The Red Tent

Jacob feels called back to Canaan, especially since there is not enough land around Haran for his sons to have property of their own. Zilpah is reluctant, but her sisters are eager to leave. Rachel proposes they take Laban’s teraphim, his household gods, with them. Laban confronts Jacob about leaving, but Jacob threatens his god’s punishment. He bargains to only take the family’s spotted or marked animals. The sisters feel somber about leaving the bondswomen. In despair, Ruti ends her life, and Dinah finds her body in a wadi (dry valley). She runs to her mothers for consolation.

Laban departs to Haran, and the camp is left noisy with flocks and sons. Rachel teaches Dinah herbal lore learned from Inna. She then gets her brother drunk and takes her father’s household gods. The family makes offerings by placing small stones on the bamah, an altar to the family gods, and then depart without Laban.

Inna joins the family on their journey because she delivered a young girl’s stillborn baby, and when the mother died, her husband threatened to kill her. Fearing the man would turn the town against her, she decided to leave. Meanwhile, Dinah enjoys the journey, the way men and women mingle and sing together. The family reaches the Euphrates river, and she is drawn to the water. When she fords it, she thinks, “Here was magic […] Here was something holy” (112). Dinah observes the wonders around her, but also her family. She notes Jacob pays attention to each of his wives; her brother Reuben is drawn to Bilhah, and her brother Judah is restless. The family pause for the women to erect a red tent for the new moon. They cook food, which Dinah serves to the men while the women withdraw to the tent. Laban arrives the next morning, demanding to know who stole his household gods. When he invades the red tent to search, Rachel announces she has been sitting on the idols. With them “polluted” by her menstrual blood, Laban leaves.

As the family travels, Jacob tells stories of his twin Esau, whom he betrayed by stealing his birthright, their father’s blessing. Dinah fears Esau’s vengeance. The family reaches the Jabbok river, and all cross except Jacob, who remains on the opposite bank overnight. The next morning, his sons find him “beaten and naked in the middle of a brushy clearing where the grass and bushes had been crushed and broken in a wide circle around him” (121). The family camps by the river while Jacob recovers from a broken leg and fever, in which he dreams he wrestles with an army of angels. One day, while exploring the clearing where their father was injured, Joseph and Dinah see a wild boar.

A son of Esau arrives and reports his father is coming. Jacob meets Esau with his family and an offering of livestock, and the twins embrace. Jacob introduces his family, and Esau greets them warmly. Dinah realizes for the first time that the handmaidens and their sons have a different status than wives. Esau then introduces his family, and Dinah befriends Tabea, a cousin close in age. Tabea tells her that Esau’s first wife, Adath, is jealous of Basemath, Esau’s favorite wife. Dinah’s grandmother Rebecca, the oracle of Mamre, dislikes Esau’s wives, in part because they do not observe the seclusion of the red tent. Tabea does not want to marry or have children but instead become a priestess, by either joining Rebecca at Mamre, where she serves the goddess Innana, or the great altar in Shechem: “There I would become one of the consecrated women who weave for the gods and wear clean robes always. Then I would sleep alone unless I choose to take a consort at the barley festival” (134).

The women prepare a feast for Jacob and Esau, and all gather to sing and tell stories. Esau returns home, and Jacob moves on. He claims land near a village called Succoth, and the family settles down. Births and marriages continue, though Rachel and Bilhah miscarry, and Leah experiences the stillbirth of another daughter. Judah, Simon, and Levi wed and have sons; the flocks multiply. Later, a messenger comes from Rebecca, inviting the family to the barley festival in Mamre. The messenger is a happy redheaded woman named Werenro. She entertains the other women with a story about the beginning of the world, and Dinah is enchanted.