EZRA

XV. Ezra

9 5Then, at the evening sacrifice, I rose from my self-abasement, with my tunic and cloak torn, and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the LORD my God 6 and prayed:

“O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. 7 From the days of our forefathers until now, our guilt has been great. Because of our sins, we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings, as it is today.

8 But now, for a brief moment, the LORD our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a firm place in his sanctuary, and so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage. 9 Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia: He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins, and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. 

Ezra: Chapter 9:5-9 (The Holy Bible, New International Version)

In this chapter we continue the story from chapter 9-1 Samuel-where we left Mrs. Martha Matombo being raped by David, whom she had regarded as her future son-in-law.

1

When David had “finished with her”, Martha continued to lie down on the carpet, still sobbing and in great disbelief that she had actually been a victim of rape committed by somebody she had trusted completely as a future son-in-law. After a period of almost an hour, she got up and went to the bathroom to clean herself up. She scrubbed herself so hard and for such a long time as if such action would undo the horrible act she had been forced to be part of.

The thought of contacting the police did not occur to her at all. All she was thinking of was what she was going to say to her daughter, Elizabeth. What was she going to say to her? She had no choice, really, but to tell her daughter that her fiancé had raped her. What was Martha going to say to the people at the church? The shame of it! Would some people, knowing their close relationship at the church choir, think that she had somehow encouraged him and eventually led him to act in the way he did?

She thought about her predicament for a long time and finally decided that she was not going to say anything to anybody. She could not bear the thought of people knowing that David had raped her. By extension, she decided she was not going to say anything about this to her daughter. Although Elizabeth deserved to be aware of something as grave as this involving somebody she had been going out with, Martha resolved that she would not tell her daughter.

2

Elizabeth came home from work that evening before her father did. Despite her resolve, Martha started sobbing the moment she saw her daughter.

“What is the matter, Mama? Why are you crying?” Elizabeth asked her mother. Martha kept on sobbing without saying anything. Elizabeth, on her part, without knowing what was wrong with her mother, also started crying. So mother and daughter hugged each other, both sobbing but the daughter doing so without knowing why her mother had started crying.

At last, Martha stopped sobbing. “It was David...David”, she sobbed. “David! What about David? What has happened to David? I did not manage to speak to him today. Has something happened to him? Is he hurt?” panicked Elizabeth.

“No, no. He is alright,” Martha said. “He came to see me this morning and said he was breaking off the engagement. He said he has been seeing some other girl and he wants to marry this other girl. He could not bring himself to tell you and came to me. I am sorry, Liz but he was adamant that he no longer wants to see you,” Martha finished.

Elizabeth looked at her mother in disbelief. “Why would he do such a thing? What other girl? We have been seeing each other almost on a daily basis. What other girl, Mother? Why didn’t he come to tell me himself?”

“I don’t know, my dear but this is what he said to me this morning,” Martha lied to her daughter.

“I am going to call him now, Mother. How dare he break off the engagement in this manner? Why come to talk to my mother? Is there something you are not telling me, Mother? Is David ill? Is he sick? Yes, that’s it, isn’t it Mother? David is sick. Is he HIV positive? Is that what he actually said to you, Mother?” Elizabeth rambled on and on.

“No, no, don’t call him. He was adamant about that. It’s probably best this way, my dear. You will get over him.”

This was all a bit too much for Elizabeth and she rushed out of the room and ran to her own bedroom where she locked herself in.

3

Martha sat alone in the lounge, thinking. Now why had she made up all these lies? What if David was still determined to continue seeing Liz? No that was unthinkable. Not after what he had done that morning. In fact, Martha was going to ensure that David did not come anywhere near her daughter again. She was also going to make sure that David did not come to church as well. Yes, that was what was going to happen after she, Martha, had talked to him and demanded all these things. He would be grateful that she had not decided to report him to the police. He would do whatever she wanted? Yes, she was going to call him now.

When Martha got through to David, she was shocked to hear him pretending that nothing had happened that morning. In fact, he had the gall to talk about the wedding arrangements. The “stupid, foolish man” was pretending that he had not come to the house where he committed a despicable act. He was now actually asking to talk to Elizabeth! Martha was beside herself with fury.

“David, how can you pretend that you did not come to this house this morning? I want you to do what I am telling you to do or I will go to the police,” Martha shouted into the phone. On the other end, David sounded quite calm and said, “I don’t know what you are talking about Mother. Did somebody do these terrible things to you? You really should have reported the matter to the police if it actually happened. You say it happened in the morning. Even if it actually happened, which I doubt, the police will wonder why you are only reporting the matter now. Are you okay, Mother? Is Elizabeth there? Let me speak to her. Does she know about all this you are telling me?”

Martha was apoplectic with rage. Who did this man think he was? He cannot get away with this? But what really was she going to do about it? If David continued to pretend that nothing had happened that morning, then what could she actually do? People will think she is the one who is mad, especially after making up the crazy story she had told her daughter. David could prove that there was no other girl and wonder what had gone into Martha’s head for her to come up with such a story?

Honestly, what would she do about it? What could she do?

The next chapter-Nehemiah- will be published not later than Sunday, 3 April, 2011

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2 CHRONICLES

Chapter 14 of the book-“NON-CONTRADICTORY CONTRADICTIONS”

XIV. 2 Chronicles

6 Then Solomon said, “The LORD has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; 2 I have built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.”

3While the whole assembly of Israel was standing there, the king turned around and blessed them. 4

Then he said:

“Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, who with his hands has fulfilled what he promised with his mouth to my father David. For he said, 5 ‘Since the day I brought my people out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city in any tribe of Israel to have a temple built for my Name to be there, nor have I chosen anyone to be the leader over my people Israel. 6 But now I have chosen Jerusalem for my Name to be there, and I have chosen David to rule my people Israel.’

 

2 Chronicles: Chapter 6:1-6 (The Holy Bible, New International Version)

In this chapter we continue the story from chapter 8-Ruth-where we left our main character, Elizabeth watching her “grandmother” who was not her biological grandmother, die in hospital.

1

After the death of her grandmother, Elizabeth knew she now had to make a final decision on what she was going to do with her new-found-knowledge on her real parents who were both alive but languishing in jail. She resolved that she would go and see them both, then make a final decision on whether she was going to have any sort of relationship with either her mother or father or both.

Having decided to see these “two strangers” who had brought her into the world under such shameful circumstances, she wasted no more time and quickly contacted the prison authorities at the two prisons to make the necessary arrangements. She thought it would be a good idea to see the father first as she assumed he might be the stronger of the two and she did not the first encounter to be tearful one. She thought the mother was most likely to cry at some stage during the visit and for that reason she decided she would see the man first.

There were no complications at all with her request to visit both her parents and the very next Saturday, she found herself at the men’s prison waiting with other people to be escorted to the visiting area. She did not know what she was going to say to this man who was her father. After having gone through most of your life thinking that your parents had “long gone to be with the LORD”, it was quite discontenting to then suddenly find out that “not only were both parents alive, but they also happened to be murderers serving life sentences in jail”. But she needed to see them for her own peace of mind. What sort of people were they? Did they regret what they had done? Did they regret having brought a child into this world? What sort of people were they?

When the father was brought to the booth in which she had been waiting to see him, she was surprised to see “a normal healthy man” before her. Perhaps because of what she had seen on television, she had imagined certain characteristics that befit a murderer. After a casual greeting to each other, they sat silent for a long time, just looking at each other. Then without warning, the thing that Elizabeth had dreaded would happen on meeting her mother, happened here with the father. The man just started weeping and saying, “Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me”, over and over again. It was quite painful to watch and Elizabeth herself was now coming close to losing her composure although she had been determined not to let herself cry in front of these people.

When he finally managed to get hold of himself, they agreed that it was best for Elizabeth to stay away from both parents and not have any sort of relationship with either one as they were unlikely to be released from prison for the rest of their lives. As Elizabeth left the prison she wondered whether she should still go and see her mother at the women’s prison the following weekend.

2

By the time the following weekend arrived, Elizabeth had fortified herself enough in her mind to be able to go through with what she thought was going to be a nasty experience with her mother. Surprisingly for Elizabeth, the mother turned out to be quite strong emotionally. She did seem to have been pleased to see Elizabeth but she was quite calm about it. She did not shed a tear and there was Elizabeth thinking that the mother would be the one to fall into hysterics.

Although the visit went very well, her mother agreed with what the father had suggested that there be no further contact with their daughter as no fruitful relationship could now arise under the circumstances.

Elizabeth left the prison and was certain that, in her mind, “both her parents were going to die again”. She was going to go back to what she had always thought, which was that her parents had long been dead, having been both killed in a car accident. It was best this way.

She had inherited a large estate from Grandma Johnson, and she was now a very wealthy young woman. She was, however, determined to continue with her studies and she enrolled for a post graduate course in Business Studies at the local college. She had obtained an undergraduate Economics degree in the previous year.

3

During the second week after starting her classes, she met a very attractive young man who was also a post graduate student. This young man was studying Accountancy and it was in one of the accounting courses that they met. They soon started dating and Elizabeth was gratified to find out that the young man, whose name was David, came from a very wealthy family. One of the things that had been worrying Elizabeth of late, was that she could end up meeting and falling in love with someone who would turn out to be interested only in her money. This did not look like it was going to be a problem with David as he came from a very rich family.

The two years required for completion of the Business Studies course went very quickly and Elizabeth was happy to have acquired a Masters degree in Business Studies. David also left the college and joined a firm of Chartered Accountants where he was to do his articles. His romance with Elizabeth was quite serious and they had been going out for a period of almost two years. David thought it was now time to propose marriage and this is what he did.

To David’s surprise though, Elizabeth did not say “Yes” right away. She needed time to think about it. What was there to think about, David wondered? Did they not both love each other? He knew he loved her and wanted to marry her. He had also assumed those were the very same feelings that Elizabeth shared. They were already lovers and nothing had prepared David for this hesitation from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had her reasons for hesitating to agree to marriage. A secret of hers was bothering her. She was bothered by the fact that she had not told David about the “true circumstances” of her birth. She had not told David that her biological parents were murderers who were still alive and in jail. These things bothered her. Up to now, she had thought that she had come to terms with the idea that “her parents had died in a car accident soon after she had been born”. This is what she had told David.

But now that David had proposed marriage, it bothered her that she had not shared her secret with him. What was she going to do? In the end she resolved to tell David the whole story because she knew that she would not be at peace if she did not share the entire sordid details.

She chose her moment and words carefully but she was surprised at how calm David was when she finished telling him the story. In fact, David was relieved to find out that her hesitation had had nothing to do with her feelings towards him. He was quite happy to now know what had caused the hesitation and he was quite understanding about it.

It was only when David told the story to her mother that something of concern crept back into his relationship with Elizabeth. David’s mother said she also had something to tell him. She had not withheld this information from David because it had never seemed to be relevant to him in any way. But now it seemed it was now very relevant.

David’s mother had a first cousin who was serving a life sentence for murder. She and her lover had been convicted of killing two people, one of whom was David’s mother’s cousin’s husband. What David’s mother did not know was that her cousin had given birth to a baby girl when she was already in prison. And from what David had now told her, Elizabeth was the daughter of David’s mother’s cousin. David’s mother had refused to recognise her relationship with her cousin after the horrible events of more than twenty years ago.

David was quite shocked to hear this. Of course, her mother was right that the issue of her cousin had all along been an irrelevant story to David’s upbringing. If David had not met and fallen in love with Elizabeth, the issue might not have come up at all.

What was David going to do about this story that her mother had just told her? Of course, he had to tell Elizabeth. Was this going to affect their relationship in any way? He did not think so but the sooner Elizabeth knew about this the better. In fact, David soon realised that it meant that he was actually related to Elizabeth.

The next chapter-Ezra- will be published not later than Sunday, 20 March, 2011

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