Rachel (30 page)

Three-and-a-half-year-old Joseph took hold of Rachel’s hand and skipped and kicked at stones along the path. Rachel laughed at his antics and finally released him to run on ahead once she spotted Jacob walking toward them looking dusty and hot, the sheep following behind him. They had reached more than the halfway point in Jacob’s contract with Laban, and Jacob’s wealth had increased faster than either of them could have imagined. The first season, the sheep had borne healthy, speckled young without a single miscarriage. Jacob’s flock grew fifty-fold.

Her father had questioned each of her brothers and half brothers to be sure Jacob had not somehow snuck into the flocks by night and taken from what was his, but in the end he was forced to admit that the speckled lambs were Jacob’s. The acceptance came with a price, however, as her father changed Jacob’s wages to lambs with spots, not speckled or striped, making the likelihood of payment near impossible again.

But Rachel had laughed behind her veil at her father’s flushed face when the lambs were born spotted and he had confronted Jacob that second time.

“What is this you have done to me? You have taken from my spotted lambs and switched them for the white ones.” Laban’s
features were mottled in anger, and he stepped close to Jacob, staring him down. But Jacob stood his ground.

“I had no opportunity to do such a thing. Your sons keep your flocks several days’ distance from mine. And my flocks are in the care of Reuben and Simeon, while I have kept yours apart. You accuse me falsely, my father.” Jacob’s tone had been conciliatory, and after a moment of silence, Laban finally looked away.

“I do not know if this is true. To test you, I have no choice but to change the terms of our agreement. This time only the striped shall be your wages. We will see if you speak truth. Even you cannot cause the animals a third time to produce as you wish.” He crossed his arms, turned on his heel, and walked away without a backward glance.

Rachel sobered when she heard these new terms her father laid down, her fear rising. What if her father was right? The first time when the ewes produced all speckled lambs, Jacob’s growing family had rejoiced. When Laban changed the wages to spotted, Jacob’s wives had fretted over what they would do if the next lambing season fell in Laban’s favor. Leah had tried to calm everyone and urged them to trust Adonai, but even Jacob worried, and at night when Rachel lay in his arms, she could feel his restlessness even in his sleep.

But a third switch? Could even Adonai perform such a feat? Spotted and speckled were more likely to produce white than striped lambs. Her laughter had turned to anger at her father.

Now Rachel drew closer and noted Jacob’s knit brow even through his delight at seeing Joseph, and she knew the weight of her father’s treachery weighed heavily on him. But she pushed the emotions and thoughts aside as she neared him, now holding a squirming Joseph.

“He wants to run. He is always busy, and I can barely keep up with him.” She smiled and accepted Jacob’s tired kiss on her cheek. “You look exhausted. Do you want me to take the sheep to the pens while you go bathe in the river? It would do you good.”

Jacob took Joseph from Rachel’s arms, tousled his thick dark hair, and laughed. “Is it my strength you wish to renew in the river or the smell of my sweat you wish to wash away?” He lowered Joseph to the ground, and each of them took one of the boy’s hands as he skipped along between them.

“Both!” Rachel shared his laughter and listened as he told her about his day in the fields.

“I lost one of the ewes to a fox. I killed him with the sling, but not before he had torn the ewe apart.”

Rachel shuddered. She had always hated the killing, but a shepherd had no choice when protecting her sheep. “How many losses does that make this year?” He kept track for his own sake but did not report the losses to her father. Why cause more dissension between them?

“In the past eight months, three have been captured by lions, two by foxes, and two by jackals.”

“Up, Abba, up!” Joseph’s childish voice drew their attention.

Jacob glanced at her, and she smiled at the wink he gave her. “Up you say, my little man?”

“Up!” His insistence was more comical than defiant, and they both quickly obliged, lifting Joseph’s arms together and letting him glide over the path. He squealed in delight.

They continued on, lifting and walking. “You will wear me out, my son,” Jacob said as they neared the fork in the path that led to the river some distance away. He released Joseph’s hand, but Rachel kept her hold. Jacob looked at her. “If you will take the sheep, I will go wash as you wish.” His smile warmed her.

She wrinkled her nose, sending him a teasing look. “We will appreciate you not smelling quite like a goat, my lord.”

He touched her head, his gesture affectionate. “I don’t know why I bother, dear wife. I will just need another washing when the lambing takes place.”

“Then you shall take another.”

He laughed as they parted, and Rachel was glad for the
distraction of the sheep before returning to the tents to help finish the remains of the evening meal and nurse Joseph. She patted each pregnant lamb as it passed by her into the fold, praying the young would be striped this time, wondering if God even heard such selfish prayers.

For Jacob’s sake
, she added. If God intended to bless her husband, she would do well to remind Him that the prayers were meant for him.

Leah sat in the shade of an oak tree, nursing her newest child. A girl, Dinah, now two years old, born two years after Joseph. She had hoped—oh, how she had hoped—that this seventh child would be a son, to give Jacob the tribal number of twelve. But perhaps Adonai intended to allow Rachel that privilege. Leah sighed and looked down on her daughter, so beautiful in one so young. She had her aunt’s beauty, and Leah found the thought both pleasing and fretful. What fate awaited a comely child or a beautiful woman? Would she be barren as her aunt had been for so long?

But the thoughts were foolish to consider now with the babe not yet weaned. She stroked her daughter’s dark hair, already to her shoulders, away from her cherub face. Dinah opened her eyes as though she knew Leah was watching and smiled, her gaze wide with childish secrets, then closed them again.

“I thought you would be in your tent.” Leah startled at the sound of Rachel’s voice.

“Sometimes the breeze is better in the tree’s shade.” She wiped sweat from her brow and positioned Dinah to the other side.

Rachel knelt near her and pulled a section of wool from a basket she carried and began to separate the strands. Joseph sank down beside her and found a stick to draw circles in the dirt. He glanced at Leah, pausing a moment. “Is she done yet?”

Leah smiled at her nephew. Though they were young, Joseph
and Dinah had taken to each other, with him entertaining her with stories as soon as he could string words together. Leah had marveled at his patience with his half sister, but since her own youngest sons, Issachar and Zebulun, had each other, she was grateful for her nephew’s ability to distract Dinah.

“Almost.” Leah patted Joseph’s arm. “Go on with your pictures. What will you draw today?” The boy was a dreamer like his mother, either running and jumping, giving his mother’s nerves a good shake, or sitting quietly as he was now and occupying himself.

“Oh, I dunno. Birds and trees and sheep.” He lapsed into silence and set about to scribble in the dirt.

Rachel looked on him with pride, and Leah felt a little kick over her heart that Jacob took such delight in this son. But she allowed her own sense of pride when she watched Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and even seven-year-old Judah traipse after their father into the fields, already becoming fine shepherds themselves. Would Joseph grow up to tend sheep? She couldn’t imagine him capable of killing a fox or lion or jackal when he grew flustered at the sight of one of his half brothers killing a scorpion. How could Jacob even consider this child as his heir? But one glance at her sister squelched her wayward, jealous thoughts.

“What is on your mind, sister? Or did you just long for my company?” Leah helped Dinah sit up and patted her back.

“I suppose I wanted your company.” Rachel’s smile made Leah silently repent of her jealousy of her sister’s son. “And I needed someone to fret with about Jacob.” She glanced beyond Leah a moment, then turned her attention to the wool in her hands.

“He does seem more tired and quiet than normal. Though you would know better than I how much he speaks.”

Jacob lapsed more often into silence around the meals or conversed with his sons, teaching them things about shepherding, and rarely conversed with his wives, who stood nearby to serve. They often waited now to eat after Jacob and his sons
were fed, and since Jacob spent his evenings in Rachel’s tent, Leah was not often privy to his thoughts.

“He is terribly exhausted. Don’t you see it upon his brow?” Rachel looked up, and Leah put Dinah on the grass near Joseph, then took some of the wool from Rachel to help her comb it.

“I see it some. I confess I am often distracted with the children.” She would not admit that she had stopped looking to Jacob for companionship after Dinah’s birth. She just didn’t have it in her to keep hoping he would one day see her with greater favor.

Rachel sighed and tugged at a piece of tangled wool. “Well, he is working himself too hard trying to build the flock. He is training the boys, yes, but they are young. They cannot handle some of the greater tasks of trimming the sheep’s hooves or lifting a lamb from a pit. They can barely handle the sling against those who come against the flock.”

“Reuben and Simeon have learned quickly. Surely they are more help than you think. You weren’t much older when Father sent you to the fields.”

Rachel gave a conciliatory nod. “Yes, of course they are a wonderful help to him. But Father has made things so difficult. He has changed Jacob’s wages six times in four years, and I have no doubt he will do it again in the two that Jacob has left to serve him. First it was speckled, then spotted, then striped. But no, that is not good enough to prove Adonai is blessing Jacob. Then it was speckled and spotted with only brown spots. Then it was striped but only black stripes. Father is impossible!”

Leah let the wool fall to her lap. “I did not realize.”

“Jacob did not want to complain. But it is wearing on him. He hides his anger, but I know he is counting the days until we can leave this place.” Rachel glanced at Joseph as though fearing the child would tell what he had heard. But he had wandered a short distance from them with Dinah, gesturing toward the treetops and talking, Dinah looking on with rapt attention.

“But what can we do?” Protectiveness toward Jacob and anger toward their father caused Leah’s hands to clench into tight fists. She leaned forward. “I would love to see Father squirm as much as Jacob has done in the eighteen years he has been with us. I think Father delights in besting him.”

Rachel nodded. “And Jacob is starting to sense a change in Father’s attitude to him. Have you noticed? I think Bahaar still considers Jacob a friend, but he will not go against Father. What of your brothers? Do they resent our husband?”

Leah picked up the wool again and pondered the thought. Did they? She had paid little attention to them and rarely spoke at length with their wives. She was too busy with her own children to notice. “I do not know. Have you spoken to your mother? Perhaps she knows. I have had little time to speak to mine.” She regretted the way that sounded the moment she said it. “That is, I haven’t really been up to going to the house since Dinah’s birth.”

Her sister seemed not to notice the impression Leah gave that Rachel, who had only one child, would have more time to spend with her mother than Leah did with hers. Both mothers often saw the wives of their sons, who had rooms extended in their father’s house, unlike Rachel and Leah, who lived in tents with Jacob on the farther reaches of Laban’s property nearest the sheep pens.

“My mother has not been feeling well of late. When I am with her, we do not discuss anything that could upset her.” Rachel ran the comb through another section of wool.

Leah looked at her, surprised at this news. “I had not heard this. How long has she been ill?” She saw the shadow pass in front of Rachel’s luminous eyes.

“About a month. She has lost weight—she has no appetite. And she could not attend the last birthing of Tariq’s daughter-in-law.” She bit her lower lip and looked away. “I worry about her.”

Leah leaned closer and touched Rachel’s arm. “We must pray
Adonai’s favor upon her.” She couldn’t imagine giving birth without Suri’s help. She was the best midwife in all of Laban’s household and had saved many a woman from undue pain and even death. “I must ask her to teach me her secrets,” Leah said. “Perhaps I can help until she is well.”

Rachel nodded and called Joseph to come. Leah glanced up to see the pair of children had wandered closer to the distant trees that led to the sheep pens. Joseph took Dinah’s hand and quickly obeyed. Leah marveled at the child’s lack of rebellion and couldn’t help but feel the twinge of envy that Joseph had been given far more of Jacob’s time than her sons ever had. Perhaps that was why his spirit was one that was quick to obey.