Song of Redemption (38 page)

Later that night, after Hezekiah left, Hephzibah knelt by the carved wooden chest beside her bed. She removed the small bundle wrapped in an embroidered cloth and took out two incense burners and a golden lampstand. She carefully spread the cloth on top of the chest and set the golden statue of Asherah in the middle of it. Then, murmuring the proper prayers, she laid out her offerings of grain and oil and incense before the smiling goddess. She gazed at Asherah’s swollen belly, longing more than anything else in the world to give Hezekiah a son, an heir to rule after him in the land he loved so deeply.

“Please, my lady,” she prayed. “I love him so much! Please forgive his unbelief and grant him a son.”

Part Three

Hezekiah did … what was good and right
and faithful before the Lord his God.
In everything that he undertook in
the service of God’s temple and in
obedience to the law and the commands, he
sought his God and worked wholeheartedly.

2 C
HRONICLES 31 : 2 0 – 21 NIV

30

K
ING HEZEKIAH DUCKED INSIDE
the foreman’s tent beside the Gihon Spring. “I’ve come for that tour you promised me, Eliakim.”

The engineer sat hunched on a low stool behind a makeshift table that was piled with scrolls, clay tablets, and chunks of rock. He looked up in surprise, then scrambled to his feet to bow.

“Certainly, Your Majesty. We’ve accomplished quite a lot already.” Eliakim’s words lacked enthusiasm, and he looked thin and haggard. His shoulders sagged as if still bent over the table.

“Are you ill, Eliakim? Do you need some time off?”

“No, I’m fine.” But his boyish grin was missing, and dark circles rimmed his eyes.

“All right, then. Lead the way.” Hezekiah stood aside.

Shebna was waiting outside the tent, kicking a huge mound of rock with his foot. “I thought you had a plan to get rid of all this rubble, Eliakim.”

“I do. We’re filling in the new extensions on the northwest wall, making a solid wall twenty feet thick.”

“Then why are all these piles still here?”

“Well, we can’t haul the rubble away instantly. It’s a long, slow process, requiring a lot of manpower. In the meantime, it accumulates down here.”

A work crew emerged from the tunnel with another load of rubble and added it to the pile as if to underscore Eliakim’s point. Shebna shook his head in disgust.

Hezekiah had no idea what caused the friction between Shebna and Eliakim, but it wearied him. Eliakim was the only man on his council whose intellect matched Shebna’s, and they could accomplish a great deal if they put their minds together. Instead, they never failed to antagonize each other.

“Is it piling up by the other tunnel, too?” Shebna asked.

“Yes, but I can’t help it. It’ll all be used as fill eventually. I don’t see the problem.”

“It is ruining any secrecy we may have hoped for,” Shebna said. “If we were mining the rock for fill, we would not be digging it out faster than we are using it.”

“I’m supposed to dig this tunnel as quickly as possible, and—”

“Hire more workmen to haul it away,” Hezekiah interrupted, “but don’t slow down the digging. Now, we came to see the tunnel.”

They skirted piles of tools and more rubble as they walked to the edge of the spring, then they stopped again as Eliakim explained the work to them. His obsession with the project was clear, despite his fatigue.

“We start with a natural fissure and dig a tunnel wide enough and high enough for one man to crawl through. Then a second crew enlarges the tunnel. My men work day and night—there’s no difference down there. Each crew rotates jobs; digging for a while, then hauling out rubble, then resting. It’s going very smoothly.”

“Are we going to stand out here all day, or are you going to let us go inside?” Shebna asked.

“I have to get the work crew out first. I just told you—it’s only wide enough for one man.”

Hezekiah flashed Shebna a warning look as Eliakim went inside to order the workmen to take a short break. Only the worker at the tunnel’s end was allowed to continue. When the path was clear, Eliakim led the way inside. He had enlarged the entrance and had cut grooves in the walls, several cubits apart, to hold oil lamps.

“It’s a lot brighter in here than the last time we visited,” Hezekiah said. “Where did you get these lamps?”

“I designed them. We can carry them like this—see? Or fit them in the grooves.” He gave them each a lamp to carry.

“But they are burning your air supply,” Shebna said, frowning.

“Yes, but that’s better than stumbling around in the dark and bumping into walls. Would you like me to extinguish them and show you how dark it is?”

“No, that’s not necessary,” Hezekiah said. “I remember how dark it was.”

They wound through the narrow slit in the rock until they reached the old Jebusite holding pool. The water barely reached their knees. The entrance to the new tunnel stood off to Hezekiah’s left, and a small dam kept the spring water out of it.

“You should dam it up on the outside,” Shebna said. “Then you could keep all of this dry.”

Eliakim shook his head. “When the tunnel is farther along I plan to let some of the water trickle through the natural fissures so I can watch for seepage in the other tunnel.”

“I still do not understand how you think they will meet.”

“It’s my job. I know what I’m doing.”

Hezekiah grew tired of listening to them. “This arguing is unnecessary,” he said sharply. “Lead the way, Eliakim.”

As the three men started down the new tunnel, Hezekiah had to duck his head to keep from smashing it on the ceiling. Even with the oil lamp for light, the tunnel felt dark and oppressive. His broad shoulders brushed both walls, and he twisted sideways, fearing he would become stuck. It was such a tight fit he wondered if he could turn around again, or if he would have to back out. Unlike the ragged Jebusite tunnel, these walls and ceilings were neatly squared off. He ran his hand along the wall, feeling the slanting pick marks.

“We’ve had only one or two false starts,” Eliakim explained as they came to an alcove off to one side. “We struck a vein of harder rock after a cubit or so and had to change direction.”

They walked several more yards, winding first to the right, then meandering to the left, until Hezekiah lost all sense of direction. He could hear the clanging of a pick against stone in the distance.

Eliakim stopped when the opening tapered down to knee height. The rhythmic ring of hammer and chisel was very close. “This is as far as we can go—unless you’d like to crawl.”

“No, thanks,” Hezekiah said. “This is cramped enough for me.” He could almost feel the weight of the mountain above his head and his own frailty beneath the tons of solid rock.

“How can the workmen stand it in here?” Shebna grumbled.

“We’re all used to it, I guess.”

“Well, it is too confining for me,” Shebna said. “I am getting out.”

They managed to turn around, and Shebna, who had been last, led the way.

“I’m very impressed,” Hezekiah told his engineer when they were outside in the warm air again. “You’ve made incredible progress in the last four months.”

Eliakim managed a tired smile. “Thank you, Your Majesty. We’re not quite halfway to where the two tunnels will meet.”

“
If
they meet,” Shebna mumbled. “Have you dug this much of the other tunnel, too?”

“No, the work on that side’s been going a lot slower. The Jebusites gave us a head start on this end, remember. Over there, we had to clear the land, then dig a shaft down to the starting level, then find a cave system with a vein of the softer limestone. We’re also digging the new Pool of Siloam to hold the water once the tunnel is functioning.”

Eliakim turned to Shebna. “Is there anything else you’d like to see, my lord?” Shebna shook his head. Hezekiah knew the brooding Egyptian well enough to know that he was deliberately holding back whatever opinions he held.

“Good job, Eliakim,” Hezekiah said. “Thank you for the tour.”

“Anytime, Your Majesty.”

The sun blazed down on Hezekiah as he and Shebna followed the shadeless path up the ramp to the city, and he almost envied the workers in the cool tunnel. When he reached the Water Gate, he finally turned to the scowling Egyptian.

“All right, Shebna. Let’s hear what you’re thinking.”

Shebna shook his head. “He will never do it, Your Majesty. You saw how that tunnel meanders. He will be groping like a blind man down there, trying to find the other end.”

Hezekiah stopped walking and paused to catch his breath. “What is it between you two? What do you have against Eliakim?”

“It is nothing personal. Merely a difference of opinion.”

“I’ve known you a long time, Shebna, and I think it’s deeper than that. Are you still holding a grudge because of that refugee business when Eliakim came to me at the Temple?”

Shebna started walking again, and Hezekiah kept pace beside him. “Maybe you should ask Eliakim why he has never respected me.”

“I wish you would work together instead of fighting all the time. Can’t you forget your differences long enough to help him? We need this tunnel.”

Shebna stopped abruptly. “There is nothing I can do to help him. I have studied his plans, and he will never get those two tunnels to meet. He is attempting the impossible.”

Hezekiah remembered how crazily the tunnel had meandered, and he wondered if Shebna was right—if finding the other tunnel would mean groping in the darkness like a blind man. “‘My God turns my darkness into light,’ ” he recited to himself, and he hoped that Eliakim was praying.

“May I bring you anything else, Your Majesty?” Hezekiah’s servant asked as he helped him remove his royal robes.

“No. I’m waiting for Shebna to bring me some documents, then I will be going to see my wife.”

Hezekiah sank down on the window seat and stretched his long legs. The day had been hot, and all the shutters in his private chambers stood open to allow in the evening breezes. They carried with them the fragrance of the sacrifice from the Temple, and Hezekiah closed his eyes, trying to recall the words of the evening prayers: “‘Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.’ ”

The words of David’s psalms comforted him, and he made an effort every night to read and memorize some of them. He picked up his Torah scroll and unrolled it.

“Your Majesty, Lord Shebna is here,” his servant announced.

“Good. Send him in.”

“I am sorry for interrupting your privacy,” Shebna said when he saw Hezekiah stretched out comfortably with the Torah scroll. “I’ve completed the itinerary, but it could have waited until tomorrow.”

Hezekiah laid the scroll aside. “No, I’ve been expecting you. I want Eliakim and Jonadab to get an early start in the morning. Let me see it.” Hezekiah studied the list of cities the two men were scheduled to visit, scattered along all the possible invasion routes. The men had orders to inspect the fortifications and offer advice on reinforcing them. As usual, Shebna had taken care of every detail, and the document was ready for Hezekiah’s seal.