Rebekah (21 page)

Later that night as she rested beside Isaac, she could not
sleep and wondered how he could so easily put it all aside. She turned over once, twice, until he stirred.

“Is everything all right, my love?” His words were groggy, but he rose up on one elbow to look at her. “Try to rest. It will be morning soon.”

“I cannot rest. How can you sleep after the way he treated you?” She could not shake the anger, even after Isaac had already assured her that Ishmael meant no harm. It was his way, and he wasn’t likely to change.

“Ishmael has mocked me since I was a small boy, beloved. It is why my mother had my father cast him out. It is his hurt and anger that speak. Do you not see this?” His patient tone defused some of her anger, and she leaned into him, deflated.

“I am trying, my lord.”

His arms came around her, and she rested her head against his shoulder.

“My very life usurped Ishmael’s place as my father’s only heir. And though my father loves him, Ishmael does not know it. Not in his heart where love is felt.” He kissed the top of her head and stifled a yawn.

“I am sorry I woke you,” she whispered, suddenly seeing Ishmael in a new light. All of the taunts and laughter now evoked a sense of pity, compassion even. “If only God could have chosen you both as sons of the promise and kept you both with your father.”

“It was not meant to be,” Isaac said, yawning wider this time.

He rolled onto his back, and she soon heard the sound of his even breathing as she pondered his words. Surely God had a purpose for Ishmael too. Only one could be heir to the promise, but God had spoken to Ishmael’s mother and called him by name. Surely . . .

But Ishmael did not recognize what Isaac seemed to see so clearly. He was too blinded by his bitterness.

 17 

Rebekah followed the sound of the lone flute, its minor tones drawing her feet forward—a swallow in search of its mourning dove. The grasses where the sheep grazed were coarse, picking through the open sides of her leather sandals, but she walked on, a basket on her arm, and spotted Isaac sitting in the shade of a terebinth tree playing the haunting melody.

How he made the flute sound so much like the actual birds he mimicked, she could not begin to tell. The skill was one she admired, but since Ishmael’s departure, the solitude Isaac sought to craft the flute not only confused but troubled her.

“There you are.” She wove her way among the sheep and approached his side.

He set the flute among the grasses and looked up, his mouth tipping in a welcoming smile. “You were looking for me?”

“I have not seen you in days, my lord. Perhaps you enjoy the time alone, but I do not.”

In the three months since they had settled in Beer-lahai-roi, she had rarely joined him in the fields. She’d been too busy with dying, spinning, and weaving the yarn from the wool he had shorn, supervising the servants, and showing specific women how to extract the dyes from the henna trees, pomegranate peels, nuts, and crocuses.

He patted the ground beside him and reached to take the basket from her. She handed it to him and settled her skirts around her.

“I planned to return home this evening,” he said, lifting the basket’s cloth cover and peering inside. “What did you bring me?”

She laughed. “Your favorite seasoned bread and some thick chunks of the sheep cheese I’ve been hoarding. I made it the way your mother used to. And some date cakes of my own creation.”

Eliezer’s wife Lila had gladly shared Sarah’s recipes with Rebekah when they had stopped by during the sheep shearing several weeks back, but she enjoyed trying her hand at new dishes when they had the spices or fruits on hand to do so.

Isaac gave her a mischievous smile and lifted the contents from the basket. He bit off a hunk of the bread, then tore a piece from the other half and handed it to her. “I daresay my mother would be proud of your skills.” His look grew more serious then, as if the mention of his mother still carried the weight of sadness. “As am I.”

She felt the heat of a blush fill her cheeks, suddenly shy at his compliment. “Thank you, my lord.” She looked at the bread he had handed to her and nibbled the end, then met his gaze.

Silence settled between them, broken only by the sounds of the sheep rustling the grasses, bleating here and there, and the birds squawking in the air above.

“Why do you prefer to spend so much time here, rather than let the servants stay with the sheep?” The question had burned within her during his absence.

He glanced at her, then looked into the distance where the sheep grazed.

“I am sorry, my lord. Perhaps I should not have spoken.”

He looked at her and smiled. “Of course you should. I fear
that sometimes I am not the husband to you that you need.” He glanced beyond her as if his admission were too painful to face. “I am used to often being alone.”

She waited, knowing he wanted to say more, wishing he did not ponder every word he uttered. “What do you do when you are alone besides carve new instruments or study the plants in the desert?”

A sigh escaped him. “I think about God.” He turned penetrating eyes on her. “I pray to understand Him through the things He has made. And I study the details of all that grows, and even the things that don’t.”

Her heart stilled with his words, and she wondered that he should be so introspective. “Has God met you here?” She glanced around, imagining she could see Him hovering nearby.

He shook his head. “Not in person. Though I have heard His voice.”

Awe filled her and her eyes grew wide. “What does His voice sound like? And when did you hear it?” Why had he never told her this before?

“It was a long time ago. When I was a young man.” He looked beyond her again, his dark eyes clouded as they often were when he shadowed his feelings.

“Do not pull away from me, Isaac. Please.” She took his hand in hers. “Tell me.” She rubbed circles along his palm and felt his breath release.

The silence grew so deep she searched to fill it, finding and discarding more thoughts than she could count, most of them not worthy of utterance. At last he intertwined their fingers and looked deeply into her eyes.

“I intended to tell you the story when I could show you where it took place.”

“But I long to know it now. Please do not continue to withhold it from me, my lord. I can tell that it troubles you, that you wake in the night with a start and your breath comes too
fast.” She pulled his hand to her lips, kissing his fingers. “I would help you, but how can I do so if you will not confide in me? Should not a marriage be based on trust in one another?”

He nodded his agreement. “Yes, of course. The story is so long ago. It should not matter to us now.”

“But it does. It is why you spend so little time with your father, is it not?”

He looked at her intently, and she feared he would not answer, but at last he gave a defeated sigh. He stood and pulled her up beside him, the food left beneath the tree. “Walk with me.”

They moved together as one, his hand clasped tightly to hers. He said nothing as they passed several lambs that barely noticed their presence, until at last he came to one of the few rams among the flock. He stopped at its side, placed a hand on one of its horns. The ram stilled and lifted its head, and then as though recognizing Isaac’s touch, it turned and looked at him.

“I owe my life to God, and to such a ram who took my place.” He faced her, releasing the ram’s horn. “Years ago, before my father married Keturah, back when my mother and father were happy together, when our home was filled with joy and laughter, God spoke to my father. At least that is how he tells it. I do not know. But I do not doubt him because God spoke to him again later. That is when I heard His voice.”

Rebekah’s breath caught. He gripped her hand, and they walked farther among the flock, Isaac touching a ewe here and a newborn lamb there.

“God told my father to take me up to a mountain, three days’ journey from where we lived, and to offer his son, his only son whom he loved, as a sacrifice there on the mountain.”

“The only son whom he loved? You?” Her heart kicked over at the hurt that flickered in her husband’s dark gaze.

He nodded. “So he took me, along with Haviv and Nadab,
three days’ journey to Moriah. When we neared the place God had told him about, my father left the servants and took only me farther up the mountain.” He paused, ran a hand over his beard, and she knew the memory still pained him. He blew out a breath. “I carried the wood and my father carried the torch, but there was no ram to offer as the sacrifice. So I asked my father, ‘Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?’ and he said, ‘God Himself will provide a lamb.’ I did not understand until he had built the altar and then came toward me with the rope he had strapped to his belt.”

Rebekah’s pulse thumped harder, and she could not keep the horror from her expression. “What did you do?”

Surely he’d fought back. Told his father no. Run away. But as she searched his gaze, she knew he had done none of these.

“I knew in that instant that my father intended to bind me like an animal and place me on the stones and wood. I would die on that mount without ever seeing my mother again, without ever loving a woman or fathering a son. Either my promised birth had been a cruel joke, or God would bring me to life again. But I knew without question that my father intended to kill me. I could have stopped him, for I was stronger than he. But I did not have the will to do so. He would prevail because I would let him.”

“But . . . why? Why not run away at least?”

Her own father’s face flashed in her mind’s eye, and she could not fathom him ever doing such a thing to her. She would have fallen at his feet and wept, begging him for mercy. Did Isaac plead for such a thing? She had heard the tales of child sacrifice on the altars of foreign gods and could never understand how a god could request such a thing. And how on earth could a father ever justify killing his child?

“Because I knew that God had commanded it. My father’s heart was breaking with every step we took up that mountain. He was determined to obey what he did not understand, but
he did not like it. His hands shook as he bound me. I could have overcome him with little effort.”

But he had not made that effort. Rebekah tried to wrap her mind around the thought, but the horror of it still overpowered any rational conclusion. “What happened?”

“He tightened the rope around my hands and feet.” His cheeks darkened as if the memory still shamed him. “And he lifted me onto the wood. The branches poked through the fabric of my tunic, stinging like nettles . . .” He choked and looked away. “I wanted to beg him for mercy, but my throat closed tight against the need to weep. I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, and when I opened them again, my father stood over me, weeping, his knife raised above me. ‘Forgive me, my son,’ he said, and then he readied the knife at my throat, raised it again, and quickly lowered his arm.

“I waited for the pain I knew would come, knowing my father would make the cut swift and deep so I would not suffer. But a loud boom startled him, and he dropped the knife in the dust beside the altar.”

Rebekah released a breath she had been holding, though her heart continued to pound.

Isaac squeezed her hand. “That’s when I heard His voice. He called to my father, saying, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’ My father called back, ‘Here I am.’ And the voice said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.’ That’s when we found the ram in a thicket. My father sacrificed the ram in my place.”

Isaac had circled them back to the tree where the basket of food still lay. A trail of ants had found a piece of the cheese he had dropped, and Rebekah would have snatched it up and brushed it off if not for the pressure of Isaac’s hand in hers.

He turned her to face him. “So now you know.”

“Thank you for telling me.” She touched his cheek. “Not
every man would submit to such a thing. Not every man would be a willing partner to what God intended.”

“My mother did not see it that way.” The shadow passed before his eyes once more. “Things were never the same after that. She could never forgive my father for putting my life in such danger.”