Signs and Wonders (13 page)

And God answered, saying, “Arise. Go to Beth-el and dwell there. And build there an altar unto me.”

Jacob called his sons to him, and all his household, and said: “Put away the strange gods that are among you. Cleanse yourselves and change your garments. For the marks of this bloody deed must be washed off our bodies and out of our souls. We will go to Beth-el. There I will raise an altar to God and we will pray to Him for forgiveness. Now, if any among you has kept wooden idols from Haran or has adopted any of the stone idols of this land, give them to me. Also, the jewelry you wear, for we must face the Lord unadorned.”

They gave to Jacob all the wooden idols and the stone idols and their rings and earrings and necklaces. And Jacob buried them under an oak tree that grew in the field near the city. But Rachel kept back the wooden idols that she had taken from her father’s house. The time of her labor was almost upon her, and she wanted them for luck. She hid them among the saddle bags of her camel, and took them with her as she rode toward Beth-el.

They came to Beth-el and Jacob raised an altar to the Lord. The Lord appeared to him and said: “Your name was Jacob and shall be Israel, for you wrestled with my angel. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation shall come out of your body; kings shall issue from your loins. The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac I give to you and your seed after you.”

Now this place had become a most holy place. Jacob raised high altars there. Upon these altars he poured drink offerings of wine, and he anointed the stone pillars with oil.

Simeon and Levi prostrated themselves before the Lord and begged forgiveness for the slaughter of the Hivites. And their brothers did likewise. As for Dinah, she had not come to Beth-el. She had vanished on the night of blood and was never seen again.

Rachel’s Death

They journeyed from Beth-el and neared a place called Ephrath, and Rachel knew that her time was upon her. She labored in great agony. The child had turned in the womb and was coming out arm first, tearing his mother as he came. Waiting outside the tent, Jacob heard his wife screaming like a lamb being torn by a wolf.

“Help her, O merciful God,” he whispered. “Spare her this pain.”

Her screams sank to a gurgling moan. Jacob raced to the tent and burst in. Rachel lay on her couch; her legs were bathed in blood. A circle of wooden idols grinned down at her. A naked baby gleamed in the midwife’s hands.

“The blood!” cried Jacob. “Stop the blood!”

“She was torn,” said the midwife. “She is stuffed with bandages, and still she bleeds.”

Jacob snatched up a handful of wrappings and fell on his knees beside the couch. He pressed the cloth against her thighs, trying to stop the terrible flow. The clean rags were immediately soaked. He heard her whispering and bent to her face.

Her voice was a thread. “He is Ben-oni.” This means “son of sorrow.”

“Do not leave me,” said Jacob. “Please … stay with me.”

She did not answer. Her eyes opened and looked into his; their green light pierced his soul. Then their light went out. Very gently he closed her eyes. Now she lay as if asleep. He gazed down at her as he had done so many times when, waking first, he would raise himself on his elbow and study that beloved face, the blue lids and long, black lashes. Once she had told him, “When I was a little girl, I tried to sleep with my eyes open to see where the dreams come from.”

“Now perhaps you will,” he muttered.

He kissed her face for the last time. Then he spoke to the midwife. “Find a wetnurse,” he said. He gathered up the wooden idols and carried them from the tent. He built a fire and fed the idols to it one by one, and stood watching the flames until they fell to ash. Then he went back to the tent.

He allowed no one to touch her body. He bathed her himself, wrapped her in a white shroud, then dug the hole with his own hands, and buried her where she had borne a son and died. He raised a stone over the grave. The children wept. Bilhah and Zilpah wept. And Leah wept, too. Jacob did not weep. He walked away over the plain, head weaving, striding crazily—for he was going back to Beth-el to break down the altar he had built.

A voice spoke out of the sky: “Stop!”

Jacob raised his face and said: “Why did you take her?”

“You ask what all men ask and no one answers.”

“I am asking you.”

“You wished me to ease her suffering.”

“Not by killing her.”

“I gave her to you. She is mine to reclaim.”

“But why her? Why not another? She was young. I loved her. Why, O God, why?”

“I am the Lord. My ways are my own and not to be challenged. I am the Lord of all things seen and unseen. I shed light and quench the sun. I bestow life and quench that strange little flame, also. I am beyond questions.”

“And beyond belief,” said Jacob.

Fire hooked out of the blue sky. The voice spoke in thunder. “Say you so? Dare you to say so?”

“Maker of heaven and earth,” cried Jacob, “you also made me, such as I am. I have heard your word and followed your way. I have been tempered in your fire. I am your handiwork. It was you who lodged the question deep in my being, where it must burn and burn until quenched by your answer. God that I have loved, who gave me the woman I loved, why did you take her away? Why?”

Jacob sank to earth, sobbing. Now the voice lost its thunder and spoke like the wind through the trees.

“Know this, O wrestler, son of the dutiful one, grandson of the idol smasher, I who wield life and death am also master of reunions.”

“Shall I see her again? Shall I be with her somewhere? Where is she? What happens after death?”

“In you, Israel, the question demands an answer so that it can breed other questions.”

“Where is she now? What is she? Shall we meet again?”

“Wherever she is, whatever she is, she waits for you.”

Jacob beat his head on the ground, laughing and sobbing. “Forgive me, Lord. O merciful God, who gives and takes only to give again, forgive me.”

“Go watch over your sons. Instruct them. Bear with them in their triumphs and crimes and do not abandon them in any travail, for you are their father and they are your sons. Caring for them, you may, perchance, learn a little of those things that trouble God who has no one to question.”

The voice ceased. Jacob wept. But he no longer despaired, for God had told him that he would meet Rachel again.

The Coat of Many Colors

C
ALL HIM BEN-ONI, “SON
of sorrow,” Rachel had whispered before dying. But Jacob could not saddle his youngest son with so unlucky a name. He named him Benjamin, meaning “son of my right hand. Benjamin, the youngest son was called, and his father was tender to him, but he could not love him as he loved Joseph. Twelve sons he had, and they all jostled anonymously in his mind when he thought of Joseph.

Rachel’s firstborn was seventeen now, graceful as a dolphin and very beautiful, with his apricot skin and gem-green eyes. But he seemed unaware of his own beauty. He was modest in his bearing and courteous to his brothers, who hated him nevertheless. Jacob could not bear to be parted from the lad and did not send him out with his brothers, but kept him close.

Jacob had raised his boys to be shepherds, and now in his old age they did all the work of flock and herd. But he had kept his special touch with the stock and still took upon himself the task of restoring sick animals to health. Since he kept Joseph at his side, he was able to teach the boy the animal lore he had learned so long ago from the Cretan bullman and had polished to a wizardry among Laban’s cattle. And the old man was amazed and delighted at the way Joseph devoured information. He snapped up his father’s words like a sheepdog taking chunks of meat. Nor did he keep this knowledge only in his head. It flowed down into his hands and made them instruments of healing. Ewes in labor, cows with milk fever, rams with blood ticks—he moved among them and brought them to health.

And Jacob was well pleased, and made Joseph a coat of many colors. He sent his elder sons among the speckled flocks to pick out those with the most curiously marked fleece. Then he bade them shear these sheep of rare markings and had the most skillful of his servants weave a coat. The white parts were dipped in dyes, according to his wish. This was his gift to Joseph, a coat of many colors such as had never been seen. And his other sons hated Joseph more than ever.

Then Joseph dreamed a dream and told it to his brothers, because it was a wonder to him and he wanted to share it. He wanted them to stop hating him.

“Hear my dream, I pray you,” he said. “Behold, we were in the wheat field binding sheaves, and, lo, my sheaf stood upright and your sheaves stood round about and bowed to my sheaf.”

“Shall you indeed reign over us?” said Simeon. “Shall you be our master?”

“I do not say so,” said Joseph.

“Your dream says so,” said Levi. “It is an arrogant and hateful dream.”

Then he dreamed another dream and told them this one, also. “I was a star in the sky and you were eleven stars circling me. And the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed to me.”

“You hope to master not only us,” said Dan, “but our father and his wife, as well. Your dreams grow more ambitious nightly.”

The brothers told their father, hoping he would be displeased. He was displeased, but not altogether. He rebuked Joseph mildly, saying, “What is this dream? Shall I and my wife and your brothers all pay homage to you? Try to dream more modestly, my son.”

This second dream angered his brothers more than ever. Judah said to his father: “He is puffed up because you keep him here in idleness. He has nothing to do but dream vain dreams. Why not send him to us, and we shall teach him to tend the flocks.”

“Who shall teach whom?” said Jacob. “He knows more about the stock now than any of you will ever learn.”

“Then we need his knowledge. It is the best of your cattle we drive to the grazing grounds. There will be plenty of work for him to do out there. And perchance he may pick up a trick or two of day-to-day shepherding even from us.”

These words made Jacob thoughtful. For he meant to leave Joseph the bulk of his wealth, and the boy could learn much from his brothers that would serve him well when he became master of vast herds.

“It is well,” said Jacob. “He will go to the grazing grounds with you.”

The brothers were ready to drive their flocks off, but Jacob could not bear to part with Joseph, and he said to them: “Go. He will follow.”

Some days passed and Joseph said: “I think, Father, it would be seemly for me to help my brothers in their labor.”

Jacob knew it had to be. “Go, then,” he said. “And God go with you.” But he was fearful, and he embraced the lad and wept at his departure.

Now, the brothers were grazing their flocks on the empty fields near the ruined city of Shalem, where they had slaughtered the Hivites. Judah, who watched everything, saw his brother Simeon prowling like a tiger, as if he smelled the blood of the enemy he had killed. And Levi’s ferocity was kindled by the place, also, and he was restless.

Then they drove their flocks to Dothan, where the grass was thicker, and waited there.

Joseph went to the city of Shalem, seeking his brothers, and was told by a man of the place that they had gone to Dothan. He followed them there.

The sun was veiled by sickly clouds, and the air was not hot but hard to breathe. For this was the season of the sirocco, an ill wind that blows out of Africa and is the parched fatal breath of the desert itself. When it blows, tame dogs bite and men run mad.

The brothers loitered about, speaking of their flocks and of other flocks and herds belonging to their father, and of the camels he owned and the donkeys. Reuben, usually merry-hearted, felt himself being flayed by the south wind. And he felt something gripping his entrails, but it was not of the body. He said: “I shall see nothing of this great wealth. I have offended my father by lying with Bilhah, who has given me sons, also. I am the firstborn but shall not inherit.”

Simeon said: “My father’s wrath was kindled against me when I slew Shechem. I shall not inherit.”

“I share your guilt in the slaughter of the Hivites,” said Levi. “And share our father’s displeasure. I shall not inherit.”

Judah listened to the others speak but said nothing. His habit was to speak less than he thought. When he did speak, his words had great force.

The next eldest, Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Bilhah, also said nothing. They, too, were envious of Joseph and had been angered by his dreams, but now they were made sullen by Reuben’s words about their mother.

“O my brothers,” said Issachar, “it counts little how you offended our father, by this deed or that. The fact is, he has never loved any of us who are Leah’s sons. For he despises our mother.”

“Truly spoken, brother,” said Zebulun. “The sons of Leah are not esteemed. Nor are the sons of Bilhah or Zilpah, whom our father never considered to be his wives but only servants performing a service.”

Gad said: “If our father does not love the sons of Leah or of Bilhah or of Zilpah, why, that leaves only the sons of Rachel to possess his entire love.”

“One son—Joseph,” said Asher. “It is Joseph he made the coat for, Joseph he dotes on.”

Reuben was silent. He was sorry he had started the discussion. His brothers’ wrath was spreading like a bushfire, and he knew what they might do in their wrath, especially Simeon and Levi.

“He will inherit!” cried Simeon. “He will get all; we shall get nothing. It is unjust!”

Levi said: “You are silent, Judah. Will you not give us the benefit of your wisdom?”

“Do you seek wisdom?” said Judah. “Has all this talk not led you straight back to the same idea you had when you began talking?”

Levi leaped to his feet and shouted, “And you, sitting there silent, drinking it all in, not deigning to let a precious word drop—what is your opinion? Do you have an opinion or only contempt for our poor efforts? Speak!”

Judah said: “I am not to be bullied, Levi. You should know that.”

“Perhaps you disagree with us?” said Simeon softly. “Perhaps you esteem your brother, Joseph, and will become his friend, and he will throw you a few bones from our father’s legacy?”