The Dragon and the Virgin Priestess

For the first time in her pampered existence, hot mud oozed up between the milk white, manicured toes of Rahab and the thirty-one other virgin priestesses of Ba'al Hadad, as they were roughly herded on their rawhide tethers through the enormous, crowded, shepherds’ camp of filth-caked, goat hair tents, barking dogs and braying herd animals. Such a place would stink in the best of times, she thought, but now the stench was unbearable. For everywhere she looked there were bodies, countless thousands of butchered male children of all ages, and their mothers, all with their throats slit by captured Egyptian daggers and sickle swords of razor sharp bronze, and with those violent deaths, also came the inevitable, involuntary discharge of liquid and solid wastes. Rahab nearly gagged as she realized that the thick red mud that filled the camp and cake between here toes came not from rain, (for it had not rained in weeks), but was a mixture of dust, dung, urine and the blood of her doomed people. 1


     Every man of fighting age of her nation had been slain a mere two hours previously, only a few leagues away on an equally blood-drenched field of battle. Now, the only humans left alive of this once proud tribe of the Midianites were virgin females of tender age, most already distributed amongst the victorious warriors, and these thirty-two servants of her god, a despised, enemy god to these shepherd folk, and whose own God would now be sated by their sacrifice.2


     Rahab could not contemplate any sane human beings slaughtering woman and children like this, and on the very doorsteps of their abodes, no less, but this had not been the original intention of the conquerors. They triumphantly returned from their victory with these innumerable slaves to relieve them of their work, but to their astonishment were met with the unspeakable curses of their wild-eyed, white-bearded patriarch who demanded every captive, save for the the women who had not known a man, to be immediately exterminated. The waste of valuable slaves befuddled the warriors, but all obeyed, rather than incur the wrath of the old white beard, or worse, the immeasurably more horrifying wrath that could have been meted out by the Living God that dwelt among them, who had killed thousands of their own tribe when angered, and demanded their firstborn calves, lambs and sons alike for his meat.3


     Like millions of animated beads of precious lapis lazuri, swarms of iridescent blue and green shelled flesh flies swarmed everywhere, drawn by the irristible cocktail of blood, urine and feces that permeated the tent metropolis. Rahab chocked as they flew into her gasping mouth, and with her hands tethered, could only blink and shake her head as they greedily lapped the fluids in her eyes. 4


     The flies, chaos and stench of the camp mercifully subsided as Rahab and her fearful companions were pulled into an open space that was the very heart of the nomadic metropolis. A large compound enclosed by a billowing curtain of spotless, fine white linen seemed strangely incongruous in this sea of dung colored hovels of felt and hide. And even the stink of the slaughtered multitudes was overpowered by the delicious aroma of carefully roasted lamb that wafted from the enclosure. 5


     The doomed women were pulled towards an opening in the center of the long curtain wall, above which, was the likeness of a Mushushu, a Mesopotamian style serpent-dragon of highly polished bronze, fearful in aspect, with sharp teeth and claws, outspread wings, eyes made of yellow Egyptian amber, and a coiling, scaly tail that wrapped around its staff of finely polished cedar.6


    The awed captives gazed at the glittering apparition in wide-eyed terror, praying to their seemingly impostent Ba'al that this monster could not be the true form of the victorious Living God, whom these shepherds now boasted actually dwelt among them, coiled in the richly appointed sanctuary they were now being led, likely to be devoured by it.7


     As the senior priestess of Ba’al Hadad, Rahab recognized the brazen image of the reptilian deity from the scrolls and tablets in her own temple library. The earliest Gods in the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates all had this form, in fact the oldest Gods throughout the world did, and the most terrible was the storm dragon Enlil, who caused the huge deluge that drowned innumerable people. It was said that these bloody shepherds honored this very same God. but by the name by which He was known in the land of Canaan. Here he was called Yaw, and according to legend, her own patron God Ba’al Hadad, supposedly defeated this dragon centuries earlier and drove him from the land of milk and honey, as Canaan was known. 8


     Had Yaw now returned to his old domain? It was said that this one dragon had scorned and humbled all of the Gods of Egypt, wreaked terrible plagues upon the people, and took their shepherd slaves from the old Pharaoh, now deceased in his shame. Everyone in Canaan had heard the story, how this same storm dragon that drowned countless numbers in the great flood, also drowned the crème of the Egyptian army that followed after the liberated slaves in a vain attempt to destroy or recover them.9


     And now, her own God Ba’al Hadad seemed just as powerless against the mighty storm dragon as the Egyptian Gods had been. But how could this have happened? Civilized human beings no longer worshipped such demonic monsters, as did their foolish, primitive ancestors. In this modern age they likened their new Gods like Ba’al Hadad to handsome, virile human warriors who slew or enslaved these dragons who were only terrifying beasts of the underworld. But where was Ba’al now, she wondered in anguish? She came to His temple at five, and celibately served Ba’al Hadad over twenty-four years, yet never saw tangible evidence of his existence, only the inanimate idol. Nor did the idol physically consume the offerings to Him as these shepherds claimed their Living God did. Ba’al’s priests burnt the offerings to their God to ashes, even sacrificed children, which was a horrible sight and stench. But she now watched as the priests of this Living God grilled His meat like an appetizing meal for men, even sprinkling it with salt, she observed. Would she be slowly cooked, and salted too, and would the air be filled with her succulent aroma, just like the roasting lamb, she wondered?10


     The thirty-two women were roughly herded into a line facing the portable dragon’s lair in the center of the enclosure, a large rectangular tent of ram’s hide dyed blood red. With a practiced eye and skilled but arthritic finger, the white-bearded Patriarch inspected each offering to insure it was unused. Satisfied as to their suitability, the white beard grunted a command, and gestured towards Rahab, the senior priestess of the hated Ba’al Hadad to be the first sacrifice. Six more would follow her today, seven being both a sacred number, and as many human sacrifices that the Living God usually deigned to consume in a single day.11


     Two burly priests in blood-spattered vestments gripped Rahab and with a swift stroke from a fine Egyptian dagger of bronze, one cut the rawhide tether, separating her from her temple sisters. The remaining bits of clothing were torn from her body, and her gold earrings were ripped from her ears, and along with here bracelets and rings would be added to the horde of precious metal that the Living God slept upon, and was carried to succeeding campsites in a sacred golden chest by His servant-priests. 12


     Another priest came forward with a dripping wad of pinkish white intestines, offal from the lamb now being grilled, and handed an arm’s length to each of the priests gripping Rahab. With the grim efficiency that comes from performing a distasteful act far too many times, one priest bound her arms behind her back, the other, her legs, with the slimy, stretchy, but quite digestible binding cord of lamb entrails. Now in full realization of her awful fate, strength left Rahab’s legs, and she would have collapsed if it had not been for her tight gripping priestly escorts at each of her sides. They effortlessly lifted her up like a child’s rag doll, and put her muddy feet into the laver, a decorative bronze, water filled basin next to the tabernacle, to wash away the bloody filth that caked them. With a damp rag, one of them washed off all other noticeable patches of blood, dung, or filth on the stunningly beautiful body. Without any noticeable prayer or ceremony they carried her to the entrance of the tent, and despite her own terror of the unknown, she saw real fear in the eyes of the priests who carried her. She could not know that the Living God behind the thin screen of leather and fabric had incinerated with His fiery breath, two of their own number, sons of the gray bearded Chief Priest, and nephews of the very Patriarch of the shepherd nation himself. It was said that they had improperly prepared a sacrifice -- so they too were roasted as surely as calves and lambs they formerly prepared for their Living God.13


    It was also said that it was death to merely gaze upon the Deity, and that the Living God warned the Patriarch of this at their first meeting on a mountain, in the very tongue of the humble shepherd nation. But the worshippers did catch glimpses here and there, for the Living God came and went from His sanctuary at night, guiding the way of the nomads with pillars of fire by day and pillars of smoke by night that He spewed from His mouth. And smoke now wafted through a vent in the top of the tent, and through the flap as the Living God seemed to pant in anticipation of the extraordinarily splendid offering.14


    The priests disdained to do more that push Rahab through the thick overlapping tent flaps and recoil quickly away. The doomed virgin saw the interior of the lair for only seconds before she was bathed in total darkness, as the stifling hot, multi-layered tent was shut up again. 15


     In those few second she saw the Living God, or at least parts of His immense coiled bulk of nearly forty cubits -- a wall of shimmering, ruby red scales, a huge paw of sharp black talons, folded wings that may have had feathers, a snout as long as her own body filled with wicked ivory teeth, golden eyes something like a cat’s, but which betrayed an unfathomable intelligence beyond that of man, and plumes of steamy smoke exuding from twin nostrils.16

And the creature laid on great heaps of golden treasure.  The wealth of a pillaged Egypt, and that of a dozen or more desert nations these shepherds and their Guardian Deity had utterly destroyed, like her own people.  Her earlobes still burnt like fire where her own golden ringlets had been torn away by the priests.  She knew that they, and her other golden adornements would soon join this treasure pile, for no servant of the Living God would dare steal so much as the thinnest, tiniest, earring from the creature's horde.17

     She could not know it then, but hymns to this creature would still be sung nearly three millennia in the future.  Psalms, they would be called, and speak of the God-Creature's fiery breath, smoking nostrils, and mighty, protective wings.  And despite her terror, she might have even laughed if she had been a seer, and divined that those future worshippers of the dragon would eventually forget his true form, and imagine him more like the staff-wielding, white-bearded patriarch who stood outide the tent flap!18


     It was too much for Rahab to take in. She fell forward in a faint to her knees, but did not feel the stony, mat-carpeted ground she had stood on, but here knees now felt soft, warm, and yielding flesh, as the God’s head evidently thrust forward to envelop her falling form in the darkness. In terror she tried to raise up, but her head struck something, and unable to raise her bound arms, lifted her head up until her face felt the God’s slick, unyielding palette, that inexorably pushed her head down into her ample bosom, effectively pinning her in a kneeling, supplicant’s position before a yawning throat quivering in anticipation that darkness thankfully prevented her from seeing.19


     As she cringed in terror something warm and wet stroked her face. A tongue, she thought, that tasted her tears of despair. And she was right, for the Living God had a long forked tongue much like a serpent’s, a tongue of incredible sensitivity that tasted and analyzed every molecule it picked up from the air and from its incessant licking of objects of interest. Then the tongue found her lips, and forced its way in, probed deeply until she choked and then left. It seemed to lap every inch of her body, giving particular attention to her breasts, under her arms and a certain nether region where the probing instrument prevailed to enter despite her clenching thighs.20


     She felt a quick, dart of pain, and then a kind of euphoria she had never before experienced. She cooed and squirmed in ecstacy, now totally oblivious of her frightful predicament. As her body pulsed in rythym to the pulsating thrusts of the powerful appendage that filled her loins, she hypnotically praised Yaw, the Living God who truly did rescue this grateful shepherd nation from slavery with His powers, and now so generously rewarded her praise in ways which no idol of bronze or gilded wood could ever hope. She was the Chief Priestess of the Living God's hated rival, Ba'al Haddad, yet in His immense benificence, all was forgiven, and the great Yaw chose to give her this singular reward. Her almost hynotic, chants of praise continued until the fading mind controlling the exhausted, sweat coated, frail body mercifully passed unto unconsciousness. 21

     With a tenderness that seemed strangely incongruent in a creature so powerful and terrifying, the Living God gently extricated the instrument of Rahab's pleasure, slowly raised its great head to the roof of the tabernacle, and with an audible gulp, sent the spent acolyte to where she could provide yet one last service to her new-found deity, that of becoming His bodily nourishment -- the ultimate and final act of adoration and worship.22


     The squelching, gurgling noises made as the Living God’s muscular throat pushed the bolus of virgin, saliva and her own excreted fluids, as it moved in peristaltic waves down the long, undulating esophagus could be clearly heard outside the tabernacle, so with an approving nod and grin, (for it seemed their God was obviously well-pleased by the offering), the toothless, white-bearded patriarch gestured with his iconic wooden staff, for the priests to bring the next virgin forward.23