In the Shadow of Sinai by Carole Towriss

Author:Carole Towriss [Towriss, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: towriss, biblical fiction, Christian fiction, carole towriss, historical fiction, Sinai, deward
Publisher: DeWard Publishing Company, Ltd.
Published: 2013-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

14 Abib

Several days later, when the moon had grown fat and full, Imma set the table for the evening meal. The door banged open. Sabba looked more solemn than Bezalel had ever seen him. His face was ashen.

“What happened?” Imma rushed to his side.

Sabba closed the door behind him and eyed each person. “Moses says it will be tonight. We have much to do to prepare.” He spoke quietly, but with a firmness Bezalel had not ever heard from his beloved and gentle Sabba.

“What will be tonight?” Imma’s eyes narrowed as she looked from Sabba to Bezalel and back again. “Prepare what?”

“Tonight we will leave Egypt. Pack a bag.”

Tonight we will leave Egypt. Sabba said this almost as casually as he might have said, “Tomorrow we will go fish in the river.” Tonight. Right now? How does an entire people just leave? The concept was too absurd to comprehend.

Sabba put his hand on the door then turned back. “I’m going to get the pesach lamb. I’ve already packed. While I am gone, Rebekah, you are to ask our Egyptian neighbors for things made of silver and gold. They will gladly give them to you. El Shaddai has commanded this.”

Bezalel jammed his clothes into a bag then helped Ahmose fill a sack with the clothes the neighbors had given him.

Sabba returned and peeked inside. “Please come outside with me.”

They crowded around their narrow front door. Other families did the same, packing the snaking pathway between houses. The early spring breeze drifted down the street, and the moon shone brightly.

Sabba had a flint knife in his hand, the blade sharper than any metal one Bezalel could have crafted. He knelt behind the lamb he had brought with him from the field. It nuzzled against his leg and softly bleated.

Sabba took the knife in his right hand and the jaw of the lamb in the other. He raised the lamb’s head up and swiftly drew the knife across its neck.

Bezalel knew the animal felt no pain, but a faint cry escaped Imma’s lips.

Ahmose grabbed Bezalel’s hand and squeezed.

Blood flowed down into the trough dug in front of the house to protect it from the yearly flooding of the Nile. Sabba placed a container under the lamb’s neck to catch the blood. He reached for a stalk of hyssop lying by the door and dipped it into the pottery now overflowing with the lamb’s lifeblood. He brushed it against the top, then the left, and finally the right side of the doorframe. He bent and took the lamb from the ground where he had laid it and gave it to Imma. “As always, for pesach, you are to roast this over a fire, with bitter herbs and mat sot. We will, however, cook and eat indoors this year.”

She opened her mouth as if to question the strange instructions but said nothing.

Up and down the street other families butchered their lambs, and most—but not all—painted blood on the doorframes. What would happen now?

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