J: The Woman Who Wrote the Bible

by Mary Burns

  I accepted Esau and Tilith’s hospitality with gratitude, and was happy to stay and rest for a few months in their peaceful home in the land of Canaan—our Promised Land. But I insisted, as I typically did, that I need not impose on them by staying in a room in their house, equipped as I was with tents for myself and my own people. I could not give up my privacy and the evenings I spent writing, and I could not risk being discovered doing so. My men set up our tents within the well-maintained walls of Esau’s compound, and we were blessed with daily supplies of fresh goat’s milk, fruit and vegetables. I spent a good deal of time conferring with my scribes, and editing and working on the collection of the stories I had already heard, and time passed pleasantly enough.

  * * *

  One bright spring day, about a month into my stay, Tilith asked if I would like to visit Rebecca’s Well, the place where Rebecca and Isaac first met and fell in love. It was still a working well, she told me, and was about an hour’s walk from their dwelling. I accepted with enthusiasm.

  As we walked through a grove of olive trees, the tiny hard green olives just beginning to show among the leaves, I was amused at Tilith’s attempts to extract more information from me without breaking the rules of politeness required from a host to a guest.

  “Your travels must have taken you to interesting places,” she said.

  I hid a smile, but saw no reason not to indulge her curiosity. “I have been as far as Lebanon in the north, and to the western edge of our land, where the great blue sea extends far beyond one’s sight.”

  I fell silent as I remembered standing on the sands of that western shore, the water lapping at my bare feet. The immensity of water, merging on the horizon with the bowl of the sky, created a longing in me I found hard to name. The empty vastness of water, unlike the stretches of desert land, is a living, breathing, moving creature, and I felt its incessant rhythm in my own heartbeat, as if I were a child in the great womb of the world. Then the sorrow had returned to my body, and I sat on the shore, weeping for my lost ones again.

  “Madame?” Tilith’s voice pierced my dreaming. “Janaia?” She tentatively tried out my name, which I had encouraged her to use. I came back to myself, and smiled at her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was thinking of … I was reminded of how much I loved the sea, and it drew me into a daydream.” I looked around at the orchard, blinking at the sun overhead. “Are we near the well?”

  “Yes, it’s just down this way,” she said, pointing with her hand to a path that wound down into a shallow place in the midst of the olive trees.

  “Tell me what happened here,” I said. “The story of Isaac and Rebecca.”

  As Tilith began recounting the love story, and the stone-covered well came into view, I felt a rush like a hot wind run through my veins, that hollowed-out sensation I had not experienced in many years. It was all I could do to keep from crying out, my spirit was so keen to receive the vision that hovered at the well. I stopped walking, and saw nothing but the vision.

  * * *

  A strikingly beautiful, dark-haired woman, a light veil over her face, stood at the well, in conversation with a young man, red-haired and stocky. I could not hear their words at first, but from their shy smiles, I divined the sweet sensations that passed between them as these two heroes of our people met for the first time. Then, as if a cloud lifted, I heard Rebecca speaking.

  “I could no longer bear to be with all those people,” she says, “it’s impossible to think two thoughts in a row!” She sits down on a bench by the well.

  “And what is it that you have to think about so seriously?” Isaac takes a seat across from her, tries to peer through her veil.

  “What, you don’t think women have anything serious to think about?” A flash of anger, her head lifts, chin in air.

  “I think women do a great deal more thinking about important things than men do,” Isaac says. “And to more effect. My mother ….” He falls silent.

  “Your mother…?”

  Isaac sighs, shrugs his shoulders, looks into the well. “I used to talk to my mother about everything, tell her everything, and even though she wasn’t able to talk, somehow I would come away comforted, and I would know what to do.”

  Rebecca’s slim body curves toward him, sympathetic, silent.

  “But she died a long time ago now,” he says.

  “And you live here, by this well? So you are the wise old, well, the wise hermit after all?”

  “Who says I’m wise? I have only my own sorrows and thoughts, no wisdom to give to anyone else.” He raises his eyes to hers behind the veil. “You seem to me very confident for so young a woman, perhaps you can instruct me?”

  Rebecca laughs, a clear, light sound, and after a moment, Isaac smiles, laughs too.

  “All right,” she says, “I’ll take up the challenge. Come, tell me, young hermit, why are we here?”

  “Here? Do you mean…?”

  “No, not here at this well, I mean here, in this life, in this desert plain, in this land! What are we supposed to do, what are we supposed to be?”

  Isaac’s brow is furrowed, his eyes sad. “I don’t know,” he says at last. “I’ve been thinking about that for a very long time,” he sighs. “And I don’t seem to be any closer to an answer. It seems useless, and pointless. There’s nothing certain, nothing good. Everything changes, and people you love … they die or betray you.”

  “Let’s look at it this way,” Rebecca says. “A man and a woman—why are they on this earth?”

  “To fall in love and make a family and love their children.”

  “Well! You answered that without hesitating at all!” There is a smile behind the veil. “And so, what is it that men and women and children and families do for each other?” She answers before he can speak. “They help each other, they protect and watch out for harm, they teach children how to do things, grow food, make things. They are always there to comfort and love each other.” Isaac is falling under the spell of her musical voice, her clear mind and heart.

  “And is not all this beautiful and good?” Rebecca holds out both hands, palms raised. “Is not all this worth living for?”

  “But sometimes people hurt you, or they die, or what seems beautiful is not!”

  “Yes, dear hermit, that is true.” Rebecca’s voice is soft, caressing, comforting. “But surely it is not worth losing all the good things, the good people, by turning your back on them, just because one or two are bad! Would you reject a whole flock of sheep because one is sick? Would you throw away all the fruit because one piece is rotten?”

  “Here,” she says, and reaching into a little bag at her waist, she takes out a date, she bites it in half. “Now there’s only half a date, but will you not eat it, and isn’t it just as delicious as if you had the whole thing?” Laughing, she holds it out for him, and he eats it from her hand.

  “It is more delicious,” Isaac says, “than the whole date would have been, because your lips have touched it.”

  Immediately, Rebecca draws back. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I shouldn’t have spoken like that, it isn’t proper. My father is always telling me I am too forward, too free.”

  “Not at all!” Isaac protests. “You could never do anything wrong.”

  “Ha! If only I could find a husband who would say that to me, and who believed it!”

  Isaac hesitates only a moment. “I could be your husband,” he says.

  Rebecca stands up hastily, drawing her cloak around her.

  “Do not say such a thing! I already have a husband, that is, I am promised to one.” She glances over her shoulder at the caravan again. “That’s where they are taking me, to my betrothed.”

  Isaac’s heart sinks, it shows in his face. “But, you are the first woman I’ve been able to talk to, the first one who’s made me laugh …. It cannot be!”

  Just then, a voice calls from a distance. “Lady! Madame! It is time to go back!”

  “You cannot leave!” Isaac is
distraught. “It’s going to be dark soon, you must stay here.”

  “I must go.” Rebecca turns to go, Isaac catches her arm.

  “Wait, can I … can I at least see your face, just once?”

  Her head turned, at first she is motionless. Slowly, she turns back to him, he drops his hand from her arm. She lifts the veil from her face, and he sees that her eyes are dark, sparks of fire, the lashes heavy. Her face: oval, smooth, the mouth good-humored but firm. Quickly the veil drops and she turns away.

  * * *

  The vision dimmed, and blurred, and was gone. I came back to myself with a start, and was surprised to hear that Tilith was still talking, standing at my side, apparently oblivious to my rapture.

  “… and of course,” she was saying, “neither one of them had any idea of who the other one was when they met at the well, so you can imagine how wonderful it must have been when they were introduced later at Abraham’s tent, as betrothed spouses!”

  Still feeling a little dazed, I murmured something in response to Tilith’s story, and then asked if we might draw some water from the well for a drink.

  There was a heavy, round stone laid on the top of the well, to keep the water from evaporating, but there was a tiny niche on the rim where a large rock was easily loosened, and a long rope with a cup of horn tied to it could be lowered into the well and drawn up for drinking. Tilith handled this procedure expertly, and I sat on the bench where moments before I had seen Rebecca sitting, and drank gratefully of the cold water, tasting of stone and minerals from deep below the earth.

  I had felt an intimate kinship with my ancient ancestress, the grandmother of the last of the twelve sons of Israel, Benjamin, the father of the line of men whose greatest son was my father, the King who had reunited Israel after all these generations. But not just because of this familial link; it was her spirit, her desire for knowledge, her wisdom and forceful thinking, that attracted me to her, and strengthened my own resolve to produce something worth living for, something worth passing on to future generations. If not a child of my body, then a child of my mind. This was worth the sorrow and the pain and the struggle that was so much a part of life itself.

  I thanked Tilith for her story, and asked if she would mind if I just sat there, at the well, alone for a while? She graciously withdrew, making sure I knew the path back to the house, and left me in peace.

  The sun was far down on the horizon when I finally rose from the bench and made my way back. I had been watching, as if at a performance, all the times of my life when God had touched me, for good or ill, in joy and sorrow, and I felt I had begun at last to understand that the life of man and woman on this earth is an ever-renewed journey of love and faith, endurance and pleasure—and it is not God who imposes any of it on us; He is there only to help us know we are loved, and loved again, and He will not desert us even if, in our greatest sorrows, we think He is not there. I felt, at last, that I could return to Jerusalem, and all would be well.

  * * *

  Before we left Beer-sheba, there was one tale hitherto unknown to me that was recited as we sat around an open fire one warm, late spring night: the dark mystery of Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, born to a handmaiden some thirteen years before the miracle of Isaac. The storyteller was a woman not much older than my mother, and she had learned the stories from her grandmother. Her voice fell into the singing, chant-like cadence that has marked the storyteller’s art from ancient times.

  Sarai the childless gave to Abram the maid of her tent, Hagar by name,

  a princess of Egypt, gift of a grateful king.

  Hagar was fertile like the Nile, and grew proud as her belly grew round,

  mocking Sarai for her barren womb.

  Abram heard the complaints of his wife and bade her do what she would do.

  Alas, Hagar was banished from the tents of Abram, a desert wanderer.

  Calling out to Yahweh, she heard a voice: Be humble, and show respect to mother Sarai. Your son shall be the father of a great nation, and you shall call him

  Ishmael, God Listens.

  And lo, the boy was born, Ishmael, and Abram loved his son.

  And lo, Sarai conceived and bore a son, Isaac, and Abram loved his son.

  Again Sarai grew jealous of Hagar, because Abram greatly loved his son by her.

  Abram heard the complaints of his wife and bade her do what she would do.

  Alas, Hagar was banished from the tents of Abram, a desert wanderer,

  and Ishmael with her.

  But the Lord God, mighty His deeds, watched over them, watched over them

  like a mother, and led them back to Egypt.

  And Ishmael grew to be a mighty ruler, the father of the people of the land of Egypt.

  I asked the storyteller if Ishmael had ever returned to Canaan, to see his brother or his father, and she answered after a long silence, as we all watched the flickering flames.

  “Ishmael came back as Abraham lay on his death bed, and he met his brother Isaac, and Rebecca, and stayed with them, here in this very place.” My skin prickled as she said this, and I saw others, too, glance half fearfully into the shadows outside the ring of firelight. “And he went back to Egypt, to Tell el-Dab’a, and then, before the next harvest time, Esau the Red and Jacob Heel-Clutcher were born.”

  I tried to get the woman to tell me more about Ishmael, but she fixed me intently with her dark eyes, and made a sign with her hand before her face, and would say no more.

  * * *

  I was intrigued by this story, and the mystery that surrounded the figure of Ishmael. To think there was an entire nation of people who, as we did, claimed Abraham as their father, joined by the half-blood of the brothers Isaac and Ishmael! Were they like us? Did we look the same and have the same beliefs and hopes? I had been startled by the singer’s use of the Name, Yahweh, for God, and wondered if that, too, had been handed down through the generations from the time when Abraham walked with God and called him by this name. These ideas fired my imagination, and I longed to know for myself. I decided I would set out for Tell el-Dab’a in Egypt, with my troupe of guards and servants, to find my ancestral line of cousins. I sent a message to my father that I would be delaying my return to Jerusalem for several more months.

  Chapter 28

  “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless

  him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his

  numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will

  make him into a great nation.” Genesis 17:20

  Once we had passed the southern borders of Judah and followed the trade routes skirting the desert, it did not take me long to discover that there was a prominent family in the city of Tell el-Dab’a who claimed their descent directly from Ishmael, son of Abram. Like our twelve tribes who were the sons of Jacob, Ishmael’s sons had numbered twelve as well, and their descendants were certainly as many as the sands of the shore or the stars of the sky! I marveled at this: how HaShem could bestow His gifts on two such people, born of the seed of a single man, and yet we called ourselves “His” people. Surely these others, these Ishmaelites, must believe themselves to be blessed by God as well?

  I observed the people and the town closely as my little caravan made its way through the streets. It had been an important capital city of Egypt some five hundred years earlier, and was now in gentle decline, though still a busy marketplace and trading center. I sent my chief servant before us with this message to the head of the household which bore the family name of Ishmael ab’n Abram: “A daughter of King David of Israel, descendant of our common father Abraham, seeks the favor of your hospitality.”

  We waited some thirty feet from the entrance to the courtyard of a large, walled house. I could see the lofty tops of palm trees brooding above the walls, and hear the shrill cry of some exotic bird piercing the late afternoon stillness.

  The great wood and stone doors opened slowly and out stepped a tall, handsome man with sharp fe
atures and the graceful walk of a dancer—the master of the house himself. He approached my wagon, which was covered with a sturdy tent-like canopy, and bowed deeply. Holding his hand over his heart, he addressed me in a language different from my own, but closely enough allied that I could catch his meaning without much difficulty.

  “Daughter of David the King, our great cousin to the North, you are most welcome to the house of one who, like you, claims Abram beloved of memory as our father.” He bowed again. “I am Ishmael ab’n Abram.” His dark eyes were of startling intensity; he had a most interesting face, where much was seen, and more was hidden.

  I bent my head in return, and spoke slowly, echoing his formal style.

  “My father will know himself to be greatly blessed by the favor of his distant cousin who shows such hospitality to his daughter. My name is Hokhma Janaia bat David.”

  He held out his hand, and I placed mine in it as he helped me out of the wagon.

  * * *

  I was shown to a suite of rooms by Ishmael’s housekeeper, a pleasant middle-aged woman named Ziphora, who immediately made herself useful to Alaya. The two of them promptly set about arranging my quarters, although on looking around, it seemed to me the rooms had already been prepared, as if awaiting my arrival. The bedroom was fragrant with fresh linens and flowers, and large cabinets had been thrown open to store clothing and personal items.

  A sizeable, comfortable sitting room, with a large table and pillow-covered couches that reminded me a little of my old study at home, was separated from the bedroom by a shimmering blue silk curtain, and opened onto a terrace with steps down to a private, enclosed garden, gay with bright flowers and splashing fountains. Alaya’s room was very near down the hall, and I was assured that the others of my retinue would be comfortably housed in another area of the compound.

  Ziphora invited me to refresh myself in a beautiful washing room with a fountain and a mosaic floor depicting animals and plants in bright, glinting colors. Through the window, in the garden, I saw a extraordinary creature: glimmering, glittering blues and greens and golds sprayed throughout a tail fan of exquisite feathers, with spots like a thousand eyes displayed on it. The bird had an elegant, green-blue neck, and on its head, a burst of feathery crown, a king of birds indeed.