The Gods Look Down by Trevor Hoyle

Author:Trevor Hoyle
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Quercus Publishing
Published: 1978-08-04T23:00:00+00:00

Part Two

‘But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof. And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, the Ark of God shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god.’

I Samuel 5: 6

8

The Ark of God

The temple was built of lava-rock. The city surrounding it was like a maze of pink stone, flat-roofed and close to the desert floor as if no one building had the temerity to rise up off its knees and stand in the presence of the temple. Narrow dusty streets and rutted alleyways ran like crooked rivers and disjointed streams through the city, adjoining quiet arched courtyards, which were the backwaters, and linking fast-flowing main thoroughfares, feeding them like tributaries. The city swam with life: some seventy thousand people living and working here, bartering and marrying, tilling the land and raising children, worshipping in the temple and eventually going to meet their Maker.

For many years the city of Shiloh had enjoyed peace and prosperity. The spring which bubbled up from the lava-rock had been channelled and led to cool stone tanks below ground, saved and not squandered, and from there to the fields where it fed crops of maize and corn and small groves of olive trees. The city was self-sufficient in the basic necessities of life, and anything it lacked (timber was in short supply, as were spices, woven cloth and fresh camel meat) it could exchange for grain with the traders who came from the north: hard-eyed men with weatherbeaten faces who spoke in a guttural mixture of dialects, drove hard bargains, got drunk on local wine and then rode off into the wilderness.

So the Tribe had found a place and made a home for itself; the centre and high point of their lives, as it was the centre and high point of the city, was the temple, and in the temple resided their most precious and holy relic: the Ark of God. It was rarely seen by the people of Shiloh, kept within the silent inner chamber and guarded day and night by priests who were appointed by the High Priest, Eli, who came of direct descent through fourteen generations from Kish, First of the Prophets. At this time Eli was ninety-eight years old and he was almost blind, and while the people loved and respected him and sought his counsel in all matters his longevity was the cause of bitterness and dissent amongst those of his own family, principally his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas.

They were jealous men, impatient men, envious of their father’s position and authority, and anxious for the day when he would die and one of them would become High Priest in his place. This was a further cause of unease and bad feeling because it was not yet decided which of his two sons Eli would choose to succeed him.

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