Rebekah: Women of Genesis (10 page)

What could this sudden show of sympathy mean? Rebekah continued to hold her tongue, unsure what the others might read into anything she said.

“What is the real issue here, girl?” asked Akyas. “Is it that you simply don’t want to marry at all? Ah, yes—this has to be it—you want us to reject
you,
but from then on, any man whom your father brings, you’ll compare him to Ezbaal and say, ‘This one is not as good as the first one you brought.’ Until you finally find one that
you
favor. It gives you an excuse to control your own marriage. Is that it?”

“You give me credit for too much cleverness, and too little wisdom,” said Rebekah. “I trust my father to find a good husband for me. If it be Ezbaal, then I will rejoice. As long as I can continue to worship the Lord God of Abraham, and no other god, I will be content.”

“You will be content,” said the grandmother, “if your husband only beats you once a week. What do you think marriage
is?
”

“If that is your sad experience,” said Rebekah mildly, “then I hope my marriage will be better than yours.”

Ethah glared at her for a moment, then turned to the other women and smiled pleasantly. “I think,” she said, “that we’ll report that Rebekah is charming and beautiful, but too young for the match. So we’ll betrothe them and take her with us, train her to be a loving wife, and hold the marriage when we find that she is ready.”

“And when will that be?” asked Rebekah.

The old woman smiled beatifically at her. “When you bow your head and speak submissively to your betters.”

“Ah, that’s a relief,” said Rebekah, adopting the same tone of exaggerated cheerfulness. “I feared it would be when I was as hard and withered and bitter as you.”

Ethah clenched her teeth a little, but she maintained her smile. “It will be a pleasure teaching you modesty.”

Rebekah turned to “Mother.” “Did she train you in the way she promises to train me? Is that why you are so fearful, so eager to keep the peace? Did she beat you? Or merely humiliate you into submission?”

“Enough,” said the grandmother. “Whether it’s a careful plot on her part or she’s really as rude and ignorant as she seems, it hardly matters. I won’t have my grandson’s life plagued with a girl like this.”

“The choice is his,” Akyas reminded her. “He has never been ruled by you, or by his mother either.”

His
mother, she said. Not simply “Mother.” So she and Ezbaal might be siblings, but not by the same mother. And Akyas spoke of knowing the bitterness of a bad marriage. There was a story here, and Rebekah could not help but wish she knew it.

“Girl,” said Akyas, “you put on a brave face. Perhaps it is true that all you care about is whether you can worship your god. So . . . what if we told you that Ezbaal is not concerned about whom you pray to? That you can marry him and he will not interfere with your private worship?”

Rebekah tried to find the trick or trap in what she was saying. “How can you speak for him?”

“I don’t speak for anyone,” said Akyas. “I only ask you, what
if
those were the terms?”

“Those who truly worship the Lord God of heaven do not worship any other god, or even allow others to think they worship an idol.”

“So you will not join in the festivals of Ba’al,” said Akyas. “If Ezbaal consents to that, you have no further objection? We would then see your sweet obedience, and not this defiance?”

“I owe you only the courtesy of a hostess, not obedience, madam,” said Rebekah. And then realized that by speaking this way, she was showing a sweet and, yes, obedient attitude.

“That is what I hoped,” said Akyas. She turned to the others. “We have indeed unveiled her here,” she said. “Veil after veil, if I see aright.”

“If you think I’ll forget what she said here today . . . ,” said the grandmother.

“I think,” said Akyas, “you’ll remember only that if she comes home as Ezbaal’s bride, she will be mistress of the camp, and you will show her proper respect, and she will show the same to you. Is that not so, Rebekah?”

“The grandmother of my husband, and his mother also, and his sister, will all have nothing but respect and love and true service from me,” said Rebekah.

The grandmother laughed bitterly. “Fifteen years of loneliness have made a peacemaker of you, Akyas.”

“A powerful woman makes the best partner to a powerful man,” said Akyas. “It is only weak women and weak men who don’t understand this.”

Rebekah saw the other women bristle at this, but they said nothing to contradict her. This seemed remarkable to her, to say the least. Why would they endure having Ezbaal’s sister speak to them this way, implying they were weak? There is more between these women than meets the eye, she thought.

Was Akyas her ally? Or merely her cleverest enemy? There was something in the solution she had offered that seemed like a poisoned sweet. She would be free to worship God as she chose, and would never be called upon to take part in the worship of Ba’al—what more could she ask than that? And yet she knew there was something wrong with this. Akyas was about to triumph over her, and she did not know how.

“You are so gracious, lady,” said Rebekah to Akyas. “Yet you speak of unhappy marriage. Surely you could not have been unsuccessful in marriage, having such grace as yours?”

“You see this girl?” said Akyas, as if proud of her. “Now she examines
us!
”

“Tries our patience, you mean,” muttered the grandmother.

“At our ages,” said Akyas, “we should have stored up quite a lot of
that.
” She rose to her feet, and the other women followed her lead. Again a sign that she, the youngest of the three, was really the leader of this group. Why?

Rebekah rose. “I fear my poor food has displeased you. You’ve hardly eaten.”

“On the contrary, your meat and drink are delicious,” said “Mother.” “Whoever taught you to cook did well indeed.”

“I could have wished the
sauce
to be a bit less spicy,” said the grandmother, making it clear by her tone that she was not speaking of the sauce at all.

“It was the sauce I liked best,” said Akyas. “I wish I could have had it every day.” Then, suddenly in a hurry, she turned her face away and seemed almost to flee the tent, she moved so quickly. The others followed.

As soon as they were gone and Deborah had secured the tent flap behind them, Rebekah sank to the rugs, trembling. “Oh, it was awful, awful.”

“I don’t understand,” said Deborah. “Did they like the food or not?” She knelt beside Rebekah and put her arms around her. “I thought it was
so
delicious.”

Rebekah buried her face in her nurse’s shoulder. “Oh, Deborah, it wasn’t the meal, it was me. I failed completely.”

“Failed? Oh, you mean . . . Ezbaal won’t marry you?”

“The opposite! I thought I was winning by making the grandmother hate me. How was I to know it was the
sister
who was the leader? And she
liked
me. I can’t think why, I was as horrible as I could possibly be without actually spitting on anybody.”

“Spitting! Better not, I taught you not to spit when you were little.”

“Then I’m glad I didn’t forget your lesson,” said Rebekah. In truth, though, she wanted very much to spit on something. The marriage plan would go forward, and even though it seemed Ezbaal was giving in on everything she cared about, she knew the marriage would be wrong, that she had overlooked something important.

“My little girl,” said Deborah proudly. “You have grown up just as I hoped you’d be. Pretty and clever . . . and you don’t spit.”

Rebekah pulled away from her, looked at her face to see if she could possibly have meant those words sarcastically. But no, there was nothing but beatific happiness in Deborah’s face. She was incapable of irony. It was Rebekah’s own guilty conscience that put barbs into Deborah’s words.

You have grown up just as I hoped you’d be, Deborah was saying. And that was it. A child growing up as she was taught. That was the loophole, the twist, the trick in the deal Akyas offered her. Ezbaal might let Rebekah worship no other god but God—but nothing had been said about the children they’d have together. He would raise them up to pray in the high places and dance in the groves, enemies of God. What would it matter to her then, that
she
 could pray to God, that
she
was pure of the defilement of idolatry, if her children were polluted from the cradle up?

I hoped that by making them hate me, I would spare myself an argument with Father. But since that plan has failed, I will have that argument, and I will win it, because I will
never
marry a man who would teach my children to love any god but God.

And once Father realizes what a marriage to Ezbaal would mean, he would never dream of requiring such a thing of me.

But after what Pillel said, Rebekah was not sure of this at all.

Please, God of Abraham and Sarah, she said silently. Please fight for me. I haven’t the strength to stand alone, if all are against me.

Chapter 3

It was after dark when at last Rebekah was summoned to Father’s tent—a servant’s whisper at her tent door, so as not to waken anyone else in the camp—and by the time she hurried outside, no one to be seen.

We will do this in stealth, in darkness, in silence, thought Rebekah. The marriage plan will unravel, but there will never be a quarrel that Ezbaal might hear.

Father, Laban, and Pillel were all waiting in his tent, their faces barely visible in the light of a single lamp that flickered with every movement of an arm or leg that might start the wick bobbing in the oil. Laban greeted her with a raised eyebrow, though what he meant by it Rebekah could not guess. Pillel was made of stone. But Father . . . could it be tears shimmering in his eyes?

The lamp had been set on the exposed dirt where people wrote things to Father. Pillel handed her a stick polished smooth by the grip of many hands. But Rebekah wrote nothing, for she knew that Pillel and Laban would have already discussed the issues with Father, and she dared not speak until she knew where Father stood.

“Ezbaal will let you serve God. A generous man, I think,” said Father. “His women gave him a good report of you. He asks to marry you, and I have said—”

“No!” cried Rebekah. Could he possibly have given consent already, without speaking to her first?

He could not hear her, but he could see her face and knew what she said. “I have said that I will find out what is in your heart. You will find no nobler, braver, richer, stronger man in the world than this one. But now that I am faced with losing you, I find that it’s a bitter thing indeed to watch you go. No man has had a better daughter, and I will feel impoverished and lonely without you in my camp.”

“Then you’ll be happy,” she wrote, “for I won’t marry him.”

“What?” asked Laban. “Have you lost your mind?”

Pillel said nothing, but she could feel his contempt for her just the same. Pillel believed that everyone should fulfil his role and keep to his place—certainly
he
did—and he had no use for those who refused, as she was refusing.

“Rebekah, you have to marry sometime,” said Father. “You have children of your own to bear, your own household to govern now. I’ve kept you here too long.”

Her previous words were still there in the dirt, and now she added, “Because he will never let me raise my children to serve God.”

Father’s expression darkened. “Ah, God, now in my old age thou sendest my own words back to me.”

Rebekah did not know what he was talking about. “What?” she wrote.

Grimly Father shook his head, and then spoke carefully, choosing his words. “When I was a younger man, I thought I would be another Abraham. I learned to read the holy writings, I felt the birthright like an angel leaning over my shoulder. I could not tolerate the slightest impurity—wasn’t it vital that I prepare my household to be the dwelling place of the Lord?” He interrupted his own story and looked at Rebekah. “The way you are now. So sure that you know what the will of God must be.”

Rebekah wrote in the dirt: “I know what you taught me.”

To her surprise, Father snatched the stick out of her hands and scratched out her words so vigorously that a cloud of dust rose within the tent. “The kingdom of God is not a walled city,” he said, “with guards to keep strangers out and citizens in. The kingdom of God is an open tent, with room in the shade for all who seek shelter.”

Rebekah reached again for the stick. “And when the wind blows?” she wrote.

“It was just a parable!” Father said impatiently. “It doesn’t have to be correct at every point! I’m teaching
you,
or have you forgotten who is the father here?”

These words left Rebekah trembling. She would never be disrespectful to her father, and yet her father was trying to tell her that she should marry Ezbaal, and she knew—she
knew
—that she could not obey.