Her father would surely discover her ruse, but what else could she do? She settled herself on top of the cushion and waited. Normally she would rise and kiss his cheek in greeting, but if she stood, the camel cushion would be searched. There was nothing to do but make an excuse for not showing him hospitality. One more deceit added to her guilt.
She waited, heart thudding with slow, anxious strokes, her mind struggling to keep pace with the activity around her. Leah’s voice could be heard telling their father to take care with her goods, and Rachel wondered if he had left things intact or was just making a mess of Leah’s careful organization.
At last the tent door darkened with the shape of her father, and she heard him rummaging in the sitting room where Joseph sat.
“Greetings, Sabba Laban,” Joseph said, his voice cheery despite the worry she had seen in his face.
Her father grunted a response, making Rachel’s anger rise a notch. The man had no manners. All he cared about were his foolish gods! She would throw them in his face if the situation weren’t so dire. Why had Jacob made such a rash comment? Were such images worthy of death? But of course to steal them was a punishable offense, though death seemed a harsh sentence.
The thought of losing her life for her own rash act fueled her anger, her fear. She looked up as her father at last entered her sleeping chamber and offered him an apologetic smile. “Please don’t be angry, my lord, that I cannot stand up in your presence. The way of women is upon me.”
He looked at her, his gaze assessing. She held his gaze, unflinching, for the space of several heartbeats and forced herself to relax. At last he nodded and continued his search, revealing nothing. When he left her tent, Rachel’s limbs turned to liquid, and she sagged against the cushions, releasing a deep sigh. She was safe. At least for now.
But she would not rest until her father left for good and she could rid herself of the accursed images.
27
Jacob stared at his father-in-law, his nemesis, barely holding his anger in check. He took two steps forward, aware of Tariq and his brothers’ subtle movement closer to their father. He didn’t care. Let them try to come after him! Laban’s search of his goods was humiliating and uncalled-for! He pointed a finger straight at Laban.
“What is my crime? What sin have I committed that you hunt me down?” He stepped closer until his breath nearly touched Laban’s cheeks. “Now that you have searched through all of my goods, what have you found that belongs to your household? Put it here in front of your relatives and mine, and let them judge between the two of us.”
Laban lifted his hands to ward off a blow and took a step backward, saying nothing. His silence raised Jacob’s ire, his heart beating fast, his mind whirling with pent-up words. “I have been with you for twenty years now,” he said, his voice rising in pitch. “Your sheep and goats have not miscarried, nor have I eaten rams from your flocks. I did not bring you animals torn by wild beasts; I bore the loss myself. And you demanded payment from me for whatever was stolen by day or night. This was my situation: The heat consumed me in the daytime and the cold at night, and sleep fled from my eyes.” How well he remembered! “It was like this for the twenty years I was in your household. I worked for you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages ten times.” The injustice, the sheer audacity of the man looking back at him now with such an impassive look, heated his blood. He clenched his hands, his nails digging into his palms.
Jacob drew a breath, willing his anger to still. It would do no good to strike the man, despite the urgent, pleading need to do so. Tariq and his brothers would retaliate, and the end would only bring harm to his family.
“If the God of my father,” he said, dragging his emotions under control, “Elohim of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been with me, you would surely have sent me away empty-handed. But Elohim has seen my hardship and the toil of my hands, and last night He rebuked you.” Jacob took a step back, further distancing himself from Laban, and crossed his arms, a barrier between them. He glanced from Laban to his sons and back again.
Laban’s look held unease, but a moment later he straightened, lifted his chin. “The women are my daughters, the children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. All you see is mine.” He spread his hands wide.
Jacob’s grip tightened on his arms to force a calm he did not feel. He stared, incredulous. The man would claim all Jacob had worked for? He blinked, slowly looking from Laban to his sons, for the first time sensing a hint of unease from his brothers-in-law. Perhaps even they could see the falsehood in their father’s words. Perhaps they were not quite so unaware of just how deceived Laban really was.
Laban laughed, a rueful sound, as though he could somehow lighten the mood. He pointed in the direction of Rachel’s and Leah’s tents. “Yet what can I do today about these daughters of mine or about the children they have borne?” He met Jacob’s gaze again, extending a hand. “Come now, let’s make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between us.”
Jacob studied Laban’s dark eyes, noticed the streaks of white lining his beard, saw the slight lift of his mouth in the familiar way he smirked when he was at his most congenial, when he was trying to coax a man to see things his way. He still thought himself in control of the situation, and yet God had protected Jacob even through Laban’s accusations.
Jacob stood straighter, breathing a silent prayer of gratitude. He nodded, then walked without a word to the edge of the camp where an outcropping of rocks protected them from the elements. He lifted a large stone, carried it to the place Laban stood, and set it up as a pillar.
“Gather some stones,” he said to his oldest sons as well as to his brothers-in-law. They moved quickly to do his bidding, brought the stones to the spot Jacob had picked, and piled them in a heap.
“The place shall be called Jegar Sahadutha,” Laban said.
“And we shall call it Galeed.” Both meant “witness heap,” but even in this, Jacob broke from Laban’s hold. He would keep to the language of his fathers, not his uncle. His fathers’ heritage, not Laban’s.
“This heap is a witness between you and me today.” Laban raised his hands as if in benediction and blessing. “May Adonai keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other. If you mistreat my daughters or if you take any wives besides my daughters, even though no one is with us, remember that God is a witness between you and me.”
Laban turned briefly to face his sons, then looked back at Jacob, acknowledging Jacob’s sons with a nod. “Here is this heap, and here is this pillar I have set up between you and me. This heap is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I will not go past this heap to your side to harm you and that you will not go past this heap and pillar to my side to harm me. May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.”
“May Elohim of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac judge between us,” Jacob said, again reminding his sons and wives who were listening that they had broken loyalty to Laban and his gods to be wholly devoted to the God of his fathers. “Let us offer a sacrifice to complete the agreement.”
Rachel spent the night confined to her tent, feigning illness during the feasting, still afraid to leave her father’s gods even to share in the evening meal. The weight they had brought to her heart since she had lifted them from their stand in her father’s house had become like a millstone tied to her neck. How she longed to be rid of them! And she would be, the first chance she got to bury them away from her tent.
The jangle of camels’ bells woke her before dawn, and she was half surprised to find her father and brothers already preparing to leave. She cast about for a place to hide the camel cushion, quickly placing it behind another pair of sacks that still held clothes and some of the weaving equipment she had yet to remove. Satisfied that things did not look out of place, she donned her robe and clutched it tight about her to still the sudden trembling. Perhaps she truly was ill.
She moved to the other side of the partition to wake Joseph, helped him dress, and then met the other women and children in the center of the camp, where Jacob was already speaking to her father and brothers. She shivered, glad for the morning chill that might make the others think her cold rather than reveal the nervousness that now gripped her middle. Joseph sidled closer to her, still groggy, and she pulled him in front of her, her shield, and she his protector.
Her father’s laughter jarred the birds’ happy morning calls, as if even the land where they were standing would be glad to be rid of him. She braced herself as he stepped toward her.
“Ah, my daughter. Feeling better at last, I hope?”
She nodded, swallowed hard. “A little.”
He leaned close and kissed each of her cheeks, then bent before Joseph and did the same. Joseph clung to his grandfather in return and kissed his peppered beard. “I will miss you, Sabba Laban.” Tears clung to her father’s lashes when Joseph released him, and Rachel felt the sudden loss of him as well.
She longed to fall into his embrace and hold him close, to feel his protective arms around her. But he had long ago given up that privilege when he treated her future with such contempt. She reminded herself of the things he had done, even the pilfering of their goods, searching for what she would not give him. Still, despite everything, he was her father and she loved him.
“I will miss you too, Father,” she said, pulling Joseph against her again. “May God go before you and watch between us.”
“While we are absent from one another,” her father finished the benediction. “Bear many more sons, my daughter.” He looked for a moment like he would say more, and she wished belatedly that she could have offered him some comfort. But he had ruined the bond they had shared in her childhood by his own choices. It took all of her strength to remember that fact.
“Farewell, Father.” She gave him a soft smile and an affirming nod before he turned to Leah and his other grandsons. When at last the goodbyes were said, Laban mounted his camel, and her brothers did the same.
She watched them go with an aching heart until the last camel disappeared into the distance. Joseph ran off to find his half brothers, and sometime later when all were fed and the men were busy with daily tasks, Rachel took the camel bag with her father’s images, walked a safe distance to a tree in the woods, and buried the gods deep in the earth.
Part
4
Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.
Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.
Genesis 32:1–3
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak . . .
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
Genesis 32:24, 27–28
28
Jacob stood on an outcropping of rocks, staff in hand, looking to the west where the hills of Gilead dipped to lush valleys and the Jabbok River rushed to the Jordan on its way to the Dead Sea, in the area where his uncle Lot once lived. Oak and pear and pine flocked the hillsides, while a sea of pink oleander covered the slopes all the way to the fertile plains. They’d traveled for days since leaving the camp at Mizpah after Laban’s departure, the covenant and the pillars they had set up reminders of the goodwill that now rested between them.
Yet Jacob’s heart beat heavy with the memories and dread of the future. Would he find acceptance in the house of his father? Did Esau still hold hatred against him? The fears were never far from his thoughts.
Up ahead, almost too far for his eye to clearly see, his servants drove his flocks—first goats, then ewes, then rams, followed by herds of camels, cows, bulls, and donkeys. The God of his fathers had surely blessed him, as He had promised when he first left his father’s house with only the staff he carried now.
The sound of children’s voices drifted to him on the rise, and he looked down to where his wives and sons and daughter passed before him toward the place where they would make camp. Satisfied that all was well, he walked to his waiting camel and mounted, tucking the staff into a sling at its side. The camel took the downward slope at a careful pace, then snorted its pleasure when they touched even ground and ran at Jacob’s beckoning toward the women and children. He paused as his beast aligned with Rachel’s.
“All is well, my lord?” The smile in her eyes was all he could see beneath the veil that blocked the sun and wind from her beautiful face.
He smiled and nodded. “All is well. We will make camp soon. I am going up ahead to secure the location.”
She acquiesced with a silent tilt of her head while Joseph waved and bounced, obviously eager to get down. Jacob laughed, the lighthearted feeling boosting his spirits.
He coaxed the camel forward, passing the herds as he went. As he neared the goats, he noticed the shadows had lengthened and the servants kept the animals in their respective groups apart from each other. Jacob glanced at his chief shepherd and waved, calling out orders to stop for the night. As he took the camel’s reins to return to the women, he spotted men walking toward him, their bearing tall and distinguished, their clothes bright as noonday.
He halted and commanded the camel to kneel, then took his staff and slowly walked toward them. To wait for his steward or a few of his servants would have been wise, but the men approaching seemed familiar in a way that made the hairs on his skin tingle. He had met them before. And they were not as normal men.
Memories of Bethel the night he’d fled his brother surfaced. He had encountered God on that trip, in the dream of the ziggurat and the angels of God walking up and down the stairs.
His knees weakened beneath him, and he leaned more heavily on the staff as he approached. “This is the camp of God,” he said, though none could hear.
He planted his staff in the dirt and waited. Angels as numerous as they had been the night of his dream approached and circled him, moving forward and back, floating just above the surface of the earth. A sense of assurance and peace filled him. God was in this place. He gazed on the messengers who surrounded him but did not speak. And yet his heart heard the music of their silence and recalled Elohim’s words all those years ago.
I am Yahweh, the Elohim of your father Abraham and the Elohim of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.
Until. Elohim would not leave him until He had fulfilled His promise. Jacob was standing on the cusp of that promise, his family behind him, the land before him. God had not forgotten him.
“This place shall be Mahanaim, Elohim’s camp and my camp, for Elohim has met me here,” he said, his voice sure despite the tremor that passed through him.
The angels left him then, disappearing from his sight. The sun had not moved from its place in the sky despite the time it had seemed to take for the angels to approach and move around him. He turned, shaken, the sense of awe he had known at Bethel as tangible as the beat of his heart. He closed his eyes, trying to get his bearings, and looked up at the sound of camels approaching. He would make camp in this place and stay for a time, then cross the Jabbok and head to the Jordan before making the long trek south to his father at Hebron.
Rachel settled Joseph in her tent for the night, then wrapped a cloak about her and stepped into the moonlight, searching the campground for some sign of Jacob. He had spoken little during the evening meal, and she sensed
something had happened on their way to the camp. But her attempt to get him to speak in the company of the others had failed, and now her sense of exhaustion nearly outweighed her need to know what troubled him. She looked with longing at the mat beside Joseph and almost gave in and curled up beside him. She could question Jacob another time. If he didn’t want to tell her, then she should sleep while she could.
But a deeper need to see him, to comfort him, pulled her from her tent. She found him near the fire, speaking with his steward. She slowly strode closer and stood where he could catch her eye without being interrupted. He smiled her way and bid his steward good night, then walked toward her.
He took her hand and squeezed. “Walk with me.”
She intertwined her fingers with his and smiled when he looked down at her. “What happened to you today?” They moved from the circle of tents to the edge of the forest, where the night breezes rustled the oak leaves above them.
His grip tightened, and he led her farther to a place near the edge of the camp where they could sit on some upturned rocks. “God met me in this place,” he said, settling beside her. He tilted his head, and she followed his gaze heavenward, longing to see what it was that put the edge of awe in his voice. “Before you arrived, his angels came from that spot.” He pointed to a place in the field just beyond them. “It was almost like the time I met Him at Bethel, on my journey to your father’s house. Now we have come full circle back to the land He has promised to me and my descendants, and He met me again.”
Rachel Page 22