There they returned.Įveryone believed in many gods, and these gods were said to inhabit the stone or wood replicas of themselves.ĭeath was common, men died from small wounds, from a pain in the ear, from a stomachache. Where the river ran, where the wells were found, there they stayed awhile. They moved with the changing seasons in search of green grass, protection from fierce wind, and always they were looking for water, because without water there was no life. The wandering clans brought their harvests to the city gates and sold them. Then they harvested the barley, and in spring they took the wheat they had sowed. Late winter they gathered seeds to eat or press into oil. In the early fall, when the rains began, they planted seeds. In the late summer they harvested grapes and olives. And from time to time they invaded one another's camps to steal their camels, to lead away their sheep, to take the gold and silver, to rape the women, to take the children as slaves. They traded in cloth and grain, in copper and lapis lazuli. Then they were commanders of small armies, one hundred men or more. The city dwellers built their houses with stones. These city dwellers lived behind walls to protect them from the roaming bandits, the fierce despoilers of life and property, the slave hunters, the rapists, the lawless, who were everywhere. Some lived in small cities, groups banded together to trade. The land in the fertile crescent tolerated the peoples who watched over their sheep, gathered the fruits from the trees, wove cloth from the wool they sheared, and slept on mats in tents made from the hides of their animals. It may have been God's intention from the moment He breathed on the deep, to bring Sarai to Abram and Abram to Sarai. In real life it slips in with the germs, with the dust, with the twists of time and geography. Only in retrospect does destiny come knocking at the door. Maybe Sarai became Sarah not because it had always been planned this way but because Sarai had not broken her leg when she tumbled down the gully when she was eight.

Perhaps the bandits that rode past on their way to Egypt stole only the camels and left undisturbed the children hiding in the dark night in the nearby cave. It was lucky that Sarai was not carried off in infancy by a raging fever, an infection in the ear: lucky that she was not trampled by the mule when she slipped between his feet.

Because of her, God will have a people and a people will have a God. Through her we will move toward whatever mysterious end awaits. She will become the mother of a great nation. The world is still new, ten generations have lived and died since Noah landed his ark on the ledge of Mount Ararat.Ī girl named Sarai sleeps, protected against the night air by her shawl. The story starts three thousand years ago in the early 1200s before the Common Era. Women of the Bible: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah

Water From The Well by Anne Roiphe