Sarai

by Jill Eileen Smith

  “This fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge!” The voice from outside came through the shuttered windows.

  “We’ll treat you worse than them.” Another closer voice was soon joined by others. The door creaked against the pressure of the howling men, and Melah had a fleeting image of Lot pushed against it, begging for breath. Would serve him right for making such an awful suggestion!

  “They’re going to break down the door!” Ku-aya’s cries sparked fear in the room.

  “Someone do something!” Kammani’s screams brought Melah’s arms tighter around both girls.

  In the next breath, the two visitors opened the door and dragged Lot into the room, shutting the door behind him. Cries of a different tone seeped through the window now. Melah released her grip on the girls and tread quietly to look. Men stood with hands stretched out before them, groping at air but making no progress forward. Could they not see where they were going?

  “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you?” One of the visitors looked straight at Lot, who cowered in a corner and slowly nodded.

  “Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place,” the visitor said. “The outcry to Adonai against its people is so great that He has sent us to destroy it.”

  Melah looked at Lot’s ashen face. Lot returned his gaze to the men. “I have two sons-in-law, pledged to marry my daughters.”

  “Go now and get them. There is little time left.”

  Lot rushed to the door, then whirled around and hurried to the back, slipping out of the house. Melah stood still, unable to move.

  “We are leaving?” Kammani’s voice jolted Melah from her stupor. “How can we leave?”

  “They are going to destroy Sodom?”

  The emotion in the girls’ voices made Melah’s eyes fill with tears. She looked around at the walls with her embroidered tapestries, the ornate furnishings, the gold and silver plating over each urn. Costly alabaster jars held fragrant oils. They would need many carts to lug it all with them. The image of goat’s-hair tents surfaced in her mind’s eye. She couldn’t bear to live like that again.

  “Take only what you can carry.”

  She jerked her head to look at the one who had spoken. Had he read her mind? But that was impossible.

  “We cannot possibly—”

  He shook his head. “There isn’t time for more.”

  The comment both angered her and caused a fresh rush of fear to whip through her. She looked to her daughters. “Come.” She hurried to her room, snatched clothing and pots of makeup and ointment and herbs, and placed them in large baskets. Surely a servant could carry some of this.

  “He said only what we could carry, Mama.” Ku-aya appeared at her side, a small satchel in her hand, her sister behind her.

  Defeat mingled with Melah’s exhaustion. The back door slammed, and she was acutely aware of the deepening darkness. She dropped her things and hurried to the sitting room, the girls on her heels. Lot appeared out of breath and distraught. A servant brought him a goblet of wine. He took it from the man and gulped it down.

  “They didn’t believe me.” His chest heaved. Had he run the whole way? “They thought I was joking.” He cast the two men an imploring look. “I couldn’t convince them.”

  “No!” Kammani rushed at him, beating her fists against his chest. “You must go back, Abi. You must convince them. We cannot leave them here.”

  “From the moment you met them, you did not speak a serious word to them. Why should they believe you? Why should anyone believe you?” Melah could not keep the scorn from her tone.

  “Go back and try again, Abi. You must!” Ku-aya had hold of his arm, her look pleading.

  Lot pushed the girls from him. “I tried. It is no use.” He glanced at the two men. “Perhaps they will change their minds before we leave.” He walked toward the hall to his bedchamber.

  “We will not wait long,” one of the men said.

  A deep shudder worked through Melah, her sense of foreboding rising with each step as she hurried back to her room to continue packing.

  Predawn stillness settled over Sodom, the town’s night revelries spent, the quiet unnerving. Melah had given the last few hours to packing and unpacking what she would need to start life over again somewhere else. In the end, she had settled on two linen sacks, one weighted down with some of her finest robes and tunics and belts and jeweled sandals. In the other, she’d had to fit all of the creams and ointments, not only to keep her youthful appearance, but to use for healing balms. Lot would have to carry the food sacks. There just wasn’t room enough for it all. As it was, their pack animals were too far away to get to in time. The few donkeys he kept for travel were boarded at the stables on the outskirts of the city. They would have to carry their supplies until they could reach the stables.

  “Can you stuff these pots into your sack?” She looked at Lot where he stood in the cooking area, one sack stuffed with clothing sitting at his feet, then at the two men who suddenly filled the arch of the door between the cooking and sitting areas. The gray light of the coming dawn peeked around the shuttered windows.

  Lot turned from her to the men, ignoring her question. Where would they fit the griddle? She could not possibly make flat bread without a three-pronged griddle. The old way of cooking over stones—she could not even think of doing that again.

  “Hurry,” one of the men said, interrupting her rambling thoughts. “Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.”

  Swept away? A sense of confusion settled over her. She couldn’t leave her home. She’d raised her children here. Her son was buried here. No, wait. Her son was buried in another land, in a foreign cave. No, that wasn’t so either. Lot had brought his body back with them and buried him here. She visited his grave every week to offer him food and drink.

  A little cry escaped her, and she pressed her hands to her temples. There was still so much to do, so much to gather. “We cannot go without the donkeys. There is too much to pack, and we are too few to carry it all.”

  She glanced at Lot, who suddenly looked lost and confused himself. Kammani and Ku-aya huddled closer, the four of them standing in the middle of the room, unsure what to do, where to go.

  One of the men stepped forward and grasped Lot’s and Kammani’s hands, while the other grasped Melah’s and Ku-aya’s. “Come.”

  They moved forward without another word, the provisions left in the sacks on the floor of their home.

  Melah’s head throbbed, her mind muddied and struggling to focus. Where were they going? Why were these men leading them out of the city?

  They crossed the threshold of the city gate and kept walking past the ring of trees that led toward the Jordan Valley. Dawn had almost fully crested the eastern ridge now, and the men urged them faster with each step, as though everything would change once the day came to light. They stopped at the edge of the plain facing the mountains to the south.

  “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain. Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!”

  Melah hurried to Lot’s side and grasped his sleeve as the girls’ startled whines came from behind them.

  “We can’t live in the mountains.”

  “We brought nothing with us.”

  “What are they thinking? Abi, please!” They spoke as one.

  “Listen to them,” Melah whispered, turning pleading, sultry eyes on Lot, knowing he could not resist her.

  Lot took a step closer to the men and fell on one knee, hands clasped in front of him. “No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains. This disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. Look, Zoar is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it. It is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared
.”

  Did he think small meant good and honorable? But surely a small town was better than the wild mountains.

  “Very well,” one of the men said, “I will grant this request too. I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.”

  Lot bowed and quickly rose, thanked the men, and ran. “Go!”

  His shout rang out, jarring Melah from her fear-induced stupor. She whirled about and shoved both girls ahead of her.

  “Don’t look back!”

  Lot’s reminder rang within her, the words of the two men searing her heart. She snatched her robes between her clenched fingers and ran after her daughters, the town of Zoar not appearing to grow any closer. She heard Lot’s heavy breaths behind her and was comforted by his presence.

  The town looked small because it was so far from the plains. What was Lot thinking? And yet running across the plains was easier than climbing mountains would have been.

  She slowed her gait, her legs growing weary.

  “Don’t stop,” Lot said. His body was in no better condition than her own. Running was for the young and vibrant. She was too old for this. But she picked up the pace again just the same.

  She glanced ahead at her girls, their long hair flowing behind them. They were many paces ahead, and Melah wondered why one of them hadn’t thought to grab a sack to carry with them. Had Lot at least tucked gold coins into his belt?

  She nearly turned around to ask him, but the men’s warning stung her ears. Don’t look back, they’d said.

  She ran faster and didn’t.

  36

  Sarah rose from a fitful night’s sleep and slipped from her tent as dawn kissed the last vestige of night’s gray. The visit from the three men had left her shaken, and she still felt the sting of Adonai’s gentle rebuke. She had lied to Him, and He knew it. Whatever had possessed her to do such a thing?

  She felt the soft touch of dew against her feet as she moved through the campground and turned toward the place where Abraham had built an altar to Adonai Elohim. Birdsong twittered above her in the oaks’ heavy branches as she picked her way up the hill to the place overlooking the valley below. What a failure her life had been. Would she have lied to God if she’d had more faith, been more righteous? How could she possibly have a son at her age? And yet, if she had believed all along . . .

  Things had seemed so simple in her youth, when she promised her father she would give Abraham a son. If her mother had lived, perhaps she would have shown her how very little a woman could control such things. But no, her mother would have insisted Sarah never make such a promise, would have told her to accept that the man might want or need another wife. She shook the thought aside, the cobwebs of her mind filling with images of her past, her pride, her faithless sacrifice to the fertility goddess, her miserable failure in giving Hagar to Abraham, and worse, after the visit of the three men, her complete lack of trust in Adonai to keep His own promise.

  Don’t look back. You cannot undo what is past. She looked from the altar to the valley, wishing she could rid herself of each and every failure. But she couldn’t seem to let them go.

  Sodom was surely far behind them by now, Melah suspected as Zoar grew closer, sitting at the crest of a low hill up ahead. Kammani and Ku-aya had already reached the ridge encircling the city and suddenly slipped from view. Panic filled her, but she told herself to calm down. Lot was somewhere still behind her. But as she strained to listen, she could no longer hear his heavy breaths. Fear rushed over and through her as a loud roar from the heavens drowned out all other sounds. Sweat beaded her brow and trickled down her back, and her heart beat wildly from the exertion.

  Was Lot still behind her? What if he somehow got caught up in whatever was making that awful noise?

  Don’t look back.

  “Lot?” She called his name, keeping her face forward, but the sound of her voice was extinguished in the thunderous roar coming behind her.

  Sarah turned toward a sound in the distance and walked closer to the edge of the hill, standing at the tree line overshadowed by a towering oak. Thunder boomed, an angry storm, yet the leaves barely rustled overhead. Fear fluttered near her heart. Abraham had told her what God had said about Sodom’s coming destruction, but she had held out hope that He would find ten righteous people there to save the city.

  Clouds congealed over the plain, the darkness blocking the dawn, hovering as though waiting to act. Had God found no way to save them? What of Lot and Melah and their daughters? Why had they ever chosen to live in such a vile place?

  In an instant the pointing finger turned on her, and she realized with stark clarity that she and Melah were not so very different. If not for Abraham’s faith in Adonai, if not for his strength of character and unwillingness to always give in to what others wanted—even her—they could be in Lot’s situation. If Abraham had been as weak as Lot, she could be standing in Melah’s sandals.

  The clouds darkened further to billowing smoke, and in an instant, fire fell from heaven like a thousand lightning strikes all pointed to one spot. Horror filled her at the sight of Sodom’s shining city snuffed out and turned to smoldering ash before her. She closed her eyes, but she could not shut the image from her thoughts. All of those people destroyed! Fear swelled in her middle, and she opened her eyes again, shading them with a hand from the bright flashes, knowing deep within her that she was no better than they. In truth, she had been controlling, fearing, despairing, never truly trusting.

  Oh, Adonai, why have I not believed?

  She turned to face the altar again, unable to watch the fire and yellow smoke raining down on Sodom and Gomorrah and the lush beauty of the Jordan plains.

  Don’t look back, beloved. Trust and believe.

  The words came softly in her ear, like the touch of a father’s gentle hand. Emotion clogged Sarah’s throat, and she fell to her knees, her heart yearning, seeking, surrendering.

  I will stop looking back, Adonai. I want to believe. Please help me to believe.

  Don’t look back!

  Melah heard the command in her head and forced one foot ahead of the other. Still no sign of the girls, but if she called to them, they would be forced to look back, exactly what they’d been told not to do.

  “Lot!” Yet she could still barely hear her own voice above the roar. His heavy breathing was no longer close. He’d grown lazy and carried too much bulk these past few years. What if his heart had died within him as he ran? He could be lying on the road behind her.

  The deafening roar blotted out all thought, making her head throb harder with every step. She couldn’t do this. Yet the ridge was just ahead. Lot! She must know, must see what was happening to her home, to her husband.

  Don’t look back!

  Perhaps it was just a suggestion. One little glimpse should not matter. Most rules were not meant to be kept explicitly, were they? She stopped, waiting, listening. If Lot touched her, she would know all was well with him.

  She waited, counting her heartbeats. But his touch did not come, and the smell of sulfur overpowered each breath, choking her.

  Just one look.

  She glanced quickly behind her, glimpsing Lot’s face before it disappeared and blackness enveloped her.

  Lot looked in horror at Melah’s back, seeing her as if time had slowed, noting every movement from her head to her shoulder to . . . The rest of her body had not had time to finish the turn when their gazes connected, and she transformed from the Melah he loved into an unmoving pillar.

  “No!” He raced forward, throwing his arms around the pillar, feeling only the gritty sense of salt beneath his touch. “Melah, no, no, no!”

  He fell to his knees at the base of what had once been her body and rocked with the force of the clamor in the distance behind him. Tears streamed down his face, not just for his wife, but for the choices that had led him here. If only . . . There were so many things he could have done differently, done better.


  Oh, God, what will I do without her?

  Don’t look back.

  The angel’s words rang in his ears, for he knew without a doubt they could not have been mere men. Why hadn’t he been stronger, taught his wife and daughters and sons-in-law the truth? Why had he kept silent when the city grew so corrupt? Why had he stayed?

  He stumbled forward, weeping the rest of the way up the ridge, knowing that while Melah did not listen and looked back, he could not afford to do so.

  Tears streamed unhindered down Sarah’s cheeks, but she made no attempt to wipe them away. She spotted Abraham near the place where the land sloped toward the valley and walked toward him, her heart full. She slipped her hand in his as they both surveyed the destruction of Sodom.

  “Do you think Lot and Melah are safe, my lord?” She leaned into his strength, grateful all over again for the faith of this man. The faith that had saved them from Sodom’s fall and so much more.

  “Adonai promised to save the righteous. He would not force them against their will.” He looked at her then. “I hope so, beloved. But I do not know.”

  She nodded, the heaviness settling over them. She recalled the frustration she’d felt toward Melah’s misguided faith, but in that moment all she could feel for her niece was deep concern. She loved Melah. She did. Despite everything. “I hope so too, my lord.”

  Abraham released her hand and pulled her to him. She rested her head against his chest, feeling his breath. “The smoke is like smoke from a great furnace.”

  She nodded, overcome with sadness. “So much beauty gone. The plains were so well watered, so green with life.”

  He sighed, and she knew his own grief went too deep for words. There was nothing to be said. Adonai had revealed Sodom’s sin to Abraham, sins of pride and arrogance, of gluttony and selfish ease, of neglecting the poor and needy, leading its people to commit detestable acts of immorality and violence.