Page 27 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)

T he world outside the tomb made no sense. Tamar raced down the garden path and then toward the city, but she couldn’t have described what she saw or felt or smelled. Her senses were still consumed by what had just happened.

First the dream, with its startling clarity, with the voices vying for a place in her head and in her heart. That first one, all sticky darkness and despair. Then the second. The one that had reminded her of who God really is. The one that had beckoned her out of the darkness and into the light.

She’d expected dawn, grays and purples, the soft light of early morning. But that flash had been so brilliant, it rendered her useless.

But she’d known it. She’d known it as somehow the same as that second voice, just seen with her eyes instead of heard with her ears. She’d known it as the voice that spoke through the Scriptures. She’d known it as the One who made all and held all in His hands.

God had stepped down into the garden that morning—a garden of tombs instead of the Eden lost to mankind. He’d stepped down, and He’d walked out of that tomb. She hadn’t seen Him, exactly—who could look on the face of God in all His glory and live?—but she’d seen parts of Him. She recognized Him.

But not just God, the unknowable, unfathomable Creator. God had been man . It was a man who’d been sealed in that tomb.

It was a man who’d walked out of it.

“Jesus.” She whispered the name as she flew toward the opening gates, a name that suddenly tasted like honey on her lips.

A heretic, she’d thought, because He’d made Himself equal to God. But she saw now. She understood. It wasn’t heresy if it was true . If it was true, then denying it was the heresy. If it was true, He’d be a madman to deny it, not to admit it.

Of its truth she had no doubt, not now. Mere mortals didn’t walk out of sealed tombs days after they’d been killed. The light of their glory didn’t so stupefy everyone around that they fell to the ground like corpses themselves.

But she wasn’t dead. She was more alive than she’d ever felt before. She felt like the bush at Moses’s bare feet, burned but not consumed. Purified. Vibrant. Too alive now to ever die.

As she gained the city gate and sped through it, she gave only the most fleeting of thoughts to whether the temple guards would be there, looking for her.

She gave no thought to anything other than finding her family and telling them what she’d witnessed.

To finding Bithnia and sharing the same good news.

She didn’t even have the words for it—and did she deserve to do the telling? She was no dedicated disciple. She hadn’t been, anyway. This wasn’t a gift she deserved to share. Yet her chest was bursting with it. How could she see such a thing as a resurrected man and not proclaim it?

A warning slithered up her spine as she turned a corner she’d walked yesterday beside Mariana. What was it the Roman woman had pointed out?

That Lazarus too had been resurrected. Those who couldn’t deny it, as they wanted to do, had sought to silence him for it instead.

Those people would simply ignore her. Wouldn’t they?

No. Perhaps, had she been anyone else. But Caiaphas, high priest and member of the sect of the Sadducees, wouldn’t let her get away with spreading such a tale when he already sought to strip her of all she’d worked for.

Her steps slowed. By rights, the warning ought to dim the light inside her. It ought to bring fear and panic and resentment back to her spirit.

None of it came. Instead, caution felt like a hand on her shoulder, gentle and sure. It sounded like a whisper in her ear, the same volume as the voice in the Lord’s tomb that she’d just been able to make out. Do not be afraid .

The God who tore the veil in two, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, would not be silenced by Caiaphas. Even if she, Tamar, was, what did it matter? The truth would still be known. That was the most important thing. With or without her words, the truth would be made known.

She took another turn, down a street she rarely traveled, simply because she felt that light, beckoning pressure on her back, the same one that had propelled her out of the cave that morning.

What would have happened had she not obeyed it then?

True, the Roman guards wouldn’t have spotted her—but then she wouldn’t have seen the light.

She wouldn’t have just caught the voice of the angel.

She wouldn’t know this thing that she could now claim from the depth of her being.

At the next corner, she turned again, walked a ways, made another turn. Not until she was staring at the back door of her cousin Levi’s house did she realize that it had been her destination.

Not just going, though. Led . She couldn’t have said how or why or what exactly had been guiding her, but she lifted her hand and rapped softly on the door then slipped inside as she always did.

Levi’s wife, Hannah, dropped her spoon in her pot when Tamar entered.

She rushed forward with arms outstretched.

“Tamar!” Even as Tamar pulled the door closed behind her and shoved her bundle of silk onto a bench, Hannah had her arms around her.

“We have been so worried. Levi felt horrible for sending you out with only a few coins. He had not paused to think that there would be no rooms. He has been prowling the city every daylight hour since, searching for you.”

Tamar found herself grinning, though she wouldn’t have thought it possible. “Well, if he could not find me, then no wonder the guards could not either.”

“Not for their lack of trying.” Hannah pulled away, bracing Tamar there with her hands on her shoulders.

“They have stopped by three times already. When he has not been out looking you for, Levi has been in conference with your brothers, trying to devise a defense to present to Caiaphas. They have an appointment with him tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. That surely meant that, even if the guards found her, they would do nothing more than detain her until then.

Which in turn meant that there was still time to talk to her cousin, to her brothers, to her family. To tell them what she’d learned. What she’d seen. What she’d experienced. “Is he at home now?”

Hannah shook her head. “He thought perhaps you had found a family of pilgrims to camp with and was resuming his search among them.”

“I am blessed to have such a cousin.”

Giving her a warm smile, Hannah turned back to her cook fire. “You must be famished! Please tell me you found food somewhere.”

“I have had some, yes. But I would not argue with breakfast. May I help?”

Hannah nodded toward the oven where its small flat loaves, unleavened for Pesach, were baking. “You can keep an eye on the bread and get out a few clusters of raisins for the children. And tell me where you have been.”

Tamar fell into the familiar work of the kitchen, helping her cousin prepare the morning meal for her four little ones while she summarized what had passed since the Sabbath began.

Hannah was as horrified as one might expect, overhearing that Bithnia had lent her a tomb, and she nearly dropped the entire pot of porridge when Tamar told her about Mariana, motioning toward the silk.

The bread was out of the oven by then, so Tamar moved to the bundle and shook it out. She could see at a glance where her knees had struck the ground—dirt and a bit of blood stained the twin spots. But there were no rips, thankfully.

Hannah slid the bowl onto another workbench and moved forward, eyes as wide as the full moon. “Silk?” She breathed the word like a prayer and reached a tentative finger out to touch it. “I have only ever seen it at the back of the best stalls. The merchants guard it like gold.”

For good reason. It took so very long to travel the Silk Road, and there were so many dangers along the way. But at the moment, she wished she or one of her relatives had at least some experience with it. “How do I wash it, do you think? I do not want to ruin it.”

Hannah only blinked at her. “I have no idea. Lye may be too harsh, I suppose. Perhaps you should return it to the Roman as it is. Her laundress will know.”

As sensible as that advice was, Tamar pursed her lips rather than granting the point. She didn’t want to return it dirty and stained, a visual reminder of how she’d felt last night. A small hint of that horrible part of the dream.

She brushed at the dirt, dislodging some of it with her fingers. It was simple dirt, not the black tar of her sin. It would come out. A brush, water, perhaps some sort of soap. It was fabric, not a soul.

Her eyes slid shut. She could still see the images from the dream, feel the panic as the stain climbed higher. She could recall with detail every fault she’d become aware of as she stood in the imagined temple before the place where God was said to dwell.

She’d stood there, in reality, on Friday.

She’d stood before the Holy of Holies, and she’d lived.

Not because God wasn’t present, not because she’d been righteous.

But because He was so merciful. He was so merciful that He’d torn down the divide between Himself and mankind.

He’d made a way to approach Him. A way of light.

A way of forgiveness. A way of love and hope.

While Tamar’s cousin had been slaughtering the Passover lambs for the pilgrims, as Jesus died on the cross, God had torn down the divide.

“Children! Your food is ready!”

Tamar’s eyes flew open at Hannah’s call, and moments later the stampede of little feet pushed more serious thoughts aside. She would tell Hannah the rest later, and Levi. She would find a way to slip unseen into her own home and tell her brothers.

But after she’d finished eating with her happy, oblivious little cousins, a new urgency settled in her chest. “Can I leave the silk with you for now? I need to check on Bithnia. She risked so much to help me.”