Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) (18 page)

She undressed herself, laying out the dress for a servant to fold and put away, and then knelt to pray. If he’s going to be a good husband to me, Lord, then please keep him safe, let no accident take him from me, no sudden disease, no assassin from an enemy, no terrible fall from a high place while he’s tending sheep. And if he’s going to be a hard man, a cruel husband—for some men are cruel, who seem to others to be good—then let me die before the seven years are up, so I don’t have to be disappointed in him.

She thought she was done with her prayer, but then thought of something else that needed saying.

“Dear God,” she whispered, “give my sister Leah a husband as good as mine, so she can be happy as I am happy.”

A
t first Jacob took little time with their study. It was Reuel who taught Leah and Bilhah the shapes and sounds of the letters. It made little sense to Leah. “So when I see this shape, I say ‘ba.’”

“No,” Reuel explained patiently. “You say ‘buh.’”

“So how do I write ‘ba’?”

“With this letter,” said Reuel. “But it could be ‘ba’ or ‘buh’ or ‘beh’ or ‘bi.’”

“Then how do I know anything? A letter to say just ‘b’ makes no sense. You can’t even
say
‘b’ without
some
sound after it.”

“Look, we don’t
have
to have all the sounds on the papyrus. Just the hard sounds, and let the singing sounds be whatever they are.”

Leah simply hated the thought that words could be broken into pieces like that, and only some of the pieces be
written down. It made reading so hard, to have to guess what went between, and where words stopped and started.

But finally the conceptual battle was won, and Leah could kneel down and scratch the letters in the dirt, and read the letters Bilhah scratched, and they could make words and sentences out of them, and read them readily enough. Of course, Bilhah could read them standing up, while Leah had to bow down and put her face close to the earth to see what was written. But when Jacob came and saw them working at their reading, he said, “It’s good to bow down when you prepare to read the words of God.” So from then on, Leah did not mind her humble posture.

Of course, Bilhah also began to kneel when she wrote and read, even though she didn’t have to. Which might not have been what Jacob intended, but Leah rather liked the effect, the both of them kneeling together; and if Leah bowed lower, then that only made her closer to God, and that’s what all this was for, wasn’t it? To find God’s will for her?

When they could read and write with some ease, Jacob began to spend more time with them—but still he did not bring out a single holy book. Instead he gave them brushes and taught them to write with ink on stones. “Papyrus is expensive and has to be brought from Egypt,” said Jacob. “But ink I make myself, and stones are free. So now you will learn to write on stones and read from rocks. The Lord made them all, didn’t he?”

Leah laughed, for she could hear in his voice that he was smiling when he said it. A jest—because it didn’t matter what they wrote
on
. Holy books were holy because the words spoke of God and the men and women who served him. If they were
scratched in dirt, it made the dirt holy; if the words were swept away, then it would just be dirt again.

There came a point in every session, though, when Leah’s head would hurt and her eyes would be too tired to work any more. That was when she would lie back and cover her eyes and Bilhah would continue her practice alone. Sometimes Leah would say words and Bilhah would write them down; later, when Reuel or Jacob came by, they would read what Bilhah had written and Leah would tell them whether that was what she said. Bilhah became very skilled at it—more so than Leah, but that was to be expected. She had more practice at it, and she could see better to start with.

Gradually, Bilhah’s handwriting became quick and graceful and small—so small that if Leah held it close enough to her eyes to read it, she cast a shadow on the stone and then could not read anything at all. “Don’t worry, Leah,” Bilhah said. “You’ll be able to read the holy books. The stones are grey, but papyrus is white.”

“You could also write larger,” said Leah pointedly.

“But this is the size that Jacob told me I had to be able to read and write. If you write too large, you can use up whole scrolls on just a tiny portion of a book. So the writing is small, to fit whole books on as few scrolls as possible.”

“I was there,” said Leah testily. “I heard.”

“But your eyes were closed,” said Bilhah. “You were resting. You didn’t see the size of the writing he showed me.”

Leah sighed. She didn’t understand why Bilhah always had to taunt her with her blindness. What Bilhah could do easily, and for hours at a time, Leah could do only for a little while, and it remained a struggle. Yet Bilhah could not resist
using her superior vision to clinch a point in an argument. I’ve seen, you haven’t.

Well, with my ears I “see” more than most people do with their eyes. I hear in your voice how you brighten whenever Jacob is near, how your voice sings with a music that is never there for Reuel, or for me. That’s my sister’s husband you’re falling in love with, foolish girl. You may be free, but you’re not free to do
that
.

At last came the day when Jacob and Reuel both agreed that Leah and Bilhah were as ready as they were going to be. It was time to bring out the holy books, or at least one of them, and begin to hear the words of God.

They would need bright sunlight to read by—or at least Leah would—so Jacob had several men help him stretch a fence of cloth to make a dooryard around the entrance to his tent. This would keep the eyes of curiosity away from the scrolls.

Leah and Bilhah sat on rugs facing the tent flap. Jacob emerged with a low table, which he laid where it would be close to both girls and to him, once he sat down. Then he returned to the tent and came back a few moments later with a cloth-wrapped bundle. This he set on the table, and when he had sat behind it, he unwrapped a scroll which was tied with a thong of soft leather. He untied it, and pried up the leading edge of the papyrus, and at last the words of God unrolled on the table before them.

Jacob turned the scroll so the writing faced the girls.

The trouble was, Leah could see nothing on the scrolls at all.

“Lean down close to it,” said Bilhah softly. “The writing is there.”

But even though she put her face so close her nose brushed against the papyrus, the writing was never more than a set of grey smudges to her. She could tell that in the midst of the vertical bands of grey there were letters, but when she put her face close enough to read, her head cast a shadow on the papyrus.

She felt tears coming to her eyes and sat up quickly, to keep them from falling on the book and smearing the ink. “I can’t read it,” she said.

“We always knew that was possible,” said Jacob. “That’s why we made sure Bilhah learned beside you.”

“But I hoped,” said Leah.

“We all hoped.”

“I prayed,” she murmured.

“God’s answer seems to be that you can hear his word, but in the voice of Bilhah.”

“Then I’m glad I have this friend to help me,” said Leah.

“Thank you for letting me be that friend,” said Bilhah.

Jacob slid the papyrus slightly on the table, so now it faced Bilhah completely.

“I don’t know this word,” said Bilhah.

“It’s a name,” said Jacob. “Enoch.”

“I don’t know who that is,” said Bilhah.

“He was the grandfather of Noah,” said Leah. “He was taken up by God, he and the whole city of Zion, because they were so holy.” She turned to Jacob. “Is this where that story is written?”

“One of the places. But not till the very end. This is the book of the revelations of Enoch. An account of his warnings to the wicked, and then of his promises to the righteous, and then his great hymn of praise to God, who walked among the
people of Zion like any man, and they gathered at his feet to be taught wisdom.”

The way we gather at
your
feet, thought Leah.

“Go ahead,” said Jacob. “Read it! But don’t expect it to be easy. It uses many strange words that my father had to teach me. I’ll teach them to you, as well. Except that there are a few whose meaning is entirely lost. It’s as if God has chosen to make us forget some of his secrets, that once our holy ancestor Enoch knew.”

“If Enoch could know it, why can’t we?” said Leah.

“These things are controlled by God, not men, and so the reasons can only be discovered by asking him, not me.”

Leah smiled. “So to have the holy books does not necessarily mean you understand them.”

“If I understood them perfectly,” said Jacob, “I wouldn’t need holy books, I’d be a holy
man
.”

“I thought you
were
a holy man,” said Bilhah.

Leah silently sighed at the worship in the girl’s voice.

“I’m a man who loves holiness and strives for it,” said Jacob. “But that doesn’t make me holy. Not like Enoch. God spoke to him face to face. Like a man to his brother. Enoch walked with God, the way Adam and Eve did in the garden.”

A question occurred to Leah and she blurted it out. “Did his wife, too?”

“Did whose wife do what?”

“If Enoch walked with God, did God also walk with Enoch’s wife? Or did she have to stay away, like when men are eating? Was she unworthy?”

Jacob spun the scroll around to face himself and began reading quickly, moving his lips a little in a sort of whispered commentary but saying no clear words out loud. “I don’t
know,” he finally said. “But it never says that when Zion was taken up to heaven, Enoch’s wife was unworthy and got left behind. So I imagine she must have walked with God, too.”

“So she was holy?” said Leah.

“She might have been,” said Jacob. “She must have been. All the people of Zion were.”

“So a woman can be holy,” Leah insisted.

“Righteous women are taken into heaven,” said Jacob, “to dwell with the Lord, as are righteous men. So of course a woman can be holy.”

“And the Lord can speak to her, and she can write down his words, the way Enoch did, and her book will be preserved as part of the birthright?”

Jacob looked nonplussed. “I’ve read the scrolls, and there aren’t any written by a woman.”

At this, Bilhah chimed in. “So if I copy over this book onto a new scroll, I’ll be the first woman to write a holy book?”

Why couldn’t Bilhah stay out of conversations she clearly didn’t understand?

But Jacob answered her patiently. “You might be the first to copy it, though I don’t know that for certain. Copying a book isn’t the same as writing one.”

“But can I try?” asked Bilhah. “If I learn to write neatly enough?”

“Perhaps you’d best
read
the words of this book, before you begin to write a copy of your own.”

Leah’s patience with Bilhah’s digression ran out. “This isn’t for you to become a scribe or a holy woman. It’s so I can learn the words of God.”

“Learning the words of God,” said Jacob, “is the beginning of holiness, and the desire to hear his words shows that there’s
already a love of holiness in your heart.” He turned the scroll back around. “Read to us, Bilhah.”

She began to read. If she was slower at reading than Jacob, Leah couldn’t tell. She tried not to be irritated at how easily and well Bilhah could read, when just making out the letters was still so hard for Leah.

But this was the word of God. This was what Leah had worked so hard to be able to hear. What was the Lord going to say to her? It might be Bilhah’s voice, and Bilhah’s skill, but what she read was God’s word to Leah.

It was the story of how Enoch was taking a journey, and Wisdom came suddenly upon him, and he heard a voice from heaven, calling him by name, saying, “My son,” and commanding him to prophesy to the people and call them to repentance, “For my fierce anger is kindled against them.”

Leah knew at once that this was why her life was so hard: The fierce anger of the Lord was kindled against her. She couldn’t keep a tear from spilling from one eye.

“Leah,” said Jacob. “Why are you crying?”

She knew he would insist that this was not what the scripture was saying—that it wasn’t talking to her specifically. She didn’t want to waste time listening to him reassure her. “My eye hurts.”

“You’re not a good liar,” said Jacob, “so you shouldn’t try.”

“I’m crying because I realize the Lord’s anger is kindled against me.”

“It was the people of Enoch’s day who were wicked, not you.”

“But this is what the voice of God says,” said Leah.

“Not to
you
,” said Jacob. “The Lord was talking to Enoch.”

“He was talking about the people who needed to repent. That includes me.”

Jacob hesitated.

Bilhah began her chirpy answer. “It’s about what God said to the prophets, and then what they did—”

But Leah wasn’t going to get her instruction in the word of God from a girl who was only hearing the words herself for the first time today. “Bilhah,” she said, “when you write your own book, you can explain it to people. I’m saying that when I heard those words, I knew that this was what God wanted me to hear.”