How are the Mighty fallen

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King Saul and his Desert Crawlers had met the Philistines at Michmash and routed the proudest army between Assyria and Egypt. The news had reached Ahinoam, Siren of Crete and Queen of Israel, as she traveled from the capital of Gibeah to the battle site. She approached the camp in a little ox-drawn cart with big wooden wheels which rumbled like a handmill grinding grain. (Horses were Hittite beasts, treacherous beasts, unfriendly to Israelites, untrainable, so it seemed to them. Camels belonged to the Midianites, as scrofulous as their masters. Oxen were slow but dependable.) Three attendants, an old woman, Naomi, who remembered Samson, and twin boys with little to remember but much to anticipate, accompanied her. All of them were much too tired to speak; it was hard even to walk, and from time to time Ahinoam had changed places with Naomi and allowed her to ride in the cart.

Ahinoam was prepared to find a celebration; she found a pervasive and unexplainable gloom. It was not that the men resembled ragged farmers instead of rugged warriors. She was used to the simple goatskin tunics they wore into battle, the cowhide shields and the shepherd staffs metamorphosed into javelins; accustomed also to the odor of the farm, the dirt, leather, and dung. But dishevelment was not the same as defeat. In the days when Saul had smitten the besieging Ammonites and freed the city of Jabesh-Gilead, bone-weary men had raised their voices in psalms to the glory of Yahweh and Saul. Today, in spite of a greater victory, despair was as tangible in the air as the brackish winds from the Dead Sea.

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