Rachel (43 page)

“Perhaps they came about Dinah.” Rachel escorted her closer to the fire and coaxed her to sit.

Leah shook her head. “The men will want to sit here.”

“They will not mind if you stay.”

Leah sat, her gaze fixed on the men, while Rachel stood behind her, kneading her shoulders. The gesture would have warmed her in another lifetime, but she could not seem to manage a single emotion other than fear.

The men moved toward them, and she tried to push up from the stone seat, but Rachel’s gentle resistance stopped her.

Leah barely acknowledged her, her limbs too weighted to rise, though she wanted to. Jacob glanced at her as the men drew near the fire and offered their guests seats opposite her. Jacob took the seat at her side and reached for her, his warm hand folding over hers.

“I am Hamor the Hivite, and this is my son Shechem, prince
of the land. We have come to speak to you of your daughter, Dinah.” Hamor spread his hands toward Jacob, palms open in supplication. He was a handsome man by some standards, though clean-shaven and square-jawed, with eyes too calculating, too sure of himself. Like her father. The young man beside him looked younger than Joseph, barely old enough to wear the princely robes or carry the burdens of a man. Surely not old enough to wed!

“I am aware that my daughter is captive in your town,” Jacob said, his voice even, though Leah could hear the edge of anger and feel the tenseness of his hand around hers. “Whatever you have to tell me had better include her return safely to my tents.”

Hamor sat back, his expression confused. “But . . . your daughter attended our festival. She wore the veil of the virgin maidens. My son . . . that is, we thought she was aware of the purpose.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw but quickly recovered his composure. “Forgive any misunderstanding, my friend. We come in peace to tell you that my son Shechem has his heart set on your daughter. Please give her to him as his wife. Intermarry with us—give us your daughters and take our daughters for yourselves. You can settle among us; the land is open to you. Live in it, trade in it, and acquire property in it.” Hamor’s words rang in the silence.

Leah’s heart thumped hard, awakening the dead feelings within.

The young man, Shechem, stepped forward and fell to one knee before Jacob, his gaze taking in her sons as well. “Let me find favor in your eyes, and I will give you whatever you ask. Make the price for the bride and the gift I am to bring as great as you like, and I’ll pay whatever you ask me. Only give me the girl as my wife.”

The request swirled in Leah’s head like a vivid nightmare. No man would want Dinah after what Shechem had done to her, but to do as they asked, to intermarry with uncircumcised heathens . . . She could not finish the horrible thought. Agony
filled her, and she nearly gave in to the desire to sway and moan Dinah’s name aloud. To weep over the death of her daughter’s purity, her future—for unless they gave her to this man, her womb would most surely be dead, her life ruined beyond hope.

Leah glanced at Jacob, who had stiffened beside her, then in turn looked to each of her oldest sons. Simeon caught her gaze, his mouth a thin line. He turned to Hamor. “We can’t do such a thing. We can’t give our sister to a man who is not circumcised. That would be a disgrace to us.”

Levi stood, hands clenched tight at his sides, and Leah feared he would pull his sword that very moment and put an end to both men’s lives. Instead, he took a step nearer, his gaze conciliatory. Yet she knew that look. “We will give our consent to you on one condition only: that you become like us by circumcising all your males. Then we will give you our daughters and take your daughters for ourselves. We’ll settle among you and become one people with you. But if you will not agree to be circumcised, we’ll take our sister and go.”

Leah shivered again, the cold becoming a living thing within her. She barely felt Jacob’s hand tighten around hers. She knew her sons, knew the violence hidden in their hearts, and feared to think what plans they possessed.

But Hamor and Shechem did not detect her sons’ deceit. They both stood, smiling and bowing toward Jacob. “It shall be as you have said.” They made swift goodbyes and took off on their horses back to their city.

It was only after they had left and Rachel had helped her to her tent that Leah realized they had not offered hospitality to the men, did not break bread or offer drink to them. But the men should not have expected such a thing after what they had done.

Yet in the quiet of night, Leah knew that neither man realized just how deplorable Shechem’s act had been to Jacob and her sons. Nor did they suspect the harm her sons surely plotted against them.

33

Rachel woke with a start three days later, her heart beating too fast. She rose and searched the mat beside her, aware of Jacob’s absence. Voices drifted to her—loud wailing—and the lowing of sheep and goats drew nearer. She quickly donned her robe and ran her fingers through her rumpled hair, hurrying from the tent. Torches lit the compound, and a large company of women and children stood huddled, crying, near the edge of the tent rows, while all six of Leah’s sons, Dinah in their midst, stood before Jacob.

She moved closer, saw Leah emerge from her tent and rush into Dinah’s arms, both weeping. Fear moved through her as she took in the company of women and children. What was this? Joseph appeared at her side and took her arm. She looked into his concerned eyes, so like his father’s, and drew strength from his hold.

“What is the meaning of this?” Jacob’s voice boomed in the darkness, silencing the noise except for the occasional fearful weeping of some of the children.

Simeon and Levi stepped from the gathering of Leah’s sons and faced him, chins raised, defiance in their dark eyes. “These are the captives of Shechem. While the men were recovering . . .” A smirk crossed Simeon’s face. “We killed them.”

“They deserved to die for what they did to Dinah.” Levi’s hatred fell like a hot blanket over burning skin.

Rachel’s legs lost their strength and her breathing grew jagged. Joseph’s arm came around her, his muscles tense. She glanced at him, saw the fire in his eyes. He had not been party to this. She looked from Joseph to Jacob, who leaned heavily on his staff, and it seemed he aged in moments as she watched him. She sought a deep breath but felt it lodge in her throat.

Jacob coughed and ran a hand over his beard, his low voice like a wounded animal. “You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land.” He looked slowly from one son to the next, seeking to drive home his point with sharp fury. “We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”

Their silence lingered but a moment. “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?” Levi spat into the dirt at his feet, whirled about, and stormed off, Simeon following.

“Let me go to him, Ima,” Joseph whispered in her ear. “He needs me now.”

She nodded, hating to lose the strength of his support but knowing his father needed it more. She let him go and made her way to Leah’s side, then escorted her sister and a still weeping Dinah into Leah’s tent, wondering what on earth they were going to do with a city full of widows and their children.

Jacob walked the length of the camp, his heart as heavy as the stones he had chosen for the altar he had first built on coming here. Now those stones seemed to mock him, as though his guilt were no longer cleansed, his sacrifices a stench in God’s face. Just as the acts of his sons were a stench in the nostrils of the men in the cities surrounding Shechem. That none had come to avenge the murders of Hamor, Shechem, and their clans brought
little comfort. He was responsible, and yet he was powerless against the vigilant anger of his sons.

He dug his staff into the dirt to help him climb the low hill to the altar, his knees weakening as he approached the place where he had once felt God’s favor. How was it possible such disaster had come upon him? God had saved him from Esau’s hand, but He had done nothing to stop Dinah’s shame or the acts of Simeon and Levi. And Reuben, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Zilpah’s two sons had joined in the greedy taking of booty. Even Bilhah’s sons had taken captive brides from among the women of the town, leaving Jacob to deal with foreigners and their wayward gods.

He bowed low, kneeling in the dust at the foot of the altar, his heart yearning for the man who had wrestled with him that long-ago night. To feel His strength imbued into him again, to feel the blessing of God on his head would do much to ease the pain he felt now.

Oh, Adonai, what am I to do?

He waited in the silence, listening. A stiff breeze moved the branches of the nearby oaks, each limb dancing a different rhythm to an unfamiliar song. Birds twittered and chirped, and the voices of many children coming from the tents of the captives carried to him where he knelt. He closed his eyes, put his face to the earth.

Go
up to Bethel and settle there, and build an altar
there to God, who appeared to you when you were
fleeing from your brother Esau.

The words joined the music of the birds and the dance of the trees, and he could not escape the thought that he should have gone to Bethel months ago. If he had not stopped here . . . But there was nothing to be done with what was past.

He pushed to his feet, a slow sense of rightness, of peace, settling in the place where the weight had been. They would purify themselves, rid themselves of the foreign idols the women had
brought with them from Shechem, and change their clothes—symbols of the past, of all that could defile them. He would bury the lot of it under the oak tree that stood on the path to Shechem and lead his family in faith to Bethel.

Rachel placed a hand over her protruding belly and held Jacob’s hand as the two walked the fields near Bethel several months later, the sheep grazing nearby. “Do you remember when we first met?” she asked, smiling up at him. His beard was not nearly as dark as it had been back then, and the lines along his brow had deepened since Dinah’s defilement and Deborah’s recent death. But when he looked at her, the light in his eyes still held a love so great it took her breath. She blushed like a young girl at his boyish smile.