Joseph and His Brothers, page 38
These spasms of pain accomplished nothing, but merely held her in her holy anguish and in the relentless torments of hell, until the screaming mask of her face turned blue and her fingers were talons clutching the air. Jacob wandered through house and courtyard, but kept bumping into things because he was holding his thumbs in his ears and the other eight fingers over his eyes. He pleaded with
God—not for a son, he was no longer concerned about that, but that Rachel might die, might he peaceful in her bed, freed from her hellish distress. When their draughts and salves and massages had proved fruitless, Laban and Adina resorted in their bewilderment to reciting invocations, and while their daughter wailed in her labors, their rhythmic words reminded Sin, the moon god, that just as he had once helped a cow give birth he might now help loosen the knots entanghng this woman and assist this maiden in the throes of childbirth. Leah stood bolt upright and silent in one corner of the room, arms straight at her sides, but hands raised at the wrist, while her blue crossed eyes watched the life-and-death struggle of Jacob's beloved.
Then from Rachel came a final shriek of utter demonic rage, a cry one cannot release a second time short of death and cannot hear twice without loss of reason—and Laban's wife had something to do besides recite the tale of Sin's cow, for Jacob's son, his eleventh and first, had come forth, emerging from life's dark bloody womb— Dumuzi-Apsu, the true son of the abyss. It was Bilhah, mother of Dan and Naphtali, who came running pale and laughing into the courtyard where Jacob had fled in vain, and with tongue aflutter she reported to her lord that a child was born to us, a son given to us, and that Rachel lived. His whole body trembling, he dragged himself into the mother's room, fell before her, and wept. Bathed in sweat and as if transfigured by death, she sang a panting song of exhaustion. The portal of her body was ripped and torn, her tongue bitten through, and her weary heart's life close to fading forever. But this was the reward for her eager joy.
She did not have the strength to turn her head toward him or even to smile, but she stroked the top of his head as he knelt beside her, and then let her eyes drift to one side, to the suspended cradle, signaling to him that he should behold his living child and lay his hand upon his son. Bathed now, the infant had stopped blubbering. It slept, wrapped in its swaddling clothes. It had long lashes, tiny hands with perfectly formed nails, and smooth black hair on the little head that had torn at its mother as it emerged. It was not beautiful at the time; how could one even hope to speak of beauty in such a small child. And yet Jacob saw something that he had not seen in Leah's children, had not perceived in the children of the handmaids, saw at first glance something that filled his heart with devout
rapture—almost to overflowing the longer he looked. The newborn had something ineffable about him, something like the luster of clarity, loveliness, proportion, sympathy—of those things that are pleasing to God—so that although he could not comprehend it, Jacob thought he recognized it in its singularity. He put his hand on the boy and said, "My son." But as he touched the child, it opened its eyes, blue at the time, and their light reflected the rays of the sun of his birth, which stood at its zenith in the heavens. And with those tiny, perfectly formed hands it took hold of Jacob's finger, holding it in the tenderest of embraces while it went back to sleep. Even Rachel, its mother, had fallen into a deep sleep. Jacob, however, caught in that clasp gentle as breath, stood there for a good hour, bent low, gazing into his little son's lustrous clarity—until the infant began to whimper for food, and he lifted it up and across.
They named him Joseph, or Yashub, which means increase and addition, just as when we call our sons Augustus. His full name, incorporating God, was Joseph-el or Josiphyah, but they were inclined to see even its first syllable as hinting at the Most High and called his name Jehoseph.
The speckled Flocks
Now that Rachel had given birth to Joseph, Jacob's emotions were very tender and running high; he spoke only in a solemn, emotionally charged voice—and the self-satisfaction of his mood was reprehensible. Since the child had appeared at the midday hour with the zodiacal sign of the Virgin rising in the east and standing, as he well knew, in corresponding aspect to the star of Ishtar, the planetary revelation of heavenly femininity, he stubbornly insisted that Rachel, the child's mother, should be regarded as a heavenly virgin, a mother goddess, a Hathor and Isis with the babe at her breast—and the child itself as anointed, a wonder-working boy, whose appearance was bound up with the beginning of an age of blessing and laughter and who himself would be fed by the strength of Yahu. We have no choice but to charge him with immoderation and extravagance. A mother and child make for a holy image, to be sure, but the simplest consideration toward certain sensitivities should have prevented Jacob from turning an image into an "image" in the word's most
pejorative sense, from turning Rachel into a celestial divine maid. He knew, of course, that she was not a virgin in the ordinary and earthly sense of the word. How in the world could that ever happen! His use of the word "virgin" was merely mythical, astrological jargon. But he insisted on the metaphor with an all too literal enthusiasm, his obstinacy even bringing tears to his eyes. And since he was a breeder of sheep and, moreover, the darling of his heart was named Rachel, the "mother sheep," his calling her infant "the lamb" might have been acceptable as a quite pleasant, even charming flight of fancy. But his tone of voice when he did so, his talk about the lamb that came forth from the virgin, had nothing to do with fancy, but appeared to ascribe to that little urchin in his suspended cradle the holiness of the unblemished sacrificial firstborn of the flock. In his raptures he would declare that the lamb would be beset by the beasts of the wild, yet would conquer them all, spreading joy among angels and men throughout the earth. He also called his son a shoot and a twig broken from the tenderest root, which, in his hyperpoetical sensibility, joined together notions of the world's springtime and that same age of blessing now begun, in which the heavenly boy would cast down the violent and mighty with the rod of his mouth. What overwrought emotions! Especially since on a purely personal level the "new age of blessing" had a very practical meaning. It meant the blessing of riches—Jacob was certain that he should regard the birth of the true wife's son as guaranty that, given the profits that had already come his way in Laban's service, the curve of his business affairs would now take a decided, indeed a very steep climb upward, was certain that after this turning point the filthy underworld would grant him without restriction all the treasures of gold it had to offer—all of which, to be sure, was closely connected with a higher, even more intensely felt idea: his return, laden with bounty, to the upper world, to the land of his fathers. Jehosiph's appearance was indeed a turning point in the course the stars of his own life had taken and should have coincided, strictly speaking, with his ascent out of Laban's realm. But that could not be, not straightaway, not as things stood. Rachel was unable to travel—was still pale and weak, recovering only with difficulty from the terrible delivery—and for now that also held true for the child, an infant whom one could not possibly presume to take on the exhausting EHezer journey of more than seventeen days. It is amazing—indeed it is almost laughable—
how these matters have on occasion been viewed and reported so cavaHerly. One hears, for example, that Jacob spent fourteen years with Laban, seven plus seven; at the end of which came Joseph's birth, followed by the journey home. Whereas it is explicitly stated that at the meeting with Esau beside the Jabbok, Rachel and Joseph also drew near and bowed down before the man of Edom. But how is an infant supposed to draw near and bow down? Joseph was five years old at the time, and those were the five years that Jacob spent there after the first twenty—five years under a new contract. He could not travel, but he could act as if he intended to depart at once in order to exert pressure on Laban, that clod of earth, who could be outmaneuvered only with pressure and ironclad exploitation of the rigors of commercial life.
Which is why Jacob addressed Laban, saying, "Might it please my father and uncle to incline his ear to what I have to say."
"Before you speak," Laban swiftly interrupted, "you v/ould do better to listen to me, for I have something urgent to say. Things cannot go on as they now are. There is no longer a lawful order between men, and over time that has become an abomination to me. You have served for your wives seven plus seven years according to our contract still lying among the teraphim. For some years, however, I believe it is six now, both the agreement and its document have been outdated, and what is left is not law but custom and routine, so that no one knows what he can cling to. Our life has become like a house built without a plumb line, and, quite frankly, like the den of beasts. I am well aware, for the gods made me with eyes to see, that you have been amply rewarded, since you serve me without any conditions or contracted wage and yet have assembled all manner of goods and assets on your side, which I do not wish to enumerate, for they are yours. And when the children of Laban—Beor, Alub, and Muras, my sons—pulled faces because of it, I reprimanded them. For every effort deserves its reward—but one must impose a certain order. Which is why we shall go and conclude a new contract for, tentatively, seven years, and you see me ready to negotiate any condition you may be inclined to propose to me."
"That cannot be," Jacob replied, shaking his head, "and my uncle has unfortunately wasted precious words he might have spared himself had he Hstened at once to me. For it is not about a new contract that I come to speak with Laban, but rather about my
departure and resignation. I have served you twenty years and must leave to you any testimony as to how well I did so, being unable to provide it myself—it not being fitting for me to use the only words appropriate. But they would certainly be most suitable for you to speak."
"Who denies it?" Laban said. "You've served me quite tolerably, that is not at issue."
"And I have grown old and gray in your service for no need," Jacob continued, "since the reason why I departed from Yitzchak's house and left my home was Esau's anger, which has long since evaporated, and so childish is that hunter's nature that he no longer even remembers those old stories. For many a year now I might have returned to my country at any moment, but I did not. And why not? Yet again, the only fitting words are those I dare not use, for they are words of praise. But now Rachel, the heavenly maid in whom you yourself have become beautiful, has born to me Dumuzi, Joseph, my and her son. And I will gather him, together with my other children, those of Leah and the handmaids, and what has accrued to me in your service, and we will mount up and embark upon a journey, so that I may come to my own country and my home and finally look after my own house, after having kept watch over yours alone for so long."
"That I would regret, in the truest sense of the word," Laban retorted, "and whatever I can do, I will do to keep this from taking place. And so let my son and nephew mince no words, but say directly what he demands in regard to new conditions, and I swear by Anu and Ellil that I will give due and most generous thought to even the most extreme propositions he might make—as long as they are more or less reasonable."
"i have no idea what you would hold to be reasonable," Jacob said, "considering what you owned before I came to you and how it has expanded under my hand, so that even your wife Adina was included in the growth and with unexpected vigor presented three sons to you in your gray old age. You would be perfectly capable of regarding all that as unreasonable, which is why I prefer to say nothing further and depart."
"Speak, and you will remain," Laban replied.
Then Jacob named his demand, said what he wanted if he were to stay another year or two. Laban was prepared for many things,
but not for this. For a moment he was simply dumbfounded, and his mind hastily struggled first to get a good grasp on the demand and second immediately to limit its impact with sorely necessary coun-termeasures.
It was the famous story of the speckled sheep, told and retold a thousand times beside wells and campfires, celebrated and exchanged in a thousand "fine discourses" in honor of Jacob and his masterstroke of ingenious shepherd cunning—the tale that whenever even Jacob pondered it all in his old age he could not recall without those delicate lips beneath his beard curling into a smile. In a word, Jacob demanded the two-colored sheep and goats, the ones speckled black and white, not—let it be understood!—those already alive, but whatever among Laban's flocks would be born spotted in the future, they were to be his reward and added to the private property he had acquired in his uncle's service over so many years. It was a matter of dividing between master and servant those animals yet to be bred, though certainly not half and half; for the vast majority of the sheep were white, and only a small number speckled, so that Jacob pretended they were some sort of dregs. And yet even as they bargained they both knew that compared to the white sheep, the speckled sheep were lustful and fruitful, and though crushed by the shameless ingenuity of his nephew's demand, Laban said as much in his dismay and admiration.
"The things you think of!" he said. "A man might be struck blind and dumb by such particulars. So then, the speckled ones, who are so especially lustful. That is brazen! Not that I am saying no to it, don't misunderstand me. I gave you license to name your demands, and I will stand by my word. If it is a condition that you are hard set upon and would otherwise depart and tear my daughters and your wives, Leah and Rachel, from my heart so that I will never see them again in my old age, then let it be as you have said. And yet, I must admit it grieves me to the marrow."
And Laban sat down as if struck with palsy.
"Listen," Jacob said. "I can see that what I demand has struck a hard blow, and does not entirely please you. But seeing that you are my mother's own brother and that it was you who begot my Rachel for me, the virgin of the stars, my true and dearest wife, I will put conditions to my condition to make it less frightful. Let us go through your flocks and cull out all the speckled and striped ani-
mals, plus all the black ones, and set them apart from the white, so that the one group knows nothing of the other. And all that are born two-colored after that, they shall be my reward. Are you satisfied?"
Laban looked at him and blinked. "Three days' journey!" he suddenly cried. "There shall be the space of a three days' journey between the white and the speckled and black, and their breeding and tending shall be separated, so that one group knows nothing of the other, that is how I want it. And it shall be documented in Haran before the judicial notary and deposited underground with the teraphim, that is my immutable counterdemand."
"A hard one for me," Jacob said. "Yes, truly, truly hard and oppressive. And yet from the start I have been accustomed to how my uncle regards business matters so sternly and austerely, with no consideration of familial relationships. And so I accept your condition."
"You do well to do so," Laban replied, "for I would never have budged from it. Tell me, by the by, let me hear which herds you intend to pasture and which you will personally lead with your staff, the spotted or the white?"
"It is only just and natural," Jacob said, "that each tend the property from which he will benefit. I shall tend the speckled herd."
"No, you shall not!" Laban cried. "Definitely not! You made your demand, made it forcefully. It's my turn now, and I shall instead present what seems to me the easiest and fairest way to preserve honor in business. Once again in this contract you are hiring yourself out to me. But as you are my servant, good business sense would say that you and your staff should lead those animals that are to profit me—the white, not the speckled that will bear young for you. Let them be pastured by Beor, Alub, and Muras, my sons, whom Adina exuberantly bore me in her old age."
"Hm," Jacob said, "that might work, too. I'll not be quarrelsome and oppose it—you know my gentle nature."
They came to an agreement, and Laban had no idea what role he was playing—that from cowlick to toe he was the duped devil. How clumsy his calculations! He wanted to keep the use of Yitzchak's blessing, that above all else, and calculated that it would be stronger than the natural vigor of the speckled flocks. And under Jacob's hands, that much he knew, the white herds—which, now that they were separated from the spotted and black, could not be expected to bear any speckled lambs—would prosper and increase at a faster rate
than the two-colored herds left under the soHd, but less than brilliant care of his sons. The clod of earth! He cleverly took the blessing into account, but, once again, not thoroughly enough to form a true picture of Jacob's wit and invention, let alone to dream of the plan that stood behind not just his son-in-law's demand, but his concessions, too: a well-thought-out idea—and well-tested beforehand—that was at the bottom of it all.
For let no one think it was only after concluding the deal that Jacob first came up with his profound ruse for breeding speckled animals—even with white mixed only with white—in order, then, to exploit it to the full. No special purpose had lain behind the idea at first, it was an intellectual game, tested purely for its science, and was simply being put to clever commercial use in the bargain with Laban. The idea went back to the days before Jacob's marriage, when he was a lover in waiting and his sound breeder's judgment was at its fervent, clever best—an idea born from a continual state of impressionable inspiration and ardent intuition. One cannot value too highly the emotions and premonitions with which he enticed nature to reveal one of her oddest secrets and then confirmed it by experiment. He discovered the phenomenon of maternal mispercep-tion. He tested females in heat to see if the sight of something speckled would affect lambs conceived while gazing at it, so that these were born speckled and two-colored. His curiosity, it must be emphasized, was of a purely ideal sort, and in the course of his experiments he noted with sheer intellectual pleasure the countless cases that met with confirmatory success. Some instinct moved him to keep this magic empathy a secret from the rest of the world, and from Laban especially; but even when, in due time, the thought of turning this hidden knowledge into a source of definitively ample riches came to him, this was really secondary, solidifying only as the day approached for concluding a new contract with his father-in-law.
