“It is time, my love.” Joseph said the prescribed words and led her smoothly toward the waiting chariot.
The crowd followed them, tossing lotus petals toward them and singing love songs that faded into the night.
Once up the steps to the newly refurnished rooms of a previous favorite of Pharaoh’s, Joseph guided Asenath inside ahead of him. He turned her to face him and removed the veil. “What color is your hair beneath your wig—or do you shave your hair as most women do?”
“I do not shave my head,” she said, glancing beyond him, her cheeks darkening.
He smiled, lifted the wig from her head, and saw short, silky black hair in its place. “Ah,” he said. “Black as night but shining like the sun.”
She smiled, though she would not hold his gaze. Was she afraid of him? Or simply quiet?
He lifted her chin to force her gaze upward. A little gasp escaped her lips, telling Joseph what he needed to know. She found him acceptable, and as he kissed her and drew her farther into the room, tossing their fine clothes to the floor, he sensed that she also desired him as he desired her.
A feeling of coming home filled him, and for the first time in more years than he dared count, Joseph felt that his life finally held purpose. He would make a life with this woman, and he hoped she would know and love him. As he wooed her and they came together as husband and wife, he sensed that she would be all he had hoped for in a wife and much more.
28
Joseph allowed his servant to apply the final touches of kohl to his eyes, then donned his headdress and the robe and belt of many colors and took the golden staff in his hand. He had done his best not to associate this Egyptian garment with the cloak from his father. Had God chosen these colors to match those of his brothers for a reason?
Asenath poked her head into his room and nearly took his breath as she walked barefoot across the tiles in a filmy white nightdress.
“You are out of bed early, my sleepy wife.” Joseph kissed her upturned face as his servant slipped away.
“And you are off again to inspect the crops while I must sit alone in the house all day waiting for you.” Her slight pout made him smile. What an ardent lover she had proved to be, a surprise for a woman so much younger than he. She clutched his arm and leaned close. “You know you want to stay with me.”
He wanted nothing more! “You tempt me, dear wife. But how can I ignore the work Pharaoh has appointed for me? We have spent a month together. It is time I began to work again, now that the crops should be pushing their heads from the black earth.” It was too early to harvest what he was certain would be Egypt’s first year of plenty. But he would inspect the growth of the crops just the same.
Asenath offered him a coy smile. “It is a wife’s job to tempt her husband.” She touched his cheek. “My only love.”
She’d taken to calling him that when he told her of his false imprisonment and the behavior of Potiphar’s wife.
“She should have been punished,” Asenath had said.
Joseph nodded. “In a world where justice rules, she would have. But Potiphar feared her father. So they lived in a loveless marriage and found pleasure in other people—slaves who had little choice but to obey them.”
“Would you fear my father as Potiphar feared hers?”
Joseph started at her question. He rose up on one elbow and ran his fingers through her hair. “You have nothing to fear from me, beloved. Never. So, no. I would not fear your father because I would never do anything to hurt you.” He looked so intently into her eyes that she leaned into him and sighed.
“And I would never do anything to hurt you, dear Joseph. I will admit that on the day of our wedding, I feared that your power over my father would make me vulnerable, because who but Pharaoh is greater than you? You must admit that at least Aneksi had her father’s protection if the captain had been cruel to her and not the other way around.” She traced a finger along his bare arm.
“And she needed his protection because she was not faithful to Potiphar. Potiphar could have done something, but I daresay he did not love her. Perhaps he once did, but there was little kindness between them while I lived in his house.” He held Asenath close, remembering the many times he had trusted people only to be betrayed by them. He would not do that to her, he vowed. He would protect her with his life. “There is one thing I would ask of you,” he said, looking again into her luminous eyes.
“Anything for you, Joseph.”
“I never did as Aneksi asked because I would have offended my God. While I know your father is a priest of On and that Egypt worships many gods, in our house, while raising our children, I want them taught only of the one true Creator God. They can learn of the others, of course, for the sake of their culture and history, but they must know that only Adonai is God. There is no other.”
She had stared at him in disbelief for a long moment. Even now he wondered how much she grasped of a faith in one God when she had been raised to sacrifice to so many. And to believe as he did would mean giving up the faith of her father. Had he asked too much?
Yet he could not allow any children born of their union to be uncircumcised Egyptians. They would be Hebrew. He would make sure of it.
As he kissed Asenath one more time with a promise to return as early as possible, he wondered if she still struggled with his request. Was she at least trying to accept his faith in the God of his fathers?
He hurried down the many steps to his waiting driver. Guards stood before and behind him, ready to run with his chariot as he traveled to every city, every field in Egypt. He’d lived in Egypt for fourteen years and had gone from slave to prisoner to prince.
Even the dreams of privilege he’d had in his youth could not compare to this experience. He could not have predicted it and would not have chosen it. But he was beginning to accept it.
1826 BC
Joseph rode to the city of Giza, where the first set of granaries stood. Pharaoh’s workers had already threshed the wheat from the harvest and were now pouring it through a large opening in the top with baskets drawn up by ropes. Two granaries were already full, and this third one would barely hold this year’s yield.
“Circle the area, then take me to the land outside of the city,” Joseph told his driver. With six years ahead of them, they would never be able to keep all of the grain in one city.
They drove closer to the granaries, and Joseph hopped down. Hamid stood near the third granary with clay tablet in hand, calculating how much wheat they’d already stored.
“How many more stacks of wheat are yet in the fields?” Joseph asked as Hamid looked up and smiled.
“According to my men, there is double the amount of wheat they usually produce each season. I would say they are in the process of threshing at least fifty more stacks, and I don’t think this container will hold it all. I’ve given orders for another granary to be built, and quickly!” Hamid scratched his chin with the end of his bronze stylus.
“Good,” Joseph said, taking in the scene with one sweeping glance. “I am going to choose more cities to hold the grain. If we have six more years of this yet to come, we will need six to twelve more cities to hold it all.” He placed his hands behind his back and walked the length of the area, inspecting the work that had already been done. A short distance away, workers had begun bricking a cylinder-like storage bin to hold the rest of this year’s crop.