Joseph and his brothers, p.37
Joseph and His Brothers, page 37
In her fifth month, Laban insisted Rachel be taken to Haran, to a seer and priest of Sin's temple, E-hulhul, so that he might foretell both her and her child's future through augury. In the presence of others, Jacob held to his principles and declined to participate, but ultimately he was no less feverish than his kin to know the results and always the first to demand nothing be left undone. Besides which, the old seer and temple-dweller in question was one Rimanni-Bel, which means, "Bel, have mercy on me," a son and grandson of seers, an especially popular and skillful clairvoyant and reader of oil, whose readings, it was generally agreed, were masterly and whose services were constantly in great demand. Jacob quite naturally refused to step before him as a supplicant and to sacrifice to the moon, but was far too curious as to what might be said—no matter from what corner—about Rachel's condition and prospects not to have indulgently allowed her parents to do as they pleased.
Thus it was Laban and Adina who walked beside the ass on which their pregnant daughter sat, one on each side, holding the bridle and leading the beast carefully to keep it from stumbling and giving its pallid rider a jolt. Behind them they had in tow the sheep they would sacrifice. Jacob, who had waved as they left, stayed at home in order not to see the pompous abomination of E-hulhul and be offended by its adjoining house of female prostitutes and boy lovers, who to honor their idol surrendered themselves to strangers for considerable sums. Without sullying himself, he awaited the verdict of this son of seers, who over a bowl spoke his thought-provoking prophecy, which they then brought home—and he listened silently to their story of what had happened to them in the temple precincts and then face-to-face with Rimanni-Bel, the reader of oil, or Rimut, as he was nicknamed. "Call me Rimut, short and sweet," the mild man had said. "For indeed my name is Rimanni-Bel, so that Sin may have mercy upon me, but I myself am full of mercy toward those who in their need and doubts are wise enough to make their sacrifice, and so simply address me as 'Mercy,' for the short form matches my face." And then he had asked what essential of life they had brought, inspected for any blemish the animal to be sacrificed, and directed them to booths in the main court where they could purchase such and such spices for the burnt offering.
An agreeable man, this Rimanni-Bel or Rimut, in his white linen garments and his cone-shaped cap, likewise of linen—an aged man
now, but with a trim body free of any unsightly fat, a white beard, a reddened bulbous nose, and droll little eyes that made you merry just looking at them. "I am well-made," he had stated, "and with no flaw of limb or entrails, like the sacrificial animal when it is pleasing, and like the sheep to which no objection can be made. I am of straight stature and even proportion, and my leg is bent neither inward nor outward, nor am I missing so much as a single tooth, nor could my eyes be called crossed or my scrotum misshapen. Except my nose is a little red, as you can see, but only out of mirth and for no other reason, for I am as sober as clear water. I could step before the god naked, as was once the custom, so we have heard and read. Now we stand before him in white linen, and I am also glad of that, for it is likewise pure and sober and matches my soul. I harbor no envy against my brothers, the conjuring priests, who do their work in undergarments and cloaks of red, wrapping themselves in the luster of terror in order to confound demons and lurking riffraff. These others, too, are useful and necessary and worthy of their hire, and yet Rimanni-Bel, for I am he, would not wish to be any of them, nor to be a priest of baths and salves, nor one possessed, nor a priest of lamentation and wailing, nor indeed one whose manhood Ishtar has transformed into femaleness, as holy as that state may be. None of these awaken in me so much as a trace of jealousy, so content am I in my own skin, and I would choose to practice no other art of divination, but am solely given to the reading of oil, for it is by far the most sensible, the clearest and best. Just between ourselves, there is something very arbitrary about both augury with livers and the oracle of the arrow, and even the interpretation of dreams and spasms of the limbs do not lack for sources of error, so that I often make my little private jokes about them. As for you, father, mother, and pregnant child, you have chosen the right path and knocked on the right door. For my forebear is Emmeduranki, who was king of Sippar before the Flood, the wise keeper of the art—imparted to him by the great gods—of gazing into oil upon water and reading what will be from the behavior of the oil. I take my origin from him, in a direct line passed from father to son, an unbroken tradition—for each father had the son whom he loved swear with tablet and stylus before Shamash and Adad and had him learn the work entitled 'When the Son of the Seers'—on down to Rimut the Merry, the Unblemished, for I am he. And from the sheep I receive the hindquarters, the pelt.
and one pot of broth—just so that you may know in advance; moreover the sinews and half the entrails as shown on these tablets and displays. The loins, the right shoulder, and a lovely piece of roast belongs to the god, and together we shall lift hands to share what remains at the temple meal. Is that satisfactory?"
The words of Rimut, son of seers. And they had sacrificed on the roof sprinkled with holy water, strewing the table of the lord with salt and placing upon it four jugs of wine, twelve loaves of bread, as well as a paste of curds and honey. Then they had strewn spices for burning on the incense candelabra and slaughtered the sheep: the suppliant held it, the priest dealt the blow, and requisite offering was made. How charmingly Rimut, the old man of unblemished limbs, had performed the final dance before the altar, cutting his judicious capers. Laban and the women could not praise it enough to Jacob, who listened and said not a word, silently eager to hear the verdict, but hiding his impatience.
Yes, the verdict, the judgment spoken by the oil—it was a murky and ambiguous matter; in possessing it, one was not much wiser than before, for it was both consolation and threat in one—but surely that was how the future had to sound if it could speak, and at least they had heard some sound from it, if only a buzzing, words spoken through lips shut tight. Rimanni-Bel had taken his cedar rod and bowl, had prayed and sung and poured oil on the water and water on the oil and cocking his head had observed the formations of the oil in the water. Two rings had emerged from the oil, one large, the other small—by every indication Rachel, the sheep breeder's daughter, would give birth to a boy. One ring had emerged from the oil toward the east and then stood still—the mother, having given birth, would return to health. A shake of the bowl, a bubble formed in the oil—her guardian god would stand by her in her need, for it would be great. Someone would escape from need, for the oil had sunk and risen, and when water was poured, it had divided and come together again, and thus someone would, though after terrible suffering, be well again. But since the oil, after water was poured, sank and then rose again and clung to the rim of the bowl, that meant that whoever was sick would rise again, but whoever was healthy would surely die. "Not the boy!" Jacob could not help crying out. No, for the child it was just the opposite—judging from the oil's signals.
which in this instance were not easily comprehended by human understanding. The child would go down into the pit, and yet live; it would be like grain, which bears no fruit unless it dies. This reading, so Rimut had assured them, was indisputable—given how, when he had poured water into the oil, it had first separated, but then had rejoined with a strange sheen along the edge pointing toward the sun, for this meant the raising up of the head out of death. It was not very intelligible, the seer had said, he himself did not understand it, he would not pretend to be wiser than he was; but the signal was reliable. In regard to the woman, however, and judging from both test and countertest, she would not see the boy's star at its zenith, not unless she avoided the number two. For in general that number was unlucky, but especially for the sheep breeder's daughter, and according to the oil she should not undertake a journey under the sign of two, for otherwise she would be like an army that does not advance to the head of its field.
This was the verdict and muttered judgment, to which Jacob listened, nodding his head, but at the same time shrugging his shoulders. What was he to make of it? It was important that he hear it, because it concerned Rachel and her child, but for the rest he would have to let it be and leave the future to make of these mutterings whatever it intended to make. Destiny and the future maintained a more or less free hand in such things in any case. A great deal could happen or not happen, and it all still might be passably reconciled with the verdict, so that one might declare this to have been its meaning. For many an hour Jacob pondered the idea of oracles in general and also spoke about it to Laban, who would hear nothing of it. Was an oracle by its nature the revelation of some unalterable future, or was it an instruction to take care, a warning that a man should do his part to keep a predicted misfortune from occurring? But that would presume that providence and fate were not fixed, but rather that it was up to man to influence them. If that were so, however, then the future did not reside outside of man, but inside him, and in that case how could it even be read? Besides which, it had often happened that the taking of preventive measures more or less brought on the prophesied disaster, indeed, it evidently never could have happened without such measures, making both the warning and fate itself the sport of demons. The oil had spoken, Rachel
would give birth, though with difficulty, to a son. But if one were to neglect her in labor, speak no charms, withhold the necessary anointings—how would destiny then go about being true to its happy verdict, yet remaining itself? For, in a most sinful fashion, evil would occur contrary to fate. But was not sin also the attempt to make good things happen contrary to fate?
Laban disapproved of such quibbling. This was not well thought out, merely skewed and oversubtle faultfinding. The future was simply the future, which meant it had not yet happened and so was not fixed, but it would happen someday, one way or the other, and was therefore fixed in only a certain sense, that is, according to its property as future—and that was all there was to say about it. Statements concerning it were illuminating and instructive for the heart, and seers and priests were engaged and paid to make them, after years of schooling under the sponsorship of the King of the Four Regions at Babel-Sippar on both sides of the river—the darling of Shamash, the favorite of Mardug, king of Sumeria and Akkadia, he who dwelt in a palace whose foundations were fathoms deep and in a throne room of unutterable splendor. So enough quibbling!
Jacob had already fallen silent. He held Nimrod of Babel in profound derision, a sentiment inherited from the primal wanderer. And so it did not make the oracle appear any more sacred for Laban to invoke in its favor this omnipotent ruler and how he himself never lifted a finger without first consulting seers and priests. Laban had paid for the oracle with a sheep and diverse nourishment for the moon idol, and if only for that reason alone he had to cling to its verdict. Jacob, who had paid nothing, necessarily treated it more casually; but, then again, he delighted in having heard something without having paid, and as for the future, one question at least, or so he thought, was already fixed: whether Rachel's fruit was to be a boy or a girl. That was already determined in Rachel's womb, except that one could not yet see it. There was such a thing as a fixed future, then, and that Rimanni-Bel's oil had indicated a boy was at least heartening. As for the rest, Jacob was grateful for practical instructions the seer had given; for as a true priest of the temple he also had knowledge of healing; and although without question there was a contradiction between these two capacities—for what good was medicine against the future?—he had not been chary in providing
tried-and-true counsel for the delivery, with ritual incantations and medicinal prescriptions supplementing each other for full efficacy.
Little Rachel did not have it easy. Long before her hour had come—which almost became her last hour—the regimen was begun. She had to drink foul-tasting brews, quantities of oil, for example, containing pulverized pregnancy stones; and her body had to bear up under all sorts of compresses—packets of salve made from pitch, swine fat, fish, and herbs—or even the body parts of unclean animals, which like the salves were bound to her limbs with cord. Moreover, a kid of atonement always lay at her head as she slept, a substitute sacrifice to feed the greedy demons in her stead. Near her, day and night, stood a clay doll of swamp-born Labartu, a pig's heart in her mouth, so that the abominable demons would leave the pregnant woman's body where they had taken up residence and be lured into her image, which was smashed every third day with a sword and buried in a wall niche—and one made sure never to glance around behind. The sword was thrust into a basin of glowing coals, which likewise—though the season was very warm, with the month of Tammuz approaching—had to stand next to Rachel's bed day and night. Her bed was encircled by a low wall of flour paste; the three mounds of grain in her chamber were also there at Rimanni-Bel's suggestion. At the first labor pains, people hurried to smear the sides of her bed with pig's blood and the house door with gypsum and asphalt.
The Birth
It was summer, a few days into the month of the mutilated god, the Lord of the Sheepfolds. Since the grand moment when he had first learned that his true and dearest wife was to give birth, Jacob had not left her side, had personally helped tend her, refreshing the salve compresses and once even breaking the image of Labartu and burying it—measures and usages which, it was true, had not come from the God of his fathers, but could, after all, have come from Him by way of the idol and its seer, and were, in any case, the only ones available to observe. Pale, emaciated, and sturdy only in the middle of her body, where the fruit, in order to flourish, was sucking at all
her energies and juices with obHvious ruthlessness, Rachel had often smiled and led his hand to where he could feel the child's faint kicks; and through the veil of flesh he had greeted Dumuzi, his true son, and told him to pluck up his courage for daylight soon, but to sHp deftly from his refuge and spare his sheltering mother undue suffering. And when with a weak smile contorting her poor face and with shortness of breath she announced that the time was near, he became greatly agitated, called her parents and the handmaids, demanding the bricks be set up, bustling about pointlessly—and his heart was full of pleading.
Rachel's willingness and good courage cannot be praised enough. With joyous and brave determination to prove fit in deed and suffering, she entered upon the work of nature. Her zeal was not for the sake of appearances and because she no longer wanted to be seen by others as the childless and "hated" wife; it was, rather, from a deeper, more physical sense of honor—for it is not just human society that knows what honor is, but the flesh knows it, too, and even better than society, as Rachel herself had discovered when in her disgrace she painlessly became a mother through Bilhah. As her labor now began, her smile was not the confused smile of that day, when it had been painted by her flesh's grieved conscience. Transfigured both by happiness and nearsightedness, her handsome and beautiful eyes rested on those of Jacob, for whom she would give birth in honor, for this was the hour to which she had looked forward with her wide-eyed eagerness for life from the very first, from the day when the stranger, her cousin from a strange land, had stood across from her in the field.
Poor Rachel! How joyous her bravery, what a good will filled her to be strong in the work of nature—and nature repaid her with little goodwill, made it very hard for the brave woman. Was Rachel, who had been so honestly impatient for motherhood and so convinced of her talent for it, in truth, that is in the flesh, not made for it at all—far less so than Leah, the unloved wife—so that the sword of death hung over her as her first labor began, and indeed fell upon her and slew her the second time? Can nature be so at odds with itself, mocking the very wishes and happy faith it places in the human heart? Evidently. Rachel's joy was not accepted and her faith was proved false—such was this eager, willing woman's fate. She had waited with Jacob in faith for seven years, and then for thirteen years
had met disappointment beyond all comprehension. But now, when nature had finally granted what she longed for, it did so at a ghastly price beyond all that Leah, Bilhah, and Zilpah combined had had to pay for the honor of motherhood. Her terrible labor lasted thirty-six hours, from midnight to noon and on through yet another night to the following afternoon, and had it lasted a mere hour or even half hour more, her breath would have left her. From the start Jacob was anxious about Rachel's own disappointment, for she had imagined she would complete this quickly, merrily, vigorously, but was quickly brought to a standstill. The first signals were obviously deceptive; the early contractions were followed by pauses of many hours, a barren time of emptiness and silence, during which, although Rachel did not suffer, she felt embarrassed and bored. She said to Leah several times, "How very different it was for you, sister!"—which Leah had to admit, casting Jacob, her lord, a sidelong glance. But then urgent pain grabbed at the mother-to-be, each clutch more cruel and protracted than before, yet when it ceased all the hard labor seemed to have been in vain. She exchanged the bricks for the bed, the bed for the bricks again. The hours of the night watches and of daylight came and went; she was aggrieved, shamed by her incompetence. Rachel did not scream when pain grabbed her and would not let go; clenching her teeth with mute integrity, she put her best energies to work, for she knew her lord's soft heart and did not want to frighten Jacob, who with his soul in tatters would kiss her hands and feet during those pauses of exhaustion. What good did integrity do? It was not accepted. And when things grew worse yet, she did scream—monstrous, savage cries so out of character, so unlike little Rachel. For by this point, as morning dawned a second time, she was not in her right mind, no longer herself, and they could easily tell by her hideous bellowing that it was not Rachel who was screaming, because the voice was utterly strange, the voice of demons that the pig's heart stuck in the mouth of the clay doll had been unable to lure out of her.
