Rachel--A Novel by Jill Eileen Smith

Author:Jill Eileen Smith [Smith, Jill Eileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042030, FIC027050, FIC042040, Rachel (Biblical matriarch)—Fiction, Jacob (Biblical patriarch)—Fiction, Bible. Old Testament—History of Biblical events—Fiction, Women in the Bible—Fiction
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Rachel awoke with a start several months later to the sound of Bilhah’s moans. She had insisted her former maid stay with her in her tent until the babe’s birth and had worried and fretted over her like she would a small child. She hurried to the young woman’s side and, at her anguished nod, woke a servant girl and sent her scurrying to her father’s house to bring her mother.

“What can I get you? Some water? Does it help to walk?” Rachel’s nerves tingled and her words rushed from her.

“I am fine.” Bilhah drew in a long, slow breath just as Rachel’s mother had taught her days earlier. She rubbed her lower back and paced the sitting area. “Some water, perhaps.”

Rachel flew from the tent and retrieved some of the water from the jug still left from last night’s visit to the well. They would need more, but she would send Zilpah or some other maid to get it. She caught herself at the thought of Leah’s maid, no longer a maid but another of Jacob’s wives and already carrying his child.

How could Jacob have done such a thing? He had told her that he could no more refuse Leah than he had her. It was a wife’s right. But Leah had no reason!

She strained the water through a thin piece of linen to remove the gnats and set it where Bilhah could easily reach it, all the while her thoughts churning with the argument she and Jacob had shared the morning after he had taken Zilpah to his tent.

“How could you do this without even consulting me?” She had followed him to the sheep pens, keeping a short distance between them due to her uncleanness.

He had jerked to face her, his cheeks flushed, angry. “Since when do I need to consult you on every choice I make? I recall you made the same decision with your maid.”

“Yes, but I had a reason. I did it to have a family through her. Leah already has four sons! She doesn’t need more. She is only using you to stay ahead of me.” Her voice had cracked on the words, and she sounded like a petulant child.

“Aren’t you doing the very same thing?”

She could not hold the fierceness of his gaze, shamed even now by the accusation he had flung at her.

“No,” she whispered as Bilhah’s moans deepened, snagging her thoughts back to the birth about to take place. I wouldn’t do that to you. I had no choice, don’t you see?

The memory of her defense to him rang hollow in her ears now. He had looked at her long and hard, then shook his head and walked off, calling the sheep to him. He didn’t see then, or now. And he had stayed in the fields for a week, letting the shame of her words continue to trouble her.

That he had at last returned held little comfort, for he had avoided her tent and everyone else’s, retreating to her father’s house after the meal or to his own tent alone.

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