37. Sacrifice

CHAPTER 37

SACRIFICE

“Nephi, Nephi!  Wake up!”  Joseph shook Nephi’s shoulders rapidly to awaken him.  “Please help us!” pleaded Joseph when Nephi opened his eyes.

“Huh?” replied Nephi as sleep evaporated from his mind.  “What is it, Joseph?  Is something wrong?  What’s happened?”

“Nothing!  Yet!” said Joseph urgently.  His voice was not overly frightened, but he was definitely filled with concern.  “The angel of the Lord appeared to me in my dream, saying; ‘Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.’”

“Oh, Joseph!” whispered Nephi breathlessly.  “This means He is not safe here.  I fear lest we are the ones who have brought this danger upon you.  Oh, forgive us, please.  You must go!  You must go now!  This very night!  Quickly!  Let us help you pack your things and you must flee before it is too late!”

Joseph spoke quickly.  “I know, Nephi.  We’re going.  Mary is already getting things together.  But she needs to pack some more things from the house.  I must go immediately and get a wagon or some other way to get us into Egypt.  At this time of night, that might be asking for a lot.”

Lehi and Hantuman awoke to the dreadful news.  They heard Nephi tell Joseph to flee before it was too late.  Grasping the urgency of the situation, Hantuman jumped up and dashed over to where he had left some belongings.  He ran back with a purse in his hand.

Hantuman was inspired to command Joseph.  “Take the gold, the frankincense, and the myrrh already given.  Here is all we have.  Take this.  Go to the Roman fort.  Purchase the fastest and best chariot you can.  When enough money is offered, chariots can be purchased from the soldiers, even by a Jew in the middle of the night!”

“Thanks, Hantuman, I will.”  Joseph rushed out of the carpenter shop to begin his search for a chariot.  He called back to his three wise friends as he reached the door, “Mary is getting things together in the house downstairs.  Please watch her Son for us in His upper room.  I’ll be back just as soon as I can!” 

Joseph took the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  He left in haste.  And it was night.

The three men sat in the upper room of the house.  The Child slept in a crib located against the wall on the opposite side of the room from the only window.

Mary was downstairs frantically trying to decide between what was needed and could be taken, and what was needed but couldn’t be taken.  Joseph was gone.  How could she decide what to bring when she didn’t even know how they would travel?

For the moment, everything was still and quiet.  If it had not been for the angel’s warning to Joseph, nobody could have suspected that treachery and danger awaited.

Nephi contrasted the joy he had experienced the previous night with the grave depression he now felt.  Same house; same room.  Same crib; same Child, calmly sleeping --- helpless.  Just from one day to the next.  But, oh how the feeling and the emotions in the room were so completely different!  There was no escaping it.  It felt like a prison; no way out, nowhere to run.

He sat in silence.  Lehi and Hantuman had nothing to say.  All their faces showed worried expressions of concern and desperation.  What should they do?  What could they do?  The answer was nothing.  Nothing but wait, wait and see.

Mary’s Son was all right and peacefully sleeping.  Nephi listened closely and heard Him breathing.  It helped to know that.  But at the same time, He was merely a helpless Child and vulnerable to the enemy, with no one to watch over Him and protect Him --- but them.

What a responsibility!  Nephi began to feel even more depressed and it felt to him that the weight of the world was on his shoulders.  Time passed slowly; at least it felt so to him.  (Of course for Joseph and Mary, the same interval of time was racing by too quickly.)  Nephi began to wonder why it was taking Joseph so long to return.

The silence and the anxiety and the worry lingered on and on.  Nephi wondered what he should do if something happened to Joseph to prevent him from returning at all.  Lehi and Hantuman were equally troubled with similar thoughts.

Eventually, Lehi broke the silence and said, “Remember when we were many days into our voyage on the sea?  We were depressed because day after day there was nothing to do but look at the endless water in every direction.  I began to lose hope that eventually land would be seen.  Nephi suggested that devotionals might lift our spirits, and singing brought me comfort.  I don’t necessarily feel like singing right now.  But, Hantuman, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind singing a hymn for all of us.”

“What do you want me to sing?” asked Hantuman.

“How about something to fit the mood from Psalms and Isaiah,” requested Lehi.

“All right, I’ll give it a try,” agreed Hantuman.  “Perhaps this will help us pass some time while we wait for Joseph.”  Hantuman’s clear and beautiful tenor voice sang with melancholy:

“Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble:

mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly.

For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing:

my strength faileth because of mine iniquity,

and my bones are consumed.

“I was a reproach among all mine enemies,

but especially among my neighbours,

 and a fear to mine acquaintance:

they that did see me without fled from me.

“I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind:

I am like a broken vessel.

For I have heard the slander of many:

fear was on every side:

while they took counsel together against me,

they devised to take away my life.

“But I trusted in thee, O Lord:

I said, Thou art my God.

My times are in thy hand:

deliver me from the hand of mine enemies,

and from them that persecute me.

Make thy face to shine upon thy servant:

save me for thy mercies’ sake.

“They gave me also gall for my meat;

and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

But I am poor and sorrowful:

let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high.

“He is despised and rejected of men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief:

and we hid as it were our faces from him;

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

“Surely he hath borne our griefs,

and carried our sorrows:

yet we did esteem him stricken,

smitten of God, and afflicted.

“But he was wounded for our transgressions,

he was bruised for our iniquities:

the chastisement of our peace was upon him;

and with his stripes we are healed.”

            Hantuman finished singing.  And Lehi asked him to sing the same thing again.

Hantuman finished singing for the second time when horrendous shrieks and screams of horror were heard in the distance.  It was a woman’s voice.  Something horrible had just taken place in her nearby home!

The scream was a mix of lamentation, of weeping, and great mourning.  It was the sound of a mother who could not be comforted; whose son was no more.

          In that same instant, the door of Joseph’s house burst open with a loud crash.  A dozen soldiers of the Roman army, clad in battle gear and carrying their unsheathed swords in their hands, stormed into the house.  Some of the swords had fresh, red blood dripping from the blades.

Mary, armed only with mother’s rage, flew toward the soldiers screaming in terror, “NO!  GET OUT!  Get away from mmmmmmm… ”

Mary’s scream was stopped short and muffled by a large, rough hand covering her mouth, and she was smothered and dragged to the ground.  The soldiers started tearing through the house, overturning the furniture and looking in every room.

          In the upper room, Nephi, Lehi, and Hantuman heard the scuffle downstairs.  That was followed by the commands shouted by one of the soldiers.  “Follow me up these stairs!  The rest of you, check the back of the house!”

          “Don’t let them get in here!” yelled Nephi as he and Lehi and Hantuman sprang to the door of the room to hold it closed. 

The door was the only way in.  And unfortunately, it was also the only way out, except through the open window high above the ground outside.  Several soldiers clammered up the stairs and tried to push their way through the door on the outside of the upper room.  Nephi, Lehi, and Hantuman pushed on the door from the inside of the room with all their might to keep them out.

The door pushing war was a standoff until the soldiers managed to wedge a sword through the small crack momentarily created at the doorpost with a strong push from outside.  Using the sword as a lever, the soldiers enlarged the gap in the door and thrust more swords into the widening gap.

          Hantuman attempted to kick at the swords to knock them away.  But another sword came straight through a panel of the door weakened by all the violent pushing.  This sword passed through the door where Lehi was pushing and pierced through the left side of his neck, severing an artery.

Lehi’s wound was fatal as the sword passed through his neck until the point emerged out the other side.  The soldier pulled the sword back again, cutting away more flesh from Lehi’s neck on its return.  Lehi began to fall, saying, “I am a dead man!”  His blood, spurting from the gaping wound in his neck, left a trail of red that ran all the way down the doorpost from where he had stood, to where he now lay on the floor, dead.

          Nephi saw that his brother, Lehi, was dead on the floor.  His face expressed a look of both horror and sadness.  Without Lehi’s strength to hold the door closed, the soldiers would be able to push the door open and enter the room.

Nephi commanded Hantuman, “Protect the Child!  Take Him while I draw the rest of them away to the window!  Then cut behind them to get away!”

          Hantuman ran to the Child and cradled Him protectively in his arms.

Nephi leaned over the body of Lehi and exclaimed, “Oh, dear brother Lehi!”

The soldiers from outside the room threw the door open without resistance and stormed inside.  Nephi surprised the first soldier and jumped on him, wrestling his sword away.  Backing his way to the window, Nephi dueled against four soldiers who followed him across the room.

The soldiers never noticed Hantuman behind them carrying the young Child.

But Nephi did!  Nephi was determined to save the life of this Child!  He managed to smite one of the soldiers severely on his arm, and he cut off the right ear of another.  But he was outnumbered by professional soldiers and received several deep wounds on his arms and legs with each sword thrust of the soldiers who pursued him.

When he staggered to the open window, Nephi was bleeding badly.  He looked out the window and saw a Roman officer’s chariot pulled by six white horses stop at the front of the house below him.

Facing the soldiers in the room, Nephi knew what he had to do.  Hantuman and the Child were behind the soldiers.  The Child held in Hantuman’s arms had awakened, but never cried out.  The Child looked in Nephi’s direction and smiled in loving recognition.  The soldiers did not bother to stop or look around.  Their attention stayed focused on Nephi.

Nephi turned his back to the soldiers and crawled into the window frame.  He knelt on the ledge and bowed his head. 

The nearest soldier stabbed Nephi in the back and the sword pierced his heart.  The next soldier kicked him with so much force that he was pushed through the window.  Nephi fell to the ground outside proclaiming, “Oh Lord, my God!”

When his body hit the ground, he was dead.

All the soldiers in the room crushed forward and peered out the window to see what had happened to Nephi.  They could not see clearly because of the darkness of the night, but the man getting out of the chief commanding officer’s chariot roared up to them, “Stop it!  I say stop!”  The man was livid.  “Oh! What have you done!?  This is not right!  Get down!  Go!  I’m in charge now!”

Fearing that the chief commanding officer would punish them for having killed others in addition to male children from two years old and under, the soldiers in the upper room immediately ran back down the stairs and out of the house.  They fled in haste.

Likewise, the soldiers who had been restraining Mary did not want to risk the wrath of their commanding officer who had arrived unexpectedly.  They released Mary and scampered away into the night as fast as they could to avoid recognition.

Mary was at once back up on her feet.  She dashed to the stairs and flew up them in leaps of three at a time.

Chasing her with equal speed, the man from the chariot was right behind! 

He caught up to her after she fell on her face as she raced into the upper room.  She did not expect Lehi’s body to block the entrance, so she tripped over him in her haste to get to her Son.

The man chasing her fell on top of her and tried to hold her.  She fought him off while they wrestled on the floor.

“Mary, Mary!  It’s me!”  Joseph spoke to her and tried to calm her down.  “Mary, stop!”  Finally she stopped hitting him.

They collapsed into each other’s arms with shared sobs and moans.  The next second Mary was at the crib and looked in.  Empty!!  Frantically, she tore through the bedding, feeling with her fingers.  Nothing!

Joseph went to the window.  The window frame was dripping with blood.  He looked down to the ground and saw Nephi’s body lying there in the darkness.  He knew Nephi was dead.  He looked to the door with the doorpost covered in blood.  Lehi’s body lay at the foot of the door.

Joseph went to Mary and held her next to him.  She was trembling uncontrollably and could not allow herself any emotion but numbness.  This was too unreal to be happening.  Finally, she cried out in agony.  “Where is He?  What have they done to Him?”  Joseph and Mary fell down in a heap together in the middle of the floor.

At that moment, the open door to the room swung closed with a slight creak that caught their attention.  Somebody hidden behind the door emerged into view.

Frightened, they looked.

“Jesus!” they cried out together.

Hantuman stood behind the door.  He held Mary’s Son lovingly in his strong arms.  And the Child was totally without harm!

            Death, at least for this Passover, passed by the Firstborn Son.

END OF PART 2