Jacob Led the Charge When Nineveh's Army Barred His Road

Two of them had leveled a city. Simeon and Levi had walked into Shechem while its men lay helpless and left nothing of it standing, and every people within a week's march did the arithmetic. If two of Jacob's sons could unmake a walled town in a single afternoon, what would the whole household do to a kingdom.

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The Kings Did the Arithmetic After Shechem

So Jacob loaded his family and his herds and turned toward Hebron, toward his father Isaac, and after eight days on the road the arithmetic answered him. An army came down out of Nineveh, sent to squeeze tribute from the world and bend every nation under one crown. When its captains heard whose caravan this was, they stopped caring about tribute. They wanted the family dead.

Jacob looked at his sons and did not tell them to run. "Fear not," he said. "God will be your helper, and He will fight for you against your enemies." Then he set a condition on the victory before it was won. "Put away from you the strange gods in your possession, purify yourselves, and wash your garments clean." They buried what they carried, they washed, and they took up their bows.

Jacob Struck First on the Road to His Father

The old man led the charge himself. In the first rush he cut down twelve thousand of the lighter troops, and when the Ninevite king threw his heavier ranks forward, Jacob set his twelve sons in a line with deliberate gaps between them and stood out ahead with sword and bow. He fought to the left and to the right. Two thousand men closed a ring around him, and he leapt clear over their heads and was simply gone from the middle of them. By the time the sun dropped he had killed two hundred and twenty thousand.

Then ninety thousand fresh soldiers came on, and his sword broke in his hand. He knelt, ground stones to powder between his palms, and flung the dust into their faces until they clawed at their own eyes and could not see to strike. Only darkness ended that day.

Judah's Face Became a Lion's

At first light Judah stepped in front of his father. "Father, thou art tired and exhausted," he said. "Let me fight the enemy alone." Jacob knew what his fourth son was. "Judah, my son, I know thy strength and thy bravery, that they are exceeding great, so that none in the world is like unto thee therein." Judah went in, and his face was the face of a lion. The Ninevites who saw it up close broke before his sword reached them. He killed a hundred and twenty thousand seasoned men, and when Levi came up beside him the enemy went down in rows like grain before a reaper.

Judah killed until his body failed him, eighty thousand and ninety-six of them, and then he could not lift his arm, and Zebulon took his place and mowed down eighty thousand more. When his strength came back Judah threw back his head and roared, and a whole army ran from the sound. Issachar and Gad drove another host into a cave, sealed its mouth with fire, and killed the ones the smoke pushed back out. Dan and Naphtali ran to their brothers, and still the Ninevites kept coming.

Water Broke From Judah's Finger and the Ninevites Ran

On the third morning the reinforcements arrived like the sand of the sea, past counting, and all twelve brothers broke them together and chased the survivors down. But the survivors turned. "Why should we flee," they said. "Let us fight them now, while they are weary." In the press they cut Judah off from the others. Jacob put his fingers to his mouth and whistled once, and Judah heard it across the field and answered, and his brothers tore through the line to reach him.

Judah was choking with thirst. He drove one finger into the dry ground, and water climbed out of the earth after it, and he drank where he knelt. The Ninevites watched a man pull a spring from the dirt with his hand, and something went out of them. "I will flee before these terrifying warriors," one of them cried, "for God fights on their side." They ran and did not turn again.

When it was over the brothers counted themselves and came up one short. Joseph was still out on the field, alone, trading blows with the last of them. Naphtali found him there, and the two finished it between them, and only then did Jacob turn the caravan back toward Hebron and his waiting father, as though the road had never been anything but a road.

The First of the Wars That Would Not End

It was the first of them, not the last. The hatred that woke at Shechem outlived every man who carried it onto that field. Years later, at the cave of Machpelah, Esau came to bar Jacob's burial with his own quarrel, and the sons answered him at the mouth of the grave and left forty of Esau's men dead in the dust. Joseph ran down Zepho and fifty of his fighters and dragged them to Egypt in chains, and when the sons of Seir and the children of the East marched to free them, six hundred thousand of them stayed behind on the field outside Egypt.

The whole world had caught the fever. Moab and Midian turned on each other until a Moabite caught in Midian was killed on sight and a Midianite in Moab fared no better, and kings of Edom and kings of Kittim rose, swore alliances, betrayed them, and went down under other kings. Through all of it the one family that came out of Shechem kept winning, because a single whistle across a battlefield still brought twelve brothers running to one another before it ever brought them to the sword.