Rebekah: Women of Genesis (39 page)

“Oh, is your father finished with me?”

“My father hasn’t been able to get a word in between your accusations,” said Isaac.

“My accusations! You’re the ones who called Jacob’s sweet little writings ‘false scriptures’! You’re the ones who said I was a curse on the family!”

“While we were waiting for you to return,” said Isaac, “I explained to Father that I thought he was wrong to burn the parchment in front of the boys. That it would have been better to leave it among the adults.”

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know he was going to burn it from the start. Why else would he have that fire burning in front of the tent where we never have a fire?”

“Now she accuses her husband of lying,” murmured Abraham.

“So you agree that you were wrong to burn the parchment?” Rebekah asked Abraham.

“No I do not,” said Abraham.

“I didn’t think so,” said Rebekah.

“And Isaac didn’t say that I agreed. He only said that
he
told me I was wrong.”

“Why do I find it so hard to imagine the scene? Isaac actually suggesting to his father that something he said was less than perfect.”

“Isaac isn’t as rash as I am,” said Abraham. “He speaks in private, when his words won’t shame me openly.”

“If only someone had been as thoughtful of poor Jacob. Not to mention Esau, who has now been shown as plainly as possible that it’s all right for him to despise his brother, because after all, his father and grandfather do.”

“That’s what Isaac said,” Abraham replied. “And maybe there
is
some truth to it. I was thinking only of the lesson about the scriptures. I didn’t think of what it might do to the way the boys regard each other.”

“So what prompted this sudden change? A moment ago you said you
weren’t
wrong.”

“Unlike you,” said Abraham, “I actually listen to what other people are saying, and occasionally allow their words to change my mind.”

This was so unfair that she couldn’t find words to answer him.

“Instead of listening only to think of arguments to destroy them with,” said Abraham.

“Like me.”

“Isn’t that what you were doing just now? Struggling to find some retort that would devastate me for daring to say that I was able to change my mind, and you were not?”

“Because you’re wrong,” she said, “and you can’t see it.”

“Sometimes I’m wrong, and like every other human being, I don’t see it until I do. And sometimes that takes longer than it should, in my ignorance. Which is made worse by the fact that I’m old and have the foolish idea that I might actually have learned something from my experiences. But you don’t have that problem, because you already know what’s right and wrong and what matters most and what doesn’t matter at all.”

“I’ve never made any such claim.”

“Of course you haven’t,” said Abraham. “To
claim
the supremacy of your judgment would show that you knew it was possible to doubt it.”

Her mind raced with sharp answers, but underneath it she could feel another thought that she couldn’t put in words, and it was that inarticulable thought that she knew most needed to be said.

So in the silence, there was a moment for Isaac’s voice to emerge again. “We are all good people,” he said, “trying to do good things for those we love. Because we disagree about what is the best thing to do doesn’t make any of us evil.”

Gentle as his voice was, it was a sharp yet fair rebuke to all of them, and from Abraham’s face, Rebekah could see that he felt it as keenly as she did. “I know,” she said. “But you treated me as if you thought I was horrible to have taught my son to read.”

“And you treated me as if you thought I was a monster for having taught my grandsons that the sacred writings are not to be trifled with.”

She started to renew the argument with a sharp retort, but again the unframed thought floating just under the level of consciousness distracted her from saying the harsh words that came to mind.

“Who is to say,” said Isaac, “which lesson was most important to learn today?”

And then the unspoken thought took shape. “Isaac, Father Abraham, do you see what’s happening in our family? This struggle between us is going to turn into a struggle between the boys. Esau and Jacob are as different as two brothers can be, but you are teaching Esau that he is the worthy, manly son and Jacob is weak and womanly.”

“While you’re teaching Jacob that he ought to covet the birthright.”

“I’m teaching him to love the words and stories of God,” said Rebekah.

And it was Abraham’s turn to visibly stifle the retort he so plainly wanted to say.

And when he spoke, it was not a retort at all. “They both need to learn it all,” he said. “They need to learn together. We’ve been wrong to try to keep Jacob away from the writings.” Abraham looked at Rebekah. “It’s the words the Lord gave you. Warning us that the younger would usurp the place of the older.”

“Those weren’t the words,” said Rebekah, “and it wasn’t a warning. It was just . . . a prophecy.”

“The Lord gives us prophecies so we can figure out what to do before the moment of decision arrives.”

“Yes,” said Rebekah. “And if the younger will someday rule, shouldn’t he be prepared to do it righteously?”

“It’s not his right to do it at all,” said Abraham.

“What if he has to rule because the older brother refuses to do it?” asked Rebekah. “Then it
would
be his right, even if he never sought it.”

“But you
do
seek it for him,” said Isaac softly.

“I don’t!” cried Rebekah. “I want Esau to be worthy, I want him to—”

“How could he ever have any kind of faith or confidence, when you disapprove of everything he does?”

“And you
approve
of everything!”

“So he doesn’t grow up surrounded by rebukes at every turn.”

“And how does Jacob feel, with you two always praising Esau and completely ignoring him?”

“When do we have a chance even to see who Jacob is, when he’s always with you and never with me?” said Isaac.

“He wants to be with you, but you never even see him. All you see is Esau.”

“Because Jacob just . . . just tags along, just
clings
instead of
doing
things.”

“He does things,” said Rebekah. “But when he tends the animals, you mock him for hugging them instead of throwing rocks at them and . . . and
blinding
them.” She couldn’t help weeping at the unfairness of Isaac’s treatment of Jacob.

“How can we love each other so much,” said Isaac, “and yet see nothing but bad in the way we treat our sons?”

“All Jacob wants is your love.”

“He has my love. You know he does, and
he
knows he does.”

And that was true. Rebekah realized it now, that Isaac was affectionate with Jacob, that he listened to him—which was sometimes a challenge, since Jacob was a determined talker, more like Rebekah than like Isaac in that way. “Yes, you’re right, it’s not your love that he’s missing, it’s . . . your respect.”

“Respect is earned,” said Abraham.

“And how has Esau earned it? What great deeds of righteousness?”

“They’re five. They can’t tell right from wrong yet,” said Abraham. “Esau’s willfulness is not wicked.”

“But it’s not a great achievement, either,” said Rebekah. “You and Isaac revel in it as if it were something to be proud of.”

“When I was Esau’s age,” said Abraham, “I already had a mind of my own.”

“So does Jacob,” said Rebekah. “But it’s not wrong that he’s able to listen and
change
his mind when he learns what is expected of him.”

“No, it’s not wrong,” said Abraham.

Isaac sighed. “At long last,” he said, “the two of you are actually trying to understand each other.”

“So when will the two of
you
try it?” asked Abraham. He sounded as if he meant them to take the remark as a joke.

“It takes a lifetime,” said Isaac. “Or so Mother told me.”

What Rebekah did not say was, When will
you
two begin to understand each other? They were on the verge of making peace. She was not going to spoil it by provoking a new argument in which she would definitely be the outsider with no right to speak.

They ended the conversation with a new resolve to treat the boys even-handedly, and from that day forward, Abraham included Jacob with Esau in his lessons, and Isaac included Jacob with Esau when he taught them how to care for animals, and how to hunt, and how to fight in battle. Teaching them side by side was not always pleasant, because the two competed relentlessly, and each took it hard when he came out second best. But that competition made it so Esau worked hard at his reading in order to catch up with Jacob, who was so far ahead, and it made Jacob work hard at the games of hunting and war at which Esau excelled and in which Jacob had shown so little interest before.

And now that they were all trying to work together to raise the boys well, Rebekah found that Abraham was not at all autocratic and arbitrary. He had reasons for everything he decided, and when she spoke to him respectfully instead of picking a quarrel, he listened to her and explained things to her so that most of the time they ended up in agreement. Isaac seemed much happier, too, to have peace between his father and his wife, and as she eventually became pregnant with each of the three girls, he could not have been more attentive.

But the tensions were all still there. Working in harmony did not mean that they were truly of one mind, only that they were determined to find a way to keep the peace and willing to compromise with or tolerate each other in order to do it.

When the twins were old enough that they began to reach the stature of men, and beards first began to grow on their faces—heavily on Esau’s face, lightly on Jacob’s—Abraham began to grow not just frail, but unwell, with pains that kept him from rising from his bed more and more hours of each day, until it was clear to everyone that he was dying. One by one he called his sons and grandsons to him and blessed them—beginning with Ishmael and his sons, and then Keturah’s sons and the grandsons who were old enough to sit still under Abraham’s hands. Each of Keturah’s sons was given a substantial gift of breeding stock that would bring them prosperity if they cared for them properly, along with a few good servants to help them with the labor and protection of their household. Keturah herself was given a household, and her sons were charged with helping maintain her all the rest of her life with the flocks and herds that Abraham settled upon her.

So blessed was Abraham with flocks and herds, lands and servants, that when he had given gifts to all his sons and to his last wife, and they had all moved away to their own places of settlement, it hardly seemed that the wealth that would be inherited by Isaac was diminished at all.

Abraham blessed Esau and Jacob, charging them especially with a solemn obligation not to take wives from among the daughters of the Canaanites, “or your children will grow up to hate God and love the idols of Canaan.” Both boys vowed to obey him in this, and to serve God all their lives.

Then, to Rebekah’s surprise, he called her in. He did not lay hands on her head, but he talked to her for a while, and his words were gentle. “I think I looked for you to be Sarah,” said Abraham, “and in some ways you have been—in your strength and boldness and . . . your desire to serve God. Maybe in that you’re even fiercer than Sarah was.”

Rebekah blushed at the thought that in Abraham’s eyes she might have surpassed Sarah in anything at all. And she found that she liked the word “fierce” when applied to her faith.

“But there are ways that you aren’t like Sarah, and ways that I didn’t want you to be like her because I thought she and I had made mistakes together with our sons,” said Abraham.

That again, thought Rebekah. But on his deathbed she would not argue.

“Especially . . .”

Oh, please, don’t show disrespect to my husband now!

“ . . . Ishmael.”

Rebekah was glad she had held her tongue.

“Sometimes the things we do out of fear help to bring about the very things we dreaded. But what’s done is done, and like every man and woman, Ishmael has to do the best he can with the errors of his parents. As your children will become the men and women they choose to be, either because of or in spite of what you and Isaac do well or badly in raising them.”

These words filled her with confidence, even though she also heard them as a warning and was sure Abraham meant them partly that way as well. It was good to remember that the children were themselves first and eternally, and sons and daughters only second.

“Be good to your husband, Rebekah,” said Abraham. “You are the fire in his hearth. He wasn’t complete until you came to him.” He laughed, a papery dry laugh that made her think of locusts on a dry desert wind. “What man
is
complete, without a woman who completes him and needs him as much in her turn?”