Page 24 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)

A nger chased Tamar into her sleep, tinting her dreams with red edges.

She kept startling awake, the images of her sleeping mind taunting her.

Davorah, again and again. Some were memories of their years working beside each other.

Others could have been, or just as easily could have been imagination, as normal as they were.

Davorah’s quiet face. Her hands, always busy. The dim, subdued smiles they’d exchanged.

Then suddenly they would shift, and Davorah would be sneering, snarling, turning her back to work on something Tamar could never see no matter how desperately she tried to shift. Was it the veil she was working on? Which one?

The one that had torn? Had Davorah somehow sabotaged the work, so that Tamar would be blamed when it failed under its own weight?

Even her dream-mind knew that was ridiculous. There could be no such duplicity, no such deception. The very nature of the work forbade it.

So the dream shifted, and it was her own fingers at the loom.

More often than not these days, she wasn’t one of the weavers in the workshop, not unless someone was sick and unable to join them—which, granted, happened regularly.

But she had no particular seat, no position that was hers alone, no rod, no shuttle she alone used.

Yet now she did. She sat on a stool that her dream self knew was hers, and she had been working so long at it already that she knew her neck and back screamed in pain. But pausing, stretching wasn’t an option. With an urgency pressing ever harder upon her, she worked faster, fingers flying.

But instead of growing, the cloth seemed to shrink under her fingers. Her throat wanted to protest, but no sound came out, and she turned to shoot an accusing gaze at the women to her right, to her left.

No one was there.

Where were they? Where were Bithnia, Illana, Hinda, Sarah? Where was Davorah?

She’d lured them away. Tamar felt the certainty in her stomach, and black hatred surged up like tar, like pitch, bubbling up from the ground beneath her and climbing up her legs, staining every inch of the silk she wore until she knew it was ruined.

Faster, she must weave faster. Her hands ached, pulsed with the effort, but the more quickly she wove, the more the cloth unraveled.

Her hands shook with pain, and she stumbled back, suddenly viewing the veil as she knew she never had.

It was complete, hanging in its place. Surrounding and protecting the Holy of Holies, where her feet were never permitted to tread.

She shouldn’t even be here in this court, but the ground didn’t open up to consume her, lightning didn’t fork down to strike her dead.

She just stood on the cold stone floor, no one else nearby, and admired the work of her hands.

Such an intricate tapestry, worthy of hanging before the presence of God.

Perfection in every thread. She let her gaze caress each bold color—scarlet, purple, blue, and gold.

She traced them as they drew the images meant to remind the priests of the God they served.

The God who had created the garden, who had put man in it.

The God who had punished man by exiling him into a fallen world, who had placed guardians at the gates of Eden to keep him from returning, to keep him from tasting of the Tree of Life now that he had stained himself with sin.

It is a mercy to die , some unfamiliar voice said, slick and oily and dark in her ear. Would you not rather die and escape the torment of a world without God than live, knowing He is not here?

But He was. He was there in that Most Holy Place. Just behind the veil. A presence so pure, so precious, that man’s sin must never draw near. That was why she labored day in and day out. That was why they created veil after masterful veil. God must be guarded. God must be protected.

Yet even as she found her favorite cherubim in the tapestry, she watched the threads fray.

“No!” The word fell silently from paralyzed lips, making the threads unravel all the faster.

The cherubim vanished in snapped threads, and then the sword it held in front of the gate, the trees behind it, the blue of the sky.

Everything she looked at, every representation of creation, vanished. Dissolved. The curtain was falling, and no matter how she stretched, she couldn’t reach it. When she finally did, she couldn’t lift it. Couldn’t put it back on its rods. Couldn’t hold up its impossible weight.

But she had to. She had to! She couldn’t let the veil fail again, couldn’t let God be exposed to the sins of man.

The earth shook, shooting pain into her palms as she tried to hold everything in place, where it should be.

It crashed down around her, crushing her, and she squeezed her eyes shut and let it bury her. Yes, it was a tomb, but that was safe. Death was an escape from the panic. Only, it kept gnawing at her. Ripping at her flesh. Slicing through her soul as it had done to the veil.

Everything was a ruin. They had failed God completely.

All their hard work, the centuries of studying Scripture and finding new ways to enforce it, to make certain that every child of Abraham had the Law written on their heads and their hearts, as He had commanded them—gone. A puff of smoke. Filthy rags.

Filthy, filthy rags. The tar-blackened silk clung to her legs, sin that ate at the flesh beneath. She could feel it rotting her from the inside out. Sin. Hatred. Bitterness.

Davorah. This is Davorah’s fault .

Thinking it made the stain creep higher, higher, higher. Her breath came in gasps, quicker with every inch the stain rose. It was going to consume her. Despite all her care, all her attention to the Law, all the work she’d done for God, sin was overwhelming her.

Did you think you were worthy of protecting Him? Did you think you were pure enough to touch something that would be so near to His presence? You are a sinner! Filthy. Unworthy.

She tried to swipe away the grime, but that only spread the growing black to her bleeding palms. She tried to pull the ruined silk away, but it only sank deeper into her skin.

Everything she tried only made it worse.

The sin increased, stained her darker, and the weight of the tomb, the shattered veil, pressed down upon her.

Death is what you deserve. Death is the wage of your sin.

She whimpered, forcing syllables out in a breath between her teeth. “Lord, have mercy.”

The weight pressed harder, crushing her. Then a different voice whispered in her ear. You must let go of it, Daughter.

Confusion swirled in the darkness, the words making no sense. She tried to push her way, swim her way, out of the suffocating veil…then realized that she wasn’t really pushing it. She had her fingers knotted in it. Every shove moved only her , not the cloth.

You are not strong enough to bear that weight. You must let go. You must let Me shoulder it.

Her fingers curled tighter, more deliberately. This was her work. This was her creation. This was what she had spent her life doing, working for God. This was her offering, her sacrifice!

I do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering I would refuse. The sacrifice I desire is a contrite heart. A broken, contrite spirit I will not spurn .

The more tightly she clung to that frayed, ruined, collapsed fabric, the more her palms burned. The more she tried to run from that ever-growing stain, the faster it crept up her legs, over her hips, toward her heart.

The voice was right. She wasn’t strong enough.

All her work, a lifetime of effort, hadn’t meant a thing.

One thing went wrong, one betrayal pierced her, and hatred and bitterness had filled her heart.

What, then, did that say about the nature of that heart?

What did it say, that she refused help when it was offered, even though she knew she couldn’t do it, do anything, on her own?

She looked around again for her weavers, but if they were there, the darkness concealed them. If they were there, they could offer no assistance. Her only help lay with God.

I will take it. I will rescue you. You have only to let go, Daughter. Let go of the sin. Let go of the burden. Cling to Me instead.

Tears blurred the darkness, shuddered through her. She’d wanted to do it herself. She’d wanted to prove she was worthy. She’d wanted to know that her work had helped God.

Did I need your help when I laid the foundations of the earth? You count the threads of the veil as if all of creation will crumble if you do not, but do you know the measure of My creation? Have you stretched the measuring line across it?

She uncurled her forefinger from its hold. “I have not, Lord,” she breathed. She could measure only the threads of a tapestry. Create only a flat, lifeless version of what God had made. She could not breathe into it and make it move, make it feel, make it think and love and multiply.

You lead your charges in a hymn each morning, but did you make the stars to sing in the heavens? Do you make mankind shout for joy?

“No, Lord.” She uncurled another finger, felt the weight of the veil slip away a little more. She always took such care to choose a hymn, a psalm to start their day. But they were only echoes of something far greater. Shadows of the song the Lord wrote in their hearts.

You decide when to drink, but do you shut up the seas behind their doors? Do you make the clouds spread out like a garment upon the shoulders of the world?

“Only You can do that, Lord.” She drew in a long breath. Straightened another finger.

You think you know when morning will come, when evening will come. You command your weavers when to arrive and when to depart. But who can cast night over noonday?

“You, Lord.”

Who can shake the wicked from the earth like dust from a cloth?

“You, Lord.”

Who protects whom?

She stared at her hand in the darkness, still clutching the cloth, though her left had let it go. Her life’s work. Her worthiness. Her offering to God—to protect His purity, to…

Light seared her eyes, pain and joy all at once, and she understood. The veil had never been meant to protect God from man.

The veil was to protect man from God. From His terrible, beautiful light. It had never been about the work of their hands—it had been about the work of His.

There is a time to laugh, but there is also a time to weep. There is a time to weave, but also a time to rend. A time to build walls…a time to tear them down.

She was a sinful creature, quick to judge, quick to sink into bitterness, quick to cling to her pride…but all of her sin, all of humanity’s sin, wasn’t enough to break down the wall between man and God—the very thing the veil had been.

How foolish Caiaphas had been, that she had been, to ever think they could. Sin could never tear down that wall. Sin couldn’t bridge the distance. Sin couldn’t stain God. The intensity of His light would scour it white as snow again.

Only God could tear down the wall. Only God could remove the divide. Only God could decide that He would walk among man again. The more they tried to accomplish it on their own, with their added rituals, their added rules, their added righteousness, the heavier they made the burden.

It was a burden mankind had never been intended to carry. A stain they could never scrub out. Only the purifying fire of the Lord could make them clean again. Only His hands could draw them closer to heaven, out from under the horrible burden they’d created for themselves.

“Forgive me, Lord.” Her lips formed the words as she levered her eyes open, expecting darkness but seeing instead a strange, faint gray that she couldn’t place. “Save me. Restore me.”

Come to Me . Words she’d heard before, in a voice that sounded so very like the one that had been adapting Job and Ecclesiastes for her as she slept. Come to Me, you who are weary and burdened. I will give you rest.

Though it was her heart that heard the words and not her ears, still it sounded as though the voice came from wherever that strange light was coming from. She sat up, panicking briefly as the veil seemed to wrap itself around her again, to tangle once more in her fingers.

But no. Only a blanket. Only bandages on her hands.

She reached out for the wall, expecting the smooth, even ones of her home and finding damp, cool stone instead. She stood, toes reaching out for the edge of the carpet she and her brothers’ wives had woven, but the same stone met her there too.

The light brightened. Not gray now. Golden. White. The sunrise? Her body tried to tell her that it wasn’t quite dawn, no matter what her eyes said, but her body was no doubt confused by the restless—yet so very restful—night.

Ears straining for the next notes of comfort, she stepped out of the cave, wincing at the onslaught of light.