“The governor grew very angry then. We don’t know the cause of his anger. Father, we could not understand this Egyptian. Benjamin? he said. We said, Yes, Benjamin.
“Then he said, Bring Benjamin here, and I will know that you are not spies.”
At these words, Jacob slumped to the ground. Reuben rushed to catch him. Reuben and Levi together cradled the man while Benjamin ran for a flask of water. Judah watched unmoving. There was the tightness of genuine anguish in his face.
“What else?” Jacob whispered, lying in the lap of his sons.
Judah spoke softly. “We told him we could not bring Benjamin. We said it would kill you. We said you had already lost one son and could not lose another. The grand vizier only seemed to grow more furious as we talked. His face was white. His voice was a whisper. He spoke Egyptian, but the translator said, ‘Then you shall stay in prison till one of you goes to Canaan and brings Benjamin here.’
“So we sat in prison for three days. Then the governor came and said, I’ve changed my mind.’ He pointed at Simeon. ‘That one stays. The rest of you, go and come back with Benjamin. Your food is already in sacks on the backs of your beasts,’ he said. ‘Go.’
“And so we have come.”
In order to show that their journey had done some good, the brothers brought forth their sacks of grain and opened them.
But there arose into the night sky a howl of extremest sorrow. For old Jacob saw in each sack of his sons the money he had sent for payment. “What are you doing to me?” he cried. “You have stolen from the governor of Egypt! No, no, no, no, no, you will not take the son of my right hand into such danger. I am sorry for Simeon—but you will not bring my grey head down in sorrow to the grave.”
IN THE YEAR that followed, no green thing grew for forage. Judah watched as the flocks and herds of his father sickened and died. People did not have the strength to drag the carcasses away.
Judah thought often of his brother languishing in an Egyptian prison. Simeon. Perhaps he was eating, but he was not here. Nevertheless, sins lay heavy on Judah’s soul. And the pain of his father shut his mouth. He would not speak.
But when their previous stores of grain were gone, when his children and Jacob’s grandchildren grew gaunt, and when their bellies distended with hunger, his father came into his tent and said, “Judah, go again. Try to buy a little food again from Egypt.”
Judah said, “Father, sit down and listen to me.”
He held his peace till Jacob sighed and sat. Perhaps the old man knew what was coming.
Then Judah said, “The grand vizier in Egypt solemnly warned us, saying: You will not see my face unless your brother is with you. Now, then, if you send Benjamin along, we will go. But if you won’t, we cannot go to Egypt.”
Jacob said, “How could you do this wickedness against me, telling the man I had another son?”
Judah said, “He questioned us closely. We only answered his questions.”
Judah waited a moment in silence. Then he said, “Father, you know that we all will die if we don’t do something now. Everyone will die. You and all your children and all our little ones. But send Benjamin with me and I will be surety for him. If I do not bring him back, let me bear the blame forever.”
Long, long Jacob sat in silence.
Finally he said, “A little balm. A little wild honey.” He pulled himself up by grabbing his staff. He limped to the door of the tent and turned. “Take gum to the governor and myrrh and pistachio nuts and almonds. Take double the money to pay for both loads of food.” The old man turned away. He stood in the doorway staring out at the dusk, an ancient shadow, an enormous sorrow. “And,” he whispered, “take your brother Benjamin.”
THE CHIEF STEWARD of the grand vizier brought his master news at noon of a bright blue day: that the same men who had come from Canaan last year now had returned again.
“You wished to be informed,” he said.
“Yes,” said Joseph. He was in his working room in Pharaoh’s palace. “How many are there?”
“Ten, my lord. I think ten.”
Joseph felt his heart beat faster. “Wait for them in the marketplace,” he said to the steward. “When they arrive, take them straight to my house. Slaughter an animal. Prepare a feast. I will share my evening meal with them.”
By a stern self-discipline Joseph spent the day attending to his regular affairs.
Nevertheless, he placed himself near a latticed window from which he could watch the sons of Jacob. He saw his steward step forward to meet them. He watched the exchange of greetings—and then their faces fell, troubled by his invitation. Twice the steward tried to lead them to the governor’s house, high on a hill; twice he had to turn back and beg them to follow. But all at once the men opened their pitiful sacks, pulled out a great deal of money, spread it on the ground and gesticulated, loudly explaining something. The good steward only put the money back again, grabbed their sacks himself, and in this way persuaded them to follow.
Next Joseph ordered Simeon’s release. He, too, was led to the vizier’s private quarters.
Then, late in the day, Joseph himself walked home.
As he approached his courtyard he heard a babble of Hebrew voices: “Simeon! Simeon, is it you? How are you? Oh, Simeon, how did they treat you?”
And Simeon’s voice: “How is father? Oh, no! Reuben, you brought Benjamin—”
Joseph felt such a constriction in his throat that he feared he could not speak. Benjamin is here!
He strode into the courtyard and with a hard tone said, “How is your father? Is he alive?”
The brothers immediately fell on their faces before him. His interpreter repeated the question in Hebrew, but the brothers didn’t move.
Joseph barked, “Stand up!” The interpreter didn’t have to repeat it. The men rose slowly, gazing at Joseph with genuine fear. Wordlessly they pushed pots and jars toward him, balm and honey and gum and almonds.
Joseph said, “The old man of whom you told me, Jacob, Israel—is he well?”
In Hebrew the brothers murmured, “Your servant our father is alive. Yes, and he is well.”
The breath was squeezed in Joseph’s chest. Suddenly he saw the fourteen-year-old Benjamin, the image of their mother Rachel, a remarkable fall of dark hair—and then Joseph couldn’t breathe at all. His face flamed with emotion. His nostrils flared. He pinched his lips and frowned like thunder. The brothers shrank backward from him. Joseph whispered, “This is your youngest brother?”
Judah stared at the governor. “Yes,” he said. “Benjamin.”
Joseph said, “Benjamin—”
But the name on his lips undid him. He covered his face and rushed from the courtyard into an inner room, where he burst into tears and wept: Benjamin.
During the meal that followed, Joseph watched how furtively his brothers ate. Eleven brothers: their hunger must be violent within them, but their fear must be greater. They nibbled. He sent them enormous portions. He sent Benjamin five times what he sent the others. Still, everyone only nibbled.
To his chief steward he whispered, “Go out and fill the sacks of the Hebrews with food and with their own money again. All of it.” He pointed at Benjamin. “And in the sack of the lad place my silver cup. Go.”
Speaking through the interpreter, Joseph required the shepherds to spend the night in his own quarters, then he left them.
He did not sleep at all that night.
Immediately at sunrise the following morning he heard the commotion of men preparing to leave. He ascended to the high window of his house and watched them go with haste and fear and elation. Eleven of them. Without turning around, he spoke to the steward waiting behind them.
“Follow them,” he said. “Block their progress. Ask why they would repay the vizier evil for good. Ask for my silver cup. Make them open their sacks. Call him who has the cup a thief, and bring him here.”
Joseph watched his servant ride forth in a magnificent chariot, approach his brothers, co
mmand them to halt, command them to open their sacks. He watched the terror thicken in his brothers’ faces as money fell out before the grain. And then, when the silver cup rolled out of Benjamin’s sack, he saw how the ten older brothers all took hold of their robes and tore them. They made a terrible wailing. He could hear it even here, on his hill, in his house, behind the lattice of his window. He watched them slowly retrace their steps, returning to the house again.
He was sitting on a dais in his royal chair when they were ushered into his presence.
“What have you done to me this time?” he asked in Egyptian.
Judah spoke, broken by his anguish. “What can we say to my lord?” he said. “God has found out the guilt of your servants, and we shall be your slaves. All of us.”
“No,” said Joseph. “Not all of you. Only him whose sack had my silver cup. Him. The rest can go home to your father.”
Judah’s face twisted with grief. Joseph set his jaw. Judah crept toward him then bowed to the floor. “O my lord,” he said, “let not your anger burn against your servant for speaking.”
Joseph stiffened. He was fighting tears.
But Judah flinched in fear. He gathered strength and spoke nonetheless. “The first time we came, you asked about our father. We told you the truth: he is old. He has already lost one son. He will die if he must lose another. Especially his youngest son, Benjamin. But that is the one you demanded to see.”
Joseph raised his face and shut his eyes tight.
Judah said, “Our father begged us not to bring the lad here to you. He said that any harm to Benjamin would bring his grey head down to death, because Benjamin’s mother had two sons and one is gone. But you demanded it, my lord, so I argued hard for Benjamin’s coming. I vowed to bear the blame of any trouble. I took an oath. Therefore, I beg you, let me stay in my brother’s stead. Take me, not him. How can I go back to my father if his son is not with me? What could I say? I cannot. I cannot.”
Joseph could not control himself anymore.
In Egyptian he whispered, “Get out! Everyone but the Hebrews, leave the room.”
When they were alone, he looked at his brothers and burst into tears. He knelt down in front of Judah and embraced him. In Hebrew he said, “Brother, didn’t you know?”
He stood up and went to Benjamin and kissed him. “I am Joseph,” he said.
“Reuben,” he sobbed. “Reuben, look at me. Simeon, I am your brother. Levi, look, I am not dead. I did not die. I’m alive. It’s me. Dan! Asher! Gad! Naphtal—it’s me, Joseph!”
One after the other, he fell on the necks of his brothers and held them close until all the men were weeping.
“I have been in the hands of God from the time you took me from my father. Oh, my father! Please! Go to my father! Tell him who I am. Tell him Egypt is prepared to receive him in a royal glory. Issachar! Zebulun, run to our father and bring him here, to live the rest of his days in peace, with me, with us, with his whole family surrounding his tent all the days of his life.”
VI
AND SO IT HAPPENED that Jacob and his children and their children and all their goods moved south and west into the land of Goshen, where Joseph came in a splendid chariot to meet his father.
Joseph leaped from the chariot.
Jacob limped toward him, an old man with a thin white beard. Each man fell on the neck of the other.
Old Jacob said, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are alive.”
But he lived yet twelve more years. And before he died, he blessed his children, as well as the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh.
Then he drew his feet up into his bed and breathed his last.
But ages later, when God had fulfilled his promises and had made the family of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob multitudinous and strong; centuries later, when the Lord had led the children of Israel out of Egypt and back to the land he had covenanted to give them, they remembered their father with a creed repeated at every harvest, and thus did they give thanks unto their faithful God.
They said:
A wandering Aramaean was my father;
he went down to Egypt and sojourned there,
few in number,
but there he became a nation,
great and mighty and many.
And the Egyptians treated us harshly…
PART TWO
The Covenant
FIVE
Moses
I
THE KING OF EGYPT was far away from his homeland—northeast of the Nile, north of Canaan, more northerly still than Tyre and Sidon—ford-ing the river Orontes. He was marching to meet the Hittites, whose king he called “the vile Fallen One of Hatti,” and his army was so massive that it took several days to accomplish the river crossing.
The army was organized in four divisions, each named for one of the gods whom the Egyptians worshiped: Amun, Re, Ptah and Sutekh. And why wouldn’t Pharaoh’s forces be named after gods? Wasn’t he himself their son? Didn’t he ride and fight and rule in their power, daily renewing his strength with the sun?
Now, it happened that the division named Amun, which was under the king’s direct command, had shortly completed the crossing when word came to Pharaoh that two nomads were requesting an audience with him. Re, the second division, was in the midst of its crossing, while Ptah waited in quarters on the far side till the ford was free. The fourth division, Sutekh, was yet several days to the rear.
“Nomads?” said Pharaoh.
“Shasu,” said the messenger, using an Egyptian term which meant To Wander Around. These were a landless people who lived at the edges of more sedentary civilizations, a nomadic folk who wandered the wilderness in tents. They were a class infinitely lower than the social refinement of Egyptians.
“What do they want?”
“To escape the power of the Hittite by serving Egypt.”
“Ah,” said the king. He paused a moment, then said, “Set my chair in an open space. Tell these two that I will listen with a smile and a stick, one for truth and one for lies, then bring them to me.”
Pharaoh standing or Pharaoh sitting—he was ever a glorious figure. There flexed a visible strength beneath the bracelets of his arms. His eye was direct and steady. Unlike others, his loincloth was pleated and bound by a broad belt and a metal buckle engraved with his name; from the back hung a bull’s tail, from the front an apron. Now, in preparation for the audience with these Shasu, he donned a blue helmet decorated with the sacred asp at the brow and two streamers hanging behind.
He sat down in his golden chair.
His lion came and lay beside him, tethered at the foot and peering into the blue distance.
Then the nomads were brought forward, fierce-eyed men of goatsmell and grizzled beards and robes of a woven wool. Uncut hair. He recognized the class. Even Egypt had become infested with them.
They bowed low before him.
He said, “What do you have to say?”
They rose up and in fawning voices said that their families were caught in the clutches of the Hittite king—but that king himself, the Fallen One of Hatti, was hiding in Aleppo, terrified of the Egyptian armies coming to engage him.
“Shasu,” said Pharaoh, gazing at them with eyes like javelins. “You are Shasu.”
“So we are called.”
Pharaoh touched a short stick which lay across his knees and said, “Why should I believe you?”
They fell on their faces before him and whined, “For the sake of our children!”
Such abject selfishness is characteristic of this rank of human. Pharaoh, therefore, believed them.
He commanded the Amun Division to set up camp in the safety of this place and wait until the other three divisions should ford the river and join them. Even Re, the second division, was a long day’s march downriver, busy about its crossing.
So the soldiers erected a square wall of shields upon the plain. The king’s tent was set in the center. Oxen carts filled with provisions w
ere gathered in; huts were built for the officers; stoves and stools and mats and basins lent a little comfort to these huts; and the soldiers themselves marked their personal areas with private bundles and weapons.
On the following day, while donkeys kicked their heels and rolled in the dust, while charioteers lay sound asleep in their chariots, a man came riding top speed from the south. His horse cleared the wall of shields in a single bound and thundered toward Pharaoh’s tent.
“Re!” cried the man, flinging himself from his mount and stumbling forward: “The soldiers of Re are dead!”
Even as Pharaoh strode toward this messenger, he felt the ground trembling beneath his foot. “Speak clearly,” he commanded.
The messenger wept, “The accursed Fallen One of Hatti had surrounded the second division in the night. He attacked us with the sunrise, and he comes behind me. King, he is upon you! Run!”
The Shasu had lied! They were spies after all.
But Pharaoh did not run.
Though the armies of the Hittites were thundering now into view, though his own soldiers exploded in panic, disordered and unready, the king swiftly grabbed his accouterments, donned his breastplate and helmet, slung a quiver over his shoulder and leaped into his chariot. He drove straight toward the Hittites, throwing up a cloud of yellow dust and drawing the best of his men behind, his personal bodyguard.
Riding at full gallop, Pharaoh tied the chariot reins to his belt, then began to release a hail of arrows upon the Fallen One of Hatti. The sheath at the side of his chariot was filled with javelins. These flew like raptor birds among the Hittites, killing two and three in a fall. Pharaoh was in his might! Pharaoh, unafraid, spread death around his hurtling chariot, opening a path through which his bodyguard followed, redoubling slaughter on every side.
The Hittites retreated before such courage. Like crocodiles they rushed belly-low back to the river. The Egyptian king charged them five times more, shining like his father Amon-Re. He set fire to the countryside.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 9