Rebekah: Women of Genesis (26 page)

“Master!” answered Eliezer. “As you can see, I succeeded in the errand your father sent me on!”

Isaac finally reached them and greeted his steward with an embrace. Rebekah was glad to see that—he was a man who could show affection to a servant, who could value a man as a man. Then, as he and Eliezer exchanged pleasantries about the work in the fields and whether the journey had been hard or easy, he cast his gaze among the girls still perched on their camels, finally alighting on Deborah and then on Rebekah in her veil.

“I saw no one wearing a veil when I first caught sight of you,” said Isaac to Eliezer.

“The lady was afraid she might blind you with her beauty,” said Eliezer.

Isaac was obviously not sure how to take this. Nor did Rebekah much appreciate his little joke. “Eliezer thinks I was foolish to cover myself,” she said, “but I am pretending that this meeting is not happening, so that you can see me for the first time clean and rested, not weary and filthy and stinking from the road.”

Isaac smiled at her. “So we are not really talking.”

“This is all illusion,” she said. “A dream.”

“And yet everything else about the day is real.” He touched his chest. “
I
am real.”

“They told me nothing about you, sir,” said Rebekah, “except that you serve the God of Abraham, as I do.”

Deborah piped up from behind her. “He’s tall. And he has a pretty face.”

Isaac grinned at Deborah. “I know flattery when I hear it. I’m Isaac, son of Abraham. If this weren’t a dream, I’d ask you your name, my lady.”

“I’m not a lady,” said Deborah, blushing. “I’m only Deborah.”

“My nurse,” said Rebekah. “I grew up without a mother. It’s Deborah who filled that place in my childhood, and even now in my heart.”

“I am honored to meet the mother-in-her-heart of my bride.” He turned to Eliezer. “Am I to be told her name, or is this one of those frustrating dreams where you find out everything except what you most need to know?”

“Sir,” said Rebekah, “Eliezer has quite a story, and I’m sure my name will come up in the telling of it. Meanwhile I am eager to reach our destination, so I can prepare myself to meet the man I have promised to marry. So why don’t you two talk while the camels keep moving?”

Isaac raised an eyebrow and smiled at Eliezer. “Shy enough to wear a veil to meet me, but not at all shy about letting her wishes be known.”

Rebekah blushed under the veil. So she shouldn’t have made the request. But it would have been intolerable to have everyone stand there in the hot sun, making no forward progress, while Eliezer told him all that had happened. And despite his jesting comment, he apparently agreed with the wisdom of her plan, for he came to her and offered his hand. “May this man in your dream offer you his insubstantial hand to help you rise onto your imaginary camel?”

“The camel, sir, is real,” said Rebekah. “Because I never have such pungent stinks in my dreams.”

She put her hand in his and leaned on him lightly as she leapt up onto the camel’s rigging. In a moment she had herself arranged, and it was Isaac who gave the command for her camel to rise, and he took her camel’s reins and walked beside her. Eliezer had no choice but to come back and walk beside him. So she was within earshot as Eliezer told the story of his prayer at the well, and the sign God gave him.

Isaac heard of the signs and wonders without comment. Only at the end, when Eliezer had told him how it was Rebekah’s own choice that made it possible for them to begin the return on the very next morning, did Isaac speak. And that was only to say, “And when she came to the well, Eliezer, was she wearing the veil? Or did she have a face then?”

“She had,” said Eliezer, “the loveliest face I have ever seen.”

“Ah,” said Isaac.

“But that was not why I chose her,” said Eliezer.

“No, of course not,” said Isaac. “God chose her.”

They walked in silence for a little while.

“But I have one question,” said Isaac.

“Yes?” answered Eliezer.

“If she had been ugly, would you have asked her for a drink?”

Rebekah laughed. “Now
there
we come to the boundaries of faith,” she said. “Eliezer chose a sign that allowed him to pick which girls to ask for water.”

“It’s a good steward who takes every precaution,” said Isaac.

Eliezer shook his head. “You can joke about a sign from God.”

“I’m teasing
you,
Eliezer,” said Isaac. “Not the Lord God.” He looked up at Rebekah. “One thing that isn’t clear to me,” he said. “Am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?”

“Both,” she said.

“Then I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that, pleasant as this dream is so far, I can’t wait for it to end, so I can meet the woman whom, with Eliezer’s prior approval, God has chosen for me.”

“I am also eager for the dream to end,” said Rebekah.

“Because it’s hot under that veil?”

“Because I left my family to become your wife, not to ride a camel. Because now it feels as though everything up to now has been a dream, and I’m ready to awaken and begin my real life now.”

Isaac nodded and said nothing, then turned again and smiled up at her. “You could not have said anything that would have made me happier.”

Were his eyes glistening as he said it? Had she touched his heart? That wretched veil, it kept her from being sure what she had seen.

They talked on as they journeyed. Isaac answered her questions about the fields and orchards that they passed, and she answered his questions about her family and her uncles and their families. And more than once, as she saw his bantering wit, his kind way of speaking to and about the men and women they passed in the fields, and the keen understanding he brought to every subject he discussed, she silently spoke her thanks to God for letting her husband be such a man as this. There was none of Ezbaal’s arrogance. Isaac wasn’t trying to impress her with his authority or strength. He was simply being himself. Or if this was a pose, at least he had the wisdom to know that posing as a simple, good man would impress her far more than posing as a great lord. And if he weren’t a simple, good man, how would he know how a simple, good man would act? No, this was no pretense. He was the kind of man she could love. The kind of man whose love she wanted to earn.

Everything was perfect, except for the veil on her face, which began to seem completely unnecessary, something meant to help her cope with a fear she no longer felt. She almost took it off, except that the moment the thought formed and her hands began to move, she was filled with dread. What if he didn’t like her? Right now he was talking with a stranger behind a curtain. When the veil came down, when she passed through that curtain, would he greet her with a smile and say, Ah, it’s you, I’ve been waiting for you. Or recoil and say, I don’t know you.

“There is one thing,” said Isaac, “that you ought to know before you reach the camp.”

“Only one?”

“One that Eliezer didn’t know,” said Isaac.

Eliezer visibly perked up.

“Father has taken a woman.”

“What?” said Eliezer.

“A concubine, not a wife. Keturah.”

“How interesting,” said Eliezer.

To Rebekah, it sounded as if he were saying, “What a disaster.”

“He assures me that none of her children will be in line to inherit, and he said it in front of her, so there’d be no misunderstanding.” Isaac chuckled. “Then he told me that beyond that, it was none of my business.”

“Keturah,” said Eliezer, “will have a hard time taking the lady Sarah’s place.”

“Mother’s place,” said Isaac, “has not been taken. I didn’t come out here to Lahai-roi merely to watch for your coming, though I confess I spent more time watching the canyon mouth than working. I also brought something else.”

He indicated a direction with his head, and Eliezer looked and laughed.

Isaac explained to Rebekah. “My mother’s tent. Keturah may warm my father’s bed in his old age, but she isn’t the lady of the camp, and she won’t have anything that belonged to my mother.”

“I take it Keturah is not your . . . friend.”

“Oh, she’s a very dear friend. In fact, she offered herself to me several times. A couple of the offers came from her father, a Canaanite merchant with an enormous fortune, and a couple came from her. The first two had a dowry attached, quite a nice one. The second two offers came with . . . no complications other than the loss of my soul because of sin.”

“Ah,” said Rebekah. A woman who was determined to be part of Abraham’s family, one way or another, front door, back door, or under the side of the tent if need be. “So it’s true love.”

“I think she’s sincere enough. She believes in God, but takes rather a personal view of him. Thinks the only way to worship him is to be married to the birthright, one way or another. It was partly because Father was afraid I might marry her that he determined that I could not delay my marriage any longer.”

“Was there any danger of succumbing to her charms?” asked Rebekah.

Isaac looked at Eliezer, who looked back at him with a smirk. “She’s a charming girl,” Isaac said. “Very ambitious. Very possessive. Very . . .
organized.
While she’s there with Father, I don’t plan to spend much time in Kirjath-arba. Lahai-roi is a good place. And besides, my mother’s tent is here.”

“I appreciate your giving me this information. It will be useful, I think,” said Eliezer.

“Father’s a little prickly about this, because he thinks I’ll be jealous that Keturah is so in love with him.”

“And you’re not.”

“I’m annoyed,” said Isaac, “but not for any reason he thinks. The problem is that if I make any complaint about her, he won’t see it as a legitimate problem, he’ll see it as my finding fault because I’m jealous.”

“But Abraham is a just man.”

“If it came to an all-out conflict between me and Keturah, I would prevail, for many reasons. Father’s loyalty to his son. His memory of my mother. And the fact that in any quarrel between me and Keturah, I would be completely in the right.” He grinned at Rebekah. “But I foresaw that the bride my friend Eliezer would bring home for me would immediately seem to Keturah to be a dire threat to her place as queen of the camp.”

“Queen?”

“In all but name, and I suspect she whispers it when she thinks Father is asleep and no one else can hear. My concern was that you should not begin your married life having someone criticizing you and complaining about you constantly. Even though I would support you completely, why should Father’s old age be filled with conflict between his bride and his son? So we will set up our home here in Lahai-roi, and visit Father when we are invited, or when we choose. I thought you could bear Keturah’s charms more easily knowing each time that you would soon go home to a place where she has no authority.”

“That was very kind of you.”

“Not that I want to bias you against Keturah,” said Isaac. “Please form your own opinion of her.”

Eliezer glanced at Isaac with a sly smile.

Then, to Rebekah’s surprise, Isaac turned her camel’s head to the left and led the caravan off the main path toward the camp at Lahai-roi. A few minutes later, the camels were all kneeling, and servants were helping the girls down from their mounts. Rebekah was pleased that Isaac delegated Eliezer to help her down from her camel, and went himself to help Deborah. It was the perfect gesture of respect, exactly what would have been owed to Rebekah’s mother, had she been there, and Deborah was flattered and delighted by it.

Isaac had already determined which tent would be for Rebekah’s women, and either he had supposed she might have a chief servant or he was improvising, but either way he had a tent which he designated as belonging to Deborah alone. “I fear you will be lonely,” he said, “never sharing a tent with Rebekah again, so if you wish any of the other girls to sleep in your tent, you have only to tell me and it will be a great honor to the ones you choose. And when you wish to sleep alone, that will also be done.”

What Rebekah heard was that Isaac had very firmly informed Deborah that there was no possibility of her sharing Rebekah’s tent now.

“My betrothed is noble of heart as well as birth,” said Rebekah.

“And for the woman whom God has brought to me, I have no fine new tent to offer. Only this old one, much used.” And he gestured toward Sarah’s tent.

Tears came to Rebekah’s eyes. “I thought you brought it here to keep it from Keturah.”

“I brought it here,” he said, “so it could be the home of the woman most precious to me, as it has been all my life.”

“I hope,” said Rebekah. “With all my heart I hope. That I will be precious to you.”

“You already are,” said Isaac. “God has gone to great pains to choose a wife for me. I’d have to be a fool not to love the gift as well as the giver.”