Abraham and Sarah (11 page)

He let his serving man roll out his sleeping mat and raise the side of the tent so he’d get more of the night breeze. Then without another thought he went to sleep.

Mara heard footsteps, then muffled laughter as goodnights were said. She saw the light glowing through the qata, the brightly woven cloth that divided Lot’s section of the tent from hers. She called his name softly and he came around to stand by her fire. She quickly knelt and loosed his sandals, banked the cushions for him to sit, and motioned for him to relax. “Was there news? Has anyone heard just where we’re going?”

It was a subject they never tired of discussing, and Lot sank down on the cushions, ready to tell what he knew.

“Did he say where we are going?” she asked again eagerly.

“He never says. He’s always vague, but I have a feeling we’re almost there. Maybe a new moon or two, and we’ll see this land he’s to be given.”

“How do you know? What makes you think such a thing?”

“It’s just a feeling I have.”

“What feeling? What do you feel?”

“I guess it’s his own excitement. You can’t be around him without sensing something wonderful is about to happen.”

“So you think it’s all true? He’s really going to have all these promises come true?”

“He’s a sensible man … a very pragmatic man. And he believes and is even more excited than I am.”

“But the famine … what about the famine? I thought there was a famine in the land west of the Jordan.”

Lot jabbed at the fire. “Who knows? One can’t always believe traders. Anyway, can you imagine Abram’s God giving him some land blighted by famine? All his talk and excitement for nothing? It’s hard to imagine such a thing.”

Mara shrugged and looked out into the darkness. “He and Sarai would be so embarrassed. After all that talk about his God, convincing all of us to come along, even leaving the family gods behind, it would be quite devastating.”

“He didn’t ask any of us to come,” Lot said defensively. “It was something we chose to do.”

“However it was, it will be most embarrassing if there should be a famine,” Mara tried to speak calmly, but her voice held an edge of malicious enjoyment that Lot completely missed.

T
hey heard only rumors of the famine until they came to ford the Jordan near the city of Hazor. Here they met a straggling band of men and their families fleeing Shechem in the valley of Mukhnah. With hollow eyes and distended bellies, they spoke of famine, dust storms, and heat.

When urged, they reported that most of the people had gone to Egypt or down the Wadi Far’ah to the land east of the Jordan. “The rains should have come a month ago,” one of them said. “It was just the same as last year, and the year before. Now it’s even the drinking water. The streams and cisterns are all going dry.”

The men in Abram’s band looked at him, thinking to see some hesitancy, some reaction. Though he listened, the depressing news seemed at first to have little effect on his enthusiasm. But when the sun beat down mercilessly and the nights grew hot and suffocating, Abram became silent and thoughtful, yet still insisting that they press on toward the valley.

Finally one little boy pointed out birds of prey that seemed to be following them, and Abram became disturbed. Great vultures and hawks would come flapping their wings and then light in the dusty branches of the tall carob trees where they could look down on his company with parted beaks and hungry eyes. “That’s ominous,” he muttered. “Birds don’t act like that without some awful carnage.”

The farther they went, the more they encountered bad omens, repeated warnings of hunger, lack of water, and a terrible, debilitating heat. All the people they met seemed almost speechless, unable to tell adequately of the horror they had experienced.

Finally the men and women in Abram’s company began to beg him, first gently and then insistently, to turn back or go another route. To their surprise, he pushed his headpiece back and wiped the sweat from his brow but insisted they press on. His step slowed, and his eyes began to look dark and troubled, but he continued to urge them on up through a rock-bordered pass until late
one afternoon they came out onto a wide basin. “See the mountains on the right with the sun glinting on them,” he said as he tried to muster some enthusiasm. “The tallest is Mount Ebal and the other beside it is Gerizim. The walled city in between is Shechem.”

The large valley was surrounded by a ring of mountains. In better days it had been fertile beyond belief, but now it was a bowl of blowing dust.

They passed several small villages that showed no sign of life. When they came to a huge oak at the foot of the valley that led up to the city called Shechem, they stopped. It was obvious that the oak had been a center for various mysterious rites.

“I remember this tree,” Abram said. “It was known as the Oak of the Sorceress. There used to be an old hag who sat here begging and telling fortunes. She had charms and incantations, and some even said she called up the devil and the djinn to do her bidding.”

As they came closer to the enormous tree, they could see that libations of blood had been poured all over the gnarled roots. Near a broken-down altar they found bones, bits of curling hairy skins, and broken shards of pottery.

The odor of decay, death, and corruption was heavy on the air. “Things have been very bad here,” Lot whispered to Abram. “The people obviously have been trying to placate Mot, so he will free Baal and they will have rain again.”

Abram didn’t seem to hear him. He walked around under the tree, lightly touching the standing stones with hollowed out places for oil or blood and fingering the bits of cloth tied to the bare branches of the tree.

With a sigh he looked back at the expectant faces of his people and remarked, “Such things are forbidden by Elohim, our God.”

The people looked with interest at the tree and then up the valley toward Shechem. From where they stood they could tell that the city gate had once been impressive and the wall well built. Now however, the gate hung open, and the wall was crumbling with large, gaping fissures. Through these openings, they could see an odd assemblage of one-story stone and mud houses. They had flat roofs constructed of dried rushes covered with mud held in place by large crossbeams. Few of the houses had windows.

Abram chose Lot to go with him and cautioned Eliazer to hold the caravan in place until they returned. As the two men approached the city, they could see that it was depressingly dirty. Refuse had been thrown out in the
streets for the goats or wild dogs. Vines and almond trees that had once lent a certain charm to their small courtyards were now standing leafless and bare, adding to the total desolate effect.

At first the city seemed deserted. However, as they came closer, beggars and a few lepers crept out with various objects supposedly for sale. The two men soon discovered that the beggars wanted to trade the decorated pottery, woven strips of bright cloth, or a few handfuls of grain for some drinking water.

Abram asked one of the threadbare urchins to get someone in authority. The boy hurried off and, within minutes, was back with an elderly gentleman. Abram noticed that he walked with a cane but carried himself with dignity. “You are welcome. You are welcome,” the old man said, speaking their language with a strong Amorite accent.

He didn’t smile, and Abram noticed that he kept nervously jabbing his cane into the path as though that might steady him. He wore fine robes, but they were stained and dusty, and his elegantly decorated sandals were strapped on feet that hadn’t been washed for days.

“We need your permission to camp in the valley below your city,” Abram said.

Instantly the man’s eyes grew troubled as he looked over the crowded carts, donkeys, camels, sheep, and goats that stretched as far as he could see. “You are welcome to camp, but as you can see most of those who were able-bodied have fled the valley. The rest of us are still trying to leave.”

“So I imagined,” Abram said.

“You can see the streams are almost dry. The soil has turned to powder. It’s blowing away.” The old man motioned to the valley and then up the side of Mount Ebal where terraces once cradled vines and small olive trees.

“We’ll need water,” Abram muttered almost to himself as he looked back down toward the valley. “We have many people and our flocks are extensive.”

The old man shook his head. “The water is scarce everywhere. We are sending mules to the wells at Dothan and over to Jezreel just to have drinking water.”

Lot moved closer to his uncle and spoke in a whisper, “It would be foolish to camp here. We need to move on.”

Abram frowned. “I remember this as such a green, fruitful valley. How can it all have dried up?”

The old man raised his hand and looked up at the cloudless sky. “It’s said
that we’ve offended Hadad, god of rain. We even sacrificed our children to him … and see, he doesn’t care. He isn’t going to help.”

Abram frowned. When people sacrificed their children, they were usually desperate. The bigger the problem, the more precious the sacrifice demanded by the gods. A child, a young man, a beautiful young woman—all were sacrificed in the hope of getting the gods’ attention.

“Is it all right if we decide to stay?”

“You can stay. Of course you can stay. I suppose there’s enough dried grass for a few days. There are no wells. You’ll find precious little water anyplace.”

Abram thanked the old man and started back to the mouth of the valley where he had left the caravan. He was deep in thought, and Lot assumed he was deciding to move on. But when he spoke, it was involving another matter. “Lot,” he said, “go down and see that the people pitch their tents near whatever water you can find.”

“And you, my lord? Where will you be?”

“I am going up the mountain. I need to be alone.” Abram was already looking toward the path that led up past the city of Shechem to the steep mountain heights of Ebal.

“My lord,” Lot said in a tone of voice that conveyed his concern, “shouldn’t we move on as quickly as possible?”

Abram seemed not to hear him. “You’ll be in charge and make all decisions until I come back.”

Abram turned and started up the path. He didn’t look back to see if Lot was following his instructions but pressed on with a determined stride. He was soon out of the valley and climbing. The dogs and curious children eventually turned back, and at last he was alone.

He saw nothing of the carefully terraced plots now overgrown with cactus or stripped down to the bare outcroppings of rock. He was deeply troubled. He realized that all along, he had envisioned this valley as the very place God was leading him and his people. He had thought this was the land God was going to give him.

He had seen the valley first on a trading venture with his father. They were on their way down to Egypt when they heard there were armed bands waiting for the caravans along the usual route, so they had decided to come through this valley, then move up into the highlands. The valley had burst upon their travel-weary eyes as a virtual paradise. As young as he had been, he
had noticed how fertile it was and how few people had settled in or around it. “There are no wells. Also it is hard to defend such an open valley,” they had told him.

When he reached the top of Ebal, he sank down on a projection of rock. He felt exhausted and terribly disappointed. More than that he felt let down, tricked. Tears of frustration blinded his eyes. He’d risked everything and, worse, he had encouraged others to follow him. Now he could see it was like following a mirage. He began to doubt, to wonder if he could have imagined the promises.

It was some minutes before he looked up and was astonished at the sight before him. He stood up and shielded his eyes to see better. There was not only the valley of Mukhnah, “the encampment,” but he could clearly see that the city of Shechem squatted right at the entrance to a pass that led westward, out to the coast.

Off to one side was the huge sacred oak that from this height looked no bigger than one of its leaves. His people setting up camp looked as small as ants.

The view of the valley was as nothing compared to the great distances he could see in every direction. To the south, he saw the port of Joppa and beyond it the great sea; to the east, the hills over against Luz, beyond that the chasm of the Jordan River, and on farther the plain of Hauran. His eyes followed the Jordan almost to its source and on out to the snowy peak of Mount Hermon.