The Red Tent

But Jacob did not smile. “I do not like the city or its king,” he said. “But I like even less an untrustworthy daughter and a lying wife.”

“Say nothing you will regret,” replied Rachel. “My sister sets you against me and against your only daughter, who is beloved of your mother at Mamre. This is a good match. The king says they are fond, does he not? Have you forgotten your own fire, husband? Have you grown so old that you do not remember that longing?”

Jacob’s face betrayed nothing. He looked long at Rachel, and she returned his gaze. “Give them your blessing, husband,” Rachel said. “Take the wagons laden with silver and linen and give Hamor the welcome due a king. You are the master here. There is no need to wait.”

But Jacob stiffened at Rachel’s insistence. “When my sons return from their travels, I will decide.”

Hamor could not recall ever being treated so badly. Even so, he was well disposed toward Jacob. “A good ally, I think,” he told Shalem the next day. “But an enemy to avoid. He is a proud man,”

Hamor said. “He does not like to lose control of his family’s fate. Odd that he should not yet know how children stop serving their parents once they are grown. Even daughters.”

But Shalem pressed his father to return as soon as possible. “I love the girl,” he said.

Hamor grinned. “Fear not. The girl is yours. No father would want her back as she is now. Go back to your wife, and let me worry about the father.”

Another week passed, and my husband and I grew to love each other in subtler ways, with caresses and endearments. My feet did not touch ground. My face ached from smiling.

And then I received a special wedding gift: Bilhah came to see me. My aunt appeared at the palace gate asking for Dinah, wife of Shalem. She was taken first to Re-nefer, who plied her with questions about Jacob’s hesitancy over her husband’s offer. The queen asked about Leah and Rachel as well, and told Bilhah not to leave the palace without gifts for her daughter-in-law’s family. And then Re-nefer herself brought my aunt to me.

My hug lifted my little aunt off the ground, and I covered her dark face with a dozen kisses. “You are glowing,” she said, when she stood back, holding my hands in hers. “You are happy.” She smiled. “It is wonderful that you should find such happiness. I will tell Leah and she will be reconciled.”

“Is my mother angry?” I asked, bewildered.

“Leah believes Rachel sold you into the hands of evil. She is like your father in her distrust of the city, and she is not pleased that you will make your bed within walls. Mostly, I think, she misses you. But I will tell her of the light in your eyes, of the smile on your lips, and of your womanly bearing now that you are a wife.

“He is good to you, yes?” Bilhah asked, giving me the chance to praise my Shalem. I found myself bursting to tell someone the details of my happiness, and I spilled everything into Bilhah’s willing ear. She clapped her hands to hear me speak like a bride. “Oh, to love and be loved like this,” she sighed.

Bilhah ate with me and peeked at Shalem. She agreed that he was beautiful but refused to meet him. “I cannot speak to him before my husband does,” she demurred. “But I have seen enough to bring back a good report of our daughter.”

In the morning, she embraced me and left with Reuben, who had brought her. She carried the word of my happiness into my father’s tents, but her voice was drowned out by the shouts of my brothers, who called me harlot. And Jacob did nothing to stop their foul mouths.

Simon and Levi had returned to our father after several days, defeated in a secret purpose. They had been in Ashkelon seeking trade not merely for the family’s goats and sheep, wool, and oil, but to speak with slave traders, whose business could yield far greater wealth than any hard-earned harvest of the earth. Simon and Levi wanted wealth and the power it would bring them, but they had no hope of inheriting those from Jacob. It was clear that Reuben would get their father’s birthright and the blessing would go to Joseph, so they were determined to carve out their own glory, however they could.

But Levi and Simon discovered that the slavers wanted nothing but children. Business was bad. Too many traders had weakened the market, and now they were assured of a good price only for healthy youngsters. My brothers could get nothing at all in trade for the two old serving women they had from their wives’ dowries. They returned home thwarted and bitter.

When they heard that Hamor had offered my father a king’s bride-price for me, they raised their voices against the marriage, sensing that their own positions would be diminished by such an alliance. Jacob’s house would be swallowed up in the dynasties of Shechem, and while Reuben might expect to become a prince, they and their sons would remain shepherds, poor cousins, nobodies. “We will be lower than Esau,” they muttered to each other and to the brothers over whom they still held sway: Zebulun, Issachar, and Naphtali, of Leah’s womb, and Zilpah’s Gad and Asher.

When Jacob called all his sons to his tent to consider Hamor’s offer, Simon raised his fist and cried, “Revenge! My sister has been ravaged by an Egyptian dog!”

Reuben spoke on behalf of Shalem. “Our sister did not cry out,” he said, “nor does the prince cast her aside.”

Judah agreed. “The size of the bride-price is a compliment to our sister, to our father, and to all the house of Jacob. We will become princes ourselves. We would be fools not to take the gifts that the gods give us. What kind of idiot mistakes a blessing for a curse?”

But Levi ripped his clothing as though mourning my death, and Simon warned, “This is a trap for the sons of Jacob. If we permit this marriage, the fleshpots of the city will consume my sons and my brothers’ sons. This marriage displeases the god of our father,” he said, challenging Jacob to disagree.

Their voices grew loud and my brothers glared at one another across the lamps, but Jacob did not let his own thoughts be known. “The uncircumcised dog rapes my sister every day,” Simon thundered. “Am I to permit this desecration of our only sister, my own mother’s daughter?”

At this, Joseph pulled a skeptical face and half-whispered to Reuben, “If my brother is so concerned about the shape of our brother-in-law’s penis, let our father demand his foreskin for a bride-price. Indeed, let all the men of Shechem become like us. Let them pile up their membranes as high as my father’s tent pole, so that their sons and ours will piss the same, and rut the same, and none will be able to tell us apart. And thus will the tribe of Jacob grow not merely in generations to come, but even tomorrow.”

Jacob seized upon Joseph’s words, which had been spoken only in mockery of the brothers who had tortured him since infancy. But Jacob did not hear the edge in his son’s words. He said, “Abram took up the knife for those of his household who were not of his covenant. If the men of Shechem agree to this, none could say that our daughter was injured. If the men of the city make such sacrifice to the god of my fathers, we shall be remembered as makers of souls, as gatherers of men. Like the stars in the heavens, as it was told to our father Abram. Like the sands of the sea, was it foretold by my mother Rebecca. And now I will make it come to pass. I will do what Joseph says, for he has my heart.” Jacob spoke with such passion that there was no use in further speech.

Levi’s face twisted in anger at Jacob’s decision, but Simon placed a hand on his brother’s arm and pulled him away into the night, far from the light of lamps and the ears of their brothers.

When Hamor journeyed to Jacob’s tent the second time, Shalem accompanied him. Determined not to return to the city without my father’s blessing, he brought two donkeys laden with still more gifts. My beloved was confident as he left, but when he reached my father’s tent, the king’s party was again met with crossed arms, and not so much as a ladle of water was offered before the men began discussing terms.

My father spoke first, and without ceremony. “You come for our daughter,” he said. “We will agree to the marriage, but I doubt if our terms will suit you, for they are severe.”

H