Pearl in the Sand

by Tessa Afshar

  Miriam, accustomed to the tent’s sights and sounds, seemed immune to its affects.

  Rahab found the rhythm of nursing had not deserted her. With quick intuitive steps she picked up new skills from one hour to the next. She found Miriam was welcomed wherever she went, even when she served in the midst of strangers. Among the sick, she had developed a reputation. Patients who had been around longer recommended her to the newcomers. “Miriam of Judah has the kindest touch. You’ll be blessed if she tends you.”

  Rahab’s respect for the young woman she called sister grew as she observed her tenderhearted ministrations. Miriam didn’t have to be here. She chose to help the most needy in her society. There was no compulsion behind her goodness. Rahab wished she could be half as good, as lovable, as giving as her new sister.

  On their way back to the camp that afternoon Rahab disclosed some of her admiration, trying to convey her high regard for the woman Miriam was.

  “I believe you labor under a misapprehension,” she responded, laughing off Rahab’s compliments. “You make it sound as though I have somehow managed to escape Adam and Eve’s fate and have arrived into this world in a state of near perfection. A greater falsity you couldn’t find in the teachings of a Canaanite priest. My flaws would fill the temple.”

  “Please! What flaws?”

  Miriam’s steps ground to a halt. “You’re serious?”

  “Of course. You are pure and good, but never proud. You haven’t once judged me in spite of what you know about me. Add to this funny, pretty, kind, easy to please, and what more can you want? Everyone is fond of you. You have hordes of admirers.”

  “And I enjoy their good opinion a great deal. In fact, inwardly, I often worry about what others think of me. This, dear sister, is a form of pride, of which God heartily disapproves. I should strive to please God, and spend far less time and effort trying to earn the good opinions of those around me. The Lord has an objection or two to being second best.

  “You say I don’t judge you. How could I, when I am convicted by my own idolatry? Rahab, don’t you know that when God requires the blood of sacrifices to cover the uncleanness and rebellion of the people of Israel, He is thinking of me as much as of you? God’s standards measure my heart, not any illusion of righteousness I might contrive to achieve with my actions. And before those standards I fail every day.”

  Rahab drew her eyebrows together until they met in a deep frown. “You exaggerate. What have you done that’s so wrong? My life on the other hand … You can’t compare yourself to me.”

  “I don’t. I compare myself to the holy standard God sets for us. Your problem is that you compare yourself to me, and conclude yourself a great failure. But your standards are skewed. In a way, each one of us is a ruin before God. The wonder is the lengths He goes to in order to save us both from our ruination.”

  The women walked the rest of the way in silence, each wrapped in her private ruminations. To Rahab, her sister-in-law’s confession of her sense of shortcoming and sin came as a revelation. She would never have guessed it about Miriam, who seemed the picture of confidence. More curious still was Miriam’s understanding of God. A God who was as dissatisfied with a woman like Miriam as one like Rahab. A God who held all of Israel to account. And judging each one guilty, provided a way to cover that guilt. The idea that before such a God she stood on equal ground with the likes of Miriam dazzled her mind.

  Partway through the camp of Judah, Rahab bid her sister-in-law good day. On a whim, she decided to visit her family whom she had not seen for several days. As the intended call offered the perfect excuse for delaying time alone with her husband, her steps took her to her family’s tent with more eagerness than usual. When she had finished greeting everyone, Izzie pulled her away.

  “Come with me. I have some news for you.” Izzie’s eyes sparkled as she grasped Rahab’s hand and began to pull her in haphazard fashion through the maze of the tents around them. Rahab threw a longing look back at her parents’ tent. She had spent her morning in back-numbing labor, and the past forty minutes traipsing through the wilderness. The prospect of yet another energetic trek through the busy byways of Judah made her stomach heave.

  “Izzie, I’m tired.”

  “And grumpy,” Izzie added with dreadful cheer.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Nowhere particular. I just want to have some privacy.”

  “In Israel?”

  “You have a point. Fine. I’ll tell you here.” She hopped to a stop and grabbed both Rahab’s hands. “I’m going to have a baby!”

  Rahab’s mouth fell open. After these many years of barrenness, they had all concluded that Izzie would never conceive again. She squeaked with delight. “Truly? That’s wonderful!”

  Izzie bounced on her feet. “I’m so happy. It’s the Lord’s doing. He has blessed Gerazim and me. Rahab, I could burst out of my skin, I’m so happy.”

  Rahab embraced her sister and did a small twirling dance. Her head spun with delighted surprise. Izzie started to walk again, holding on to one of Rahab’s hands. Rahab forgot her tiredness and thirst. Joy filled her. As they trotted forward, haphazardly navigating narrow lanes, Izzie began unfolding the story of events leading to her pregnancy, a story that astounded Rahab.

  “Before your wedding, Gerazim and I decided to take a new lamb to the Tabernacle to offer to the Lord. As a sin offering for giving our son to … for our great sin. I was desperate to ask for His forgiveness, though I didn’t really believe that God would ever be willing to pardon me.”

  She put her hand on her chest as though it throbbed inside. “My son. My sweet son. When I think of what I did, I can hardly bear it. I wish I had listened to you then. I will always bear the ache of that loss.”

  Her hand dropped to her side, and her face took on a dreamy expression. “Gerazim and I went to the Tabernacle with an unblemished lamb, the best we owned, and we stood before the priest. My knees were knocking together with apprehension. I thought the priest would spit into my face and show me the way out when I began my confession. He didn’t, though his eyes widened a bit. When he had finished the rites, he said a blessing over me, and it was as if every word was a burning coal that I swallowed. I cried out; I felt that I was on fire. But the strange sensation passed and in its place, I experienced a restful quiet that I have never known before. My mind, my heart, my will, my body were all at peace. I floated in this state of tranquility for I know not how long. While I was like this, a conviction penetrated my soul—the conviction that God had forgiven Gerazim and me. I cannot explain it. I know I don’t deserve it. But so it was.

  “I thought this was the end, and for me, it would have been enough. To experience forgiveness for the first time since the day I offered my son as a sacrifice was overwhelming enough. Yet the Lord had more to give me.

  “I conceived that very night. I have waited this long to be sure before telling anyone. Gerazim has known from the beginning, of course, but next to him you’re the first to find out.”

  Rahab and Izzie spent the next hour rejoicing over the baby, planning and plotting for his birth, and thinking of names. Every once in a while, one of them would give a shriek of delight and envelop the other in a mighty embrace.

  The sun had long retired from the sky when Rahab took her leave from Izzie and the rest of her family to whom they had returned. She had lived through a full and topsy-turvy day. Her bones were desperate for rest, but her mind clamored. She wasn’t ready to face Salmone. She did not wish to look into his long sleepy eyes and read the condemnation in them. She did not want to see the full shapely lips pressed hard with the effort to hold back words. So instead of going home, she sat behind a tent and ruminated.

  In a way, the events of this short day had turned many of her assumptions on their head. She had found that God held someone as perfect-seeming as Miriam to account for sins that were graver to Him than they appeared to Rahab, while at the same time forgiving and blessing someone as ruined by the
worst of acts as Izzie. He wiped out Jericho, and He saved a harlot. What kind of God was this? He seemed at once impossibly holy and ridiculously merciful. How could you tie those two incongruities together?

  Rahab sighed, no closer to understanding than when she first began. She became aware as she caught sight of the moon high and bright in the sky that she could not afford to linger away from home anymore. As it was, she had neglected to prepare her husband’s supper by her lateness. With weighted, slow steps, she made her way back.

  She found Salmone marching back and forth in front of their tent. He came to a halt when he spotted her. “Where have you been?” he cried.

  “I told the servant to tell you—”

  He clenched his jaw until the bones jutted out. “That was hours ago. Miriam’s been back since before supper. I checked.” It was clear from the choppy way he jerked out each sentence that anger gripped him in a powerful hold.

  Rahab took a cautious step back. “I went to visit my family.”

  “You could have sent someone to let me know.” He stepped closer until he was towering over her. She tilted her head back to study him and realized with a jolt that he was shaking with fury.

  “I … I’m sorry,” she said without much conviction, not understanding why he was so livid over a few hours. Was it because she had not prepared his food? Could a missed supper rile the man so?

  “Sorry?” he shouted. Then closing his mouth abruptly, he grabbed her around the arm and pulled her into the tent, dropping the flap behind him. Two or three oil lamps lit up the interior with enough light to illuminate his expression. Nostrils flaring, eyes narrowed, lips tightened, he stood with his feet apart, and the veins on his neck bulging. Rahab gulped. Instead of releasing her, he pulled her against his chest with a rough movement that jostled her bones. “Do you know what I’ve been through since before sundown not knowing where you had disappeared to?”

  “You were worried?” Was that why he was fuming? This was a new revelation. Her years of independent living had taught her to be master of her own time. Even the months of living with her family in Israel’s camp hadn’t prepared her for this. There, if she could manage to get away from the various demands that dogged her steps, her time was her own. She gave no one explanations of where and when she came or went. No one, so far as she knew, grew anxious about her being gone for two or three hours longer than usual.

  “What do you expect? You disappeared without a word. What was I to conclude? After last night I thought …” He stopped mid sentence and took a small step back, enough to put some breathing space between them.

  His reference to the previous night caused Rahab to grind her teeth. Then she realized it was a reference of caring, not judgment. He was concerned for her well-being after a difficult night. “You worried about me?” she repeated with wonder. Something about that knowledge, about the fact that he had been anxious over her began to loosen the knot in her belly. “I ask your pardon,” she said, her voice soft, this time meaning the words.

  He shoved her away from him and turned away. “Let it be. It’s over.”

  “But—”

  “Let it be, I said. I’m going to bed.” To Rahab’s astonishment, he grabbed a blanket and a folded mattress and strode to the far side of the tent. Flipping the curtain, he walked through to the space they set apart for guests. Openmouthed, Rahab followed him. He made up his makeshift bed with a few jerky moves and crawled under the covers. Except for the night that he hadn’t come home, he had never slept apart from her since their marriage. Not even in the midst of their worst struggles. “Salmone!”

  “Rahab, you need your own space. This I understand. Now you have it. Run along and enjoy.”

  “But let me explain.”

  He waved his hand. “Woman, this whole day long I have sat adjudicating as people explained. I’m done with explanations.”

  Rahab turned on her heel and left him. She fumed her way to bed. His unreasonable and uncharacteristic withdrawal made her so angry that for once she forgot to worry about not being wanted. What ailed the man? Had he lost all sense? Why was he careening from fury to worry to childlike huffiness? Because she had been a few hours late?

  You disappeared without a word. Her unexplained absence had fretted his mind. And through the hours of waiting, he must have grown increasingly resentful of her thoughtlessness, swerving between fear of the worst and anger over her cavalier disappearance. But his insistence on sleeping alone verged on a childish tantrum. How could a man who had withstood the worst she had thrown at him be provoked to such a degree by a minor incident?

  Rahab twisted in bed. You need your own space, he had said, his voice too calm. Did he think that she was avoiding him? In truth she was. However, she was not avoiding the man, his company, his presence, or his society. These things she loved. She was avoiding his disappointment. Avoiding his regret at having married a woman not good enough. Did he not know that? Had he, perhaps, for once, misread her? Had he left in a huff because he felt hurt and unwanted? By her?

  Chapter

  Twenty-Three

  Tossing in bed did not help, and turning was no improvement either. Rahab’s anger had long since evaporated. Instead she wrestled with the odd idea that her self-assured husband might be laboring under the false notion that she had spurned him.

  He had once accused that she expected his love to fail. Well, perhaps it had, a little, the night before. He had left her behind, alone with her tears, his mien cold as he walked out. He could have abided by her. Instead he had walked away.

  And when she had stayed away from home all these hours, had he thought she was making an indictment against him as a husband? Had he thought she had stayed away from home because he had failed her? That she avoided him because she was disappointed with him?

  Salmone, her lion of a husband who fought the enemy with legendary courage, who led thousands every day through times of peace and war, whose confidence seemed to her unshakable, was at this moment lying in another bed not because he didn’t want her, but because he thought she didn’t want him. She sat up straight. If she was right, she was sleeping in the wrong bed. And if she was mistaken, she was about to suffer another mortification.

  Rising, Rahab took the time to straighten her shift and push her tumbled hair off her shoulders. Making little noise on her bare feet, she padded to the back of the tent and swished the curtain aside. In the darkness she could make out Salmone’s shape, his back turned to her. Before doubts could sap her courage, she marched forward, lifted the blankets and slid under. Salmone remained inert, his quiet breaths rising and falling as before.

  “What are you doing?” he barked just as Rahab relaxed.

  She jumped so hard her teeth rattled. “S-s-s-sleeping in my bed.”

  “This is not your bed,” he said, his back still turned to her.

  “My bed is with my husband.” Biting her lip, Rahab forced herself to lift her hand. It felt like it belonged to someone else. She willed it to move and placed it on Salmone’s shoulder. “My place is with you, Salmone. I don’t want to leave.”

  He sighed. A few moments passed. Then he turned around, his face so near that she could feel his breath stirring against her hair. “Stay, if you want. But not out of duty.”

  “I want to be with you,” she confessed, trying to infuse her voice with the love and longing that had become her constant companions. In the thick darkness, she felt his hand move about her waist. With a strong push and pull of fingers, he drew her into his arms and held her. For the first time since waking many hours before, Rahab felt her muscles unclench. The unspoken things that remained unresolved lay between them still, but ignored for the moment. Rahab was content to be near him, embraced by him.

  She sensed that he was as wakeful as she. “My sister is with child,” she blurted, wanting to share the precious news with him.

  He propped his head on his palm. “I am happy for her. She’s been barren for many years, hasn’t she?”

 
Rahab told him the story Izzie had shared with her. “Salmone, why do you think God blessed her? He seems to act out of His holy justice when I would expect mercy, and pour out mercy when I would have doled out judgment.”

  He drew a finger down her cheek. The simple touch made her shiver and noticing, he gave the ghost of a smile before withdrawing his hand. “I suppose our sins warp our expectations.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean that the reason God seems to act in ways that make no sense to us is that our perceptions are wrong. Our expectations are subtly twisted. We long for things that harm us and run from the things that grow and heal us. We think good is bad and bad is good. God acts rightly, but to us, it seems confusing. Or sometimes plain wrong.”

  Rahab digested Salmone’s response. “Do you … Do you think my perceptions about my past are wrong too?”

  Salmone was quiet for a moment, gathering his words. “I think they are a mixture of truth and lie, which make them very convincing, and therefore very dangerous. But it seems likely that where you would believe yourself deserving of condemnation, the Lord would desire to give you mercy.”

  Rahab sank into silence. How would her life change if she could, in the secret interior places of her heart, begin to believe the promise that lay at the root of Salmone’s words? As a woman, as a wife, as a lover, as a daughter, as a friend—would she arise a different creature from the one she was now if she put her faith in the merciful goodness of God? If she truly believed that God forgave her, accepted her, counted her as one who belonged to Him—would that change her life?

  Fatigue began to have its way with her body, and sleep clouded her thoughts. In the periphery of her drowsy mind, Rahab was aware that Salmone held her, and that God held her too, no less tightly and securely at that moment. Then she sank into a dreamless sleep, deep and uninterrupted.