Rachel (24 page)

Rachel awoke with a start several months later to the sound of Bilhah’s moans. She had insisted her former maid stay with her in her tent until the babe’s birth and had worried and fretted over her like she would a small child. She hurried to the young woman’s side and, at her anguished nod, woke a servant girl and sent her scurrying to her father’s house to bring her mother.

“What can I get you? Some water? Does it help to walk?” Rachel’s nerves tingled and her words rushed from her.

“I am fine.” Bilhah drew in a long, slow breath just as Rachel’s mother had taught her days earlier. She rubbed her lower back and paced the sitting area. “Some water, perhaps.”

Rachel flew from the tent and retrieved some of the water from the jug still left from last night’s visit to the well. They would need more, but she would send Zilpah or some other maid to get it. She caught herself at the thought of Leah’s maid, no longer a maid but another of Jacob’s wives and already carrying his child.

How could Jacob have done such a thing? He had told her that he could no more refuse Leah than he had her. It was a wife’s right. But Leah had no reason!

She strained the water through a thin piece of linen to remove the gnats and set it where Bilhah could easily reach it, all the while her thoughts churning with the argument she and Jacob had shared the morning after he had taken Zilpah to his tent.

“How could you do this without even consulting me?” She had followed him to the sheep pens, keeping a short distance between them due to her uncleanness.

He had jerked to face her, his cheeks flushed, angry. “Since when do I need to consult you on every choice I make? I recall you made the same decision with your maid.”

“Yes, but I had a reason. I did it to have a family through her. Leah already has four sons! She doesn’t need more. She is only using you to stay ahead of me.” Her voice had cracked on the words, and she sounded like a petulant child.

“Aren’t you doing the very same thing?”

She could not hold the fierceness of his gaze, shamed even now by the accusation he had flung at her.

“No,” she whispered as Bilhah’s moans deepened, snagging her thoughts back to the birth about to take place.
I wouldn’t do that to you. I had no choice, don’t you see?

The memory of her defense to him rang hollow in her ears now. He had looked at her long and hard, then shook his head and walked off, calling the sheep to him. He didn’t see then, or now. And he had stayed in the fields for a week, letting the shame of her words continue to trouble her.

That he had at last returned held little comfort, for he had avoided her tent and everyone else’s, retreating to her father’s house after the meal or to his own tent alone. Would he come to hold Bilhah’s child on his knees and claim it as his own? For her sake? Had his love grown cold?

Unshed emotion burned at the back of her throat, accompanying the guilt that condemned her one moment and justification that absolved her the next. She had done nothing any other woman wouldn’t do. She was not wrong. Leah was the one adding to the conflict by giving Jacob a fourth wife. And a pregnant one now, though Rachel took some comfort in knowing that at least Leah was not carrying another.

The thoughts wearied her, and she pushed them away as her
mother and Farah arrived to attend Bilhah. The hours passed in agonizing slowness, but at last a son burst from Bilhah’s womb. Rachel was the one, guided by Suri, to catch him, clean him up, and claim him as her own. She glanced at Bilhah, who looked on the boy with motherly affection and longing, and felt her heart twinge with the slightest hint of jealousy. The baby was not really hers, though by all legal rights he would be her adopted son. Still, she could not nurse him, and he would never bond to her as he would to the one who had borne him.

She glanced away from Bilhah’s pleading expression, not wanting to give her the boy but knowing she must. She tucked the blanket closer around him and walked through the tent’s door to the small crowd waiting near the fire pit. She searched for Jacob, relieved to see him sitting with her brother Bahaar.

She strode to him, lifting her chin. “You have another son, my lord,” she said, holding the boy out to him.

Jacob met her gaze and smiled, though the smile seemed forced. She must speak to him. Apologize for her earlier outburst if she was ever to enjoy the presence of his company and the love they had once shared.

He took the child from her and rested him on his knees. “What will you name him?” He looked at the boy, touched a finger to his soft cheek.

“Dan,” she said, grateful when he looked up once more and held her gaze. “God has vindicated me,” she said softly. “He has heard my plea and given me a son.”

He nodded. “A good name, beloved.”

She released a long-held breath, relieved. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Perhaps now you can find some peace?” His look held such hope and expectation that she longed to assure him all would be well. But the niggling fact still troubled her. Bilhah was Dan’s true mother. How could she find peace apart from bearing a son of her own?

“I hope so, Jacob.” If only Adonai would notice her too.

She took the babe from Jacob’s arms and looked into the child’s sweet face, knowing the peace Jacob hoped for would be a long time coming.

Jacob stood at the edge of a cliff, staff dug into the dirt, bracing himself against the wind. Dark clouds billowed overhead, the scent of coming rain in the swirling air. He glanced at the sky, its darkness matching his mood. The rare moment away from the sheep, away from the chaos of his household and the women fussing over another birth through Bilhah for Rachel’s side, should bring some sort of relief. But relief would never come as long as Rachel remained dissatisfied.

He should never have listened to Leah and taken Zilpah to wife. For Zilpah had also borne him a son and then conceived again shortly after Bilhah. “What good fortune,” Leah had said, as if the child’s birth were part of a game of chance and she was fortunate enough to have won a round. And so Gad had joined Leah’s family, making five for her, soon to be six, and two for Rachel.

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, glad for the feel of the wind’s relentless strength pushing against him, flattening his robes to his body, whipping the edges of his turban about his face. Let it pummel him. The wind’s beating was preferable to the cackling of the women in his tent, the fierce, endless restlessness of Rachel always vying for more sons. If she found another maid to give him, he would refuse. He was weary of her unhappiness and yet, in the same breath, felt his own unease, knowing he could never deny her. How he longed to give her what she asked!

How long, Adonai?
Would God ever remember her and give Rachel a son?
Please. Let it be so.

He had stopped worrying about losing her in childbirth.
None of the other women had been lost to him, and he realized that though such things sometimes happened, his worries were unfounded. Surely God would take care of her.

His prayers for her had come haltingly at first. But somewhere in the past year or so, they had become a daily necessity. As he watched the trees sway in the valley below him, felt the first fat drops of rain hit his cheek, he knew he would not stop seeking God’s favor until He granted Rachel’s deepest desire for a child. He could do no less than his father had done for his mother. If he did not do this, did not give her his heart in prayer and petition on her behalf, his love for her would be found wanting. He could not let that happen.

For though he would prefer to be rid of the need for such prayers, he would never be released from his intense love for Rachel. He was as bound to his prayers as he was to his love for her. And he would wrestle the wind to bring the answers forth if that was what it took to please his beloved.

19

Rachel held Bilhah’s second son, Naphtali, against her shoulder and slowly paced inside her tent, relieved when his crying ceased and he at last slept peacefully. He was not as contented a child as Dan had been, and she wondered not for the first time if he was mocking the name she had given him—“my struggle.” Her words to Jacob the night of his birth still rang in her ears.
I have had a great struggle with
my sister, and I have won.
But had she?

She glanced at Bilhah, recalling the girl’s violent efforts to bring him forth. For a time they had feared they would lose her, and Rachel knew she could not beg Jacob to sleep with the woman again anytime soon. Like Leah had after Judah’s birth, Bilhah would need time to recover.

Rachel glanced at Naphtali’s sweet face, thinking to lay him in the basket beside his mother, but she could not seem to release her hold on him. Already she loved this child as her own.

Almost as her own.

The thought brought the familiar restlessness to her heart, and she moved through the spacious tent to walk with the boy toward the pens where Jacob should soon be returning from the fields. She darted a quick look in the direction of Leah’s tent and saw Zilpah, heavy with child, sitting with Leah in the shade
of Leah’s tent, both working the spindle and distaff while the children slept or played nearby. Reuben had gone with Jacob to the fields, already old enough to learn some of the easier tasks of shepherding.

If Zilpah bore a son, which Rachel fully expected, Leah’s sons would number six while Rachel could name only two. She gently tightened her grip on Naphtali, forcing back the discontented thoughts. It did no good to feel such contention. The boy would surely feel her heart beating too fast beneath her tunic and wake up, crying again. Her struggle was not with the child, and she could not bear to upset him.

Mourning doves sang their sad dirge in the trees circling the edge of the tents, and the breeze softly rustled the hair she had let hang loose down her back. She approached the sheep pens, seeing Reuben running and jumping ahead of Jacob in the distance, the sheep following obediently behind them.

Her heart stirred at the sight of Jacob, so rugged and swarthy and strong. She caught the way his lips curved in that hint of a smile as he watched his oldest son, and she knew it pleased him to share his time with the boy. What man wouldn’t want sons to follow in his steps?

She moved from the shadow of the trees and waited near the gate. His smile widened as he approached her, and his look made her heart melt. He patted Reuben on the head.

“Go on to your mother now, Reuben. Tell her all that we did today.”

The boy glanced up at Jacob, his look full of pride and affection, then raced off toward his mother’s tent, calling, “Ima!”

Jacob cupped his hands to his mouth. “Do not yell for her. She will think you are hurt.”

The boy skidded to a stop, turned, and nodded. “Okay, Abba.” He ran down the hill, his young voice again calling his mother’s name, this time more distant.

Jacob chuckled. “He is anxious to tell her of his adventures.”
Jacob met Rachel’s gaze. She turned Naphtali so he could get a better glimpse. “And how is my youngest today?”

“He finally sleeps.” She stepped closer and kissed Jacob’s cheek. “I have missed you.” He had spent little time with her of late, and she feared she was somehow the cause.