600

Drums.

He wiped the sweat off of his brow and looked around the barn. Sweat dripped down his nose. Drums were beating. He paused, listening. "Is that my heartbeat?" At first he thought it was, then he realized it was something different. A low, barely audible but steady tone was echoing in the distance.

He wiped his forehead, walked over to his old ox, and stroked its neck gently. Year after year they came, just at the time of the fall harvest, to take away their store of winter food. Last year five of his kinsmen had died of starvation at their uncaring hands. He had held his own mother's head in his lap as she breathed her last breath.

He stepped to the door and turned to their little tent and saw his wife step outside, shade her eyes to the sun, and look his way. Her face was thin and gaunt from going much too long without enough to eat; her clothes hung ragged and worn over her tiny shoulders. He could feel her gaze across the plain, far away, and could guess her thought.

"They are coming. The Philistines are coming."

Shamgar turned and looked down at the earth beneath his feet. He studied the pebbles and wished he could become as small as one of them; that his troubles would melt away. He bent down and slowly ran his hand through the dirt, letting it trickle through his fingers, thinking of the months of labor preparing the harvest, gathering food for his family, only now to have it all yanked away by an uncircumcised band of Philistines.

He looked up as a cloud began slowly traveling over the sun, and thought of the mighty men of old who had trusted in the God of Israel. Ehud, who had braved death to bring death to their persecutor Eglund. Abraham, who by his example had shown an entire nation how to have faith in God. His forefathers.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he stared at his hand, turning it slowly as he studied the veins running over its back. Blood was running through those veins. The blood of a Hebrew.

He looked back at his wife standing there all alone, clutching her garment tightly. He turned as he reached out a hand for the ox goad hanging on the wall, and walked to the center of the road, lips moving in prayer. The earth trembled and shuddered as the drums came onward, accompanied now by the tromping of hundreds of feet.

So it was that when the Philistines came over the next crest they saw a tired, sweaty man standing in the road with an ox goad in his hand, a few sheep grazing nearby, and no one else for miles but a weak looking woman standing in a far doorway watching helplessly. A baby's cry penetrated the stillness.

"Hebrew, get out of the road."

Shamgar took a step forward, paused, and said, "I have a message to you from the Lord". And then he ran, the tip of his goad swinging through the air until it landed on the startled Philistine captain's head with a crack. Before the captain began to fall Shamgar was moving at a run towards the ranks of Philistines, breathing heavily, but moving lightly, with a new energy that made his bones seem to spring forward. The goad whistled through the air, spinning around Shamgar as the Philistines raced to meet him, swords drawn in their hands.

The ball at the end of the goad cracked against a Philistine skull, and then Shamgar wheeled to impale another Philistine on the goad's sharp point behind him. He ducked under a thrusted blow, smashed a Philistine face with his elbow, and shoved another away with his foot while he brought the blunt end of his goad singing in a great arc through the air. A hand clutched at his throat and Shamgar thrust his elbow into an unseen gut and pulled away. Strange - it seemed that his slightest effort crushed helmets, broke bones; that they fell almost at his slightest touch.

Backwards and forwards he moved, striking with the ball, and then behind him with the point, until bodies and gore lay strewn about him. He moved quickly away from the pile forming around him to prevent his feet from becoming entangled in the mass of arms and legs - his hands and arms ached from swinging, but still he kept at it, fighting for his life. And then he stepped on a bloody patch of grass and fell hard.

He looked up at the sky, breathing hard and expecting a sudden blow. But there was nothing. He lifted his head and saw a few lone soldiers running over a distant hill, carrying the news back to Philistine that the Lord had brought salvation to Israel. Six hundred dead or dying men lay fallen around him.

And as his sheep grazed, and his wife ran to meet him, he let his head fall back to the earth, raised his arms to his maker, and wept.