This Scarlet Cord by Joan Wolf

Author:Joan Wolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2012-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Alone in her room at Asherah’s Shrine, Rahab’s thoughts were on Elohim as well. The priestesses had explained to her what would happen at the festival and how she must conduct herself. As she listened, everything in her mind and heart and body had recoiled from the picture they were painting. She did not feel like an empowered goddess; she felt like a sacrifice. She wanted to fight. She wanted to scream at these white-clad priestesses that they were wrong, that there was no holiness in what they were doing, but the thought of her family and their vulnerability held her back. The priestesses believed in this ritual. That was the difference between them and her. They believed and she did not.

Rahab arose from the carved wooden bedstead she had been given for the night and walked over to the wooden statue of Asherah that was the room’s only decoration. As was usual with statues of Asherah, she was nude, with her hands tucked under her breasts. Instead of a torso and legs, her lower body consisted of a straight cylindrical column decorated with snakes, symbolic of the goddess’s power of renewal.

All of Rahab’s life she had revered and prayed to Asherah. The statue she was looking at now was the same as dozens of other statues of the goddess that Rahab had seen. She shut her eyes and felt with her mind for some connection to the goddess she had grown up with.

There was nothing.

“I am not going to become you tonight,” she said out loud. “I am going to be me, and whatever the king does with me is not going to cause the grain to grow or the beasts to bear.”

The empty eyes of the statue looked straight ahead, not seeing Rahab at all. The girl took one step back and then another. She had nothing in common with this blind wooden replica. It was not Asherah; it was just something that had been carved by men.

Rahab shivered in her thin white gown and wrapped her arms around herself to stop shaking. Once again she thought of Sala’s God, Elohim. There were no statues of Elohim because His greatness could not be captured in wood or stone. He did not even have a name. He was the Creator. Did that mean He had created her? If He had, if He had really created her, then wouldn’t that mean He cared about her?

She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was in the worst trouble of her life and she didn’t know where to go or what to do. Sala had said his God had done miracles for his people. He had sent plagues on the Egyptians so the Israelites would be freed from slavery. He had parted the waters of the sea so that they could escape from the pursuing Egyptian army. He had fed the Israelites in the desert. Surely, if this God could do all of these things, He could save her from the sacred marriage.

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