The house of Simon Barlevi was gray,
and in shape an oblong. It had a flat roof laid
with a plaster of lime, about which was a fretwork
of open tiles. Beneath, for doorway, was a recess,
surmounted by an arch and covered with a layer of
mud. On each side was a room.
In the recess, sheltered from the
sun and visited by the breeze, Simon stood. His
garments were white, and where they were not they had
been neatly chalked. On the border of his skirt
and sleeves were the regulation fringes, and on his
forehead and about his left arm the phylacteries which
Pharisees affect. He was not pleasant to the eye,
but he was virtuous and a strict observer of the Law.
In the room at his left were mats
and painted stools, set in the manner customary when
guests are awaited. For on that day Simon Barlevi
was to give a little feast, to which he had bidden
his friends and also a rabbi whom he had listened
to in the synagogue, and with whose ideas he did not
at all agree. Save for the mats and stools, and
a lamp of red clay, the room was bare.
In front of the house was a bit of
ground enclosed by a hedge of stones; and now as Simon
stood in the recess a guest appeared.
“Reulah!” he exclaimed, “the Lord
be with you.”
And Reulah answering, as etiquette
required, “Unto you be peace, and to your house
be peace, and unto all you have be peace,” the
two friends clasped hands raised them as though to
kiss them, then each withdrawing kissed his own hand,
and struck it on his forehead.
Singularly enough, host and guest
looked much alike. Simon had the appearance of
one conscious of and strong in his own rectitude, while
Reulah seemed humbler and more effaced. Otherwise
there was not a pin to choose between them.
To Simon’s face had come an
expression of perplexity in which there was zeal.
“I was thinking, Reulah,”
he announced, “of the rabbi who is to break
bread with us to-day. His teaching does not comfort
me.”
Reulah was unlatching his shoes.
“Nor me,” he interjected.
“On questions of purity and
impurity he seems unscrupulously negligent. I
have heard that he is a glutton and a wine-bibber.
I have heard that he despises the washing of the hands.”
“Whoso does,” Reulah threw
back, “will be rooted out of the world.”
Simon nodded; a smile of protracted
amiability hovered in the corners of his mouth.
For a moment he played with his beard.
“I think,” he added, “that
he will find here food in plenty, and counsel as well.”
Reulah closed his eyes benignly, and
Simon, in a falsetto which he affected when he desired
to impress, continued in gentle menace:
“But I have certain questions
to put to him. Whether water from an unclean
vessel defiles that which is clean. Whether the
flesh of a dead body alone defiles, or the skin and
bones as well. I want to see how he will answer
that. Then I may ask his opinion on points of
the ritual. Should the incense be lighted before
the high-priest appears or as he does so. Is or
is not the Sabbath broken by the killing of the Paschal
lamb? Why is it lawful to take tithe of corn
and wine and oil, and not of anise, cummin, and peppers?
In swearing by the Temple, should one not first swear
by the gold on the Temple? and in swearing by the
altar, should one or should one not first swear by
the sacrifices on it? These things, since he preaches,
he must know. If he does not
And Simon looked at his friend as
who should say: What is there wanting in me?
“If I may be taught another
duty I will observe it,” said Reulah, sweetly.
At this evidence of meekness Simon
grunted. Two other guests were approaching.
On the edges of their tallith were tassels made of
four threads which had been drawn through an eyelet
and doubled to make eight. Seven of these threads
were of equal length, but the eighth was longer, and,
twisted into five knots, represented the five books
of the Law. The right hand on the left breast,
they saluted their host, and placing in turn a hand
under his beard, they kissed it. A buzz of inquiries
followed, interrupted by the coming and embracing
of newer guests, the unloosing of sandals, the washing
of feet.
As they assembled, one drew Simon
aside and whispered importantly. Simon’s
eyes dilated, astonishment lifted him, visibly, like
a lash, and his hands trembled above his head.
“Have you heard,” he exclaimed
to the others “have you heard that
the Nazarene whom I invited here, and who pretends
to be a prophet, allowed his followers to pluck corn
on the Sabbath, to thresh it even, and defended and
approved their violation of the Law? Have you
heard it? Is it true?”
Reulah quaked as one stricken by palsy.
“On the Sabbath!” he moaned. “On
the Sabbath! Why, I would not send a message on
Wednesday, lest perchance it should be delivered on
the Sabbath day. Surely it cannot be.”
But on that point the others were
certain. They were all aware of the scandal;
one had been an eye-witness, another had heard the
Nazarene assert that he was “Lord of the Day.”
“This is monstrous!” Simon cried.
“He declared,” the eye-witness
continued, “that the Sabbath was made for man,
and not man for the Sabbath.”
“It is monstrous!” Simon
repeated. “The command to do no manner of
work is absolute and emphatic. The killing of
a flea on the Sabbath is as heinous as the butchering
of a bullock. The preservation of life itself
is inhibited. Moses had the son of Shelomith
stoned to death for gathering sticks on it. Shammai
occupied six days of the week in thinking how he could
best observe it. It is unlawful to wear a false
tooth on the Sabbath, and if a tooth ache it is unlawful
to rinse the mouth with vinegar.”
“Yet,” objected Reulah,
“it is lawful to hold the vinegar in the mouth
provided you swallow it afterward.”
No one paid any attention to him.
Simon’s indignation increased. Of the thirty-nine
Abhoth he quoted twelve; he showed that the Nazarene
had violated each one of these prohibitions against
labor; he showed, too, that by his subsequent speech
and bearing he had practically scoffed at the Toldoth,
at the synagogue which had drawn it up as well.
“If the Sadducees were not in
power, Jerusalem should hear of this. As it is
Whatever resolution he may have intended
to express remained unuttered. A silence fell
upon his lips; his guests drew back. At the step
stood the Nazarene, behind him his treasurer, Judas
of Kerioth. For a second only Jesus hesitated.
He stooped, undid his shoes, and moved to where Simon
stood. The latter bowed constrainedly.
“Master,” he said, “we awaited you.”
At this his friends retreated into
the little room. Reulah reached the middle seat
of the central mat first and held it, his nostrils
quivering at the envy of the others.
Preceded by their host, Jesus and
Judas found places near together, and, the usual ablutions
performed, the customary prayers recited, lay, the
upper part of the body supported by the left arm, the
head raised, the limbs outstretched.
On the stools were dishes of stewed
lentils, milk, and cakes of mashed locusts. Reulah
ate with the tips of his lips, greedily, like a goat.
Judas, too, ate with an air of hunger. The Master
broke bread absently, his thoughts on other things.
These thoughts Simon interrupted.
“Rabbi” and
to his wide mouth came the sneer of one propounding
a riddle already solved “it is not
meet, is it, to thresh on the Sabbath day? Yet
since you permit your followers to do so, how are we
to distinguish between what is lawful and what is
not?”
The Master raised his eyes. The
dawn was in them, high noon as well.
“Show yourself a tried money-changer.
Choose that which is good metal, reject that which
is bad.”
Simon blinked as at a sudden light.
“But,” he persisted, “in
seeking to observe the Law, there is not a jot or
tittle in it that can be rejected.”
With an acquiescence that was both
vague and melancholy, Jesus looked the Pharisee in
the face.
“Seek those things that are
great, and little things will be added unto you
He would have said more, perhaps,
but a woman who had entered from the recess approached
circuitously, and kneeling beside him let a tear, long
as a pearl, fall upon his unsandalled feet.
Judas’ heart bounded; he glared
at her, his eyes dilating like a leopard preparing
to spring. At once he was back in the circus,
gazing into the perils and the splendors of a woman’s
face, telling himself with reiterated insistence that
to hold her to him would be the birthday of his life;
and here, within reach of his hand, was she whom in
the din of the chariots he had recognized as the one
woman in all the world, and who for one moment the
day before had lain unconscious in his arms.
Reulah sat motionless, his mouth agape,
a finger extended. “The paramour of Pandera,”
he stammered at last; and lowering his eyes, he looked
at her covetously from beneath the lids.
Simon, too, sat motionless. There
was rage in his expression, hate even that
hatred which the beautiful excites in the base.
Time and again he had seen her; she was a byword with
him; from the height of her residence she looked down
on his mean gray walls; her luxury had been an insult
to his abstinence; and with that zest which a small
nature takes in the humiliation of its superior, he
determined, in spite of her manifest abjection, to
humiliate her still more.
“If this man,” he confided
to his neighbor, “has in him anything of that
which goes to the making of a prophet, he will divine
what manner of woman she is. If he does not,
I will denounce them both.” And nourishing
his hate he waited yet a while.
The Master seemed depressed.
The great secret which in all the world he alone possessed
may have weighed with him. But he turned to Mary
and looked at her. As he looked she bent yet
lower. The marvel of her hair was unconfined;
it fell about her in tangling streams of gold and flame,
while on his feet there fell from her tears such as
no woman ever shed before. In the era of primitive
hospitality the daughters of kings had not disdained
to unlatch the sandals of their fathers’ guests;
but now, at the feet of Mercy, for the first time
Repentance knelt. And still the tears continued,
unstanched and undetained. Grief, something keener
still perhaps, had claimed her as its own. She
bent lower. Then Misery looked up at Compassion.
The Master stretched his hand.
For a moment it rested on her head. She quivered
and clutched at her throat; and as he withdrew that
hand, in which all panaceas were, from her gown she
took a little box, opened it, and dropping the contents
where the tears had fallen, with a sudden movement
she caught her hair and poured its lava on his feet.
An aroma of beckoning oases filled
the small room, passed into the recess, mounted to
the roof, pervaded and penetrated it, and escaped to
the sky above.
And still she wept. Judas no
longer saw her tears, he heard them. They fell
swiftly one after another, like the ripple of the rain.
A sob broke from her, but in it was something which
foretokened peace, the sob which comes to those who
have conceived a despairing hope, and suddenly intercept
its fulfilment. Her hands trembled; the little
box fell from her and broke. The noise it made
exorcised the silence.
The Master turned to his host.
“I have a word to say to you.”
Simon stroked his beard and bowed.
“There was once a man who had
two debtors. One owed him five hundred pence,
the other fifty. Both were poor, and because of
their poverty the debt of each he forgave.”
For an instant Jesus paused and seemed
to muse; then, with that indulgence which was to illuminate
the world, “Tell me, Simon,” he inquired,
“which was the more grateful?”
Simon assumed an air of perplexity,
and glanced cunningly from one guest to another.
Presently he laughed outright.
“Why, the one who owed the most, of course.”
Reulah suppressed a giggle. By
the expression of the others it was patent that to
them also the jest appealed. Only Judas did not
seem to have heard; he sat bolt upright, fumbling
Mary with his violent eyes.
The Master made a gesture of assent,
and turned to where Mary crouched. She was staring
at him with that look which the magnetized share with
animals.
“You see her?”
Straightening himself, he leaned on his elbow and
scrutinized his host.
“Simon, I am your guest.
When I entered here there was no kiss to greet me,
there was no oil for my head, no water for my feet.
But this woman whom you despise has not ceased to
embrace them. She has washed them with her tears,
anointed them with nard, and dried them with her
hair. Her sins, it may be, are many, but, Simon,
they are forgiven
Simon, Reulah, the others, muttered
querulously. To forgive sins was indeed an attribute
which no one, save the Eternal, could arrogate to
himself.
“ for she has loved much.”
And turning again to Mary, who still crouched at his
side, he added:
“Your sins are forgiven. Go now, and in
peace.”
But the fierce surprise of the Pharisees
was not to be shocked into silence. Reulah showed
his teeth; they were pointed and treacherous as a
jackal’s. Simon loudly asserted disapproval
and wonder too.
“I am amazed” he began.
The Master checked him:
“The beginning of truth is amazement.
Wonder, then, at what you see; for he that wonders
shall reign, and he that reigns shall rest.”
The music of his voice heightened
the beauty of the speech. On Mary it fell and
rested as had the touch of his hand.
“Messiah, my Lord!” she
cried. “In your breast is the future, in
your heart the confidence of God. Let me but
tell you. There are those that live whose lives
are passed; the tombs do not hold all of those that
are dead. I was dead; you brought me to life.
I had no conscience; you gave me one, for I was dead,”
she insisted. “And yet,” she added,
with a little moan, so human, so sincere, that it
might have stirred a Cæsar, let alone a Christ, “not
wholly dead. No, no, dear Lord, not wholly dead.”
Again her tears gushed forth, profuser
and more abundant than before; her frail body shook
with sobs, her fingers intertwined.
“Not wholly dead,” she
kept repeating. “No, no, not wholly dead.”
Jesus touched his treasurer.
“She is not herself. Lead
her away; see her to her home.” And that
the others might hear, and profit as well, he added,
in a higher key, “Deference to a woman is always
due.”
And to those words, which were to
found chivalry and banish the boor, Judas led Mary
from the room.