Chapter Text
The name of the world is misery.
The name of the world is misery, but until the day before, he didn’t know it. The day before, he was still his father’s son, proud, loved, cared for to the point of being spoiled. The favourite. Yet in a mere moment, he had lost everything, and now his whole battered body was in pain. His back, still throbbing from the blows that had rained upon it earlier, ached terribly. His feet dragged from exhaustion of having walked so much, and the rope binding his wrists chafed them raw. He was hungry and thirsty.
The name of the world is misery.
All these aches were nothing compared to the grief that was gnawing on his soul. His brothers… The mere thought brought burning tears to his eyes. He was now nothing more than a slave, barely good enough to be sold, exploited, abused. The name of the world is misery, and he was nothing.
What had he done to deserve such a fate? Why God, God who had prevented Abraham from raising a hand on his own son, God who had guided his father Jacob on the road of exile, God who always sided with the smallest and the weakest, why had He abandoned him? Had God not been showing him His favour until now, sending him visions and prophetic dreams? Was he not intended since his birth to have a great future? Were these visions nothing more than lies sent by the Devil to mislead him?
Why? Why? For days, he mulled this question over. And then, suddenly, an answer came, as clear as if someone had whispered it in his ear. It was a punishment. He had displeased the Lord, and the Lord punished him, hiding His Face from him, and handing him over to the hatred of his brothers.
At first, the idea seemed repulsive. A punishment? Was he not the victim? What had he done to deserve to be beaten, stripped of everything, humiliated, sold, hated by his own family? Certainly, he was as innocent as a newborn lamb! But the more he thought about it, the more he saw he had himself abused, denigrated, demeaned, humiliated them. How many times had he boasted about being their father’s favourite, God’s favourite? How many times, miserable sneak he was, had he snitched to his father what his brothers had done without even trying to understand them? Had he not boasted about being the prophet among his brothers, the one who would dominate the others, to whom the largest part of their father’s heritage would one day go, the one to whom God spoke in dreams?
What a cruel delusion: he was no better than the others. And maybe he was even worse: a hypocrite who had clothed his own misgiving in the clothes of virtue. But God knows the heart of men. He had believed he was the first and the better, and God showed him now his real place: the last of all. He would have wept, ashamed and remorseful, but he had no more tears to shed. In the silence of the desert, with a broken heart and a humbled spirit, he cried to the Lord. Insignificant, he prostrated himself before the Highest. With a heart stripped of all pride and more sincere than ever, he begged for the mercy of the Eternal.
But only the breeze answered him.
He swallowed a sob back, with grief, with pain or with shame, he was not certain. Was it even important? He was alone, and the name of the world is misery.
The name of the world is misery, and he would never, ever, see his father’s home again.