“No,” Judah said, sounding impatient. “Watch them. Figure out what they want. Everybody wants something.” He held out an open palm. “Everyone has a price.”
Joseph looked at him.
Judah, waiting in the quiet, looked back.
Joseph turned and walked away.
Chapter 14
Genesis 42:36
Judah ducked out of the evening light and into his father’s darkened tent, blinking in the sudden dimness. He heard the rustle of fabric behind him as Benjamin, who had held the tent flap open, stepped in behind him. Judah waited while his brother moved past across the soft flooring of carpets and sheepskin. Their father, Jacob, was resting on a low couch, his white beard as brilliant as ever.
Benjamin knelt beside Jacob, putting a hand on the aged man’s shoulder. “Father,” he said, “they’ve returned with food.”
Judah saw the old man’s eyes open; he saw his father’s eyes focus keenly on his face. “Judah.” Jacob smiled, rising to sit. “How was your journey?” His voice carried easily through the tent. Judah moved closer.
“Safe,” he reported. “And the People were generous with us.”
Jacob nodded. “Good,” he said, stretching. “Good. We could not have gone on much longer without you.”
Judah nodded, taking a slow, deep breath. “Well,” he said at last, “God has always watched over our family.”
Jacob raised an eyebrow, eyeing his son in the dim light. “What has moved you to speak of God?”
Benjamin looked away at his father’s emphasis on you, but Judah simply raised the small bag that he had found nestled in the grain, holding it out so his father could see. “This pouch was hidden in my sack,” he said. “It’s the silver we used to buy the grain.”
Jacob stared at the strange apparition. Then he held out his own hand, flicking his fingers in a beckoning gesture. Judah handed him the pouch of silver. Jacob weighed the roughly made material in his palm before loosening the neck of the little bag and peering inside.
“There is some strangeness at work here.” Judah paused. “We were also accused of being spies.”
“Spies?” Jacob looked up. “Why would anyone think you are spies?”
“I don’t know.” Judah swallowed. “But Simeon was kept behind.”
A sudden, strangled hush fell through the tent. Benjamin reached out to put a hand on his father’s shoulder, but Jacob pushed his youngest son’s hand away, rising from his couch, his thick woolen garments doing little to cloak the lingering broad strength of his chest. He took a long step toward Judah.
“You have come,” he said, gesturing with the jangling silver sack, “to tell me that another of my sons is taken from me? That is what you have come to say?”
“Father—” Benjamin began, but Judah, glancing at his brother, raised a hand for quiet and looked at his father, who, even in his fiery white-haired age, stood still taller than his fourth son.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” Judah said, facing Jacob. “They asked that we bring Benjamin as proof that we are a family. Then Simeon will be freed.”
He saw his father’s lip twitch before he spoke. “Benjamin?” Jacob turned around, looking back at the young man who stood, hesitant, behind them. He wheeled back on Judah. “You dare to come here and tell me you have left Simeon and intend to take Benjamin for bargaining?” He shook his fist, jingling the bag. “With your silver in the sacks? They will accuse you of being thieves, not spies!”
“Benjamin,” Judah said, trying to keep his voice calm, “is the proof they demand.”
Jacob turned his back with a growl, retreating toward his couch.
“Father”—Judah stepped after him—“I know what it is to lose a son.”
Jacob stopped, then slowly turned. His dark eyes fixed on Judah’s face.
“On my life,” Judah said, “no harm will come to him.”
The wrinkles around Jacob’s eyes deepened as his gaze narrowed. “That promise,” his voice low and even, “is a promise you cannot make.” He turned, and his gaze flicked over his shoulder. “We are finished speaking.”
Benjamin, Jacob’s youngest son at only seven years old, looked up, startled, sitting with an open scroll across his knees. Jacob too paused in the middle of the passage he was reading aloud as the covering over the entrance to his tent flapped back and Benjamin’s older brother came striding in.
“They’re saying you don’t trust me to go with them.”
Joseph’s shoulders had filled out since Jacob had given him the linen coat of the birthright, and he looked, from what his seven-year-old brother could tell, like a fully grown and very handsome man with his newly grown beard.
With a sigh, Jacob sat up straighter. “I’ve already said—”
“Is it true?”
“That I don’t trust you?” Jacob asked, holding the gaze of his seventeen-year-old son—the son he had trained and taught and reared by his side, the son over whom he had taken such careful watch after his mother’s death, the son he had named as his heir—and Jacob wondered why this son should take such a sudden interest in aligning himself with his brothers instead. “You stay with me,” Jacob said, “because you have a different work than they do. Who has been saying that I don’t trust you?”
Joseph crossed his arms. “It’s just . . . what they say.”
“Who?”
Hearing the tone, Benjamin quickly lowered his eyes, pretending to be studying the scroll. Joseph lowered his eyes as well.
“Whoever it is,” Jacob said, “I’m sure they have their reasons to say what they do. Joseph”—he waited until his son raised his eyes—“if I did not trust you, why would I make you the heir of this family and the covenant we carry?”
Joseph looked at his father. “Because of my mother?”
Jacob’s face hardened. “My love for your mother,” he said, and Benjamin, caught awkwardly between them, stared even more intently at the scroll, “would not cloud my judgment as to who should lead this family. Nor is it her fault that only she has given me capable sons. I will not hear her name abused in this camp.”
“No one was—” Joseph began, but Jacob held up a hand.
“No more,” he said. “And if you want to be respected, then you must tell your brothers so yourself.”
Flustered, glaring, Joseph turned and left without reply.
In the sudden quiet, the kind that fell over the desert after a great thunder stroke, Benjamin looked up at his father. Jacob’s eyes were closed, and for a rare moment he seemed to sink into the appearance of an old man, a stooped and wizened carrier of many burdens.
But when Jacob opened his eyes and looked back at Benjamin—who had his same dark eyes, with his father’s face and his mother’s gentle, observant nature—Jacob smiled, tiredly.
“It will work itself out,” he said.
Benjamin, still a little wide-eyed, nodded.
It was Dinah who saw Joseph striding away from Jacob’s tent. Glancing at Bilhah and Zilpah, who sat beside her grinding grain, she gave a quick excuse and got to her feet, moving after her younger brother—younger half-brother, as the others would point out.
“Joseph,” she said. He turned, looking a little annoyed at being delayed in whatever hot-headed trajectory he was on.
“Maybe you want me to grind corn with the women?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t know how.” Dinah smiled. “Where are you going?”
Joseph crossed his arms. “Everyone’s making fun of me because I’m not going to take the flocks. They said Father doesn’t trust me with any real work.”
Now Dinah crossed her arms as well. “And you believe them?” She shook her head, reaching out a hand. “They’re just jealous—”
Joseph stepped back, turning and moving his shoulder just out of her range of touch.
“People pity me,” he said, “or they hate me. No one respects me.”
“Joseph,” Dinah said, “you know Father respects you more than anyone—”
But Joseph just waved a hand and walked on.
Dinah stood, watching his retreating back and the swishing of the elegant robe that set him so apart.
“Dinah?” Judah was walking toward her, carrying a small lamb that was agitatedly flicking its ear at a fly. “What’s wrong with Joseph?”
“The same thing,” she murmured, still looking after him. “Only now he says that everyone either hates him or pities him.” She glanced at Judah. “Can’t you get them to back off a bit?”
“Is this about not going to take the flocks?” The lamb gave a little bleat and began struggling. Judah held the animal tightly to his chest, trying to soothe the tiny creature. As the lamb calmed, he looked back at Dinah. “It shouldn’t matter.”
“Well, clearly it does.” She glanced at him. “He’s already alone in so many ways. He doesn’t need trouble from the rest of you.”
Judah looked after Joseph’s retreating back. “He can be . . . a little intense, you know.” He shrugged, readjusting his grip on the lamb. “Maybe it’s hard for you to understand. He is . . . part of it.”
“Well,” Dinah turned to her brother, “maybe if you all stopped ganging up on him and making him feel he isn’t one of you, he might not be so intense.” The lamb gazed up expectantly, swishing its tail and giving another bleat. Dinah reached out, tickling her fingers across the wooly little head. “It may be the way of the desert that the strongest always prevails”—the lamb gave another flick of its ear—“but in the covenant, God prevails on behalf of all.”
Then she turned, walking back toward the other women.
“Father.”
Judah bent down beside Jacob, crouched within the milling herd of sheep as his father inspected the hoof of a limping ewe. A vibrating din of animal noise filled the air, mingling with the shouts passed between the brothers as they prepared to travel with the flock and the first of the new lambs toward fresher grazing grounds.
Jacob didn’t look over. “Yes?”
Judah looked down at his hands, scratched and covered with dirt from the day’s work. “If you have reservations,” he said, “about sending Joseph with us, I would look out for him.”
Now Jacob did look over, letting the ewe put her weight tentatively back on the wounded foot. “You think I don’t trust him?” His emphasis lingered just slightly on the last word.
“I’m sure your trust is always well placed,” Judah said, pretending to look at the ewe’s hoof. “But if I can be of help, I would be.” He looked up, meeting his father’s eyes. “That’s all.”
Jacob looked back at his son, surrounded by the woolly moving bodies, then rose to his feet. Judah rose with him.
“Well,” Jacob said, putting his hand on Judah’s shoulder. “I’ll remember that.”
Judah nodded.
Jacob turned and made his way on through the flock.
Justified! Thou art pure, thy heart is pure, cleansed is thy front with washing, thy back with cleansing water . . . justified, in these standing waters . . .
Thou enterest . . . by the great purification, with which the Two Ma’ats have washed thee . . .
—The Book of Breathings, lines 9–13, 18
Chapter 15
Genesis 37:23–24
My son.
His father’s face, warm and trusting.
I must ask something of you.
It was a simple task, only a day’s journey, and his father smiled as he left.
His father, who trusted him and loved him, even if his brothers taunted him otherwise—his brothers, who were jealous, and anxious, and eager to inherit and be their own men.
You must understand, his father had said, that there must always be one chosen for the birthright—one chosen for inheritance, for succession, for the covenant—
One chosen for sacrifice.
The boy lay alone, broken open to the harsh chill of the desert and the bleeding expanse of stars, enclosed on all sides by the earth that had received his body like a dead man’s.
His memory scrabbled over the broken pieces, stumbling, like a wounded thing—his robe, stained with his mouth’s blood, the cloth wailing, the knife driving in and out and the pieces of linen fluttering to the ground as he was dragged away, his arms bruised beneath their fingers.
He had struggled, thinking he could plead with them.
Then his body had collided with the wall of the well shaft, and he fell back, screaming.
A day, already, had passed. He knew that his brothers had stayed nearby at first because he’d heard them shuffling, murmuring in low snatches, but they had not answered his cries.
Now the desert was silent.
He lay staring up through the narrowed darkness. A trickle of water ran just beneath the surface of the dry well. He had worn the tips of his fingers raw from digging down toward it. Waves of nauseated hunger stirred him whenever he slipped, intermittently, into a place of no light.
His brothers had meant to kill him, but the knife intended for his throat had been turned instead to his robe, swift hands butchering the cloth as they would a sheep. He had simply been thrown away, the unusable, unclean remnants of the slaughter.
Reuben had begged the others not to hurt the boy, but he had been pushed aside, threatened with the same knife.
Don’t kill him.
He heard Judah’s voice in the tumult, felt his older brother seize him by the arm as he lay on the ground, his captors arguing like dogs over a carcass.
Don’t kill him—Judah was breathless—sell him.
Mercy in the form of slavery. Atonement by pieces of silver.
Joseph had seen his brother’s face in the moment before he was thrown away, and he saw Judah standing there, still, watching—
Just watching.
When the rope was lowered down to where he lay, Joseph stared at the dangling strands, uncomprehending, before he reached out, pawing at the rough, fraying ends. A voice shouted down, telling him to bind his wrists together. Fumbling with clumsy, swollen fingers, eventually he managed to obey.
With a jerk, his body was lifted off the ground, and he was hauled up out of the darkness, spitting as his face collided with the gravelly sides of the pit, wincing at the rope chafing against his wrists. Another pair of hands reached down and grabbed him under his arms and hauled him up over the edge, flooding his eyes with light and lowering his stinging body gently back to the earth. He tasted the rich trickle of fresh blood.
A man bent down, shielding his face from the flickering light. The boy heard voices speaking in a quick, chattering tongue. His eyes fluttered, and he saw the man, a stranger, who had hauled him up and was sitting crouched beside him, slowly winding a rope back into a coil. Had he expected his brothers? His eyes rolled back, and he could not speak. He lost all sense, and the world was darkness.
When he awakened again, he was lying on his side and no longer felt the scorch of the sun. He could still hear strange, muted voices talking to one another, as if coming from somewhere far away. As he tried to open his eyes, drawing more fully to the surface of consciousness, the voices became louder. He blinked, wincing, and felt a presence draw closer and crouch beside him. He felt a hand on his arm.
“Boy.” Blinking, forcing his eyes back open, Joseph looked up into a calm, weathered face. “Can you drink?” Joseph nodded, and the man turned, gesturing urgently. Someone handed over a water pouch, and the man offered it to Joseph’s lips, holding the slick opening against the boy’s mouth.
“How long were you down there?”
Swallowing, Joseph moved his mouth away from the water. “Two days,” he croaked.
The man gave a low whistle. “In this heat?” He was helping Joseph sit up. “You must have a lucky star.” Joseph, eyes still raw, squinted. He had been lying in the shadow of an accommodating camel, and the beast remained kneeling beside him, chewing thoughtfully. Looking around, still blinking, he saw half a dozen other loitering camels and half a dozen other men tending to their animals or speakin
g quietly to one another.
Then Joseph noticed another small group sitting by themselves.
He looked back at the man who had bent down beside him. “Did you find me?”
The man shook his head, waving a hand. “Some tribesmen found you.”
Joseph felt the dirt around his eyes as he squinted. “Who are you?”
The man smiled and gestured toward the horizon. “We are traveling to Kemet.” He paused, trying to ascertain whether Joseph had understood. “The Divided Land.”
Joseph felt his eyes turn again toward the small band seated together on the ground. One of the men was staring at him, while the others sat with their backs turned.
Sell him. Don’t kill him. Sell him.
Joseph heard the words echoing around his head like a cry in an empty cave.
“I thank you,” he swallowed again, tasting another sip of blood from his dried lips, “for saving me. My father will repay you. His camp is close,” he turned, pointing, “to the east . . .”
“We have come from the east.” The trader shook his head. “There are no camps.”
Joseph looked at him. “That’s impossible.”
“You’re disoriented.” The trader reached out, pressed a hand to Joseph’s forehead. “You’ve had a fever. There’s no one coming for you, boy. It’s just the desert.”
“Let me go,” Joseph snarled, moving from the man’s touch.
But the trader merely put a quieting hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “If I let you go,” he said, “you will die.”
“No,” Joseph shook his head, voice breaking, “it’s a mistake—my brothers . . .”
And then his eyes caught sight of his wrists, bloodied from the rope, and he looked down at his stomach, thin and caved, and how he was naked except for a small cloth wrapped around his hips. His brothers had left him nothing—no clothing, no family, no identity.
The trader looked at him—sadly, it seemed. “If your people come for you,” he said, “they may have you. But I cannot leave you here.”
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