Signs and Wonders

by Bernard Evslin

  Dinah laughed with joy and embraced her brothers, and ran off. Then Levi said to Shechem: “Do you wish to marry our sister?”

  “I do,” said Shechem.

  “Even though she is not a virgin?” said Simeon. “Or do you not count that a virtue among the Hivites?”

  “Your words call for swords,” said Shechem. “But we are to be brothers and must not fight. Your sister is a virgin to all the world but me, who shall be her husband, and shall be the only man who will know her. Let us arrange this matter without anger.”

  “Truly spoken,” said Levi. “We offer no dowry. Do you offer a bride price?”

  “I do. My father is king. I am his prince and shall be king. Dinah will be my queen and share all that I have.”

  “Your reign lies in the future, which only God can read,” said Levi. “What do you offer now?”

  Shechem raised his head proudly. “Please yourself about the details. My father’s treasury is open to you. And his herds and his flocks. Take the price you want. Your sister is a treasure beyond price.”

  “Truly spoken,” said Levi.

  “Arrange matters as you wish,” said Shechem. “I leave it all to you. But let the marriage be soon.”

  “Not quite so soon,” said Simeon. “We follow a God you do not know, and have our own customs. We cannot give our sister to one who is uncircumcised.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We sons of Abraham pledge ourselves to our God in a certain way, by cutting the mark of his covenant into our flesh. You must do that, too, and your father and all the men of the Hivites, before we can give our sister into your hands.”

  “It shall be done,” said Shechem.

  “You had better understand what you are agreeing to,” said Levi. “It is a bloody pledge, and painful. Among us it is done when the infant is eight days old. For grown men it is a more serious matter. We cut the mark of that covenant into the very fountain of our manhood, even our foreskins, which are cut away.”

  Shechem stared at them, amazed. “A savage custom,” he whispered.

  “Pardon me, prince,” said Simeon. “I do not mean to give you the lie, but we view this as the mark of a blood oath between us and God. And our God is all-powerful, maker of heaven and earth—not a stone idol squatting on its pedestal. To us this mark cut in our flesh is a caste mark, separating us from savages and idolators. If you hold other views, you cannot have our sister.”

  “So be it,” said Shechem. “I am a man of the sword, a man of the chase. I have no special insight into the ways of this god or that. But I have met a goddess, and her name is Dinah. And I would cut off my left arm for her, and shall surely submit to the small carving you propose.”

  Simeon’s face and neck were swollen with blood. His fingers itched so for the hilt of his sword that his arm trembled. But he clenched his lips and said nothing. Levi, knowing that his brother could not speak for rage, said: “It is well. Go to your father and tell him what is to be done. And let each male of your tribe, every one from your oldest man to your youngest infant, be circumcised according to our custom.”

  Shechem nodded and strode off. “Keep a rein on yourself,” said Levi to Simeon, “or you will show your intention and they will escape our vengeance.”

  “You do the talking, then,” said Simeon. “And I shall stand by. For when I come close to him, I want only to take my sword and lop his pretty head off.”

  “It may be that you will have the chance,” said Levi. “But not yet.”

  Shechem went to his father and told him what had been demanded. “Must this be?” said Hamor. “It is a sore thing.”

  “We must do it,” said Shechem, “or I cannot have her. We must do it, or I must attack them and take her by force. And we shall lose more blood through sword-cuts than through the small knives of their rite. Besides, they are a peaceable people. Skilled herdsmen, people of wealth. It will do us no harm to exchange daughters with them. It may improve our stock. They are full of a strange fire and see things that we do not.”

  “You see things that I do not,” said Hamor. “I loathe these Israelites. I should like nothing better than to summon our horsemen and smite them in their tents and quench these strange fires once and for all.”

  “Do not hate them,” said Shechem. “I am to marry their daughter.… But first we must circumcise ourselves, as they have instructed.”

  “You must explain it to all the men,” said Hamor. “I am their king, their captain, master of revels, rainmaker. I cannot go to them with an edict concerning foreskins. You must speak for me and tell them what to do, and it shall be done.”

  Shechem did so. Then he circumcised himself, and Hamor circumcised himself, and Shechem made sure that every man of the tribe, and every male child, was circumcised. And he sent word to Jacob that this had been done.

  Now the men of the Hivites were weak from loss of blood, and in pain. Simeon and Levi watched at the gates until they saw that every man had been circumcised. Then they called a band of armed herdsmen, which they had posted at a nearby grove. Each man took his sword and entered the gates of the city, and went into each house and fell on the helpless men and slew them. Simeon and Levi stormed the palace where Hamor and Shechem lay on their couches in pain. Before the king and the prince could rise to defend themselves, Levi passed his sword through Hamor’s body. Simeon swept his blade like a scythe and cut off Shechem’s head.

  They called together their men and left the city. Then the other sons of Jacob came with their herdsmen and sacked the city. They looted each house, put chains on the women and children, and took all the gold and silver and precious things that were in the city. The herds and the flocks they took, also, and drove them off. Then Levi and Simeon went in to tell Jacob what had been done.

  “You have defiled our name!” cried Jacob. “You have made it stink throughout the land. You have acted like murderers and thieves. You promised to go in my stead and act as my spokesmen, and stand for me in all things. Is this what I have taught you—lies and treachery and murder? And have you used the sacred rite of circumcision for your foul ends? Will not that Hivite blood given in pledge to God call out to God for vengeance?”

  “He treated our sister like a harlot,” said Simeon. “He had to die.”

  “And his father? And all the men of the Hivites?”

  “They would have been our enemies when we killed their prince. So they had to die, too, or they would have killed us.”

  “We shall have more enemies than you can count,” said Jacob, “when the tale of this deed is spread throughout the land. For they are many and we are few. They will band together and wipe us out. Get out of my sight, you fools! Go to the altar I have built and beg God to show you how to erase your crime.”

  The two young men left the tent, and Jacob was alone. Then he went out into the night and raised his face to the sky, and said: “Forgive them, Lord, for they were but the tools of my unuttered wish. They read my wrath and did what I myself could not have done. Forgive them, and forgive me. But I could not bear the thought of my daughter coupling in the field like an animal.”

  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 a
lmost 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.

  JOSEPH

  The Coat of Many Colors

  CALL 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.”