Beyond the Ark stood the priest Phineas, recounting the crossing of the Jordan to several thousand children spread out as far as Deker's eyes could see, all the way to the mysterious, natural-gas-like bursts of fire at the south end of the camp.
"So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant went ahead of them!" Phineas cried out. "Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet, as soon as the priests who carried the Ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water's edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down was completely cut off. So the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground."
Something like that, Deker thought, and wondered to what extent Phineas' revisionist history was what Salmon and Achan had heard as children about the parting of the Red Sea. Even the fate of the dolmen stones now under the Ark, which earlier had formed the stone bridge across the Jordan, got a poetic
rendition.
"So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the Lord had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."
The altar of dolmen stones holding up the Ark was assembled like a ziggurat and stood about four meters tall-six dolmens across the bottom, four across the middle and two across the top. The altar was a stone monument unto itself, which was probably the intent as soon as the Ark was lifted up and out by the Levites to carry before the armies of Israel.
Deker looked at the dolmen stones and realized it must have taken a company of men from each tribe to haul each one out of the river and drag it to this place.
But it was all part of the show, and Deker could see Elezar take a seat on the ground in front of a couple of small children and nod his approval to an appreciative Phineas.
As he stared at the remarkable scene, he sensed somebody standing next to him. It was Salmon, who had gone from sullen to exultant.
"Bin-Nun has done it!" he said.
"Done what, Salmon?"
"Honored Yahweh by bringing us here forty years to the day of the Passover in Egypt before the Exodus. Tonight we celebrate the Passover in the Promised Land!"
"That was the hurry to cross the Jordan at flood stage?" Deker asked. "He wanted to hit a date?"
"This is his sign from Yahweh," Salmon said. "Don't you see? All of this is the sign the people needed to see."
"What sign do you see, Salmon? I see no sign."
"The holiness of Yahweh is before your eyes in the Ark."
Deker thought back again to his bar mitzvah, and the symbol of the Ark and how he had dropped the Torah. "You mean the 613 laws and purification rituals to show how ungodly we
mortals are."
Salmon looked at him curiously. "The Torah and Law of Moses do not promise salvation, because keeping them all is impossible. The Law reflects the holiness of Yahweh, to show us our dependence on Yahweh's grace like Abraham. Without the Law we would know neither justice nor mercy."
Salmon sounded like Rahab up on her terrace in Jericho. True believers in a world ruled by those who seemed to make up the rules to suit themselves. It was beginning to make sense to Deker now, this notion that the fledgling nation of Israel existed to bear witness to the Law in a lawless world. But not this idea of faith in Yahweh's mercy. Thus far he had seen little of that from Bin-Nun.
"Bin-Nun has depended on nothing but me so far, Salmon. Phineas too."
"You will tonight," Salmon promised. "All the troops will."
"That's the problem, Salmon. I don't see any troops. Where are they?"
"Healing."
"Healing? From what?"
"Come with me and I'll show you."