You might think The Innkeeper’s Wife is long, but it's 20,000 words shorter than my original draft! I knew I had to cut something—a lot of somethings. Like a movie that posts out-takes on YouTube, in the coming weeks I will post here some favorite scenes that got cut.
The temptation for a historical writer is to share all their fun research even though it doesn’t move the story forward. I loved imagining what I had learned about the Feast of Tabernacles and John 7:37-52 from Alfred Edersheim’s 19th-century work The Temple based on Talmudic accounts of Second Temple worship.
In my first draft I had Hadassah coming to Yerushalaim with Shimon between chapters 42 and 43 of The Innkeeper’s Wife to hear Yeshua preach during the autumn Feast of Tabernacles.
“Let’s go to the temple,” Hadassah said when we were through the gate. “I want to see the temple.” Her eyes sparkled. “Usually it’s your mother and Tirza who bring our things to the market—your mother won’t let your sister out of her sight—and I stay with the children.”
We climbed the slopping tunnel to the Court of the Nations. Around us the crowds recited the traditional Hallel psalms the inn guests had danced to last night, waving citrons and palm branches and myrtle and willow twigs.
When Israel came out of Egypt,
Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,
Judah became God’s sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.
It was almost time for the water ceremony. The crowd had been up all night singing and dancing in the light of the four huge golden candlesticks in the courtyard and uncounted torches, but joy shone on every face. I pushed forward, dragging Hadassah after me, until I found a place where she could see. Her face was alight.
Levites stood on the steps up to the court of Israel, playing harps, lyres, cymbals, and trumpets. We clasped hands and joined in the ecstatic singing of psalm after psalm.
The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;
the mountains leaped like rams,
the hills like lambs.
I couldn’t take my eyes off my wife as the priests circled the altar seven times carrying a golden vessel of water from the Pool of Siloam. The music rose to a deafening pitch. Hadassah squeezed my hand. Then as one priest poured the usual libation of wine over the altar, another poured water from the golden vessel, and our prayers for rain and fruitful fields in the coming year rose to Adonai as the water ran down the stones of the altar and mixed with the wine of joy and the blood of the sacrifice.
As one, the congregation drew in its breath at this climax to eight days of feasting and delirious celebration. Tears ran down Hadassah’s cheeks, and I realized I, too, was crying.
In that silence, a voice rang out.
“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.”
Hadassah whirled to see who was speaking, but I knew that voice.
“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
Hadassah glanced at me.
I nodded. “Yeshua.”
She clung to my hand and listened with rapt attention.
“I am the light of the world,” Yeshua said. “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
He raised his arms to the torches surrounding us. They were gutting out, no longer needed in the brilliant light of the autumn day.
Just then a disturbance arose near the north gate. The temple guard marched purposefully across the marble courtyard from the hall where the Council met.
I grabbed Hadassah’s arm. “We’ve got to get Yeshua out of here.” We pushed through the crowd toward the preacher. But we were too late. The soldiers reached Solomon’s Porch and surrounded us. We were boxed in.
But they did nothing. They seemed content to watch.
And listen.
“I’m with you for only a short time,” Yeshua was saying, “and then I’m going to the one who sent me. You’ll look for me, but you’ll not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”
A tall thin scholar near me in long robes crossed his arms and muttered to his companion, “Where does this man intend to go that we can’t find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks?”
I didn’t like his tone. He didn’t need to know we’d already been to Tyre and Sidon and Caesarea Philippi. And it wasn’t just to our scattered people that Yeshua had preached.
“If there’s trouble,” I whispered to Hadassah, “you get out and go home. I’ll have to protect my rabbi.”
“He’s amazing,” she said.
But there was no trouble that day.
The guard listened as the sun grew hot, reflected off the marble walls and pavement. “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the commander murmured to his officers. They turned, and marched back the way they had come.
I looked after them and shook my head. “‘My time is not yet here,’” I quoted Yeshua.
“Not yet,” Yudas murmured. “But soon.” His voice was full of determination.
