The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible Read Free

divine, regarded even our most outlandish passions with a kind and compassionate eye. That’s why the forbidden tales of the Bible are not merely a rollicking good read; above all, the Bible affirms the essential qualities that make us human in the first place.
    * All quotations from the Bible are from
The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961) unless otherwise indicated by an abbreviation that identifies another translation. “NEB,” for example, refers to
The New English Bible With Apocrypha
, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). A complete list of Bible translations and the abbreviations used to identify them can be found on page 355.
* The Hebrew Bible has been explored, explained, and embroidered upon by successive generations of rabbinical sages for more than two thousand years. Much of their work is found in the Talmud, a vast collection of Jewish law, lore, and legend, and a separate accumulation of Bible-inspired commentary known as the Midrash. When I refer to “the rabbis” (or, sometimes, “the sages”), I mean the rabbinical commentators whose work appears in the Talmud or the Midrash. Specific citations to Talmudic and Midrashic sources can be found in the works that are referenced in the endnotes to each chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

LOT AND HIS DAUGHTERS
     
    “Come, let us make our father drink wine
….”
     
    — GENESIS 19:32    
     
    A blood-red moon anally rose after midnight, but a distant glow had been visible on the horizon long before, as if something afire were boiling up from the waters of the Dead Sea and spreading across the desert floor. Ever since that terrible morning when the earth shuddered and fire fell from the sky, the air was full of foul-smelling smoke and greasy ash by day, and the moon was stained red by night.
    Day and night, the youngest daughter of the man called Lot watched from the mouth of the mountain cave where they had sought shelter. Her sister refused to come out at all; she lingered in the dark corners of the cavern, curled up alone, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth like a child in a bad temper. A few feet away, their father dozed in his own stony alcove, occasionally lifting himself up only to nibble something from the basket of food or sip from the bottle of wine that they had thought to bring along, then slipping into sleep again.
    The younger one was not afraid to venture out of the cave. She skittered up and down the rocky slope, sometimes daring to go as far as a stoned throw from the mouth of the cave, but never so far that she could not scamper back inside if danger threatened. She looked forsomething green that they might be able to eat, some small animal that they might be able to hunt and kill, and—God willing—a spring that might replenish the skins of water that they had dragged up from the oasis town far below them.
    Above all, the younger one looked for the sign of another human being, whether man, woman, or child. She surveyed the jagged peak of the mountain, peered into the cracks of the black and gray rock on the lower slopes, shaded her eyes as she looked out over the empty desert floor, but she saw no one.
    “You’re foolish, little sister,” the older one would insist whenever they spoke of her vigil outside the cave. “No one else is alive but us. And it’s a good thing, too, because if anyone
did
find us, he would be like one of those brutes from back home—he would take you, if and how he wishes, and then he would slay you.”
    Then the older one would fall silent, and begin to rock back and forth again.
    “But don’t worry, little sister,” she would always say. “No one will come—because no one else is alive but us.”
    The older one was right, of course, about the kind of men who lived in Sodom. Back home, the younger one remembered, the menfolk were brutal to any stranger who was unlucky enough to reach the city gates,and they were not