Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) Read Online Free PDF Page B

commanded to offer their own babies as sacrifices.
     
    All of this preyed on Sarai’s mind, and many times she almost convinced herself that it was all pretend, that nobody ever really killed people in the name of a god. Certainly it never happened with the worship of Asherah—though there were things that went on at the temple of Asherah that they didn’t talk about in front of her. Could it be that even there, something or someone was killed? Impossible.
     
    But the rising tide of gossip made anything seem possible. Now she heard for the first time that Suwertu had sacrificed a child as a thank offering, burning the child’s body on a hill near Olishem. This story was told in support of the idea that there really wasn’t anything unusual about human sacrifice, though to Sarai it seemed that if human sacrifice were normal, no one would need to prove that it was normal, because everyone would already know.
     
    Most of the stories horrified or puzzled Sarai. Only one really frightened her. It was the tale that Suwertu had sacrificed three young sisters. It wasn’t the fact they were young like Sarai that made her afraid. It was that they were the daughters of a man named Onitah, who just happened to be making a claim that he was the rightful heir of the first Pharaohs.
     
    If this story was true, it meant that Suwertu made it a habit to kill people in order to punish their fathers for claiming the birthright of the priesthood. That was the reason this story was told—those who repeated it always made comments about how murder was murder, even when a priest did it and called it sacrifice. “This has to be stopped,” they would say.
     
    But Sarai never heard them mention any plan to stop the sacrifice of Abram. They might deplore it, but they weren’t doing anything. Not even Father. And why? Because he was afraid that he might lose his safe haven in Ur-of-the-North if he spoke up against Suwertu’s “sacrifices.”
     
    This is how it happens—how bad people can do terrible things, right out in the open, and everyone stands away and lets them do it.
     
    There were even people who were helping Suwertu. The priest of Shagreel, for instance, claimed that Abram had also blasphemed against his god, which was, after all, only the sun. By saying that only the priests of his father’s God had authority, Abram had as much as said that all other gods were false. “And yet we see the sun in the sky every day!” the priest was said to have declared. “We are warmed by it! And Abram denies that the sun is a god!”
     
    At last Sarai could stand it no more, and went tearfully to her father to ask him why no one was doing anything.
     
    “But many of us are doing things,” said Father kindly. “We do them quietly, where you don’t see. But if it hadn’t been for our intervention with the king, Suwertu would have pierced Abram’s heart already.”
     
    “So you’re going to stop him?”
     
    “With so many jackals pulling at the deer, how long will it stay on its feet?” Father shook his head. “I’m sorry you have to know about such things.”
     
    “Why don’t people hate Suwertu?”
     
    “They do hate him. But they fear him more. So they don’t stand against him.”
     
    “ You stand against him, Father! I don’t care if he sacrifices me.”
     
    “He couldn’t sacrifice you, ” said Father. “You belong to Asherah.”
     
    Only then did she realize—if Father openly opposed Suwertu, it might be Qira on that altar, just like those three daughters of Onitah.
     
    So because they fear it happening to their own families, everyone will let this murderer have his way.
     
    And he does it all in the name of a god.
     
    It made Sarai ponder long and hard about the life she had been pledged to live, as a priestess of Asherah. If the worship of Ba’al or Osiris or Elkenah or Shagreel could be used as a mask for the murder of a foreign king’s enemy, then which gods were genuine? Only Abram seemed to