My name is Hannah, and I was King Herod’s spy. I wasn’t
trained as a spy, of course. A woman would never be trained as a spy. And I
hate King Herod. Everyone does. He’s cruel and paranoid and can turn on anyone
at a whim. I was just looking for a way out. You see, I’m a Parthian Jew. Not
everyone trooped back from Exile in Babylon all those hundreds of years ago
when King Cyrus let us go. Some Jews chose to stay in the East where everything
was settled and civilized, instead of returning to the desolate ruins of
Jerusalem. So my ancestors stayed put—until my crazy father brought his rug
trade back here last year. I have spent the last 6 months determined to get
back home to the East, away from this dark land, a land where loutish Roman
soldiers leer at women in the streets; where tiresome Roman matriarchs talk
only about their household finances and their teething babies; and where cowering
Judeans hide in the shadows from the wrath of King and soldier alike, and dream that God is
going to save them. Before I became a spy, I didn’t see God doing squat for
anybody. I figured that we have to do for ourselves.
I wasn’t
afraid. I was determined to do what it takes to get away from here before my
father married me off to some old merchant. I heard that caravans from the East
often stopped by Herod’s palace to interpret dreams for the king—or to sell poisons
and potions, more likely! So I hid away in an order of carpets from my father’s
shop that was bound for the palace. You can imagine my delight when I saw a
whole Parthian caravan milling around inside the palace gates. There must have
been at least 12 magi with their camels and servants, goats and carts of food
and supplies. (Magi, by the way, are not kings. If you think that they are
kings, you are getting confused with Isaiah’s old prophecy from Scripture.
Isaiah was writing way back during the Exile, trying to convince people like my
ancestors to come back to Jerusalem and start over. “The Glory of God” indeed.
“Nations shall come to your light and kings to your dawning….”
“We’re still waiting for that, Isaiah,”
I used to think. “It’s still pretty dark around here. The only nation that came
to us is Rome, and the only King we got is Herod.”
Anyway, magi are wise students of
both the stars in the heavens and the deep dreams within. They know things—cool,
spooky things. Of course, good Jews aren’t supposed to believe in such
idolatrous star-gazing and magic-making, but I’ve always found the claims of
magi intriguing—and of course our hypocritical King Herod sure seemed eager to
talk with them.
I heard these
magi asking Herod about a new Jewish king, a child, that their star-studies had
revealed to them. In Parthia, they had seen a special star in the heavens and had
taken off in search of it. Imagine—to have the freedom and the resources and
the fierce curiosity to set off on a journey like that, just to figure out some
heavenly message. That’s exactly the kind of freedom that I longed for. The
wise magi must have been traveling for months in the wilderness to get here,
though.
Since Herod had no new sons, he sure
paled when he heard their news. You could have heard a pin drop in the throne
room. When the scribes sent the magi off to Bethlehem, I leaped at my chance.
Sidling up to one of the King’s ministers, I suggested to him that, with my
knowledge of Hebrew and Parthian, that I could join the magi’s caravan as
translator and find this dangerous child-king for Herod. Of course, I didn’t
plan to come back; I figured that I could hide away and sneak back East with
the magi.
When we got to Bethlehem, the star,
which had beckoned us forward since nightfall--glittering like a jewel that you
would want to grab if you could just get close enough to it--seemed to glow
more brilliantly. It seemed to drop in the sky, too, sending streams of light
right into the middle of town. The magi, who had been chasing this thing for
months, of course, began to talk excitedly among themselves, waving their hands
and acting like little boys who had won a game. They were as joyful over that
starlight as if it had been real gold that was streaming down into their
pockets.
The streets of Bethlehem are pretty
narrow, though, so as we entered the town, it became clear that the carts and
camels couldn’t come with us. Without a second thought, the magi paid an
innkeeper handsomely to take care of them; they didn’t even haggle over the
price, they were in such a hurry to find this child. They only took out a few
sacks from their supply chest and gave them to a servant to carry. “Presents
for the new king,” I thought. “You can’t visit royalty without gifts.”
After walking a few minutes, the whole
group of magi began to look worried for the first time, though, as the beams of
light seemed to be carrying us into the center of the old town, and the streets
began to narrow into alleys, and the stench of human waste became
over-powering, and the ramshackle buildings began to lean into one another, and
ragged men were seen peering around corners at our finery or lurching drunk
through the puddles on the street. The magi whispered to one another, and I
began to wonder if we weren’t involved in some kind of bad magic. What if God
had caught me in a trap, a trap of punishment for a disobedient daughter who
runs away from her father? What if the rabbis were right, and astrology calls
forth only fallen angels? “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One,” I heard
from inside my thumping heart. I hadn’t said earnest prayers in a long time, I
realized. Despite my hasty prayer, fear and doom and disappointment crept up
from the dark alleys like a fog until the starlight was almost invisible. I was
covered in shame.
Suddenly, one of the wise men grabbed
my arm and pointed. A thin beam of light fell on the flat roof of a tiny house,
cutting clearly through the thick darkness like the finger of God. We heard a
baby cry inside. “Well, if it’s not a king, at least it is a child,” was all
that I could think. Nothing about this was making sense anymore. Before I knew
it, we were in the house, all squeezed into one tiny, low-ceilinged room. The
Parthians had to bend over just to come in. On the bed by a small window, a
young woman just my own age was holding a pale, sleeping child. Her tired eyes
looked up at us expectantly, as if she had already seen so many strange things in
her life that nothing could surprise her anymore, even a bunch of Parthian magi
showing up in her house in the middle of the night. I felt sorry for her. This
was no great king, no messiah. This was a poor young mother with a pale, sickly
baby; I remember thinking that she was exactly what I was trying to avoid
becoming. I didn’t even see her husband, but perhaps he was still out on the
town somewhere.
I didn’t have much time to think
about him, because as we stood awkwardly in the little room, even before I
could translate anything for the magi, a beam of light from that crazy star
fell through the window and onto the sleeping baby. “Is he dead?” I wondered. He
was so still and limp. “Poverty and death,” I shuddered. “What are we doing
here following poverty and death as if they were precious jewels?!”
Suddenly, as the light slanted in
upon the child, he awoke, looking at us with beautiful, yet piercing, eyes. His
gaze made me warm inside, like a glass of strong wine, and my fear melted away.
All of a sudden, I saw something moving in the light, angels perhaps, angels
walking from the child up into heaven on the beam of starlight? No, they weren’t
angels, but human beings. I saw Roman soldiers hand in hand with Jews,
Parthians and Medes and many from Asia, black people and strange-looking people
with yellow hair, poor people, and crippled beggars, prostitutes even, in their
gaudy robes, people (criminals, surely) carrying what looked like golden
crosses, although they couldn’t be
crosses—no one would make a hideous Roman cross out of gold. This mix of people
were all singing and rejoicing and glowing, almost as if they were on fire with
the light.[1]
I started to burn, too, as the light grew to take me in. “You are the light of
the world,” I heard. Did the voice come from the baby? “Let your light shine
before others, so that they may… give glory to your father in heaven.” All of
my resentment, my hatred, my shame, my drive to flee … they all caught fire and
burned, and I fell on my face before the light. The magi must have seen the
Glory, too, for there they were like me, noses pressed to the earthen floor,
foreheads in the dust, prostrate as before the Lord himself. Somehow, we rose, lifted
by the sad, wise gaze of the mother and the loving, burning gaze of the child. The
magi pushed their sacks of gifts toward the bed and backed out, bowing low.
We stood in the street as dawn began
to break and people began to stir. The ordinariness of daylight was soothing
yet somewhat dim, compared to our nighttime epiphany. I smelled the stale urine
in the streets, and I heard the wail of a mourner, crying for someone who must
have just died. “Poverty and death are still with us,” I sighed.
And yet, everything is different now.
What I saw last night--in what must have been just a few seconds--has made the
world a different place. But me, Herod’s spy, what do I do now? A spy cannot
survive in the Light. That baby even said that I was the light of the world. How
can that be? Well, I won’t tell Herod. Yet who do I tell? Where do I go? How
can you tell about something that you don’t even understand? I’m free now, yet
not free at all. I belong to that baby’s eyes.
“Go get your camels and head back
East,” I warned the Parthians. “Go home and figure out what we have seen here
today. Don’t return to Herod—he must not know about this.” I watched them turn
and head toward the sun.
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