The Harlot by The Side of The Road: Forbidden Tales of The Bible Read Online Free PDF Page B

will be all right, sister,” the younger one said one day. “We have enough to eat and drink.”
    “Yes, but what kind of life will we have here?” the older one complained. “We are alone in all the world. Everyone else is dead. Do you know what that means?”
    The little sister looked at her quizzically.
    “It means that we will never see a man other than our father for as long as we live,” the older one said. “We will never marry. We will never bear children. Our father is already an old man and growing older fast, as you can see for yourself. When he dies, we will be alone in this miserable place until
we
grow old and die.”
    The little one considered her sister’s dire prediction. True enough, they had seen no living human being since the morning they rushed out of Sodom. And she, too, had noticed that her father seemed older, grayer, and more feeble as each day passed.
    “I wish Momma was here, don’t you?” she said at last.
    And the first-born said unto the younger: “Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.”
    — GENESIS 19:31–32    
     
    “But she isn’t,” the older one said in a sharp voice that reminded the younger one of their mother. “And that means there is only one solution to the problem.”
    “What do you mean, sister?”
    “We will lie with our father,” she announced grimly, “and
he
will give us babies.”
    “Lie with Father?”
    “Don’t pretend to be so innocent. You heard what the women used to talk about when you were drawing water from the well. You know how babies are made.”
    “You want to make a baby with our
father?”
she squealed. “What a horrible thought!”
    “We will make babies so we will not be alone when he dies—and so there will be someone left here when
we
die.” The older sister seemed angry. “It’s the only thing left for us to do.”
    “If we were back home,” the younger one said, “we would have proper husbands to lie with us and give us babies, as our poor dead sisters did with their husbands.”
    The older sister laughed out loud. “Have you already forgotten what men were like in Sodom? Anyway, they’re all gone now, and the only man left is our father.”
    The younger one thought for a moment and then nodded.
    “Tell me what I need to know,” she said. “Tell me what I need to do.”
    The older one had contrived to put aside a couple of jars of wine from the oasis town, and she kept them hidden even when Lot’s supply ran out and he began to groan in despair over the lack of something to drink besides water. Now she fetched the wine from its hiding place,and she appeared at his alcove as the sun was setting and the shadows inside the cave were deepening. Soon, she knew, it would be so dark that neither of them would be able to see the other at all.
    And they made their father drink wine that night. And the first-born went in, and lay with her father; and he knew her not when she lay down, nor when she arose
.
    — GENESIS 19:33    
     
    “Look, Father,” she said cheerfully. “Look what I found.”
    “What is it? I can’t see a thing.”
    “A jar full of wine,” she announced. “From the house back in that little town.”
    “Where the devil did that come from? I
knew
I had another jar somewhere. Have you been hiding it from me, you ungrateful child?”
    “Oh, no, how could you think such a thing of me?” she said coquettishly. “I found it among the rocks outside the cave—we must have dropped it on the way up the mountain.”
    “Well, then, give it to me—”
    “Here it is, Father,” she said. “Drink your fill.”
    She hung back in the shadows while her father pulled the stopper and lifted the heavy jar to his lips. He drank greedily, but took care not to spill even a drop of the precious stuff. Then he pushed the stopper back