Signs and Wonders Read online

  Signs and Wonders

  Tales From The Old Testament

  Bernard Evslin

  For Galeal, Jarah, Noah, Boaz, Eli, Luke, Nathaniel —

  our new sons with the old, old names

  Contents

  Introduction

  IN THE BEGINNING

  The Creation

  The Garden of Eden

  Eve

  The Apple

  Cain and Abel

  Noah’s Ark

  The Tower of Babel

  THE PATRIARCHS

  Abraham

  The Idol Smasher

  Journey to Canaan

  Hagar

  The Covenant

  Sodom and Gomorrah

  Lot’s Daughters

  The Birth of Isaac

  The Sacrifice

  Isaac

  Rebecca at the Well

  Jacob and Esau

  Beersheba

  The Hands of Esau

  Jacob

  Jacob’s Ladder

  Laban’s Daughters

  Jacob’s Sons

  Jacob Becomes Israel

  Jacob’s Daughter

  Rachel’s Death

  Joseph

  The Coat of Many Colors

  The Slave

  Potiphar’s Wife

  The Reader of Dreams

  The Brothers

  Israel in Egypt

  FLIGHT FROM EGYPT

  Moses

  The Bulrushes

  The Burning Bush

  The Plagues

  The Red Sea

  In the Wilderness

  The Commandments

  IN THE PROMISED LAND

  Deborah

  Samson

  The Coming of Kings

  David

  The Shepherd Lad

  David and Goliath

  The Outlaw

  The Witch of Endor

  Saul’s Death

  David and Bathsheba

  Absalom

  Solomon

  The Prophets

  Elijah

  Jonah

  THE HEROINES

  Esther

  Judith

  ISRAEL IN EXILE

  Daniel

  The King’s Dream

  The Fiery Furnace

  King in the Grass

  The Writing on the Wall

  The Lion’s Den

  Chronology

  INTRODUCTION

  ONCE, A VERY LONG time ago, the world turned almost good for a day. For the space of twenty-four hours, there were no wars, no private murders, no rapes, no robberies—some small cruelties, but no major crimes.

  Satan was displeased. He summoned the most reliable of his demons and said: “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, my lord.”

  “Find out.”

  The demon flew up to earth, looked about, and flew back. Demons are quick. “It’s a book,” he said. “People have been reading it.”

  “What book?”

  “I hesitate to use such a term before your dark majesty.”

  “The Bible, eh?”

  The demon shuddered.

  “The Bible. Very well, we’ll take it away from them.”

  “How?”

  “Make it unreadable. That’s your job.”

  “I am at your service, my lord, but I do not quite know how to proceed. God’s word is immutable, is it not?”

  “God’s word is immutable, but clerks make mistakes. Translators, too, are prone to error. That’s where we come in. Am I not the father of error? Go up there and darken counsel.”

  “Can you be more explicit, my master?”

  “That collection of books called the Bible is drawn from many different writings: Egyptian hieroglyphics inscribed on tomb walls, Chaldean cuneiforms on broken stone tablets, fragments of Hebrew script on rotting papyrus and moldering sheepskin scrolls. All this feeds confusion. Even better, ancient Hebrew was written without vowels, ancient Greek without punctuation or division between words. Translators reading Hebrew cannot really tell whether a word is pet, pot, put, or pit, shut, shot, or shoot. Take this sentence: ‘Baalisnowhere.’ Someone translating from the ancient Greek can choose between two opposite meanings: ‘Baal is now here,’ or ‘Baal is nowhere.’ See the possibilities?”

  “Where do I start?”

  “Start and end with the stories. Don’t bother with the tomes of law; nobody reads them. Excruciating detail of priestly vestment, description of temple architecture, chapters on ritual—forget it. Nobody looks at such texts except priests and scholars and other specialists. I want you to ignore all that material and concentrate on the stories. Stories are dangerous. They call up the reader’s own experience and release energies of mind and soul, directing them in whatever path the author wishes. Stories grapple the imagination, engage the senses. A reader of tales absorbs instruction through his pores. Go up there and make the stories unreadable.”

  “How?”

  “Mix up the scroll fragments. Butt them against one another at random so that a story starts and stops and starts again in a different place, and certain phrases repeat themselves endlessly.”

  “Yes, sir, I can do that.”

  “Find an exciting place in a story and insert a stupefying genealogy, a string of jaw-cracking names joined by begat. From time to time, rip out whole sections of law or ritual and plant them bodily in the stories. So much for sowing confusion; I also want you to do some editing. Here’s a pencil red as flame. Search among the tales and destroy the sensuous fabric wherein events must dwell if they are to pierce the heart. Strike out physical detail. Get rid of any word that describes how something looks or sounds or tastes or smells. As far as possible, eliminate dialogue. You can’t get it all, but every bit helps. Follow my thinking?”

  “I believe so, my lord, and shall punctually perform your will.”

  “Make haste, my son. I don’t know if I can bear another day like today.”

  The demon, whose name was K’miti, flew to earth and did what he had been told to do. It may be coincidence, but not a day since has troubled the Devil’s mind.

  Whatever the merit of this legend, it identifies the major problems of Bible scholarship and is accurate in its critique of those stylistic barriers that keep people from reading these marvelous Old Testament tales. Everyone has heard fragments, snippets, synopses. We know Eve ate an apple, Cain had sibling problems, Noah came in out of the rain, Goliath was big, and Solomon was wise. But how many of us have actually read these tales?

  The fact is that they are often disappointing to read. The Devil did his work well. This book is an attempt to restore these stories to what they were before Satan stuck his pencil in.

  What liberties have been taken? This is tricky ground. There are many who think it sacrilege to change a word of Bible text. They do not realize how that text has been mutilated through the ages. Mutilated not only in the ways already described but by a kind of popular insistence on certain detail. The apple Eve ate, for example, is never mentioned in Genesis. The word is fruit. It might have been a fig or an orange. In that climate it would more than likely have been an orange or a date or a fig or a pomegranate. But everyone knows it was an apple. Something demands an apple.

  Elijah, starving in the desert, was fed by ravens. But in ancient Hebrew, written without vowels, the words for raven and Arab were identical: oreb. Was the old prophet fed by birds or nomads? For story purposes, birds beat Arabs. Ravens they remain. Drama dares where scholarship falters.

  What liberties have been taken? There has been an attempt to restore what Beelzebub had deleted: dialogue, description, sights, sounds, smells. Phrases meaningless to a contemporary reader have been rephrased. When Jezebel “tired her head,�
� it does not mean that she wearied herself thinking but that she attired her head, put jewels in her hair. Sometimes it was necessary to change a phrase to restore its meaning.

  About language: The Authorized King James Version is one of the glories of English literature. James convened his council of English poets and prose stylists in 1611, five years before Shakespeare’s death. At least two of the phrases in the Bible are duplicated word for word in Shakespeare’s plays: “A generation of vipers” and “Grave, where is thy victory, death, where is thy sting?” So it can be assumed that the Bard sat on this council and helped translate into immortal English older English texts, which had been translated from ancient Greek—which had been translated from much older Hebrew texts. In retelling these tales, I have attempted to preserve the deep organ notes of the King James Version, changing it to clarify what is unclear or to restore the original meaning to words that now mean something else.

  My greatest regret is having eliminated thou and thee. In growing away from these intimate forms, our language has lost nuance. Nevertheless, they are fossil forms and make one more hurdle for the reader, so they have been tenderly laid to rest.

  All the tales here retold are taken from the Old Testament, except for Judith and some legends of Abraham. The Judith story is apocryphal. What does that mean? The word means “obscure,” “of uncertain origin.” But in Bible terms it means more. The priests and pundits who decided what went into the Old Testament arbitrarily closed the books about 500 B.C. Anything told thereafter, no matter how inspired, how beautiful, how exalted, was denied a place in holy writ. Thus, some of the best tales, some of those that have become the tissue of tradition, are apocryphal: Susan and the Elders; the Maccabees; Judith. Where would ecumenism be without Chanukah to be coupled broad-mindedly with Christmas? Where would Chanukah be without the apocryphal Maccabees?

  Of the tales out of Apocrypha, Judith is perhaps the best. She is one of the all-time heroines and has inspired poets galore. Painters, too. Holofernes’ gore reddens many a wall.

  I have also gone beyond the Old Testament in some of the stories of Abraham—specifically, in the tales of his birth and his idol smashing. Here I have gone to those writings known as pseudopigrapha (“false writings”), which are folktales and legends about biblical figures. There is simply more to be said about Father Abraham than the Bible offers.

  Keeping more or less to narrative event, I have tried to flesh out the giant bones. The intention was to undo some of K’miti’s fiendish work and to make these indispensable stories more accessible.

  IN THE BEGINNING

  THE CREATION

  IN THE BEGINNING THERE was only God who had always been. The rest was emptiness and darkness. Then God hung the sun in the sky, and said: “Let there be light!” The sun gave light; that light was Day. And God called up the darkness again to be Night. So ended the first day.

  There was no earth yet, and no stars, only the great light of the sun shining on an endless waste of waters. Then God made the waters sink out of the sky, which He called Heaven, and prepared a place for the stars. He called back the darkness; that was the end of the second day.

  On the morning of the third day He gathered the waters under Heaven in one place. Where the waters shrank away from His hand, dry land appeared. He called that dry land Earth; the place of waters He called Sea. Then He planted grass on the earth. He planted bushes and trees that bore vegetables and fruit of all kinds. God said: “These are living things, these flowers and trees that I have planted upon the earth. And I put upon them a special sign of my favor. From now on they will be able to make their own kind out of their own seed. So these living things that I have planted will live upon the earth until the end of time.”

  On the fourth night God punched holes in the sky to let the light shine through, and said: “These small lights shall be called Stars; they shall give a little light to the earth even at night.” Then He hung the moon in the night sky between earth and stars. So ended the fourth day.

  On the fifth day He breathed upon the seas and made them boil up into different kinds of life. There were fish in the sea, little fish and great whales. God lifted His hand; birds flew out of the water and sang with joy. He said: “You fish and birds shall bear my special sign. You will be able to make your own kind out of your own seed until the end of time.”

  On the morning of the sixth day God said: “Let the earth do as the waters have done and bring forth living creatures. I want animals of every kind, each one different, each alive in its own way.” Whereupon animals appeared on earth and moved among the trees and the grass. Lions and tigers and bears and wolves, and deer and camels and horses. Also, crocodiles and snakes. Cows and bulls, too, and goats and sheep. Then God looked down on the earth and saw that the plains and forests were full of animals and the sea was full of fish and the air was full of birds, and He said: “My breath is life, and life is good. I have molded life into different forms and given each form its own way to be, and have put upon each my special sign, which means that it may make its own kind out of its own seed over and over until the end of time. Now I shall make the most important living thing. I shall make man. And man will be unlike any other creature on earth, for I shall make him in my own image. He will have in him animal life and the spirit of God, and will rule over beast and fish and bird. He will rule the earth in my name.”

  God reached down and took a handful of dust and breathed His own life into it. There in the palm of His hand lay a man asleep. God set him down in a garden and let the darkness come. That was the end of the sixth day.

  On the seventh day God rested. He looked down upon the earth, and upon the heavens, upon sun, moon, and stars, and all the living things of earth and sea and air—and upon man asleep in his garden. He said: “This is good.”

  THE GARDEN OF EDEN

  THE NAME OF the first man was Adam. He lived in a garden God had planted in a place called Eden. This was the most beautiful garden that ever grew. Every kind of flower grew there and every kind of tree. A river ran through the garden and became four rivers. In the middle of the garden stood a tree, the tallest tree of all, hung with golden fruit.

  “This is the Tree of Life,” said God. “It bears twelve kinds of fruit, a different one for each month—orange, fig, date, quince, olive, apricot, and other kinds that nourish body and soul. If you eat of this tree and no other, you shall never die.”

  Then God showed Adam another tree, standing apart on a grassy slope. Red fruit burned on its boughs.

  “You may not eat of this tree,” said God. “It is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. You must not taste this fruit, or you will die. Do you understand?”

  “I obey,” said Adam.

  God said: “This is your garden and you must care for it. You must name its trees and flowers. For you are a man, and man is the only one of my creatures to whom I have given the power of the word.”

  “Shall I name the forbidden fruit?”

  “Name it, but do not eat it.”

  “I name you Apple,” said Adam.

  He went around the garden naming the trees and the flowers. Before night came he had found names for the oak and the rose. Nor did he sleep when night came, but stood looking at the sky.

  “You points of light,” he said, “you are many, and I shall find a name for each of you, but not yet. Until then you will just be called stars.”

  He watched the moon climb, and said: “And you, yellow ball of fire that changes the night, I name you Moon.”

  God was pleased with these names. He took up handful after handful of dust and made new animals and birds. Each creature He made He took to Adam to be named. And Adam gave each bird and beast a name. Some were short names like cat and bear and lark. Others were long, like hippopotamus. But they all seemed to fit exactly.

  When day was done, Adam did not sleep, but stood looking up at the sky, trying to find a different name for each star. He looked lonely standing there at night, and God said: �
��It is not good for man to be alone.”

  Eve

  Then God made Adam fall into a deep sleep. As Adam slept, God took a rib out of his body, and that rib He made into a woman. Now a woman lay asleep in the garden next to Adam.

  When Adam awoke he saw her and was glad. The woman awoke, and saw Adam, and smiled. Adam said: “You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and I shall call you Woman. Thank you, God, for making this woman to be my wife.”

  God said: “Because I made this woman out of your rib, she has become bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. And from this time on, man and woman who choose each other shall belong to each other only and be one flesh. Man and woman, I put upon you the sign of my special favor. In the joining of your bodies you shall have the power to make your own kind out of your own seed, from now until the end of time. Man and woman have I created you. You are created in my image, and shall create your own children upon earth, who shall be born out of your love for each other, blossoming forth from the seed that man plants in his wife. I give you to each other in this garden of earth. Obey me, care for each other, and live in the blessing of the God who made you.”

  Man and woman looked at each other and were glad. They were naked and not ashamed. Adam said: “Because you are to be the great mother of all who come after us, I name you Eve.”

  The Apple

  Adam showed Eve all the trees of the garden and all the flowers, and taught her their names. He showed her the tallest tree, and said: “You may eat of the fruit of any tree, but do not eat the fruit of that one.”

  “Why?” said Eve.

  “It is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and God forbids us to eat of its fruit.”

  “What name did you give that red fruit?”

  “I call it the apple.”

  “Do you not wonder why God denies us the apple?”

  “It is for us not to question God, but to obey.”

  Eve obeyed. She did not eat the fruit of that tree. But it loomed above the other trees; she saw its topmost branches wherever she went. And of all the fruit in the garden—the orange, the fig, the quince, the apricot—Eve thought the forbidden fruit the most beautiful.