Just as Benaiah was rising up, drawing his bow, he heard a faint…Â The lion was on him before he knew it!
The force of being hit in the back sent his spear and bow out of reach. As he was a seasoned fighter he went with the initial rush and used the lions momentum to roll out from under the lion’s belly, landing on his feet, facing the lion with only his knife in his hand, crouched and ready for the next charge.
  The lion was surprised by the speed of his quarry, he had killed these two legged creatures before and found them easy prey. When he winded this one hunting his Oryx he went for the easy meal.
There they stood, in the quiet, on a snowy day, facing each other.
The lion made the first move, a very slow and deliberate step to his right. Benaiah followed suit, very slowly. The lion stopped. This two legged animal was not afraid.
It did not cringe, cry out, or try to flee.
This confused the lion for a moment. The lion decided to face this thing head on. He moved his hind quarters around behind his front shoulders. Slowly, so slowly, so smoothly, as to gather his powerful legs under himself in order to produce a full force, frontal charge.
And the two legged creature did the same.
  It was a lightning fast and ferocious assault!
As he charged the two legged, easy meal, standing just feet away the only thing he caught was air…
and the blade of Benaiah’s knife under his right eye.
  As he made his lunge he rolled out of the way using his momentum to get far enough away to grab his spear. Benaiah had created enough space between him and the lion to defend himself properly.
Being wounded and surprised, with enough room to retreat, the lion being old, wise and battle tested himself, chose to choose…
the better part of valor!
As his heart stopped racing Benaiah could appreciate the beauty and blessedness of this encounter. And Thanked God for his life! As he came away with scars of his own, across his neck and shoulder.
If he would not have been accustomed to fighting and rolling with some punches it could have been worse. He thought himself lucky to be able to move his head just enough as he ducked and rolled to make the lion’s bite miss anything important.
There would be other encounters as well. None so close as the first, and as the adversaries had quite the mutual respect for one another neither could gain the advantage needed to claim victory and with each passing year their respect for one another grew.
Benaiah came to call the lion ‘baladi al’asad’ which is Arabic for ‘my lion’, he had grown up among the wilderness, among the borders of Edom and Moab and in the area of the caravan trade routes and had learned many things from the Bedouins moving through along those area’s as well. Things of the world, things of people and trading and things of languages…
even of those languages unspoken.
In his conversations Benaiah would come to refer to him often as,
Baladi Al’asad, ‘my lion’.
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