The Wedding at Zion

And then there is a wedding.

And the violin that has wept for two thousand years now does what it does at every Jewish wedding: it bursts into a freylekhs, a dance, faster and faster, the bow bouncing on the string, the feet of the guests off the ground — for there is a limit to how long joy can keep sitting still.

This whole series began with a bride and a crown — book one — and the old serpent who counterfeited the crown and the bride and seized the throne — book two. And now, at the end of the third book, all the lines converge on one feast. The bride from the nations, who for two days kept the lamp in safekeeping. The mother from Israel, who passed through three wildernesses and on the third day was raised up. Not two brides. Not two peoples. Not two plans that God knotted together somewhere halfway. One olive tree, always. One menorah, now at last complete again, with the old central stem and the grafted-in arms, and all its lamps burning at once, and not one ever goes out again.

Think of Gomer, all the way back at the beginning of this book. The woman who ran away, sold herself, ended up on the market — and whom her husband, against all honor and all logic, bought back and brought home and said: you are Mine again. That was never only a story about a prophet and his unfaithful wife. It was the whole history in miniature. Israel run away, lost among the nations, on the market of history — and a God who pays the price, the whole price, and brings her home. "I will betroth you to Me forever [...] in righteousness, in lovingkindness, and in mercy. I will say to Not-My-people: you are My people, and he shall say: my God" (Hosea 2:19, 2:23). The name that was a punishment — Not-My-people — is turned back. On the third day no one is called Not-My-people any longer.

There is something in the creation week that I have held back until now, because it belongs here and nowhere else. At each of the six days stands the same closing line: "and the evening and the morning were the first day [...] the second [...] the sixth." Evening and morning, evening and morning, six times. But at the seventh day, the sabbath, the day of rest — that line is missing. There is no "and the evening was" at the seventh day. No evening. No end. The third day of Hosea, which is the seventh day of creation, the great sabbath of the world, is the first day in all of history that knows no evening anymore. Two days of weeping, and no evening anymore at the third.

The wanderer is home. The lamp burns again in Zion, and this time it never goes out. The violin has carried throughout this whole book a voice that shrilled and moaned, that in the deep valleys nearly broke and on the high peaks nearly rejoiced; now the player lets the bow sink, for where the feast grows so great, even the music holds its breath for a moment. And in that silence, for the first time in two thousand years, there is no one left on the way. Everyone has arrived. Everyone is home. And it is morning, and it stays morning, and the sun that rose over Zion never sets again.

On the third day.