Rebekah: Women of Genesis (46 page)

Why did he stop wanting to please her? She didn’t like to think of it, but it was possible that he simply gave up when it seemed she could not be pleased by anything he did. Maybe it seemed to him as he was growing up that anything he did well, Mother didn’t much care about, and anything she cared about, he did badly and had to be corrected.

Having thought of it, the idea preyed upon her. Did I cause this? If I had been less critical of him, would he have kept that generous, giving spirit in his relationship with me?

After several days in which Rebekah had lived with—and prayed about—an overwhelming sense of guilt about this, Esau came home with his brides for a visit. She saw how disdainful he was with his father—enough so that Judith, at least, looked a bit shocked—and Rebekah realized that while she might have been too critical of him, his father and Abraham had certainly not been, and Isaac now got even worse treatment than she did. Of course, that might be simply because he was blind so Esau could get away with more right in front of him. For all she knew, he mocked her viciously behind her back. But the important thing was that the parent who indulged him and approved of him all the time got treated as badly as, or worse than, the overly stern parent. It wasn’t the way they treated him. It was Esau. It was his own choice.

The girls were nice enough, though it made Rebekah feel old to have her son married to such children—even Judith seemed like a child to her. And she was glad that his wives were kind, and treated her and Isaac’s daughters well. Young Deborah, especially, hovered around Bashemath like a bee around a flower, wanting to take possession of her, which was not surprising, since Deborah was only a couple of years younger than the bride.

Which meant that soon they would need to arrange a marriage for her. It made Rebekah tired and sad, to think of her daughters getting married and leaving her. All this work to raise children, and just when they become interesting, everything changes. The girls get married and leave and you never see them again, and the boys—well, Esau, at least, had become a stranger in many ways.

Marriage did change him. It subdued him, a little. He still went hunting with Nebajoth, but they didn’t go into town anymore. Esau’s wives wanted him to stay home with them, and he was happy to oblige. In fact, Nebajoth got so bored that he actually got married, too.

And Esau turned out to be a reasonably competent herdsman. Apparently during all the years that he had avoided the work of the camp as much as possible, he still managed to pick up enough skill and knowledge not to embarrass himself with the men. And where the servants loved Jacob and trusted him, they were dazzled by Esau and vied for his attention in a way that made Rebekah a little sad for Jacob. He had to see the difference in the way they were treated, and she knew him well enough to know that though he would never speak of it, it must bother him. It must make him feel . . . unvalued.

Like Isaac.

What Jacob is going through, watching how Esau, after having ignored the herdsmen’s work for so many years, becomes the hero of the herders from the moment he finally pays attention to them—that’s what Isaac had to go through as well. It must have been just like this for him, whenever Ishmael came to visit, watching how everyone—Abraham included—hung on every word, laughed at every jest, jostled each other for pride of place, for the chance to be noticed by Ishmael. While Isaac was just . . . Isaac.

Abraham never disdained Isaac—quite the contrary, he loved his only son by his beloved Sarah. But Isaac never got to see his father look at him with those shining, dazzled eyes that Ishmael always got to see. That was the root of it all, the reason why Isaac had never been able to believe in his own value.

But that meant that poor Jacob’s experience was much worse, for unlike Isaac, he had only disdain from his father, which had recently turned to hostility. If Isaac’s life has been stained with a sense of worthlessness because of the contrast between him and Ishmael, how much more damage is Jacob going to suffer?

Of course, there was another difference—Jacob had never seen his father with a knife raised to kill him. But which was worse? At least Abraham had been commanded by God. Isaac’s dislike of Jacob was entirely his own choice.

And I don’t treat Esau the way Sarah treated Ishmael, for that matter. I did not play favorites. I expected them to follow the same rules. If Esau ended up in conflict with me and Jacob didn’t, it wasn’t by my choice.

It’s really Isaac’s fault. Why should Esau ever learn to obey me, when he knew Isaac would always indulge him?

And yet Isaac indulged Esau because Esau was everything Isaac wished he could have been. He couldn’t help how he loved this wild son. The seeds planted by Abraham and Sarah grew in Isaac and bore fruit in the way he treated his own sons. And it would happen again in the next generation. However hurt Jacob was, or however spoiled Esau was, it would show up in the way each treated his children. And so on, and so on, in a never-ending cycle that began with nothing worse than good people trying to do what was right and getting it wrong without meaning to.

Like my father, divorcing my mother for the sake of the children. Like my mother, defying my father because she truly believed that it would harm me if I weren’t offered to Asherah. Everyone trying to do the right thing.

Which of the right things I’m trying to do are really wrong?

Round and round in circles these thoughts went, day after day. Esau’s visit ended and camp life settled back to normal—but Rebekah noticed that the buoyancy had left Jacob, and he began to find excuses not to come and work on copying the holy writings with her and Isaac. She couldn’t blame him—Isaac’s answers were perfunctory now, as if answering Jacob were an onerous duty that he’d just as soon avoid.

Still, unpleasant as things were, they might have gone on in relative peace if Rebekah hadn’t come upon her younger two daughters, Sarah and Qira, playing in an odd way with their dolls. They were in the tent they shared with their older sister Deborah—much to Deborah’s disgust, of course, since she considered herself to be a woman and vastly above these mere children. Rebekah was seeking them out because she wanted them to help her make a robe, so they could learn some of the finer points of sewing and get some practice. To her shock, she found three poppets perched on top of a chest with lamps lighted in front of them, and both of the younger girls stark naked.

“What in the world are you doing?” Rebekah demanded.

Immediately the girls shrieked and dived for their clothing. Since they were so frantic to dress, they got everything inside out and backward and knotted and stuck, and by the time Rebekah had got them dressed again, she had had time to think about what they had been doing. She remembered seeing her mother kneel before an image of Asherah.

“What game were you playing?” asked Rebekah, keeping her voice calm so they’d not be afraid to tell her the truth.

“Just a game,” said Sarah.

Which meant that she knew she had been doing something wrong, and so didn’t want to name it.

“You were pretending that your dolls were gods, weren’t you?” said Rebekah.

Sarah clammed up—she had inherited her father’s taciturnity—but Qira burst into tears.

“Where did you see someone do this?” asked Rebekah.

Through her tears, Qira said, “Judith and Bashemath showed us.”

“They said for us not to tell,” said Sarah.

“If someone tells you
not
 to tell your mother something, then that means they know it’s wrong and want to hide it. So that’s exactly the thing that you
must
 tell me.”

“I promised not to,” said Sarah.

“If you promise to commit a terrible sin, will God punish you for breaking the promise?”

Sarah thought about that for a moment. “I suppose not,” she said.

“Why were you taking off your clothes, Sarah?”

“Because that’s how Judith and Bashemath did it.”

“In our house,” said Rebekah, “we worship only the Lord God. We make no images of him. We worship no images of any of the false gods, either.”

“We weren’t worshiping, we were just playing,” said Qira.

“Pretending,” said Sarah.

“No, children. I’m afraid that isn’t true. When you lit these lamps before your dolls and bowed down, you turned these dolls into images of false gods, and what you did was worship, whether you were sincere about it or not. So I’m going to have to take these dolls to your father and have him destroy them.”

They wailed and pleaded, but Rebekah was adamant. “You have turned these toys into images of gods,” she said. “No one did that but you, and I taught you all your life that images of gods are forbidden here.”

“But Judith’s and Bashemath’s gods weren’t destroyed!” said Qira.

“Darling girl, that’s because your father and I didn’t know they were worshiping them. But you may be sure that they
will
 be destroyed.”

“No, you can’t!” cried Sarah. “Then they’ll know we told!”

“But I knew before you told me. How else could you have learned such a thing? I’ll make sure they know you didn’t tell.”

Rebekah took the dolls and left her daughters weeping. There would be time to comfort them later. Isaac had to know.

She found him in his tent, of course. He heard her story, which she told as simply as possible, without comment, and when she was done he turned his face away from her. “My son’s wives have brought evil into my household,” he said. “Burn the dolls, and send me a man I can use as a messenger.”

Isaac sent the man with a command that Esau bring him the gods his wives had dared to worship in his own camp, so he could destroy them.

The message came back that his wives had not worshiped any gods, because they knew it was forbidden.

Isaac’s return message was short: Send me the gods, or send me the wives. One or the other will be destroyed. And he did not send it with a single messenger. He sent it with ten men, armed as if for war.

They came back with three statues of wood, two of stone, and one carved from the antler of a hart. Isaac had the wood burnt, the stone crushed, the antler ground to dust.

That evening, Esau himself arrived about dusk, his wives weeping behind him. They had walked the whole way, and the women’s feet were bloody. There was dried blood in their scalps, and bruises on their faces as well. Esau dragged them to his father’s tent and threw them to the ground.

“Here they are, Father!” shouted Esau. “The liars who told me they had no gods! The blasphemers who broke the oath they made to me, that they would forsake their old gods and never worship them again!”

Secretly Rebekah rejoiced to hear this. She had not known that Esau cared enough to exact such an oath from them.

Isaac came out of his tent and stood there in judgment, as Esau named their sins. “For idolatry they are worthy of death,” said Esau. “For breaking their oath to me, I should put them to death, or if I let them live, I should divorce them and send them out to be harlots. For lying to me and saying they had no gods, I have already beaten them. For teaching my sisters to imitate their evil idolatry, I have made them walk barefoot from Lahai-roi. Now, Father, you are the judge. Their sins against me I have punished. But their sins against God are for God’s prophet to punish.”

Esau’s talk of putting people to death or divorcing them filled Rebekah with dismay. If Rebekah was any judge of character, these women had never realized how serious Esau was about the religion of his father. They could hardly be blamed for that—Rebekah herself had not been sure until now that Esau even cared. But Judith and Bashemath could not repent of their sin and learn to serve the Lord with honest hearts if they were dead. And if Esau divorced them, they would hate God and never learn to love him.

“Husband,” said Rebekah. “May I speak on behalf of these women?”

Isaac looked surprised, and Esau turned to her with consternation on his face. “You would plead
for
them?” he asked.

“I think God will be better served if they are given a chance to repent of their sins and learn to obey their husband and keep their covenants.”

“I don’t want them near me,” said Esau. “I can’t believe anything they say to me.”

“You’re angry now, but that anger will pass, and you’ll see that from now on they’ll be honest with you. They don’t have lying hearts.”

The abject women, weeping, sobbed their agreement with Rebekah’s words.

“My father divorced my mother for a similar offense,” said Rebekah. “The result was that my brother and I grew up without a mother, and my mother never learned to love God, but worships Asherah to this day. Show them mercy, Isaac, and perhaps they will become worthy wives for your son Esau.”

There was silence for a while as Isaac thought. Finally he said, “Esau, you heard your mother plead for your wives. What do you think now?”

“If you judge that they should live, and that they should remain my wives, then I’ll take them back. But only because you command it.”

“Judith, Bashemath, you heard your husband’s mother plead for you. Will you learn to worship the Lord God, and serve only him and no other?”