The king in his mercy allowed the prisoners' families to live with them, but this only made matters worse: people were suffering from overcrowding more than ever. "The dirty Jews' wives are fruitful," the gaolers said jeeringly. "In multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven." The Lord blessed Israel, but this blessing turned into a curse; numberless children were born and died, teeming in the filthy place like maggots in carrion.
"Thou hast carried them all away captive.
Thou bindest them by Thy love."
Issachar recalled the king's hymn to the god Aton. "Fine sort of love," he thought, "casting the living into hell!"
Ahiram brought his nephew to Eliav's hut and saying good-bye to him went back to the city to get the pass.
Issachar walked into the half-dark entry. Two mangy sheep dozed in their stall; a sick old mule and a scraggy ass stood dejectedly by an empty water trough: beasts of burden carried stones in the quarry and lived together with the prisoners.
Beside them a decrepit old man, naked but for a ragged loin cloth, sat on a heap of dung and ashes scraping with a potsherd the white scabs of leprosy on his body, with a dull, monotonous wail, like the howling of wind at night. This was Shammai the Righteous, the grandfather of Eliav's wife Naomi.
He had once been rich, happy and respected by all; he had salt mines by the Bitter Lakes and a lot of cattle in the Goshen pastures, and he used to send caravans with wool and salt into Midia. He was a godfearing man and led so blameless a life that he was surnamed 'Righteous.' He had hoped to live to a happy old age and to die filled with days. But it pleased God to test him and he was suddenly deprived of everything. Two of his sons were lost with their caravan in the desert, probably killed by robbers; the other two perished in the rebellion. His son-in-law, who was steward over all his property, falsely accused Shammai of having taken part in the rebellion. The old man was seized and tried; the judges acquitted him, but they had a compact with his son-in-law and robbed him of all he had. Now that he was a beggar all his friends forsook him; his wife died. He thought of Naomi, his favourite granddaughter, and came to live with her in Sheol where he fell ill with leprosy.
Sitting day and night among the ashes, he scraped his scabs with a potsherd and comforted his heart with wailing. All the family had grown so used to his endless wail that they noticed it no more than one notices the creaking of a door, the sound of the wind or the chirping of a grasshopper.
Issachar stopped in the entry and listened.
"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said there is a man child conceived. Why died I not from the womb? For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept, then had I been at rest. My soul is weary of my life; I will say unto God, do not condemn me; show me wherefore thou contendest with me. Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst destroy the innocent?"