Sold into Egypt

by Madeleine L'engle

  Copyright © 1989 by Crosswicks, Ltd.

  Reader’s Guide copyright © 2017 by Penguin Random House

  Foreword copyright © 2017 by Rachel Held Evans

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Convergent Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  convergentbooks.com

  CONVERGENT BOOKS is a registered trademark and the C colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in the United States by Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois, in 1989.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Little Gidding” from FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright © renewed 1964 by T.S. Eliot. Copyright 1940, 1942 by T.S. Eliot; Copyright © renewed 1968, 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9780451497109

  Ebook ISBN 9780451497116

  Cover design by Jessie Sayward Bright

  v4.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Foreword by Rachel Held Evans

  1. Reuben

  2. Simeon

  3. Levi

  4. Judah

  5. Dan

  6. Naphtali

  7. Gad

  8. Asher

  9. Issachar

  10. Zebulun

  11. Joseph

  12. Benjamin

  Reader’s Guide by Lindsay Lackey

  The best authors can be counted on like good friends.

  There are those to whom you return when you need a clever quote for sealing up an argument or concluding a toast, those to whom you return in search of words as familiar and comforting as a hot cup of coffee in your favorite mug, those to whom you return for inspiration, or analysis, or a freshly relevant word.

  And then there are those authors to whom you return when everything is on the line—faith, hope, a reason to look squarely at the world for what it is and yet trudge on.

  For me, and for millions, Madeleine L’Engle is that author, the one for those moments when only the truest words will do.

  Like so many, I first encountered L’Engle’s work as a child when I read A Wrinkle in Time, and as another young reader so aptly put it, “didn’t understand it, but knew what it was about.” Later, when that simple faith evolved into one riddled with questions and doubts, I found a kindred spirit in L’Engle’s memoirs, essays, and poems, which meander so seamlessly through philosophy, science, literature, and Scripture, and like her fiction, never patronize, never paper over the darkness with trite platitudes or five-point solutions, but instead challenge the reader to “rejoice in paradox” and “embrace the not-knowing.” When my own dreams of becoming a published author were realized, I imbibed every word of Walking on Water, L’Engle’s classic on creativity, and have returned to its worn pages at least a dozen times in the course of my career, if only to be reminded to “be obedient to the command of the work, knowing that this involves long hours of research, of throwing out a month’s work, of going back to the beginning, or, sometimes, scrapping the whole thing.” (“Be Obedient to the Work” is scrawled in green marker on a notecard taped above my writing desk, right next to it a sticky note reminding me “the next sentence is not in the refrigerator.”)

  L’Engle, it seems, has a word for every season, be it one of faith, doubt, childhood, parenthood, planting onions, burying pets, writer’s block, jury duty, death, birth, or rebirth.

  And so it is with the Genesis Trilogy.

  One might wonder what a twenty-year-old series on a thousands-year-old sacred text has to say about a modern world divided by conflict and connected by technology, and the short answer is, everything. In times of tumult and uncertainty, we return to the stories that have shaped our identity, that tell us who we are. As L’Engle insists throughout the series, the story of Creation, the story of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Isaac, Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Joseph, is her story, too—our story. For in these ordinary, embattled characters, complete with ordinary faults and fears, we encounter a God who is stubbornly present—“marvelously, terribly there”—and who invites us all into the ongoing work of creation, even in the midst of our own failures and doubts.

  “Every single one of us, without exception, is called to co-create with God,” she writes in And It Was Good. “No one is too unimportant to have a share in the making or unmaking of the final showing-forth.”

  L’Engle demonstrates this showing-forth by inviting us into her own life—aboard a wind-assailed ocean freighter, into a jury deliberation room, amid the bleary aftermath of her husband’s death—and by expertly, as only she can, connecting these events to everything from quantum mechanics, to atonement theology, to gender theory, to Shakespeare, to ancient stories about pharaohs and angels and strange dreams.

  For me, a reread of the Genesis Trilogy could not have come at a better time, for my favorite author had once again caught me in a new, critical season of life: the year I became a mother.

  I gave birth in a year so otherwise terrible, so ravaged by political and social upheaval and upended by blatant disregard for the truth, the planet, and the vulnerable among us, that I found myself very near despair, the words from the Advent poem pulsing with new intensity:

  This is no time for a child to be born…

  No time at all.

  And yet, once again, St. Madeleine (as my friends and I like to call her) grabbed me by the shoulders and shook the cynicism right out of me, not by turning me away from reality, but by helping me face it—every galaxy and quark, every senseless war and blighted tree, every Bible story that doesn’t quite resolve, every robin’s dance and stormy sea. What a relief it was to learn that this woman I admired so deeply struggled, too, with anxiety about the state of the world, and amid the dirty diapers and sleep deprivation of early motherhood, wondered herself what the future held for her children, yet in spite of it all resolved:

  Love still takes the risk of birth.

  “Caught up as most of us are in the complexities of daily living,” she writes, “we forget that we are surrounded by the creative power of Love. Every once in a while we need to step aside from the troubles and pleasures of our lives, and take a fresh look, a time to feel, and listen to our Source.”

  I came to the Genesis Trilogy as I came to A Wrinkle in Time—like a child. Frightened. Fledgling. Longing for a good story. L’Engle’s words lovingly, patiently took me back to the Source. I didn’t have to understand every page to know exactly what this Story was about.

  In A Stone for a Pillow, L’Engle tells of a young admirer and fellow writer, who, upon learning a medical condition would prevent her from ever giving birth, called the author from the hospital and tearfully asked, “ ‘Madeleine—all the things you’ve written, do you believe them?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘You really do?’

  ‘If I didn’t believe them, I couldn’t survive.’ ”

  The young writer, who might as well be any of us who long from time to time to call up St. Madeleine and ask the very same thing, pressed once more: “ ‘I just need to be sure you believe what you say in your books.’

  ‘I do.’ God help me, I do. Even when I don’t, I do.”

  The best authors are those who remind you of what you already know, what you already deeply believe. In this regard, reading Madeleine L’Engle is a bit like going to church, for sh
e reminds me of the truths I declare every Sunday morning in the little Episcopal congregation to which I belong.

  I believe there is a good and almighty God who is the creative force behind all things seen and unseen; that this God is One, yet exists as three persons; that God loved the world enough to become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, who lived, taught, fed, healed, and suffered among us as both fully God and fully man. I believe that Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born to a virgin; that Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross and buried in the ground; that after three days dead, Jesus came back to life; that he ascended into heaven and reigns with God and will return to bring justice and restoration to our world. I believe that God continues to move in the world through the Holy Spirit, the church, and God’s people. I believe that forgiveness is possible; that resurrection is possible; that eternal life is possible.

  I believe all of these things, at least most of the time.

  And, thanks St. Madeleine, even when I don’t, I do.

  —Rachel Held Evans

  Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning (first fruits) of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power:

  Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father’s bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.

  GENESIS 49:3–4

  He was a spoiled brat, Joseph, the eleventh brother. Indulged, self-indulgent, selfish. He clung to his father and the women. Whined. Got his own way. If one of the wives said no, another would surely say yes. When he was crossed he wailed that he had no mother. His older brothers took off in the other direction whenever he came around.

  In his adolescence he became arrogant. He knew that he was the favoured one of the twelve brothers, but he was not yet old enough to know that a father does a son no favour in singling him out, giving him a beautiful coat, lavishing him with love.

  He dreamed big dreams, and he was not wise enough to keep them to himself.

  Pouring fuel on the fire of his brothers’ resentment one day, he said,

  “Listen to this dream I have dreamed! We were binding sheaves in the field, and my sheaf rose and stood upright. And all your sheaves stood round about, and bowed down to my sheaf.”

  Not surprisingly, his brothers were angry.

  “Will you reign over us indeed? Will you have dominion over us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dreams and his bragging.

  Joseph could not keep his dreams quietly in his heart, but went on boasting.

  “Listen. I have dreamed another dream! In this dream the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed to me.”

  This time even his father, Jacob, scolded him, saying,

  “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow down before you?”

  Which mother was Jacob referring to? Rachel was dead—Rachel who had borne Joseph, and then died, giving birth to little Benjamin. Was Jacob thinking of Leah, Rachel’s elder sister, who had given him six sons and a daughter? Or Bilhah or Zilpah, the maids, who had each given him two sons? Or was he, deep in his heart, still thinking of Rachel, the one he most loved? Could it be, that after all these years, more than ten, Jacob still did not, deep in his heart, believe in Rachel’s death?

  There is something in all of us that shares this disbelief, especially after we have lost those dearest to us. I still want to turn to my mother, saying, “Mother, you’re the only one who knows about this—” It is a reflex that will never completely vanish. The mortal fact of my husband Hugh’s death is still, sometimes, a matter for total disbelief.

  Many African tribes do not believe in the deaths of their members, but hold that they are still available, can be talked to, conferred with, asked for advice. Across the world and across time in the Episcopal Church (and in other liturgical churches) we celebrate All Saints’ Day and talk about that great cloud of witnesses with which we are surrounded—all those, known and unknown, who have gone before us. We talk of the communion of saints, and by saints we mean not only those especially endowed with holiness, but the saints as all of God’s people. This communion is the gift to us of the Resurrection. So, although the death of this mortal body is undeniable, in a very deep way we do not believe in death. I believe that it was Rachel in Jacob’s heart when he referred to “your mother.” Joseph’s mother in fact. Jacob’s beloved always.

  Joseph’s brothers were poisoned by envy. But his father observed and thought about what Joseph had told about his dreams. Perhaps the old man was secretly proud that his favoured son was going to be a great man. He was rich, old Jacob, having settled in the land of Canaan, but keeping himself apart from the natives who worshipped alien gods. These natives were, in fact, distant cousins, being descended from Noah’s son, Ham. But they worshipped the storm god Baal, giver of rain, which was desperately needed in this desert land; and they worshipped Mot, a god who could strike those he disliked with sterility and death. Goddesses were part of the Canaanite pantheon, too, fertility goddesses who ruled over the crops and animals.

  Jacob held to the one god he had chosen, the God of his father, Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham. And he prospered; his flocks increased in number so much that his sons had to take the beasts further and further afield to find pasture.

  Joseph, the braggart, like the baby brother, Benjamin, was not given his full share of the work, and this, too, was resented. Joseph was fourteen, more than old enough to pull his own weight. In those days so many thousands of years ago, a lad was a man at fourteen, and most girls were married, and had borne children.

  Being the favoured one is lonely. Benjamin, the baby, was pampered in a different way, adored by Dinah, the one sister, worshipped by the two concubines. He was happy, easily pleased, demanded little. He did not remember his mother and accepted, without question, the mothering of the other women. He was not a question-asker.

  But Joseph was inquisitive, wanting to know everything.

  “Why does the moon get bigger and then smaller and then bigger?” He was not satisfied when Bilhah, who had been Rachel’s maid, told him that the goddess ruled the moon. “What is the goddess like? Is she beautiful? Why don’t we have a goddess? Does a goddess look like my mother?”

  Bilhah put her finger to her lips. “Hush.”

  “Why?”

  “Your father doesn’t approve of goddesses.”

  He turned to Zilpah, Leah’s maid. “Why is the sun so hot that it withers the crops? Why did El put the stars in the sky since they’re not bright enough to see by? Why?”

  When he was given answers, they were simple, because the world then was a smaller and simpler world than ours. The sun and the moon and the stars were put in the sky by the Creator for the benefit of human beings. Crops, calving, lambing, all were determined by the rhythm of the heavenly bodies which in turn determined the essential rain, and the cycles of the females of all species. The cosmology of creation was accepted, rather than understood. It was a knowledge which had been passed down from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, and which Jacob was now passing on to his twelve sons.

  Twelve sons. Four mothers. Polygamy was customary. There were more women than men. The planet was sparsely populated and sons were important.

  As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are the children of the youth. Happy the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

  Thus spoke the psalmist centuries later.

  For a man to have a quiver full of sons, he needed more than one wife and, in addition, concubines. As far as we know, it was not the custom for a woman to have more than one husband. Because men were killed in skirmishes with other tribes, or by wild animals when they were out hunting, there were extra women, and surely it seemed the kindest thing to take these otherwise superfluous women into the family circle as wives. Customs tend to reflect the realities of a time and culture. We,
of the late twentieth century, have tended to impose our own mores on others, without trying to find out why certain customs have arisen. Because we have failed to listen to each other’s stories, we are becoming a fragmented human race.

  I try to listen to the story of Joseph and his brothers, and of his father, Jacob, because it is a story of human beings becoming more human through their adventures and misadventures. The story of Joseph is the journey of a spoiled and selfish young man finally becoming, through betrayal, anger, abandonment, unfairness, and pain, a full and complex human being. I have much to learn from his story.

  Jacob and his sons lived in a masculine world, with a masculine God, surrounded by alien deities, many of them feminine, who directed the planting of the crops. It was a polytheistic world full of rivalry, each tribe convinced of the superiority of its own particular deity. The One God of the Hebrew, the God who is One, the God who is All, was still remote. A pantheon of gods was accepted by our forbears, as the psalmist makes quite clear:

  Whose god is like unto our god?

  Or,

  Among the gods there is none like unto thee, O Lord; there is not one that can do what you do.

  It was normal to assume that one’s own particular god was more potent than other peoples’ gods.

  And yet for Joseph and his family there was also the paradoxical and contradictory belief that God, the Creator, had made everything, the earth with its seas and land masses and all the various species of fish and birds and animals and finally, as the culmination, the triumph of creation, man—male and female. Homo sapiens, the creature who knows. We know that we know and consequently we ask unanswerable questions.

  Joseph’s questions were simpler than ours, but still questions.