Pearl in the Sand (18 page)

Noticing the diversion of his attention, Rahab cleared her throat. “So the Lord forgives the one who errs by sinning unintentionally?”

Salmone turned toward her. “With the right sacrifice. Yes.”

She kept her lashes lowered, hiding her expression from him. Salmone balled his hand into a fist at his side. He found that he was beginning to hate the way her eyes slid from him as if in dread. For all his inner objections to her, had he mistreated her over the past two weeks? Had he insulted her? Demeaned her? Why did she smile for Ezra and Hanani and Miriam and every other human creature under the sun as far as he could tell, yet for him she only had reserve and distance? He itched to put his hand on her chin and turn her to face him. Instead, he tightened his fist harder.

“What about the aliens living among you?” she asked, her voice soft and without inflection.

“What about them?” he growled. He wasn’t paying attention to her question. Instead, his mind was still grappling with her remoteness. Resentment rose up in him, unreasonable and sharp, coloring his voice with a harsher edge than he intended.

She sensed that edge and misunderstood it. Her pale skin turned a bright pink, and he realized too late that she was mortified. “Pardon, my lord. I didn’t mean to interrupt your teaching,” she said and moved to get up. Before he could think, Salmone reached out his hand and grabbed her wrist, pulling her back down.

“Stay. You weren’t interrupting.” For a moment she tried to pull her hand away, but he held it fast, and pulled her down harder. Forcing his voice into gentleness, he said, “Ask your question again.”

She grew very still. Salmone became aware that he was still holding her wrist and quickly released her. With a casual motion, he leaned back against his elbows, increasing the distance between them.

“I … I just wondered if the alien living with your people could also receive forgiveness by presenting an offering.”

Not a question of ritual. Not a question that would help her fit in with Israel, or assist her to avoid costly mistakes. This wasn’t a question of outward practicality. She was seeking to please God, to find forgiveness and redemption.

Would God give these things to one such as she? Did he even know the answer? The echo of a distant teaching seeped into the edges of his mind. What had Moses taught about the aliens?

“Moses once said, speaking for the Lord, ‘You and the alien shall be the same before the Lord: the same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you.’ He said this about offering sacrifices.”

“He said that the alien shall be
the same
as you before the Lord?” In her eagerness, Rahab forgot to avoid Salmone’s eyes. The curtain of withdrawal lifted from her face, and she stared at him without her usual guardedness. Salmone took a sharp breath. He became aware, perhaps more than she herself, that her whole heart was in that question. She had ripped herself open, laid herself bare by asking it. For at the core of her words was the fragile offering of herself, her hunger to belong to the Lord and to Israel, knowing very well that she might be rejected, cast out and unacceptable.

He had wasted so much time worrying about her loyalty, worrying about the dangers of insidious Canaanite idolatry, worrying about her motives. Had he ever been barking up the wrong tree like a rabid dog! All Rahab actually wanted was to belong to the Lord. She thirsted for God. Hungered after Him. She couldn’t seem to get enough of His precepts. And what she was searching for wasn’t knowledge. It was belonging. She wanted the Lord Himself.

Could someone like her belong to God? Would He take her, accept her, receive her, cover her shame and sin? Was she the alien He had in mind when He spoke those words through Moses? Salmone didn’t want to give her any false reassurances or empty promises. Silently, he asked the Lord to direct his response.

“Moses said those words, yes,” he began. “He was speaking about sacrifices, and saying that the aliens living with the community of Israel must live according to the same rules. They must offer the same sacrifices.” He stopped and sank into deep thought for some moments before continuing. “We ought to remember that for Israel, sacrifices aren’t a token ritual. They avail something real. Sacrifices are both the acknowledgment of our wrong and the price of our forgiveness. So if God asks an alien to offer a sacrifice, He isn’t asking for the fulfillment of a ritualistic law. God wouldn’t ask for a sacrifice if He weren’t willing to pour out His forgiveness and acceptance in return.” He stopped for a moment and stared into the shifting sand. “It’s strange. I have never thought of this before.”

Rahab looked like she was exploding with questions. Salmone watched the desire for answers tangle with something else, something more primal. Fear? She swallowed and saying nothing, slipped back behind her wall. Frustration and relief warred within him. With a force he barely understood, he wanted to smash down that defense, to experience again her openness and trust. Yet he also knew that some of the questions she was desperate to ask would tie him up in tangles.
Will the Lord forgive me for my life of adultery? Will He forgive my father for asking me to become a harlot? Will He
forgive my sister and her husband for offering their son to Molech? Will we have a new start, a clean slate?

Salmone rubbed the back of his neck with a hand callused from the handle of a sword. What was the answer to these riddles? There were injunctions against every one of those sins, and serious consequences for each. Would God forgive? Would He give this family a second chance?

Miriam chose that thorny moment to come and join him. She had been speaking with Rahab’s mother for the past hour. Salmone noticed the dark circles under his sister’s eyes. She had risen from bed before him that morning, cooking for and tending to the sick for several hours before coming with him to visit Rahab and her family. Exhaustion etched her features. He should have noticed sooner, he thought with a pang of guilt. Standing up in one fluid motion, he pulled her up with him.

“Come. Time to return home.” He turned to face the men before leaving. “Tomorrow, I’m going to speak to Joshua about getting you settled in our camp. I think you are ready.” Then maneuvering his sister ahead of him, he pushed her with gentle fingers to get out of there before the family’s jubilant expressions of thanks could start to harp on his nerves.

The walk home started in silence. Miriam was too tired for words, it seemed, and Salmone was drowned in speculation about Rahab’s unasked questions.

“She loves the Lord, doesn’t she?” Miriam asked into the silence. “I mean, with a genuine desire that goes deep and wide. You don’t find that kind of faith very often.”

“Hmm?”

“Rahab. I overheard some of your conversation with her.”

“Hmm.”

“My brother the conversationalist. I’m serious, Salmone. Remember that day when they burned their clothes? I didn’t tell you what Rahab told Izzie that day. When I had explained to Izzie that she couldn’t bring her robe into our camp, Rahab said that Izzie
should only give up her robe for the Lord. ‘Don’t do it because of the rules, or because of Israel,’ she said. ‘If you do it for Him, you will have joy. If you do it for them, you’ll end up with a lot of resentment.’ Her wisdom amazed me. She barely even understood the basic commandments then, yet she comprehended the difference between performance and worship. She understood that doing something as a willing offering to the Lord brings joy, whereas doing something to satisfy human expectations can only end in pain.”

“She’s … an unusual woman.”

“Is that what brings you to their camp so often?”

“What?”

“Come, Salmone. You could send anyone to do this work. Any number of your men could have done the teaching. Yet as often as not, you have chosen to do it yourself. Two weeks ago, you were pulling out your hair in exasperation because Joshua had foisted them on you. Now you hardly stay away.”

“I wanted to gauge their character for myself,” Salmone protested.

Miriam sniffed, but showed enough wisdom to hold her tongue. Salmone tightened his mouth with annoyance. Her words struck too close to home for comfort. He had lost count of the arguments he had had with himself where he sounded just like Miriam. Every morning he lectured himself that he had better things to do with his life. And repeated the lecture even while of their own accord his feet directed him back to Rahab’s camp. He convinced himself that his visits rose out of a concern with the many problems of grafting an enemy family into Israel. The potential pitfalls in this harebrained plan of Joshua’s could give a young man white hair. The possibility of resentment, hatred, insidious idolatry, immorality, division, and a host of other dangers hung over the Jericho contingent like a storm cloud. Salmone almost convinced himself that he visited them as often as he did in order to ensure that none of these dangers would become a reality.

The only thorn in this reasonable conviction had a name. Rahab.
His thoughts strayed her way too often for comfort. His eyes rested on her without his volition. Although his physical attraction to the Canaanite woman plagued him, it paled in comparison to his increasing fascination with her as a whole. She had a brilliant mind, he had discovered. Quick-witted and savvy, she often seemed to be five steps ahead of everyone else in her family. She understood the ramifications of every decision with a precision that Salmone couldn’t help but admire. Above all this, Rahab’s faith drew Salmone. She awakened a longing that had old roots for him.

Salmone had been married at a young age. He had known his Anna from infancy. She had been his parents’ choice, though a choice to which he had willingly submitted. In the short years of their marriage, he had known the kindness of a loyal wife. He had known the companionship of a patient and caring woman. But in his deepest heart, he had hungered for more. Anna believed in the Lord and followed His precepts. Yet she wasn’t ardent for Him. She didn’t speak to her husband about Him, growing excited with every new step of faith. When he tried to bring up the subject, she would avoid it. Salmone had longed to be able to bask in the mysteries of God with his wife, to share with her this most precious and sacred desire of his soul. His marriage, though pleasant and warm, lacked the fire of this greatest passion of Salmone’s life.

In spite of the fact that Anna had been dead for many years now, Salmone had never remarried, because he remembered that barrenness and dreaded it. He wanted more than he had known with Anna. He felt disloyal just thinking about it, as if he accused Anna of a shortcoming. What fault had she, after all?

In Rahab, Salmone caught a glimpse of the passion, the intelligent searching mind, the hunger after the Lord that he longed for. In spite of her many gifts, however, she was utterly unsuitable. Her origins, not to mention her besmirched past, made her an unfitting companion for any Hebrew man, let alone one of Israel’s leaders—
the son of Nahshon, once leader of the tribe of Judah, no less!
They would simply be incompatible.

And yet she drew him …

Salmone had factored in every conceivable danger directed at Israel from Rahab and her family. This one contingency, however, had never occurred to him. That he would himself become the target of so inconvenient an attraction was an irony that he could do without. He would stay away from them starting tomorrow, he decided with finality. If Miriam was beginning to notice the leaning of his heart, then it was more than time to put a dead stop to it. He kicked at a stone as he walked beside Miriam, unintentionally causing a shower of sand to rise up. It flew into her mouth, which was open in a soft hum, and found its way up her nose.

“Yupphht! Hey!” she said, spitting out granules, sticky with her saliva. “What are you doing, declaring war on the sand?”

“Pardon.” It wasn’t the sand he was at war with. It was himself.

“Joshua, I think Rahab and her family are ready to move into the camp with us.” Salmone sat alone with Joshua on a nubby hill. A few blades of tough grass grew around them in the rocky soil, waving now and again in the mild breeze.

Joshua gave a half-smile and then quickly wiped it clean before turning to his protégé. Not quick enough for Salmone to miss, however. “I’m glad to hear it. So you have no more concerns?”

Salmone’s lips twisted. “I wouldn’t say that. I am simply satisfied that their faith is genuine, and that they seek the well-being of Israel.”

Joshua snorted. “That’s mighty generous of you. The woman’s faith is well known to half the camp already. In fact, I’d like to meet her. Why don’t you bring her to me tomorrow?”

“I’ll have Hanani fetch her for you.”

“No, no. You bring her. I’d like to have you there too.”

Salmone barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes. “Of course, Joshua,” he said, his smile wooden.