The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible (30 page)

Indeed, one or two of Jephthah’s comrades, who were precisely the rough sort that one might imagine to be the friends of a bastard who had been thrown out of his own home, urged Jephthah to pay another visit to his father’s house by night. “Slit one of their throats,” they said, “and even the fatheads who have taken away your father’s legacy will understand your message!” Jephthah briefly considered the proposition but decided that an outlaw was even worse off than a disinherited son. So Jephthah and a few of his cohorts fled from Gilead and made their way to a town on the frontier between Israel and Ammon, a place
where a man whose wits were as sharp as his sword might make a living as a soldier of fortune when there were rich men to serve—or a bandit when there were rich men to rob.

Exactly who Jephthah’s mother had been—and why she was not his father’s wife—was a puzzle to young Seila, one that her father never bothered to explain. Only when Seila was older, after she had been befriended by the young women of Mizpah who became her constant companions during Jephthah’s long absences, did she learn the word that described Jephthah’s mother, a word that her father never once uttered within her hearing.

“Your grandmother,” one of the girls explained, “was a harlot.”

So it was that Jephthah came to Mizpah in the land of Tob, and so it was that Seila was born in the little house on the outskirts of town. “My one and only child,” Jephthah would say as hot tears welled up in his eyes, “flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood!”

Jephthah raised Seila on his own, and they lived together in a rough-plastered house with a small courtyard where she kept a goat for milk and a few chickens for eggs. Now and then, a woman would appear at the doorway with a bundle of clothing and bedding, a sure sign that Jephthah was ready to pack up his weapons and make off with his cohorts to some distant battlefield. For weeks and sometimes even months, Seila found herself in the not-so-gentle care of a hired nursemaid until the happy day when her father appeared at the threshold with a bag of silver coins that would feed them until the next call to arms. Jephthah was an accomplished and courageous fighter, much in demand in those unsettled days in Canaan, and Seila was consigned so often to so many different women with so many unfamiliar names that she came to recall them as one woman with no name at all.

As she grew up, Seila wondered to herself if one of those nameless women had been her mother. But Jephthah told his daughter nothing about the woman who had given birth to her, always turning away even her most pointed and insistent questions with the same phrase. “It’s the two of us against the world,” he would say. Seila understood that he intended to comfort her, but he succeeded only in provoking her curiosity. Eventually she stopped asking, but she did not stop wondering about her mother’s name, her origins, her whereabouts. Perhaps she had
been a harlot, too. Perhaps she had fallen ill and died in childbirth. Perhaps she had run away with one of the battle-scarred old soldiers who could be seen up and down the streets of Mizpah. Yet, no matter how colorful or exotic the stories Seila told herself, her mother always remained nameless, faceless, voiceless, a ghost who haunted a young girl’s dreams.

When Seila was old enough to care for herself while her father was away, she ventured beyond the little courtyard of their house, beyond the well in the town square, beyond even the gates on the outskirts of Mizpah. On one of her long walks into the countryside, she found a cleft in the dusty brown hills where a spring bubbled up and an old oak spread its branches. To that hidden place in the hills Seila returned again and again, at first alone and later in the company of one or two young women whom she counted as worthy of knowing her secrets.

Sitting cross-legged beneath the tree, listening to the whispers that seemed to be coming from the highest bough as the wind stirred the leafy canopy, Seila imagined that one day she might look up and see her mother sitting high above her head in the crook of a swaying branch. She imagined the sound of a woman’s voice, and she wondered how her own name would sound on her mother’s lips.

One day, when Seila was milking the goat in the courtyard, she heard a commotion in the distance, and she peered over the wall of the enclosure to see what was prompting the laughters and catcalls. Shading her eyes from the sun with one hand, she saw a parade of she-asses making their way slowly down the road in a little cloud of dust. Alongside the donkeys ran a few ragged children who whistled and hooted at the riders. At the head of the parade was a soldier on horseback, thoroughly ill at ease and watching the children with real apprehension. Two more soldiers bearing long spears rode at the rear. Between the mounted
soldiers rode seven old men perched awkwardly on the she-asses, each man wearing plush robes of a kind not often seen in Mizpah.

To her amazement, the procession drew up directly in front of Jephthah’s house, and the old man on the first ass—a gangly fellow with a long, silvery, two-pointed beard—dismounted with an indelicacy that confirmed he was not accustomed to donkey-riding. Seila noticed that his robe had been dragged along in the dust, and the embroidered hem was blackened with dirt. At last, he stood up and addressed Seila without deigning to look at her.

“Is this the house of Jephthah?” he demanded as he peered past Seila and studied the little house beyond the courtyard.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Ask the mighty man of valor if he will receive us,” the old man instructed. “Tell him the elders of Gilead have come to call on him.”

Seila stared at the man for a long moment—she remembered the elders of Gilead and their evil decree—and then she hastened back into the house to summon her father, who was sleeping off a late night of drinking and singing. Jephthah appeared at the doorway, stretched his arms above his head, rubbed his eyes, coughed, and then spat into the dust. When he caught sight of the old man at the gate, he laughed out loud.

“So what brings you all the way to Mizpah, old man?” Jephthah demanded. “Have you changed your mind about the inheritance you and my brothers have stolen from me?”

The elder of Mizpah ignored Jephthah’s question and began to

“And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord,” the old man continued, “saying: ‘We have sinned against Thee, we have forsaken our God, and we have served the Baalim.’”

“Yes, yes,” Jephthah said dryly. He had already heard about the advance guard of the Ammonites that had crossed the Jordan River to probe the defenses of Canaan. He had already heard of the sorry showing by the ragtag militia of Israelites when they encountered the professional soldiery of the Ammonite king. The old soldiers of Mizpah had laughed among themselves at the militiamen who had broken and run, the rich men who had packed themselves and their finery out of Gilead at the first word of the approaching army. Now the trembling lords and their soundly thrashed army were huddling together in their tents within sight of Mizpah.

“I am sorry that the Ammonites have scared you out of your houses,” Jephthah continued, “but what does all this have to do with me?”

The old man frowned briefly at Jephthah and then continued to shout out his grandiloquent words.

“And the Lord said unto the children of Israel: ‘Did I not save you from the Egyptians and the Amalekites and the Philistines? Yet ye have forsaken Me and served other gods, and so I will save you no more! Go and cry unto the gods which ye have chosen—let
them
save you in the time of your distress!’”

Seila studied the old man’s face, now contorted with anger, and she felt suddenly giddy. If the pious old graybeard who had cheated

Jephthah of his legacy only knew what strange gods were worshipped in Mizpah and its environs, and in what strange ways!

“So the children of Israel put away the strange gods from among them, and served the Lord, and His soul was grieved for the misery of Israel,” the old man went on. “And the people said to one another: ‘What man is he that will take up the fight against the children of Ammon? He shall be our chieftain and
he
shall rule over all of Gilead.’”

Seila noticed a cruel smile play across her father’s lips. Now Jephthah understood why they had come to him, but he did not spare them the effort of saying it out loud. After a long moment of awkward silence, the elder of Gilead raised his hands toward heaven in a gesture of prayer and cried out to Jephthah.

“Come and be the general of our army, so that we may fight the children of Ammon!”

Jephthah fixed a stern gaze on the old man, who had suddenly fallen
silent but who kept his hands in the air. The old man turned awkwardly and looked over his shoulder, as if to plead for assistance from the others, but they said nothing. At last, it was Jephthah who spoke.

Now a second old man stepped forward from the rank of the elders who had watched the first one’s performance in obvious discomfort.

“Yes, Jephthah, we are in desperate trouble—all of Israel is in trouble—and that is why we have come to you now,” the second one said with both candor and calculation. “We want you to come back to Gilead. We will make you a general, and you will lead our army into battle with the Ammonites. And if you prevail over them in battle, we will make you not only general of our army but chieftain over Gilead….”

The old man paused so that Jephthah would not miss his meaning.

“… chieftain over all of Gilead,” he repeated, “and every man who lives there.”

Seila saw that her father did not mistake the meaning of the man’s
words. A generalship was one inducement, but she had often heard her father say to his comrades that generals who are fortunate enough to prevail in war are quickly forgotten in peace. But a chieftain would rule in war
and
peace, and he would wield his authority over civilians as well as soldiers. Among the cowering civilians of Gilead, of course, were Jephthah’s half brothers.

“If you bring me back home to lead your army in battle against the Ammonites,” Jephthah said slowly, as if to make sure he would not be misunderstood, “and if the Lord delivers them to me, then—and only then—will I be your chieftain.”

The elders clasped their hands, nodded, beamed. The one whose words had won over Jephthah stepped forward and seized his right hand.

“The Lord shall be witness to the words we have spoken to each other,” the elder said solemnly. “Surely we will do exactly as you say.”