Jacob said, “Lately I’ve heard the sons of Laban complain about my presence here. They say I’ve taken their father’s wealth. I think they fear for their own inheritance. On the other hand, I know for a fact that your father has no regard for me anymore. As far east of Haran as we are west of it, there are herds and flocks mottled exactly like these, except that they are weaker than mine. They belong to your father. On the day he promised to give me the multicolored cattle, he removed them all—every goat and sheep—and drove them east.
“You know that I have served him these twenty years with all my strength. Yet he has cheated me. He has changed my wages ten times. What am I to do in such a difficult position?
“I think I have to leave.
“Hush! Rachel, hush a minute. Let me finish.”
Jacob knelt down and pulled a shepherd’s scrip from under the stone. He opened it and offered each woman a bit of bread. Rachel nibbled at hers. Leah merely held it. Actually, her mouth was dry; but she didn’t ask for a drink.
Jacob said, “But God has been with me. I dreamed a thing, and then I did it.
“I took fresh rods of poplar and almond and planed and peeled the bark so the white showed through. Whenever the stronger animals were breeding, I put before their eyes rods white with stripes and speckles and spots. But when the feeble animals bred, I hid the rods. So the mottled kids and the spotted lambs were strong—and they became mine, as you see before you now.
“In that same dream the angel of God said to me, ‘Jacob.’ I said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me. Now arise, go forth from this land and return to the land of your birth.’
“That is what God said, Rachel,” Jacob whispered, gazing again with steadfast entreaty into her eyes. “Leah, the Lord God said, Go. What do you think?”
Rachel said, “Let Leah speak. She’s older.”
Leah said, “I’m thirsty.”
Immediately Jacob drew a leather flask from his scrip. She put it to her lips and drank, grateful to find it was wine. Then she handed the flask to Rachel.
“I will tell you the truth,” said Leah. “We are treated like foreigners in our father’s house. Since we married you, there’s been no guarantee that any property will fall to us or to our children hereafter. Now, then, whatever God has said to you, do.”
This once, each in the presence of his other wife, Jacob kissed them. Yes: they felt both strength and dread in their souls. They did not feel young any more.
Jacob said, “Prepare the children. Tomorrow your father and brothers are going to shear the sheep they keep three days east of Haran. While they are there, we will steal away to the west.”
So JACOB AROSE and set his family on camels and drove all his cattle westward—all that he had acquired in the land of Paddan-aram.
As his grandfather Abraham had before him, he crossed the Euphrates on inflated goatskins, then turned his face south to the land of Canaan and his father Isaac.
When Laban returned to Haran and saw his great loss, he called his kinsmen together and set out after Jacob. But God came to Laban in a dream by night and said: Take heed that you speak no evil word to Jacob!
Moreover, when he drew near to his nephew, Jacob rode at him in a towering anger. Jacob leveled at Laban a verbal attack so fiery that the older man began to shake.
He said, “These are my daughters. Their children are my children, and the flocks are my flocks. But what can I do this day to these my daughters or to their children? They are in your hand now. Come, let us make a covenant, you and I.”
So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar.
They called the pillar Mizpah because it was a watchpost between them. And each man said, “The Lord watch between you and me when we are absent one from the other. And I shall never pass over to you, nor you to me, to do the other harm.”
V
SOUTH WENT THE LONGhousehold of Jacob, slowly. In the spring of the year there was good pasturage; but valleys thundered with the flooding rainfall and every small brook swelled into a river.
South, skirting the city of Damascus; south over the high plateau of Bashan, then descending a chalky, limestone land into Gilead; south through that beautiful country where Jacob grew contemplative and withdrew into himself. Here were sights he had not seen in half his lifetime: the western slopes of these hills were rich with olive orchards and vineyards and fields of a young, green grain; the hills themselves were covered in thick forest. Jacob was remembering, overwhelmed with the goodness of Canaan east of the Jordan.
But then they came to the Jabbok River, roaring through its gorges toward the Jordan, and another mood seized Jacob’s heart, silencing him altogether.
He had sent messengers to his brother Esau, saying that though he was returning, there was no need for the brothers to meet or intrude on one another’s private lives. But the messengers had ridden back at high speeds, crying: “He’s coming! Esau is not staying away. He’s crossing the Jordan at Jericho and riding north to meet you with four hundred men!”
His brother was coming to kill him. Jacob was afraid.
He led his household down a treacherous path into the Jabbok valley, to the narrow strip of land that ran along the northern bank of the river. There he began to divide his livestock and to send it all ahead of himself in great, successive waves. One wave alone consisted of two hundred and twenty goats, two hundred and twenty sheep, thirty camels, fifty cows and thirty asses—all in the care of several servants whom Jacob commanded to find Esau and say, “This drove of animals belongs to your brother Jacob. He gives them as a present to his lord Esau—and he himself follows behind.”
But behind the first wave came a second, the same size, with the same message: “A gift, and your brother follows behind.”
In this way Jacob sent a third wave and a fourth, an absolute deluge of wealth, a trick to soften his brother’s heart or else to scare him with waves of power.
When his cattle and his drivers had all passed on before him, he saw to it that his wives and their maids and his eleven children likewise went safely over the Jabbok with his most trusted servants.
So then Jacob stood alone on the northern bank of the river: before him the roaring waters; behind him a wall of Nubian sandstone, perpendicular from its foot to the tangled black forest on its brow; right of him there was nothing except a stony, wet plateau; and left of him, nothing.
Night was descending. The gorge grew gloomier, leaving only a path of sky above him, where stars filled the blackness with such tiny lights that he felt small and solitary.
It had been Jacob’s intent to make a private crossing of the Jabbok. But maybe he trusted the swimming stroke of his strong arm better in daylight than in the dark; and maybe the night fell faster within the walls of the gorge than he had expected. Whatever the reason, he did not dive into the waters. He did not move. He stood transfixed, surrounded by sound and soon by an absolute darkness—for even the tiny stars were suddenly swallowed as if by a beast of horrible size.
Jacob felt wind, then a chill.
Someone came flying down the riverbank. Jacob felt what he could not see. Then someone attacked him, struck him to the stony ground, and began to wrestle with him. They wrestled by the river. They whirled and heaved each other against the sheer rock wall. In a breathless silence they wrestled all night until a high grey dawn began to streak the sky.
Jacob’s adversary touched him in the hollow of his thigh and put his thigh out of joint.
Jacob threw his arm around a huge waist and held on.
The massive foe said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”
But Jacob shouted, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
“What is your name?”
“Jacob.”
The contender said, “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
“Who are you?” Jacob c
ried. “Tell me your name.”
But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” Then he blessed him and vanished, and he was there no more.
Immediately it was morning.
Jacob tried to rise from the terrible exertions of the night—then suddenly realized whom he had been struggling with all night, even all his life long. He began to tremble.
“I have seen God face-to-face,” Joseph whispered, “and yet my life is preserved.”
He called the name of that place Peniel: The Face of God.
And the sun rose upon him as he left Peniel, limping because of his thigh.
VI
ON THE MORNINGafter God had changed his name to Israel, Jacob looked up and saw Esau approaching with four hundred men.
He did not pause or turn away. He continued walking toward his brother. He limped. Moreover, he kept bowing to the ground in genuine humility.
And when Esau spied Jacob in the distance, he leaped from his donkey and ran as fast as he could to meet him, then fell on his neck and embraced him and kissed him.
Jacob wept because of his brother’s kindness.
Both men were bearded. Both beards were shot with white. But Esau’s was full and reddish while Jacob’s was thin and black. Esau had the stocky body of his uncle Laban. Jacob had the native grace of Rebekah.
Jacob put his hands on Esau’s shoulders and smiled. “To see your face is like seeing the face of God because you are receiving me with such favor.”
Esau stroked the muscle and the bruises in Jacob’s forearm. “You’re stronger now,” he said. “But, baby brother, your quarrels must be horrible.”
Jacob laughed. He begged Esau to keep the presents he had sent him yesterday. And so the brothers were well-met after all. They spent the day together, and then they parted in peace, forever.
Esau returned to Seir, southeast of Canaan, where his family would dwell for centuries thereafter.
Jacob crossed the Jordan River at Succoth and traveled to Shechem. There he made public the name that the Lord God had given him. He purchased a small piece of land and built an altar on it. He called the altar El-Elohe-Israel: God! The God of Israel!
FOUR
Joseph
I
JOSEPH, THE ONLY CHILD of his mother Rachel, was a clever fellow, a boy with a mind of genuine complexity.
“Subtle,” his father Jacob would say, tapping his temple. “Levi, why couldn’t you learn to count so early?”
Even before he was weaned, Joseph learned that he could cause small explosions in any of his brothers, simply by raising his eyebrows and popping his eyes at the lad. “Stop that!” his brother would yell. “Stop it, you slithering—”
Of course, he only did that trick when their father was present—and then great Jacob would roar the name of the offended brother, “Judah! Judah!” laughing till the tears ran down his nose, utterly stunned by the wit of the infant. “Oh, Judah, the boy drives you like a donkey, doesn’t he? Mark my words: he will be someone some day.”
No one had the proof, but the brothers believed it was Joseph who told their father about Reuben’s sin. Who needed proof? It was always Joseph. He was always sneaking off to tattle.
So one morning Joseph disappeared from the fields where the brothers had led their flocks, and just as they expected, Jacob came out that same afternoon.
“Oh, no,” Reuben groaned.
The brothers lifted their eyes, and saw their father striding across the fields like the whirlwind of God, white with wrath. He passed through the flocks as if they were foam, bore down on Reuben, grabbed the young man’s staff and began to beat him with it. Backhand, backhand, the big man cracked his son across the buttocks till the rod broke, and Reuben ran for the hills.
When their father departed again, never having uttered the first word, the brothers gaped at each other. What had Reuben done?
Well, Simeon knew. Simeon and Reuben shared the same room in their mother’s tent. Three nights ago, with awe and pride and genuine dread, Reuben had described for Simeon his first experience with sex.
“Reuben had sex?” the brothers said.
“Yes,” said Simeon.
“That’s why father beat him so badly?”
“Well, yes and no. It gets worse.”
“What could be worse than that?”
Simeon lowered his voice and said, “Reuben had sex with Bilhah, father’s concubine, Rachel’s maid—your flesh-mother, Dan, and yours, Naphtali.”
All the brothers shivered at this last bit of news. And little lord Joseph!—so he’s the one who told it to their father? Yes, and because of him every member of this family now is suffering. It probably never occurred to him what effect his tattling would have on Dan and Naphtali!
What, therefore, should be done about Joseph? What should the brothers do about him?
Reuben got a drubbing—and Joseph got a coat. A dress-coat! A garment so extravagantly long that one could not wear it while working. But then, the little lord never did physical labor anyway.
There was no proof that the coat was a reward for Joseph’s witness against Reuben, but everyone assumed it because their father had chosen for his favorite son a coat with the sort of sleeve that only the royalty wore!
Right away the fellow began to dream.
Nor was he private about his dreams. Joseph would don that royal coat and regale the entire family with his dreams, raising his arms for emphasis.
“I dreamed that my brothers and I were binding sheaves in the field,” he said. “And lo!”—here he threw up his arms and waved his sleeves—“lo, my sheaf stood upright while my brothers’ sheaves bowed down before it.”
Did he say bowed? Whoever heard of sheaves bowing like people? Besides, when did the little king actually cut a sheaf in his life?
“I dreamed of the sun and the moon and eleven stars,” said Joseph. “And they were all bowing down before me.”
Jacob cleared his throat. “This dream is different, isn’t it?” he said, frowning. “By sun and moon, can you mean your mother and me?”
One would have wished that Jacob had probed the boy’s insolence a little farther. He didn’t. And seeing that their father did not, the brothers wondered more and more loudly among themselves: What’s to be done with this dreamer?
II
WHEN JOSEPH WAS seventeen years old, his mother Rachel became pregnant for the second time in her life. It should have been a year of glad anticipation. But Rachel had ever had a delicate frame; and the same small bones that once had caused such love in Jacob now were frail and uncertain. Her large, lovely eyes were larger now and darker than ever.
Pregnancy made an invalid of Rachel.
Instead of gaining a cushion to soften the child inside of her, there came a month when she actually began to lose weight. Then the baby caused such pain in her pelvis that she had to lie down. Rachel spent the last three months of her term lying on her back. It broke Joseph’s heart to see her so.
Whenever he crept into her tent, she smiled and reached to touch his cheek.
“Be good,” she said. Often she said, “Joseph, are you befriending your brothers? Do you obey your father’s word?”
“Yes,” he would say. “Yes.”
But then the baby would turn, and she would gasp, and Joseph hurt to see her hurt. Worse, he felt guilty that on his account she should struggle to cover the pain. His presence, then, increased her trouble.
“Be good,” she said.
He said, “Yes,” and left her alone in the darkness.
Then one night, while Jacob’s household was traveling to Ephrath, Joseph was awakened by a long, crimson scream. This was not a lamentation. It was plain animal pain.
Joseph ran outside in time to see his aunt Leah duck into his mother’s tent.
He went through the darkness to the back of her tent. He sat down and drew up his legs and wrapped his arms around them. He bit his lip. He bowed his head and rocked because he could hear the sounds his mother
was making—woofing sounds, snarling, like the grunting of wild beasts when they tear their prey apart.
Joseph started to cry, but without sobbing. Tears ran down, soaking his robe at the chest.
Toward morning he heard Leah speak in a clear voice. “Don’t be afraid, Rachel,” she said. “You are bearing another son.”
For just an instant Joseph felt almost giddy. Soon it would all be over.
But then he heard the whispering voice of his mother, a ghostly exhalation: Benoni, she breathed. This was her name for the infant. Benoni.
And then she breathed no more.
Joseph tried by the force of his will to make his mother breathe again. He held his own breath. Then someone touched his neck, and he jumped, and it was Leah. She said, “Joseph, go back to bed for a while. I need to speak to your father.”
JACOB BURIED RACHEL on the way to Ephrath. He set up a pillar upon her grave.
It is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb, which is there to this day, near the village of Bethlehem.
EXACTLY EIGHT DAYS after he had buried his wife, Jacob circumcised his son. That night he crept into the darkness of Rachel’s tent and crouched by her pallet.
He heaved an enormous sigh. Then, suddenly, he smelled her.
He hadn’t expected anything like the presence of Rachel to meet him here; but her scent was on the air, something sweet and nourishing, like milk. It was as if the spirit of Rachel herself were passing through the room.
Then it spoke: “But mother named the boy Benoni.”
Ah, no, this was not Rachel. It had the lilt and the accent of her voice, but it belonged to Joseph.
Joseph had been here ahead of Jacob, lying in shadows on his own pallet. Perhaps he’d been sleeping here for eight days now.
Jacob turned toward his son and said, “What? What did you say?”
With some emotion Joseph said, “Mother named the boy Benoni. I heard her. But today you circumcised him with another name: Benjamin.”
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 6