"But what mean the sudden shouting and singing?" asked Marduk.
"Listen closely," replied Ben Yusef, "and you will hear the Levites, who stand on the fifteen steps leading from the women's court. They strike their harps and cymbals as they chant the fifteen Songs of Degrees, some of which you may have heard the pilgrims singing as they were coming up hither. See! they are dancing over there; and soon the whole city, and these multitudes outside, will join the innocent revelry. It is a sin not to be merry to-night. The man whose griefs have made him shun the face of his fellows must be neighborly now. The stranger must make a comrade of the one next to him. Our God is a happy divinity, and men may share the joy of the Lord."
Marduk did not sleep that night. Most of the hours were spent in the company of Ben Yusef and Elnathan. They wandered among the booths, which the Jew said were everywhere, not only in the fields, but in the city, wherever there was space enough in the streets, in the house-courts, on the roofs, on the walls. Indeed, the stone city and the stony hills about were mantled with an artificial forest of palm and pine, olive and myrtle.
"But," asked Marduk, "how dare so many Jews leave their homes to come hither in such times as these? The Samaritans and other enemies of your nation must take advantage of this."
"No," replied Ben Yusef; "our God, who stopped the mouths of the lions when our prophet Daniel was thrown to them by Nebuchadnezzar, stops the wrath of our enemies at such times. When our three annual festivals were set up, ages ago, in the days of Moses, Jehovah promised: 'Neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice in the year.' I leave my own little girl alone in my tent in far Galilee, fearing no evil for her until I return."
All night long joy echoed from the walls and over the hills about Jerusalem. With the first pale shimmer of daylight over Olivet came a hush. The people stood by their booths, with faces turned towards the city, in silent expectation. At length a sweet note floated out from the temple precinct.
Ben Yusef pointed to the distant forms of two priests who, leaving the temple, advanced eastward across the court, carrying great silver trumpets. Reaching the wall, they suddenly turned their backs to the east, and shouted in loud tones these words: "Our fathers once turned their back to the sanctuary, and their faces to the east, and worshipped the sun-god: but we will lift our eyes to Jehovah."
Soon a thick column of smoke rose from the great altar in the temple court, and outspread above the sacred precinct like a canopy, its edges fraying in the scarcely moving air, and, as Marduk said, "floating some fringes of its blessing to the good heathen beyond."
"Yes," replied Ben Yusef, "for during the week of festivity seventy bullocks will be offered—a round number for all the nations of the world."