Joseph and his brothers, p.13
Joseph and His Brothers, page 13
"You see, how fine and agreeable this is. I would like to sit like this through all three watches of the night, for that has been my desire for so long now. My lord gazes up into that countenance on high, and I do equally well in gazing up into his own, for I regard it, too, as a divine face, shining now in reflected light. Tell me, did not the face of my hairy uncle Esau look to you much like the face of the moon, when, as you report, he met you at the ford and, against all hope, was gentle and brotherly? But that, too, was but mildness reflected upon a hairy, heated face, the reflection of your countenance, dear lord, which is like that of the moon, and of Abel the shepherd, whose offering was pleasing to the Lord, but not like Cain's or Esau's, whose faces are like a field burst by the sun, and like a clod cracked by drought. Yes, you are Abel, the moon, and the shepherd, and all your family, we too are shepherds and herdsmen, and not people of the sun who till the soil, not like farmers, who walk sweating behind the wooden plow and the plow's oxen and pray to the
Baalim of the land. We, however, look up to the Lord of the Way, the wanderer who rises gleaming in white robes. But do tell me," he continued without pause, almost without taking a breath, "did not Abiram, our father, go up from Ur in Chaldea out of vexation, and did he not leave the moon citadel of his city in anger, because to the displeasure of Sin's people, the Lawgiver greatly exalted his god Marudug, the fire of the sun there, elevating him above all the gods of Shinar? And tell me, do not people there also call him Shem when they want to exalt him highly—the same name given Noah's son, whose children are black, but lovely, as was Rachel, and dwell in Elam, Assur, Arpachsad, Lud, and Edom? But wait now and listen, for your child has thought of something else. Was not Abram's wife named Sahar, that is, the moon? Do but look, and I shall reckon it up for you. Seven times fifty days, those are the days of the round, and four besides. Each month, however, has three days when people do not see the moon. Let my lord, if I may ask, take three times twelve from those three hundred fifty-four days, which leaves three hundred eighteen nights of the visible moon. But three hundred eighteen is the number of servants born in Abraham's house, with whom he defeated the kings of the East, pursuing them beyond Damascus and freeing Lot, his brother, from the hand of Kudur-Laomor, the Elamite. So then behold, Abiram, our father, loved the moon as well, and was so devout that in battle he counted his servants exactly according to the days of its shining. And presuming I might have blown it kisses, not one, but three hundred and eighteen—though in truth I blew not a one—tell me then, would that have been so great an evil?"
The Test
"You are clever," Jacob said, and his hand, which had lain still during the task of reckoning, began to stroke Joseph's head again even more vigorously than before. "You are clever, Yashub, my son. On the outside your head is handsome and beautiful, just as Mami's was"— this had been the young Joseph's nickname for his mother, a name of Babylonian origin, the earthly, familiar name for Ishtar—"and inside very quick and godly. When my years counted no more than yours do now, mine was just as merry, but it has grown rather weary with
all these stories, not just new ones, but those that have been kept for us from the old days and are worthy of thought; weary, too, with troubles and Abraham's legacy, which gives me cause to ponder, for the Lord has not been clear. And even though one may behold His countenance as the face of gentleness, it is also like the fire of the sun and like a blazing flame; and it destroyed Sodom with its heat, and in order to cleanse himself a man passes through the fire of the Lord. He is the devouring flame that burns outside the tent at nightfall and consumes the fat of the firstborn at the feast of the equinox, while we sit inside faint of heart and eat of the lamb whose blood stains the doorposts, because the Destroyer is passing by . . ."
He broke off, and his hand slid from Joseph's hair, who looked up only to behold the old man with his face in both hands, and saw that he was quivering.
"What is it, my lord!" he cried in dismay, swiftly wheeling around and extending his hands up to those of the old man, without daring to touch them. He had to wait and ask yet again. Jacob changed his position only with some hesitation. When he revealed his face it was lined with dreadful pain, and his sorrowful eyes peered beyond the boy into space.
"I thought of God, and it was terrible," he said, and he seemed to have difficulty moving his lips. "It was as if my hand were the hand of Abraham lying upon Yitzchak's head. And as if His voice had called to me and commanded ..."
"Commanded?" Joseph requested, tossing his head with a quick birdlike motion.
"Commanded and instructed—but you know what it was, for you know the stories," Jacob replied with faltering voice, as he sat there bent forward, his brow resting on the hand that held his staff. "I heard that command, for is He less than Molech, the bull-king of the Baalites, to whom in their need they bring the firstborn of men and deliver babes into his arms at a secret feast? And may he not demand from his own what Molech demands from those who believe in him? And he demanded it, and hearing his voice I said: 'Here I am!' And my heart stood still, my breathing stopped. And early in the morning I saddled an ass and took you with me. For you were Isaak, my late-born and my firstborn, and the Lord had prepared laughter for us when He announced you, and you were my one and all, and all the future lay upon your head. And now it was His right
to demand this, though it ran counter to the future. And so I spHt wood for the burnt offering and loaded it on the ass and set the child upon it as well and departed with servants from Beersheba, traveling for three days in the direction of Edom and the land of Muzri, and toward Horeb, His mountain. And when I saw the mountain of the Lord from afar and the top of the mountain, I left the ass behind with the young lads, who were to wait for us, and laid the wood for the burnt offering on you, and took fire and a knife, and we went off alone. And when you spoke to me, asking *My father?' I was unable to say, 'Here I am,' and instead my throat suddenly let out a whimper. And when you asked in your voice, *We have fire and wood; but where is the sheep for a burnt offering?' I could not answer, as I should have answered, that the Lord would be sure to provide a sheep, for I was so grieved and sick that I could have wept and vomited out my soul, and I whimpered yet again, so that your eyes cast me a sidelong glance. And when we came to the place, I built a table of sacrifice with stones and laid the wood on it and bound the child with ropes and laid him on top. And took the knife and covered both your eyes with my left hand. And when I drew out the knife and put the knife blade to your throat, I faltered before the Lord, and my arm fell from above my shoulder, and the knife fell, and I tumbled to the ground, falling on my face and biting the earth and the grass of the earth and striking it with my feet and fists, and I cried, 'Slay him. You slay him, O Lord and Destroyer, for he is my one, my all, and I am not Abraham, and my soul falters before You!' And while I struck and cried, thunder from above the place rolled across the heavens, and its rolling died far off in the distance. And I had the child, but I had the Lord no longer, for I could not do it, for Him, no, no, could not do it," he moaned, shaking his head against the hand holding the staff.
"At the last moment," Joseph asked, raising his brows, "your soul faltered within you? Yet in the next moment," he continued, since the old man simply turned his head away in silence, "in the very next moment, the voice would have sounded and called out to you, *Do not lay your hand upon the boy and do him no harm!' and you would have seen the ram in the thicket."
"I did not know that," the old man said, "for it was as if I were Abraham, and the story had not yet happened."
"Aha, but did you not say that you cried out, 'I am not Abraham!'?" Joseph responded with a smile. "But if you were not, then you were Jacob, my dear papa, and the story was an old one and you knew how it came out. And so it was not the lad Yitzchak, either, whom you bound and were about to slay," he added, with another delicate toss of his head. "But that is the advantage of these later days, that we know the great rounds in which the world rolls ever on, and the stories in which it all comes to pass and that the fathers established. You could have trusted the voice and the ram."
"Your answer is facile, but false," the old man replied, forgetting his pain in the heat of argument. "First, you see, if I was Jacob and not Abraham, I could not know that it would turn out as it had that day, and I could not know if the Lord might not want to allow what He had once prevented to proceed to its ending. Second, do but consider: What would have been my strength before the Lord if it had come from my counting on the angel and the ram rather than from my great obedience and the faith that God can let the future pass through fire unscathed and burst the bars of death and is the Lord of resurrection? And third—was God testing me? No, he tested Abraham, who stood fast. I, however, tested myself with the test of Abraham, and my soul faltered within me, for my love was stronger than my faith, and I could not do it," he lamented again, bending his brow to the staff once more, for having now justified his reasoning, he again gave himself over to his emotions.
"Most certainly I have spoken nonsense," Joseph said humbly. "My stupidity is without doubt greater than that of most sheep, and in comparison with this brainless lad a camel surely has the insight of Noah, the cleverest of men. My reply to your embarrassing rebuke will be no more enlightened, but it does seem to this stupid child that if you were testing yourself, you were neither Abraham nor Jacob, but—how fearful to say it—you were the Lord, who was testing Jacob with the test of Abraham, and you had the wisdom of the Lord and knew which test He intended to inflict upon Jacob, that is, the one that He had no intention of letting Abraham endure to the end. For He said to him, 'I am Molech, bull-king of the Baalites. Bring me your firstborn!' But when Abraham set about to do so, the Lord said, *How dare you! Am I Molech, bull-king of the Baalites? No, rather I am Abraham's God, whose countenance is not like a
field burst by the sun, but like the countenance of the moon, and what I commanded I did not command so that you would do it, but that you might learn that you should not do it, because it is nothing but an abomination in My sight, and here, by the by, is a ram.' My dear papa was diverting himself by testing whether he might be able to do what the Lord forbade to Abraham, and is now fretting because he has discovered that he could never, ever do it."
"Like an angel," Jacob said, sitting up straight, so touched that he shook his head. "You speak like an angel near to the throne, Je-hosiph, my child of God! I wish that Mami could hear you; she would clap her hands, and those same eyes that you have would shimmer with laughter. Only half the truth is in your words, and the other half remains with what I said, for I proved weak in my trust. But you clothed your part of the truth with grace, anointing it with the oil of wit, so that it is a deHght for the understanding and a balm for my heart. How is it that my child can speak words so full of wit that they fall merrily over the rocks of truth and splash in my heart to make it leap for joy?"
Oil, Wine, and Figs
"That comes from the fact," Joseph replied, "that wit is by nature a messenger who goes back and forth, like the intermediary between sun and moon and between the power that Shamash and the power that Sin hold over the body and mind of man. That is what Eliezer, your wise servant, taught me when he showed me the science of the stars and their conjunctions and their power over the hours, depending upon their aspects one with the other. And when he showed me the horoscope of my birth in Haran in Mesopotamia at midday in the month of Tammuz, Shamash was standing at the zenith and in the sign of the Twins, and the sign of the Virgin was rising in the east." Looking up, he pointed a finger to these constellations, of which the one was just leaving its apex and declining toward the west, while the other was about to begin its ascent in the east. Then he went on: "That is a sign of Nabu, my dear papa should know, a sign of Thoth, the scribe, who is a nimble, resourceful god, the one who advises good counsel among all things and promotes intercourse. And the sun likewise stood in one of the signs of Nabu, who
was the lord of that hour and was in conjunction with the moon, which is favorable to him according to the priests and interpreters, for through it his cunning is given mildness and his heart receives tenderness. Nonetheless, Nabu, the go-between, was in opposition to Nergal, that fox and mischief-maker, through whom his dominion takes on a hardness and is sealed with the cylinder of fate. As for Ishtar, whose contribution is moderation and charm, love and grace, she was at her zenith at that hour, in an exchange of friendly aspects with Sin and Nabu. She also was standing in the Bull, and experience teaches that this lends tranquillity and persevering courage and gives deHghtful shape to the understanding. But she also stood, or so Eliezer says, in a trine aspect to Nergal in the sign of the Goat Fish, which Eliezer found a cause for rejoicing, because then her sweetness, so he says, is not bland, but is like strained honey spiced by the fields. The moon stood in the sign of the Crab, its own sign, and all interpreters stood, if not in their own, then in signs with which they were allied. But if Nabu in his shrewdness joins the moon in a powerful position, this brings great journeys out into the world. And if, as at that hour, the sun is in trine aspect to Ninurta, the warrior and hunter, that is an indication of a share in the events of the empires of this earth and in the administration of authority. It would not make for a bad horoscope according to these rules, that is, if the folly of this disappointing child does not ruin it all."
"Hmm," the old man said, letting his hand pass gingerly over Joseph's hair and looking off to one side. "That is a matter for the Lord," he said, "who guides the stars. But what He announces through them cannot be the same every time. If you were the son of a great and powerful man in this world, one might then perhaps read that you should have a share in affairs of state and governance. But since you are but a shepherd and the son of a shepherd, it stands to reason that it must be interpreted in some other fashion, on a smaller scale. But what was that about wit as a messenger going back and forth?"
"I was just coming to that," Joseph replied, "and shall now guide my words in that direction. For my father's blessing was a birth with the sun at the zenith and its aspect toward Marduk in the Scales and toward Ninurta in the eleventh house, in addition to the aspect these two paternal interpreters, king and armed warrior, shared with one another. That is a strong blessing! But my lord should also realize
how powerful my mother's was as well, and the moon's blessing, given the strong positions of Sin and Ishtar. And that is surely the source of wit, produced, for example, when Nabu is in opposition to Nergal, when the reigning Scribe opposes the hard light of that retrograde scoundrel in the Goat Fish; and it is produced so that he can act as ambassador and mediator between the father's legacy and the mother's legacy, balancing the forces of the sun and moon and happily reconciling the blessing of day with the blessing of night..."
The smile with which he broke off was slightly awry but Jacob, sitting above and behind him, did not see it.
His father said, "Old Eliezer has had much experience, has gathered many words of wisdom and has, so to speak, read the stones from before the Flood. He has also taught you all sorts of true and worthy things about the beginnings, about origins and relations, all sorts of practical knowledge that can be put to use in the world. But about many things it cannot be said with certainty that truth and usefulness are to be accounted to them, and my heart wavers, doubting if it was good for him to show you the arts of the astrologers and magicians of Shinar. For though I consider my son's head worthy of all knowledge, I never knew that our fathers read the stars or that God taught Adam to do so, and I have my worries and doubts if it is not perhaps very like the worship of heaven's Hghts and an abomination before the Lord, a thing dubious and demonic, halfway between piety and idolatry." He shook his head in distress, caught up in his most private concerns—that is, in his worries about what was right and his brooding uneasiness about God's lack of clarity.
"Much is doubtful," Joseph answered, if what he said can be called an answer. "There is, for example, the night, which hides the day, or is it the other way round, so that day conceals night? It would be an important matter to determine, and I have often considered it when out in the fields and in the tent, so that if I should ever gain certainty I might draw conclusions as to the virtue of the sun's blessing and the virtue of the moon's blessing, as well as to the beauty of the legacies from father and mother. For my dear mother, whose cheek smelled as sweet as the petal of a rose, descended into the night when she gave birth to my brother, who still dwells in the tents with the women, and in dying wished to call him Ben-Oni, for it is known that On in the land of Egypt is the home of the sun's dearest son, Osiris, who is king of the lower realms. But you named
the little boy Ben-Yamin, so that it might be known that he is a son of your true and dearest wife, and that, too, is a beautiful name. And yet I do not always obey you, but sometimes call my brother Benoni, a name he likes to hear, because he knows that for a moment as she lay dying Mami had wanted it so. She is now in the realm of night and loves us from the night, the boy and me, and her blessing is the moon's blessing and a blessing from the depths. Does not my lord know of the two trees in the garden of the world? From one comes the oil with which the kings of the earth are anointed that they may live. From the other comes the fig, green and pink and full of sweet garnet-hued seeds, and whoever eats of it will surely die. From its broad leaves Adam and Heva made aprons to cover their nakedness, for knowledge had become their portion beneath the full moon of the summer solstice, when it passes through its highest splendor, so that it may then wane and die. Oil and wine are sacred to the sun, and happy the man whose brow drips with oil and whose drunken eyes glisten from red wine. For his words will ring bright and bring laughter and comfort to the nations, and he will provide for them the ram in the thicket instead of the firstborn as a sacrifice to the Lord, so that they may be healed of their torment and fear. But the sweet fruit of the fig is holy to the moon, and happy is he whose dear mother nourishes him out of the night with its flesh. For he will grow as if beside a spring and his soul will have its roots at the source of the waters, and his word will be substantial and lusty like an earthly body, and the spirit of prophecy will be with him ..."
