Keepers of the Covenant by Lynn Austin Read Free Book Online

exiled here in Babylon, Ezra might be serving as the high priest of the temple in Jerusalem, the spiritual leader of his people. But his learning and his pedigree did him no good, now. He may as well make pots like his younger brothers.
    He stood and rolled up the scroll to put it away. He needed to get out of his stifling study. The sackcloth beneath his tunic burned his irritated skin like fire, but he refused to remove it, a reminder to pray each time it chafed. As he walked through the quiet, meandering lanes of Babylon’s Jewish community, hearing the familiar sounds of goats bleating and babies crying, only two things were clear to him—and they were contradictory. The Almighty One had made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, an everlasting covenant that would never change; and the Persian king had decreed his people’s annihilation, a decree that also could never be changed.
    Ezra’s steps took him to the grove near the canal where his brothers continued their father’s pottery business, the towering palm trees above the clay pit motionless in the still air. He wovehis way around the shimmering heat of the kiln and through the obstacle course of pottery in various stages of completion to where Jude sat at his potter’s wheel, shaping a vessel on the upper wheel while spinning the lower wheel with his foot. Jude glanced up and acknowledged Ezra with a nod before returning to his work, dipping his fingers in water to keep the clay supple. The knee-high vessel he was making would be glazed and fired, then used to store grain or olive oil.
    Ezra watched the clay expand and grow beneath Jude’s experienced hands like a living thing, obeying the pressure of his fingers, the pull of his hands. He thought of Isaiah’s words: “We are the clay, you are the potter . . .”
    Ezra had apprenticed with his father in his younger years and knew that a pot couldn’t be shaped without pressure. He also knew the importance of centering the lump of clay precisely in the middle of the wheel before beginning. If it wasn’t centered, the emerging vessel would become deformed or even fly off the wheel as it spun. Ezra had never mastered the centering process, and his pots had inevitably become misshapen beneath the pressure of his fingers. Was that where his people had gone wrong? Had they failed to center their lives on God’s law before being shaped by Him? Maybe if Ezra could teach the Law to his people more diligently, centering them and—
    “What brings you here?” Jude asked, pulling Ezra from his thoughts. The wheel had stopped spinning, the pot finished.
    “I needed to get out for a while. Get some perspective.” Or was he avoiding God’s echoing silence? His brother cut the pot free with a thin cord, then climbed from behind the wheel, stretching his arms and shoulders.
    “Did you find a reason for the king’s decree?”
    “Not yet.”
    Jude sloshed his hands in a bucket of water to clean them off. In the pit in front of them, an apprentice treaded the oozing slime, mixing water into the clay with his feet. Two moreapprentices knelt beside a wooden board, wedging the clay to force the air out before forming the clay into a pot. Ezra had never mastered the skill of wedging, either. But the Torah? He could recite large portions of all five books by memory. Jude crouched beside the boards to inspect the wedged clay, poking it to feel the texture. He shook his head. “Work it some more.”
    Their youngest brother, Asher, worked beside the kiln, dressed in a turban and loincloth. His lean body glistened with sweat in the intense heat. Married for less than a year, Asher had been ecstatic as he’d shared the news that his wife was expecting. Ezra remembered how he had bounced from one foot to the other as he’d announced the news. Now Asher’s joy had turned to despair. He seemed to shrivel a little more each day, like a branch hanging too close to the flames, knowing he couldn’t protect his wife and