Posted by Lisa Laree to Catching The Mosquito
I originally wrote this back in...2005, according to the notes I have. We were doing an Easter production at church, and the lady who was portraying the Woman at the Well endured a lot of good-natured chaff because of her 'floozie' character. She took it well, but it kinda grated on me. We look at this lady through our modern eyes and believe that she was the one who brought on all her trouble. A woman of the first century really didn't have that kind of power. So this found its way onto a page; kind of my way of saying, 'you don't know what someone else is going through...'
I did publish it on the sewing blog early on; I believe I have made some small edits since then. Interesting that the Chosen, while keeping to the 'she's at fault' narrative, still has an element or two that are very similar to this story...
She stepped out
into the midday heat as she
looped the long rope over her shoulder before hoisting the empty water jug to
her shoulder as well. At least it was a
legitimate excuse to get out of the house.
She didn’t want to be there when Zophah returned…the bruise on her cheek
wasn’t quite faded from the last time he wandered in at noon after drinking all night and didn’t find
some odd thing to his liking. She
thought a moment and realized she couldn’t even remember what had upset him
that time. Not that it really mattered –
when he was drunk there was no telling what would set him off. But if she wasn’t there, he would stagger off
to his sleeping mat and snore away the rest of the day, returning to his normal
sullen apathy when he awoke. If she’d
timed things right, there’d be no bruises today.
As her feet
turned onto the rocky path to Jacob’s Well, she felt despair wash over
her. Nothing about her life satisfied
the least of the dreams she’d had when she was young. Dreams any young girl would recognize – a
husband who cared for her, provided for her in a home that heard children
laughing and welcomed friends and family.
--Where did I ever get the notion life would be like that, she thought
bitterly. The plainest and most awkward
fifth daughter in a poor family, she was fortunate that her father even found
her a husband, although when she raised her barely fifteen year old eyes to
gaze upon her groom at the wedding feast and saw a fat, toothless man only four
years younger than her own father, ‘fortunate’ was not the word that came to
her mind. She was Gera’s
third wife, his hope for offspring after his first two wives had died
childless. Not that he treated her
badly, so long as she was available to him for the almost nightly attempt to
sire a child. She sighed, thinking how
she used to welcome her monthly courses, as that was the only time she could
count on a night to herself. However, for
whatever reason, despite all his efforts, those courses continued to flow and
there was no child.
Then Gera had died suddenly
after only eighteen months of marriage, simply collapsing in the vineyard he
tended. As he had no near kinsmen she’d
returned to her father’s house, much to his disgust. He had assumed she’d been too proud to allow
the older man to share her bed, and her failure to produce a son for her
husband became her shame. Daily her
father reminded her that she was a reproach to the family, a burden that they
could not get free of. For who would
marry a cold widow woman who would not give her husband the child he
wanted? And what would become of her if
she didn’t marry?
But there was an
offer of marriage. After the mourning period had passed, Bered the butcher
arrived on her father’s doorstep, proposing marriage. He had two children already, his wife had
died birthing a third, stillborn child.
Bered needed a young, strong woman to help him keep house and tend the
children. Her father was enormously
relieved…not only would she have a good husband, but she would have all the
fresh meat she desired! What a
match!
-- Yes, she
thought, passing the last house of the village and through the south gate –
that was a good match. Bered was a good
man. He told her he’d chosen her for his
second wife because she knew what it was like to be bereaved. An intelligent, thoughtful man, Bered was
well able to carry on conversation with any who came into the shop for
meat. She had listened to the
conversations, learning many things herself.
It was probably as close to happy as she’d ever been. But it was such a brief time. The fever that swept through the village two
years after they married took not only her newborn son, her mother, three of
her sisters and their families, but Bered and his daughter as well. Bered’s brother took her stepson into his
house but, as his brother had left a son, refused to take her, even as
household laborer. It may have been due
to his wife’s insecurities, but it didn’t matter now. --Nothing matters now, she thought with a sigh
as she sat on a large rock, more to postpone the inevitable return to the house
in which she dwelt than because she needed to rest. Only a few insects droned about in the
merciless sunshine and she smiled to herself, admitting that it was worth
venturing out in the blistering heat to avoid meeting anyone who had an opinion
about her. No one knew what had really
happened in her life…or seemed to care.
After Bered’s
death, she had returned once more to her father’s house, grieving, lonely, and
weak, having barely survived the illness herself. She expected to spend the rest of her days
caring for her family in her mother’s stead.
However, her father soon remarried and his new wife, Serah, scarcely
older than she was, was determined to be the woman in charge of the day to day running
of the home and began at once to demand that her husband find a suitable match
for his now twice-widowed daughter. A good match wasn’t the goal…any match was
acceptable. After the fever had
decimated the town’s population, there were several widowed men who would’ve
certainly been at least as kind to her as Bered had been, but the first one to
ask was the one to whom she was given, and he would not have been her
choice.
Ashvath was a
big man, strong and, to her father’s eyes, well able to protect and care for
his daughter. But Ashvath was violent
and prone to jealousy. He frequently reminded
her that she ought to be more grateful that he took her out of her father’s
house, as homely and unlovely as she was.
She often wondered why he even bothered with her…and wished he
hadn’t. His wife had also died in the
epidemic, and Ashvath held her up as the standard of perfection that the weary
and worn young woman could not begin to equal.
At first, his temper tantrums were only verbal, but little by little
they began to include physical violence.
He began frequenting the brothel in the village, telling her simply that
she was too ugly to satisfy him. He did
spend the occasional night in her bed, however, and eventually a child was
conceived. The worst beating she had was
when she informed him she was pregnant…cursing her, he declared that she had
defiled his bed with another man while he was away. He’d slapped her against the wall, then
pushed her backward over a low bench and stomped off into the night, leaving
her unconscious on the floor from the violent crack of her skull against the
beaten earth. How long she lay there she
had no idea, but when she once more became aware of herself she was bleeding
profusely. The infection that followed
the miscarriage nearly killed her again and apparently rendered her infertile
as well, for she never conceived again.
She endured seven years of hell with Ashvath before he lost his temper
with the wrong person and died in the brothel with a knife in his belly.
Since Ashvath
died with no offspring, she found herself bound over in marriage to his
brother, Aniam, as was the custom, in order to provide an heir for the family. Unfortunately, Aniam was no less cruel than
his brother. He had sent his first wife
away with a divorce decree, stating that she had repeatedly burned his
meals. His second wife had died giving
birth to a son, who had only outlived his mother by two weeks before he died of
milk fever. Three more years of misery as
Anaim’s wife passed before it became apparent to them both that she was
barren. Declaring her an unfit wife,
incapable of producing an heir for either him or his brother, he’d given her a
divorce decree and pushed her out of his house with only the clothes on her
body.
She sighed,
realizing she couldn’t spend all day on the trip to the well and stood,
hoisting the jar once again and turning down the hill toward the well, which
was in a small grove of trees ahead of her.
As she slowly descended in the shimmering heat, she remembered the
humiliation of standing in the street, holding the small scroll that damned her
as useless. In almost unbearable shame,
she forced herself to return to her father’s house. There was simply nowhere else for her to go. Her stepmother had stood in the doorway,
refusing to let her in. “You’re thirty
years old!” Serah had hissed. “Go and
make your own way!” Her father had
unexpectedly taken her part, stepping into the door and pulling his wife
back. “There is no other way for her,”
he’d bitterly commented. “Would you have
her go to the brothel?” Serah had looked
at her with distaste. “Let her go to her sister’s house. She can care for her!” She’d watched as her father looked from her
to Serah and back. “You could help Gomer
care for her children. Perhaps that
would be best.” --Yes, she thought,
imagining what life would’ve been like living with Serah in her father’s house,
--Perhaps that was the best.
Not that life in
her sister’s house had been anything to rejoice over. Gomer had eight children, one of whom had
been born with deformed feet and had to be carried about. She’d worked hard for her keep, never
forgetting that it was her sister and her brother-in-law’s charity that gave
her any semblance of respectability. But
it was at least somewhat peaceful…until her brother-in-law began to take notice
of her in uncomfortable ways. Dropping
hints that she could certainly show him a little more kindness, since he’d
shown her such kindness. Furtively touching
her when he walked by. She began to be
frightened that her sister would accuse her of attempting to seduce him and
turn her out, but her attempts to avoid him seemed only to make him more
insistent. In desperation, she went once
more to her father to ask him to find her a husband, saying only that she
wished for a home of her own. Surprised,
he told her he had actually had someone ask about her that very week. “Who is it?” She inquired, hopeful. Her father had hesitated a moment before
answering, “Jalam.”
Jalam was the
town fool, the carcass collector. The
butt of all the jokes and the lowest man on the village social ladder. She’d found out later that he had been
lamenting to a group of men sitting in the town’s dung gate that he’d not been
able to find a wife, and one of them – he wouldn’t say which one – had
suggested that she might have him.
Although Jalam didn’t tell her they’d all laughed when the suggestion
was made, her step-mother made sure she found out. But keeping house for Jalam,
as foul as it could be at times, was still better than avoiding her
brother-in-law’s attention. Jalam was
child-like, and she felt more like his mother than his wife. She smiled slightly as she remembered some of
the more foolish things he’d done…things that had made her furious at the time,
but now, after he’d disappeared, seemed comical.
The smile
quickly faded as she suddenly saw that she was not alone on the path. About a dozen men were emerging from the
grove around the well and heading up the path toward the village. She took in their manner of dress as she
realized they had not yet seen her. Looking
around in a panic, she saw a large rock between two large thorn bushes about
ten feet from the path. She quickly
ducked around behind it before the men had gone twenty feet, and peeked out at
them through the branches of the thorn bush to verify her first
impression. Jews! What were Jews doing in that part of Samaria? Jews never walked through Samaria!
They considered the Samaritans so corrupt that they would have no
dealings with them whatever, lest their lives be somehow tainted with the
Samaritan bad seed. She had absolutely
no desire to encounter any Jews. She
peeked through the spines of the thorn bush again to see that the men had
stopped, looking back toward the grove as one hurried back as if he’d forgotten
something. She moved away from her
vantage spot to make herself less likely to be noticed from the path and nearly
held her breath until the man returned to the group and they continued up the
path, past her hiding place and on up the hill.
She waited a full five minutes after the world fell silent again before
she drew a deep breath, picked up the water jug and crept back out to the path.
Thinking of
Jalam, she wondered again what had happened to him. Eighteen months ago, after talking
mysteriously about some plan he had to become wealthy, he’d walked away from
the house at his usual time and never returned.
No one knew what had happened to him.
She hadn’t worried at first; he’d gone off before for days with
expectations of finding treasure, or pursuing some wild plan that he expected to
make him wealthy and the envy of everyone in the town, but he’d always
returned, rather sheepishly admitting that things hadn’t gone as he’d expected. But as the weeks passed she began to suspect
that some horrible thing must’ve happened to him. After a cursory search in the area, the
townspeople gave up looking for him…or even caring what had happened to him. The general opinion was that he’d decided to
leave the village and the carcasses and pursue his crazy schemes in some far
off place.
That meant she
was alone, in Jalam’s house. She knew
she could glean in the fields and perhaps hire herself out as a laundress in
order to survive, but it was more difficult than she thought. Zophah began coming by the house, insinuating
that he’d take care of her, if she’d let him move in. She resisted him for about five weeks, then
the tax collector came and told her he would turn the house over to Jalam’s
relatives in the next village if she couldn’t pay the taxes. She found herself in a desperate position
again. Without proof of Jalam’s death,
she couldn’t marry again…and she couldn’t return to either her father’s or her
sister’s house...and she was hungry. The
next time Zophah asked her if he could move in and take care of her, she
swallowed hard and said yes.
She honestly
didn’t think her place in society could drop much lower than it was as Jalam’s
wife, but she quickly found out that there was a much lower place to be. Living with Zophah made her the village
slut. The women nearly stoned her the
first evening she came to the well for water after he moved in, so she began
coming at odd times…like noon,
when no one else ventured out. Once
again despair washed over her. If only
there was some way she could go back and start over…be happy….
Suddenly she
stopped as she rounded the first tree in the grove which shaded Jacob’s Well
and saw the well itself. To her horror,
there was a man sitting on the ground next to it with his back to her. From the look of him, he was Jewish, like the
others who had just passed her. She felt
tears rising as she realized this could mean the others were returning…but it
could be as much as an hour before they did so.
Would the man sit by the well that long?
There was nothing to do but get
her water and hope he left her alone.
She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, focused on the side of
the well opposite him and walked as quietly as she could toward that spot.
When she was no
more than two feet from the well, he suddenly turned around and fixed amazingly
kind eyes on hers.
“Will you give
me a drink?”
