<p>Nebuchadnezzar doesn't believe Ben Sira actually knows what's in his garden. So the king proposes a test. He'll blindfold the boy, march his army past in separate battalions, and Ben Sira will have to identify which group contains the king.</p>
<p>The first troop thunders past with noise and shouting, shaking the ground. "Is the king here?" asks the guard watching Ben Sira. "No." The second troop charges by with cavalry flanking all sides. "No." The third marches past with chanting and music. "No."</p>
<p>Then a fourth group passes. In silence. Not even the horses' hooves can be heard. Just a thin, quiet stillness.</p>
<p>"That's the king," Ben Sira says. "And he's standing right in front of me."</p>
<p>They remove the blindfold. He's right.</p>
<p>The explanation Ben Sira gives is devastating. He recognized Nebuchadnezzar's presence by the silence because the king, in his arrogance, imitates God. Just as God appeared to the prophet Elijah not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in a kol d'mamah dakah -- a still, small voice -- Nebuchadnezzar surrounds himself with the same quiet grandeur. "You are not equal to God," Ben Sira tells him bluntly. "But your pride has made you comparable to the Holy One's authority, and that's why God is angry with you."</p>
<p>When Nebuchadnezzar protests that God has made him great, Ben Sira quotes (Obadiah 1:4): "If you go as high as an eagle..." The verse ends with a fall. According to the Alphabet of Ben Sira, composed between 700 and 1000 CE, God raises the proud only so the crash will be louder. Furious, Nebuchadnezzar plots to poison the boy -- and the story takes an even wilder turn from there.</p>