Town wakes rapidly. Merchants set up shops. Builders, masons, and metal smiths labor. Field workers tear away at pesky weeds. Music drifts from fine houses. Women and children dance in the streets.
Enoch has developed the art of the javelin. As violence increases, such weapons bring security and peace. More men are using them to kill birds, small animals, and fish for food. Enoch’s darts are the best. He can throw them straight and far. His fame spreads.
His steady hands hone a metal tip at his worktable. Well-formed muscles flexing on sun darkened skin still carry the perfections that God created so many years before his time. He and Orna have work, food, privacy, and each other.
With a twinkle in his eye a smile curls upward on his lips. Like everyone else they eat and drink and see others marry and have children. Everyone believes in the joining of one woman and one man to become one flesh. God told them this was the way he had designed their bodies and souls in creation.
As Enoch steps back admiring a finished piece in his hands his thoughts take control.
“This is an instrument of death. Should I encourage people to kill?”
He knows that his best tools are the darts, often used to offer a sacrifice of the lamb that God had asked them to bring.
By faith, with child-like obedience many people pour out the blood. The best tool takes the life of the best lamb. Parts are burned. Flesh is shared. They do it with trust believing this is the only way they can approach a holy God.
“People are using my instruments to kill people.”
Hatred and violence grows and festers like the gash in his side.
Enoch had hurt himself just a few days before when he had gone with Haran to gather branches for new javelins. The wound is healing slowly. He is not sure if their growing disagreement about the altar is healing at all.
The one he loved saw it first.
“There must be more to life than we are experiencing. Look at the street. People walk by as if they are in control of their own destiny.”
She speaks slowly as they share a simple piece of bread with cheese and wine. Self-made men and prancing women surround them. There is no thought of God; most live for the desires of the flesh. The altar is not what it had been.
Haran brings hardwood branches to the shop and drops them in a bin as the sun stretches toward the western sky.
“Don’t miss the festival this time like you did a month ago.”
“We are going toward the setting sun for a few days and will not come.”
Enoch carefully answers his cousin.
How long could they make excuses?
Everyone must come to the festival. They are essential in the community. Business depends on them. Relationships are strengthened.
If Enoch and Orna tell the truth, they would say the gatherings which are so important to everyone else make them feel uneasy.