, queenly as ever, but frightened and wild like a winter wolf far afield of its den, his own ravenous hunger reflected in her eyes, maddening and acute, reactive and red as a forewarning sunrise over the sea.

They ran, and the devil celebrated.

In the trees, like a wind, was Yaweh God. And he spoke Adams name. And in his nakedness and shame, Adam appeared. Only he had hidden his nakedness from God, who asked him if he had transgressed the only limit given him. Adam said “It was the woman” who said “It was the snake, and God’s face was hard and unfathomable.

God asked the devil then if he would yet try to ascend the mountain, to rule this kingdom, but the devil recoiled, its strength not on nobility and strength, but in lies and deceit, lain bare by the scouring light of the one most mighty and high upon which the keenest thesaurus cannot bestow enough honor, its attempts falling impotently and seeming uncouth and untamed.

What followed was a curse that follows us now and forever, that Mans toils of the earth would yield little and be laborious, and that her labor would be in great pain, that they would crush his head and he would strike at their heel.

Then Yaweh God fashioned them garments of skin, looked on them with kindness saddled on a mount of great pain. Then his look changed. “Man and woman have become like us. They have seen great evil and know it. If they eat of the tree of life they will be evil forever. It cannot be so. Thus, they must go. And Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. As they went, God called them by name once more to remind them that hope was not all behind, that the snake-crusher would one day come.

Then came the gloaming time. Black were those years and black are the stories that are told of them. Death was everywhere. Weeds choked the grain. Eyes went blind. Humans woke, not to the joy of the dawn, but to time running out. Sacrifices were made. Abels fine lamb, Cain’s first fruits. But sin is a slobbering creature. It put on Cain like suit and choked the life from his brother.

So it was in that time. Cain was like Adam, Lamech like Cain, Nimrod like Lamech. Their bodies were tuned to their fathers ruined pitch, their minds ill-tempered in the headwaters of panicked haste, their souls crying out for the Lord their god, but caged in a song of misery and doubt. Giants rang discordant arias of clanging metal and chortled in lecherous verse of the pleasures of the flesh. So God released the waters, and it was made new.

Like a blossom peeking from under thawing fleece another Yaweh God would call by name, Abram, later to be “Abraham”.

Ohh, Abraham was living in a time and place of great upheaval. The Amorites were on the move, bringing with them the seeds of the Babylonian empire to come. The Medes from their mountain lands were streaming into the plains like a premature thaw. And all the while, great droves of refugees flocked to the lands around Ur, the crown jewel of Sumerian civilization. It was a comfortable life for Abram and his kin. And it was a life that the lord most high, El-Elyon, was telling him to leave behind.

In Abram, El Elyon, God, was forging a covenant partner. In the heart of Mesopotamia, in the midst of a rebellion against God, Elyon found Abram and said “Let’s get out of here, I have an idea, and I’d like you to come.”. And Abram went.

Over leagues of Canaanite ground, God led Abram and his convoy of migrants. Blessed land, with rivers that flowed like aquamarine, jade-capped trees that dropped figs and dates as big as your fist. But Abram and his folk walked far from the river, fearful of the migrants spilling into the land. Caanan, to Abram, seemed a most toxic and virulent jewel, its bounty feuded over by too many. Not a suitable place for him, his wife, or his people.

So after a time, after Abrams companions had chosen the familiar comforts of a city, Elyon led Abram to a hill. It was green, and bordered by oak trees. Upon it were the bones of animals and dark splashes, testament to ritualistic sacrifice. Incense hung in the air, wafting through the trees, and Abram weaved this way and that, seeking what was drawing him near, icy trepidation clinging to his heart, and at last he came to the tree.

This made no sense! This tree was hung all over with ropes and idols, this place reeked so much of death that Abram unconsciously reached for his knife, as though that could stave off the rot and decay coming from this place, it was the worst place he had seen since coming to Caanan!

And Elyon said “This is the place. This is the land I’ll give you.” And he meant “You will take back the dwelling place of demons. Here on this hill of death, this tree of death, MY kingdom will come.

So Abram did as asked, though he gruffed and kicked his feet. He built altars, he walked, and he chafed the nerves of many jealous spirits along the way

And so it went for a very long time. As a consequence of living in a period of so much upheaval, cities were sacked, Searing heat scorched cities of outrage, scouring them from the earth until what remained glittered like glass on a sea of stars. Abram fought in various conflicts with his people, a bulwark against the hurricane of swords around them, trying desperately to shelter the kindling embers of God’s kingdom from the downpour of blood and tears that soaked the sands around them. He failed time and time again, retreated from Caanan, returned, and our God was patient with him.

Abram fought, and Abram wept, and Abram got old. His knees ached, his eyes had fog at the edges. And he waited, and waited. He had no children, no heir, no descendants. He and his people wondered what had gone wrong in Elyon’s promise.

That’s when it happened. Abram awoke to the familiar fire at his back, and words in his ears “Fear Not. For your reward shall be great. I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and give all these lands to your descendants”.

And God made good on that covenant. Abram became Abraham, there was at last “laughter”. By Laughter, I mean, “Issac”. Not Abrahams first son, but the one that was promised by Elyon, the lord God.

And after Abraham prove his devotion to God, willing to cull the beloved line he was promised, the stage was set. Issac would have sons, one of those sons would wrestle with God. Abraham eventually died, and the covenant lived on through is descendants, as promised.

In the north, Ur burned. The jewel of civilization collapsed to young and ambitious people, who rose and fell in their own time.

Far away over the desert, Egypt too, fell, rose, and fell again. And as the illuminating sun rose over the kingdom of Ramses, over the fledgling promise of the kingdom of God.

The river was high. It went by like a ripple of sapphire in the midday sun, waves of carnelian in the evening, and humming sable in the dark of night, ochre flashes on its surface from innumerable torches from a very busy Egypt. The trade way was flat with the traffic of the Levantine bounty, and even the beasts lounged passively, watching the industrious humans with insolent eyes.

It was VERY good, to be Egyptian.

That is, until a messenger came. Oh, he seemed insignificant at first. Dirty feet, blistered lips. A rube. A redneck of the Sahara. Yet, he strode along the amber sands beside a rose-gold river with a purpose and a princely gait, to the home of the Pharaoh.

The guards didn’t think much of him, of course, but he spoke in the old, noble language, and gave his family name, so he was taken to see Pharaoh. And past the throngs of servants, sorcerers, soothsayers and mewling attendants, Pharaohs eyes settled on the unassuming newcomer, and immediately spoke aloud “Moses”.

How still the room went after that. Moses. Never the true brother of Pharaoh, but growing up beside him, his return to society in Egypt must have caused quite a stir in the local Newspapyrus.

Moses and with him, his brother Aaron, approached the not-quite-man seated on the throne before them. See, Pharaoh has plucked on the threads of humanity one by one in his journey to become an incarnation of the most revered Egyptian spirits until his cold, reptilian eyes bored holes through the bronze breastplate of the Greek hoplite and silk gowns of the finest Nubian statelord alike, but he could not cow these two backwoods bumpkins?

Moses and Aaron started with an opener that did not disappoint the local gossips, “Thus says Yaweh” Ohh, the chill. “The God of Israel. Salah et Ammi. Let. My people. Go.

Pharaoh had a virulently choleric temper that could be ignited if his grapes were too soft or his chamber pot an inch too short. But at the mention of “Yahweh” his knuckles were as white as pearl and the ivory arms of his throne creaked. “Yahweh? Who is this Yahweh that I should listen to him? I do not know “Yahweh” (A categorical lie) and I will not let Israel go. Get back to your burdens.

Moses and Aaron did go, with red faces and tight fists, but it was hard to argue with the Khopesh-wielding guards giving them stern glares. But they did not stay gone long. Because Pharaoh demanded the Hebrews make bricks without straw. Now, I’m no pre-zero mason, but that isn’t actually possible. But the beatings continued, and the foreman vented at Moses. Big mistake. Moses vented on Yahweh. Bigger mistake, good thing our God is patient and slow to anger.

Moses’s stamping feet fell on the fine limestone bricks (rich in straw, by the way) leading to the throne room. Aaron was as pale as a linen sheet and silent as the grave this time, which really ticked Moses off, because he was the one supposed to do all the talking. So this time, there would be no talking.

Instead, Aaron simply dropped his staff. The attendants laughed aloud, but not for more than a breath, because the staff let out a great roar and to the bewilderment of the Pharaoh, became a dragon! Now, hold your tomatoes, I understand. You declare “It was a snake! Not a dragon, you fool”. But the word used in the Hebrew text was Tannin. Not Naw-Kawsh. Tannin is used to describe “Sea Monster”, rather than snake. At the very least, a winged snake.

Either way, it might surprise you to learn (though it shouldn’t) that moses went away disappointed again. Pharaohs heart was hardened. And Moses and Aaron were weary and afraid. Because what came next would not be decided by who was right, but rather by who was left. War. A war of Yaweh, the one most high, and the principalities and spirits of Egypt.

Some time later when Moses went to see Pharaoh, the palace was empty. Flies were piled against the walls like black masses of sickened wheat. The Pharaoh was slouched alone on his throne. He had lost much weight and looked like a salamander in his ornate headdress. The boils on his face had not healed, and virulent fever stoked his tempers like a furnace with too many holes in its casing, the heat escaping ineffectually and causing the man to list to the side like a ship run aground. He did not wait for Moses to speak.

“Go and take your children, worship your God” he said. “But leave your livestock.”

No indeed. Moses replied “Not a single hoof shall remain behind. This was like throwing hot oil on the leaking furnace. Pharoah exploded. “GET AWAY FROM ME! Be careful, do not see my face again, for on the day you see my face, you shall die!”. And Moses, ever the diplomatic one, replied “Then I will never see your face again!”

But God wanted just ONE more.

So Moses declared the final plague on Egypt, that every firstborn son will die.

The final words from Pharaoh to Moses as he held his dead and lifeless son in his arms, can be summed up as “Get out”.

And so they did. Like a noise in a dream, in the dark of night, doors opened and shut. Wheels on wagons creaked objectively to heavy burdens. Families filed out of their homes, sleepy children held by awestruck parents. Some held lanterns, others walked by moonlight. All filtered out into the cool sands and from an elevated palace, one can imagine Pharaoh beheld a twin to the river nile, resting darkly in onyx relief. Only this twin was a band of fireflies and sinew, motes of torchlight dotting the land, stretching over the dunes toward the sea, their somber retirement a bleeding vessel from the economic heart of Egypt.

Then came wartime. The Hebrews keened swords from ploughshares. The waters of the Jordan made way, and they entered Canaan once again. Once can almost hear Abraham sighing. Led by Joshua, Israel carved a swath through mightily prepared fortifications. God’s provision brough walls of stone to rubble with a mere shout and quake. Men fled at the fury of the faithful Hebrews, each faced etched in bas relief, each heart a fulcrum and each division a matrix of unflinching dedication, chests beaten and tense silence shattered by primal yawp- shoulder to shoulder with brothers of sanguine purpose, we are GOD’s people, this is GOD’S land.

One wishes that steadfast dedication was going to last. That God’s command to scour the Canaanites and their hatred from the land was carried out in full. But half measures and man’s sin let fester virulent spores of long-remembered hate. A cancer left untouched in dark places bred naked aggression that would plague God’s people for centuries to come.

And in the end, Joshua stood facing the people of Israel and asked them “Who will you serve? As for me and my household, we will serve the lord”.

The people looked back to Joshua. And they lied. Apostasy is swifter than the ravens. Rebellion is a crop that does not fail.

The people faltered. They sought out Canaanite superstition and learned of the Baal gods, old and vile. Sacrifice, intercourse and murder. Bloodletting, summoning and incantation. Death itself.

And so Yahweh relented. He gave the people what they wanted. He was leaving. The people did not want him, so he would go. “What have you done?” he asked. “I will give you what you want then, I will not drive these people out of your land. They will be a snare around your neck. They will choke out your breath. Did you not know?”

[Pause]

This brings us to our last story. I know I’ve kept you long. Whispered to you, yelled at you. But now comes the tale of a man after Gods own heart. And I might just have to yell a little bit more.

Battle lines. Muddy ruts in famished country, grasses trampled to dust. Wheat threshed and crushed to fuel the furnace that drives the greatest danger to natural order. Man. And War. Good king Saul had his armies drawn up as a bulwark against the invading armies of the Philistines.

The men had been camped in this soggy, waterlogged land for so long, the season had begun to change, and a soldier waking to his morning constitutional hummed in melancholy resignation as he pictured his wife at home, left to harvest the orchard and stock his vintnery with his 6 year old son, but without him, regardless of his fate.

The Phillistine champion was chanting again. A mighty belting chorus quick like arrow-fire and flat like the end of a oxen hoof. His challenges echoed over the swampy battleground and filtered into the tents like corpse-gas. It repeated the same barbaric dare. “Send a man to fight, are there no men left in Israel?”

David came to the battlefield on errand. He was no soldier. He had no armor, no training. No keen edge on which to balance the fate of men. He was a shepherd, lowly and humble. He had tempered his courage fighting off lions, sure, but nothing like this absolute unit of a man standing before him.

But as he deviated from his errand, he beheld Goliath. A leftover from the tribe of Gath, whom Joshua failed to eliminate. Consequences. Danger.

And what’s a humble shepherd boy to see in this spectacle? Time to run? Head for the hills? No. He asks “What will be done for the one who kills this man?”

And just like that, it was settled. David was scolded by his brothers, had King Saul clutching his head in frustration, and soon was on his way to face Goliath. He didn’t see consequences or danger. He saw opportunity.

At first, Goliath didn’t even register David as he approached. And when he did, he asked “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” David discarded his shepherds crook and his face went a bit red. He had been armed in Sauls best armor, with a keen edge indeed, but the crux of this showdown was resting in a sack at his hip. The armor left behind, they would only slow him down.

Goliath raged “Do you like birds? They’ll pick the flesh from your bones!”

David replied cooly “I like that sword o’ Yours. And that Javelin. Lets see how they stack up against the name of Yahweh of the Armies of Israel, whom you have defied”

The mention of Yahweh caused the Israelites to leap and shout, but the Philistines to roar. David shouted over the din “You want a feast for the ravens? I’ll give them your whole army! And the world will know that there is a God in Israel!”

Goliath charged, his shield bearer before him. His visor was low, obstructing his vision. His every thought on impaling that pathetic mono-theistic prattling boy onto the dank ground so he could sit at his arched and broken back and feast over the sound of a fleeing, weeping Israel.

As his Javelin arm arched back, practiced muscles tensing and tendons screaming with anticipation, Goliath suddenly went limp, like a marionette with its strings cut. A hole in his forehead bearing lone witness to the intrusion of a single stone, artfully flung from a sling, as David had done a hundred times before to an encroaching wolf or terrorizing lion. His flock was behind him, wide eyed and afraid. Ahead was a beast that needed to be put down. And David did what God led him to do.

Goliath dropped, and the ravens cawed in delight.

David got everything he was told he would have. Status. Power. His body was ripe and the wind was a kiss, no matter how strong it blew, and all light was honeycomb. His success was Saul’s undoing, and King David did become, to the unbridled Joy of his people.

But on Davids mind was something much older. The garden of Eden, like a whisper in a dream, so real you could touch it, but when you awaken, the harder you grasp after its memory, the more fleeting it becomes.

So David built the temple, and had the Ark of the Covenant put inside a place of Honor. He sought God always, first and foremost. His joy at the exaltation of the Lord was boundless.

How I wish we could stop right there.

But the forbidden fruit is sweetest to the sinful heart of mankind. And David beheld the fruit in Bathsheba. He ordered her husband to his doom, slept with her, and in doing so, sinned greatly.

And like Adam, he did not own the sin and repent, but hid in his shame.

And so God sought his son once more, not in the cool of the garden, but in whatever chamber David felt most comfortable in. And though David did repent, it cost him his son with Bathsheba. Later, he would have another son, who we all know as Solomon, the wise. But David, redeemed as he was by God, is another chapter in a book that characterizes just how deeply we need our father. Every step Adam walked east of the garden, he needed his Father. Every heartbeat that drove Abraham out of the promised land in doubt and fear, took him farther from his Father. And every step he took back was to a covenant that God never reneged on. When Moses, unsure and thoroughly out of his league, was told the seas would part, that preposterous malarky was made manifest by our Father. When Joshua was told the walls of Jericho, which had stood for ages, would fall to a battlecry, had any power in the universe short of Yahweh declared it, it would have been their undoing.

But he trusted his father. And when David stood over Saul, who had hunted and persecuted him across the desert, and had him dead to rights, he trusted in his father, declined to harm one anointed by him.

And when David slipped, and worse, hid from God in the cool of the day? And God came looking? David apologized to his Father, and God kept his promise.

But for Israel, as they say, the best promise is yet to come.