The Two Wives of the Kingby Mikhayah ben David

בשם יהוה הרחמן הרחם/بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Once upon a time there was a King married in a manner quite unlike most kings tend to be married. This king’s marriage was not arranged by any other. The king had no relatives to be spoken of who would designate a spouse for him, nor was there another related line of royalty. This King was unique and alone in his authority. It was as the Torah says Ishmael would be the father of twelve princes; twelve princes from a king who had no predecessor in the land which he ruled. He ruled the Arabs because of his athority, from ancient times, and because of his innate claim of kingship over the Arab peoples to which he was ancestrally related and for which reason he was brought to that land.

In the same way, this King had no immediate predecessor. Where he came from no one knew, and the authority which he derived was from a source indescribable to those whom he ruled. A great mystery surrounded him, but being as people are, few were interested in inquiring much about this. He was their King, and for most this was enough to know. They could only tell that he was their king due to his fitness for the task. It was as though a giant lived amongst a community which cultivated an orchard. No one amongst them would dispute who was fit for the task of picking the fruit from the highest of trees. The fitness for the task would naturally fall to the man of highest stature. In such a way this King was the obvious ruler of his Kingdom. Any who knew of this King did not dispute his fitness for the task; it was implicit in his nature. For this reason, no one asked where he had come from originally.

As it happened, this King would come to marry a woman who had been a friend long before their marriage. In fact she was related to him in a manner of speaking... But that is neither here nor there. The two had been friends, the woman showing interest in the King; attracted only to who he was, and not to any notion of status or benefit to be derived from a friendship with him. The two became increasingly close and in time they married. With their marriage came an increased intimacy. It is the sort of thing that a person who has not been in such a relationship could not understand. They were closer than any husband and wife, and this because their marriage was, in part, based on the initial friendship and attraction to the virtuous personality of the King.

Though this coupling seems like the ideal in the modern world, in an age when arranged marriages are largely a thing of the past (with couples longing for such enduring friendship and intimacy), not everything fit the modern prescription. The woman loved her husband, the King, very much, but as happens with time she grew quite accustomed to him. The virtuous traits, the wisdom he exhibited and even his understanding nature, which set him apart from men, became somewhat taken for granted. This woman had been a virgin before marrying the King and wasn’t able to experientially juxtapose the King with the ways of men.

When she would see other men, she was captivated by the face they put forward, their exterior persona. She did not know, first hand, that the appearance one wears in public often masks deficiencies within; something which one will only come to know with much time and proximity. Because she had only known the reality of her King, she did not understand that much of what such men projected was in fact a lie. Some of these men would attempt to seduce and some she would seek after in intrigue. From time to time she would meet a man in town and talk over a meal or the like; still never divorcing the King and never consummating an affair with the other men. Instead, each of them would indirectly remind her of how special her relationship with the King was. For this reason she neither desired to leave the King nor consummated an affair with other men who caught her glance.

The King, in his wisdom, could not remain ignorant of these things. Never once did the woman have an opportunity to confess, as circumstance had it that the King would always find out the truth. Sometimes the men would come before the King, in his employment, or before members of his court, mentioning a woman that they had recently met (not knowing that it was the King’s wife). The King, knowing it was his wife, would inquire as to the extent of the relationship. Time after time, the King found that though the woman had hurt him, she had neither consummated sexually with these men, nor had she any desire to leave the King. It was a strange situation for the King to find himself in!

But the King was wise and understood that the very uniqueness of their relationship was what led to her infatuation with others. To all the men she lied, saying either that she was divorced or that she had no husband at all. To some who had seen her about with the King, she would claim that the King was her brother. Though the King ruled over this land, he remained hidden from sight, ruling instead from his castle, and through intermediaries. In this way, he was free to observe the state of the kingdom with his true identity veiled from his subjects.

Each time the King would confront his wife. She would admit her actions, but clarify that she had not done so much as kissed another man. The King, knowing this to be true from his own prior knowledge of the events, would forgive her and in time their relationship would grow stronger and stronger. In spite of all of these betrayals, the King never forsook her, and in spite of her curiosity and accustomedness to the King, she never left the King.

This woman, long before these events, had borne offspring to the King. She was a devoted mother to their children and she could not imagine anyone else raising her children, in spite of her wandering eye. But one day the woman spoke candidly with the King about a woman in his court who she had noticed was admiring him for some time. She had never made an inappropriate move towards the King, nor even heard his voice. She admired him from a distance, and kept within her heart a seemingly unattainable desire for him.

“My Life, I see how she looks at you, and I know that your appetite is not like men. You are never quenched, you are never exhausted. You do not give to me a measure that cannot equally be given to another. You do not have a portion to be delegated to one and not another. I love you, my life, but I have treated you poorly over the years, and I see how her heart aches for you. I want you to know that I do not have any opposition to you marrying her as well; even siring children with her.”

This would be something very incomprehensible in our time. Men and women alike would be perplexed by this. Some men might pity the King, imagining his wife did not care enough to be filled with jealousy. Others might envy him, yet they themselves would acknowledge not having the capacity for equity which the King had. Women might see the woman as tragic on many levels. Others might view her as subjugated or even demented. But this was not a situation like common place situations.

Indeed, the King took the woman as a second wife. All of the enamor that the first wife had towards the King’s wisdom and understanding – all that she had become accustomed to – was very new for the second wife. She was head-over-heels in love with the King. When she was not thinking of how to please the King, she was trying to figure out how to be accepted by the first wife. She knew there was no dispute, that the first wife had even brought the suggestion to the would-be second wife, that she should marry the King as well. There was no confusion or dispute over this. However, things were not so simple…

You see, the second wife had a large family. Amongst her family were jealous sisters and brutal brothers. They wanted no part of this for this sister. “Sister, you are not some second rate woman that you should marry a man who already has a wife who he has known for so many years and loves with a passion! Do you have no dignity? Couldn’t you instead have married someone from our family, one of our cousins or someone from your hometown?”

The sister, the King’s second wife, would not hear any of it. She was in love and even when threatened with disownment by her family, she accepted it, and married the King anyway. But again things were just not this simple either...

The first wife too had many jealous brothers and sisters. They too were upset with this new arrangement: “Sister, you have been with the King for many years. When he made his vows to you it was an eternal covenant, it was between you and him. He did not say anything in those vows about another woman! Yes you did many wrong things over the years, but this is not right. Whatever he desires is not even the question here, you should not be alright with this. Your perspective has become warped because of your past misdeeds. You should never accept such an arrangement. You must oppose the marriage to this other woman; it is just not valid and she is crazy if she thinks it is!”

Over time the second wife also bore the king many sons. The question of succession was not so much the issue, as representation was. This king was like the righteous king Shem and his descendant Eber, ruling in secret from the mountains of Canaan. While Abraham was seen, they were hidden. In time, Isaac would be taken to them for training, eventually representing this hidden rule. Still, all the while, the masses knew nothing of the knowledge in their presence once these two masters had withdrawn from society.

The King too was like this; at one time present in this castle and eventually moving to a hidden place from where he came. This occurred well after both of his wives had died of old age and his children had all reached maturity. No one ever doubted that the King remained alive, immortal and in authority over the kingdom, but this did raise the question of who would represent him in absentia.

Remarkably, the sons of both the first and second wife didn’t dispute about the matter at all. Just as the wives of the King had not been as normal women, and just as the King himself was not as men, these children were not normal children at all, and their ways were not the ways of men. As the children of the first wife had grown up in the castle, they would remain there and the children of the second wife would reign in her hometown, which they had a second home in. You see, though initially disowned by her family, the second wife’s family would eventually yield to her once they saw the power which had been invested in her. They did not care to get to know the King, but they were nevertheless enamored with the stature she had attained, the authority, the servants, the land and property. Because of this they were suddenly proud to have association with the King. What they knew about the King was only what his second wife would tell them in letters. If she said “he is powerful,” they would recite about him “he is powerful,” yet they would not know this first hand. If she spoke of him allegorically, saying “his hand extends over the whole Kingdom” some of them, those of the most unfit minds, would even spin tales about the King having gigantic hands!

Yet for all the harmony there was between the first and second wives’ children, there was proportionate discord between the cousins of the first wife and the cousins of the second wife. The entire matter quickly escalated into a bitter family feud with tremendous bloodshed on either side…

The sons and daughters of the King – sons and daughters, grandchildren and eventually great grandchildren – stood up and demanded an end to the violence and called for familial reconciliation. They all had been told of how to visit the King, how to inquire anything of him, how to seek advice or opinion. This was a secret known only to the offspring of the King. While the masses did not know where the King was, the family would – from time to time – read letters from the King, relaying his desire for the Kingdom and its subjects. Because he was a righteous king, his will was deemed logical, reasonable and was not contested by the population. As he was not apparently there to physically derive benefit from the masses, it was further clear that his orders were for the benefit of the subjects, not for himself in any way.

So the offspring of the King, the offspring of both wives, went to the King: “Your majesty, Father! The relatives of your wives, our extended families, have caused so much bloodshed in the land. They have turned on one another, arguing against each other, even indirectly arguing against you, yet each murders the other in your name.”

The offspring of the first wife said: “The family of your second wife says that our grandmother was a whore after other men and that you married their great aunt because you had abrogated this first wife; because you no longer loved her, and only kept her around because you had children with her!”

The others reported the counter-claims: “And the family of your first wife says that our grandmother was out of her mind, some sort of court stalker, someone who was infatuated with you, had illegitimate children and invented this notion of marriage to you in her wild imagination! They call her crazy and they call her children, our parents and grandparents, bastards!”

The King, as he had done so many times, with so many issues before – related to the administration of the Kingdom – issued a message which was sent in a peculiar manner. He knew that these were different families with different traditions, and he knew of these traditions first hand. To the first family, he wrote to them as he always had; as they had been accustomed to his communiqués. He wrote to them in this manner which they should have had no problem recognizing.

To the second family, he wrote in a manner they could relate to but the message was the same as the first. With this letter, however, he placed his royal seal, so that there would be no confusion, so there would be no disbelief claiming the message was a forgery.

When the first family read the letter they followed along throughout the introduction, at first having no contentions or disputes. As they continued, they read that they must accept this other royal line, that they must accept both the royal line of their cousins, as well as that of the second wife. When they read these words they accused the one who brought the letter of having fabricated it. “There is no proof that this letter is from the King. How are we to accept this when he never told us anything about this when he was amongst us? There is nothing to prove that this is authentic at all.”

There were only a small number amongst them who accepted this as authentic.

The second family opened the seal, read the message in their native tongue and with clear acquaintance to their ways. They read it and saw validation of their cousin’s royal line, the line from the second wife. They took preferred excerpts, quick to present them to the other family: “Look the King is on our side!” they exclaimed. The letter, however, contained scathing admonitions against their own actions towards the cousins of the first wife’s line. These words were glossed over or interpreted as contextual by this family. “What the King meant was that if we had not been attacked by the disbelievers from this other family, then we should be peaceful and live in harmony with them. He of course, didn’t say that we don’t have the right to fight back against their brutal aggression!”

Only eight members of this family accepted the message as it was intended.

In this way both families rejected the message of peace from the King. This, however, did not stop the royal lines from speaking out against the hatred and violence contrary to the King’s letter. In time, the bitterness of the feud had grown so strong that each respective side formulated a conspiracy to kill the royal heirs on each side. The cousins from the first wife’s side put into action a plan where the royal line would be usurped and those with popular support amongst these cousins would lead the line in their stead.

The cousins from the second wife were not as different as they imagined! In fact, both sides did the exact same thing! These too killed the royal line, through several generations, and installed dynasties of their choosing from amongst the most remote cousins of this line; those who had not even spoken with an heir to line. They selected nine direct descendants who looked the most like the King’s second wife. They imprisoned some, but in the end killed them all in a variety of manners.

In this way they paraded their understanding of the King’s letter as absolute and unaltered. They made beautiful works of art with passages from the letter that glorified them. Other passages they ignored, and others still they issued an edict saying that that those passages which spoke out against them be written with different spellings of key words. For example, when the letter said “You must stop this flight of ever-increasing bloodshed and violence!” they would render it as saying: “You must stop this plight of ever-increasing bloodshed and violence!” In the tongue of this family the letter p and the letter f were exactly the same! While the King’s letter spoke of the “unrestrained exercise or display of ever-increasing bloodshed and violence,” they rendered it the “oppression, the burden of ever-increasing bloodshed and violence;” seeing it as the King encouraging them in their struggle against the other family. It was in this manner that they saw such substitutions as within their interpretive right. The nine murdered descendants of the second wife had spoken out against this misinterpretation, and this was in part a reason why they were killed.

Others of this direct line of descendants, from both wives, brought forth further letters from the King. Each message was the same decree of reconciliation and peace, over and over. These latter ones, were killed by the second wife’s family. “There is one letter that we are to pay attention to,” they yelled, “It was the letter brought to us, in our language, confirming that we are in the right. It was the one with the seal to authenticate it to us (as it was the first and only letter we received from the King) and if you bring another one you claiming to have contact with the King! Did you not know that our leaders have said no one can speak to the King any longer? If you claim to have contact with the King then you will surely be put to death this day!” In this way they killed off their opposition and kept the power in the hands of remote cousins of the direct line.

In the end, the second wife’s family was ruled by a brutal regime of those acting in the name of both the first wife, and the King; now claiming themselves to be the heirs to the Kingdom. They remained locked in a heated battle with the family of the first wife, whose power would wax and wane against the second family over many years. Yet ironically, both families looked forward to an individual from each family who would one day come, relay a message from the King, act on his behalf, resolve the matter, fight against those who opposed the King’s verdict and wash away all of the bloodshed. This was something which both versions of the royal letter had promised. Yet as much as either side grew weary of the violence, it seemed that elements on both sides had no difficulty keeping the feud locked in a seemingly unending dance of death.

While looking forward to reconciliation of the situation from a hero to come, neither side seemed to understand the impossibility of recognizing such an individual amidst the clouded atmosphere of hate and destruction which each had caused to fill the land. For this reason the King would send this hero, from remnants of each line, who had survived murder and usurpation, generation after generation. Each time the hero would appear wearing a different garment, with the hopes that the masses would not recognize him as the messenger from the previous visit whom they had chased out of town and would instead listen to his message, then realizing his identity and origins from the King.

To this day, after many visits, after many different appearances and garments, the hero has not been successful in swaying the hearts of these people. It is said, however, that when the conditions are right in the hearts of the people, then reconciliation will occur and he will rise as their future prince; the royal heir to the throne, the representative of the King. Still, to this day, the people ask each other “when will our hero arrive?” not knowing that he has been in their presence again and again but they were not ready.