The sun cast its rising brightness over the Sea of Galilee which lay in its rock- and sand-bound bed, quiet as if yet asleep and blue as the cloudless sky hanging over it. Against the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky, the figure of a man, who stood close to the water's edge, was sharply silhouetted. For a time he stood with folded arms looking away toward the distant coast line. Then he turned and cast his eyes on the near-by shore reaching away from his feet in every direction.
In the slanting rays of the rising sun, this bit of beach looked like a monster honeycomb, each shapen place the broken track of a human foot. It was here the day before, Jesus of Nazareth had talked to a vast concourse of people. So insistent were they in getting close to him, he took to a boat, and even then men crowded knee-deep into the quiet water to hear his teachings, so strangely different from that of the Temple priests. All sign of the multitude was now gone but the far reach of footprints. At no great distance from where the lone man stood, a pile of rock jutted into the water behind which was a secluded spot known to the man on the shore and to which he now went, making his way around the point on half submerged stones. Farther down the shore was a line of rushes and willows growing by a wady that in wet season turned a small stream into the sea.
The man who had sought seclusion behind the pile of rock had scarcely found time for meditation or for prayer, when a second figure came upon the sand, the figure of a woman. As she approached, the stillness was not broken by so much as the call of a bird. Yet the man behind the wall of rocks moved that he might watch her, yet himself remain unseen. Slowly and painfully she moved the burden of a wasted and diseased body toward the water's edge, looking about with the caution of a wounded beast. One of her arms was covered with sores. The knee joint of a leg, around which she put both hands from time to time, was swollen to great size. Her eyes were sunken in a colorless face. Her hair was thin and uneven and her garments were tattered and stained with soil.
Reaching the edge of the water she sat down, putting her leg in place with her two hands. Then she began digging in the soft sand and soon there was a bowl of water before her. She bathed her face and poured water on her sores. Again she looked cautiously about and listened. All was still. She hurriedly drew off her bodice and put it in the bowl of water, but before she had finished cleansing it she was startled by the sound of a dipping oar quite near, then from behind the line of rushes a small fishing boat came into view. Folding her arms across her breast and bending low to hide her nakedness, the woman in a shrill voice cried, "Unclean! Unclean!"
The fisherman instinctively pulled away a little, lifted his oar and stopped.
Again the voice, now half sobbing, called, "Unclean! Unclean! Oh,
Jael—I am unclean!"
The fisherman gave a start and cried, "Who art thou that doth call
'Jael' in the voice of one dead?"
"It is Sara."
"Sara is dead—by bitter hemlock did she die."
"Yea, Sara is dead. Yet not by bitter hemlock. By the living death of an issue of blood which is worse than leprosy hath Sara been buried from the clean, though she yet liveth."