Rebekah: Women of Genesis (32 page)

“I simply didn’t know,” said Rebekah, “that it was anything more complicated than a straight cut. Does Ishmael scallop the edges?”

Ishmael laughed heartily. “It’s not really the cutting,” he said. “It’s taking off as much as you can without removing anything that should be left attached.”

“It’s not a matter of skill,” said Abraham impatiently. “Isaac has circumcised five of my sons. Why not let Ishmael circumcise this one?”

Once Abraham had spoken, no one was interested in arguing the point. So it was Ishmael who stood before Abraham and made the baby give that little screech at the sudden discovery that really painful things could happen now that he was out of the womb—even with adults standing around watching.

Ishmael could not resist showing off a little. As Shuach cried lustily, Ishmael turned around, brandishing the knife, and asked innocently, “Anyone else?”

Rebekah laughed because it was genuinely funny, and yet was angry because this was a solemn occasion and not a time for jokes.

Then Abraham stood up slowly from the ground, Eliezer and Isaac helping him to rise, and reached out to take the baby. “Serve God all the days of your life!” he said to the baby.

Then he turned to Rebekah and said, irritably, “And how long am I supposed to wait for my grandson?”

She couldn’t believe he had asked her such a thing in front of everyone.

“That’s a question better asked of God,” said Rebekah, “than of me.”

“I’m old, and I want to see my grandson before I die!” Abraham turned to Isaac. “Why haven’t your prayers been granted, that’s what I want to know. What sin stands between you two and the favor of the Lord? Is it yours, or hers?”

Was Abraham joking? Rebekah had no way to tell—the remark was so outrageous that it had to have been meant ironically. But even if it was intended as a jest, it wasn’t funny.

Isaac said nothing, of course.

Except that this time he should have spoken, Rebekah thought. It was wrong of him to leave her undefended. “I have repented of every sin I’ve known of as soon as I recognized it,” said Rebekah, “and prayed for God’s forgiveness. But if you know of any other sins I have committed, I’d be grateful if you would take me aside privately and tell me about them.”

If Abraham noticed the implied complaint that he was accusing her so publicly, he gave no sign of it, except to turn from her to Isaac. “You’re a high priest, aren’t you? Ordained with the power of God? Well, use it!”

Ishmael was enjoying all this enormously, Rebekah could see, even though he kept his head down and seemed to be concentrating on cleaning his knife.

Isaac finally answered. “I don’t trouble the Lord, asking for blessings he’s already promised to give.”

“What does that mean? Aren’t you even praying for a baby? Is that it?”

“We pray,” said Rebekah.

At the same moment, Isaac answered, “Of course not.”

Oh, thought Rebekah. He
isn’t
praying for a baby?

“You taught me,” said Isaac, “that it’s foolish to pray for the sun to rise, when the Lord has ordered the universe in such a way that it always rises.”

“Yes, well, are you always having babies?” asked Abraham.

“The Lord has said that I will,” said Isaac.

Ishmael spoke up. “I think the Lord promised Father that his descendants would be as numerous as the sands of the sea, but I’ve never heard that the promise was limited to his descendants through you.” Ishmael was smiling, but to Rebekah his envy and bitterness seemed painfully plain. “I’ve given him twelve grandsons, which isn’t a bad start.”

Isaac looked at his older brother mildly and said, “I can wait for the Lord.”

“Well, you might think of
me
in all this extravagant patience and meekness of yours,” said Abraham. “I’m not going to live forever, much as it might seem that way.” Abraham smiled at both his sons, and Rebekah saw how deftly he and Isaac had kept Ishmael’s envy from provoking any kind of confrontation.

Then Abraham turned to Rebekah. “You asked me to name the sin that’s keeping you from having a baby. Well, now I know what it is. Pride! You two are so proud of having perfect faith that you haven’t even bothered to humble yourselves and
ask
the Lord for a son!”

Rebekah longed to make some sharp retort—something about how much good it did for him and Sarah, given how long the two of
them
prayed for a baby. But one does not affront the patriarch in front of company. Especially when arguing with him would involve insisting that yes she
was
humble.

“Father,” said Isaac, “as always, I am taught by you. Rebekah and I will return to our tent at once and pray for the Lord to grant us a son. I will pray that the next circumcision in this household will be that of our boy.”

He took Rebekah’s hand and led her through the crowd of family and servants, which parted for them.

In the tent, Rebekah stopped by the door and, with a suppressed cry of rage, she waved her arms around like a madwoman. “I could scream,” she said when her momentary childish display was over.

“I appreciate your controlling that impulse,” said Isaac. “I appreciate even more the fact that you did not argue with Father. He never used to be this way, when he was younger. He just . . . says what’s on his mind. He didn’t mean to shame us.”

“But he
did
shame us all the same,” said Rebekah. “We’ve done no wrong.”

“I’m not sure about that,” said Isaac. “Maybe it
was
a kind of pride, for me not to pray for a son.”

“It was faith, not pride,” said Rebekah. “And one thing’s certain. I will never raise our children under their grandfather’s control. The last thing children need is someone who always says whatever’s on his mind. They’re too fragile for that.”

Isaac looked at her with deep sadness in his eyes. “But what if it would be better for our son to be raised under the influence of a stronger man than me?”

“There is no stronger man than you,” said Rebekah.

To which Isaac answered not a word.

He stood in the middle of their tent—not the largest guest tent, either, since Ishmael had that—and raised his arms toward heaven and began to speak to God. Rebekah loved to hear Isaac pray, because he did not speak in a public voice meant to be heard by others, and there were no fine phrases. Rather he prayed as if he were talking to a dear friend or loving father, his voice full of love and trust as he poured out his heart in simple language.

He asked the Lord to forgive him for not praying before. “I don’t know why I didn’t, but it’s an evil spirit that counsels a man not to pray, and I’m glad you inspired Father to wake me up to my error.” He explained how much he and Rebekah longed for a child. One of the things he said touched her especially. “Rebekah is the greatest blessing a man could have in his life. She has brought me nothing but happiness, and gives the same gift to all the people around her.” Rebekah was pretty sure this wasn’t actually true, but she was glad her husband thought so.

“She deserves to have this reproach taken away from her,” Isaac went on. “Fill her arms with sons, Father. Whether her husband is worthy or not,
she
is worthy.”

He went on, talking through all his feelings, all his hopes and dreams for his sons, along with all of Rebekah’s yearnings that she had shared with him over the years—and some that she had not. As he talked, tears came to her eyes and finally streamed down her cheeks, for she could tell that his words were not coming only from him, but God was in them; God was teaching her husband the words he should say to God in prayer.

Isaac, too, wept in the midst of his entreaties.

But when he was done with the prayer and sank to his knees and bowed his head, as worn out as she had ever seen him, even after a day’s work, she realized there was one thing he had not said. In all his reasoning with the Lord, he had never mentioned Abraham’s desire to have Isaac’s heir born while he was still alive to see it.

Well, that’s right, thought Rebekah. Let Abraham put that in his own prayers and see what the Lord wants to do about it.

The silence lingered for a while. Then Isaac sighed and buried his face in his hands. “Those were hard words to say,” he said.

“I’m glad you said them,” she answered.

“And do you know why they were so hard?” asked Isaac.

“No.”

“Because Father told me to say them.”

“Not those exact words.”

“It made me feel like a little child, to have my father tell me to go say my prayers.” Isaac gave a quiet little laugh. “But the fault is mine, because apparently I
did
 need my father to tell me.”

“And you were humble enough to do it when he told you to,” said Rebekah. “I’m afraid I’m so stubborn and rebellious that it would have taken me days to cool off enough to realize that he was only commanding me to do what I wanted to do already.”

“Well,” said Isaac. “Now it’s done.”

“Not quite,” said Rebekah.

“What else?” he asked. “I’m all talked out.”

“Good,” she said. “Because the next part doesn’t have much talking in it.”

Chapter 12

The rest of the festivities passed peacefully enough. Abraham didn’t single them out for any more humiliation, and Ishmael made no more gibes. As for Isaac, he acted as if nothing had happened, talking cheerfully with everyone as he always did. Nor did he give any sign that he noticed how there was always a crowd gathered around Ishmael; he was often in that crowd himself, and now that Ishmael wasn’t jabbing at him, they even seemed to enjoy each other’s company. It occurred to Rebekah that if they hadn’t been brothers, they might have been friends, in the weird way that people of almost opposite personalities often become close, admiring in the other the traits they lacked in themselves. For once the rivalry had receded into the background—for the moment—Ishmael seemed genuinely interested in the things Isaac talked about.

In particular, Ishmael listened closely to Isaac’s explanation of something he had been piecing together from the various records. “To put it plainly,” said Isaac, “the world is drying out, at least this part of it. Until grandfather Terah’s time, droughts were rare and brief. The problem was far more likely to be flooding. And the land we move through used to be very different. Tall grasses and trees—everywhere, groves and stands and single trees. And seasonal streams in areas where there’s nothing but dust or sand today. I think it’s safe to say the world has changed. The drought never ended. We just got used to it. We found ways to work around it. To live in spite of it.”

Ishmael got caught up in the details of the evidence, how Isaac had discovered this in the casual mentions of animals that used to be hunted in regions where no one could remember ever seeing them—and some animals that seemed to be of great size but whose names now meant nothing at all to Isaac. “What’s a curelom?” he asked. “Does anyone know?” Of course no one did. “Well, it was big, and now it’s gone. Hunted or driven or droughted into oblivion.”

“Or it got a new name,” said Ishmael.

“Quite possible,” said Isaac. “That’s the problem with not having the original writers here to talk to.”

Rebekah was glad to see them being excited together about the holy writings. But of course the information Isaac had been working on was not particularly holy. It made her all the hungrier to have a look at them, and a little bit more irritated that she could not.

On the way home, after a week in Kirjath-arba, Rebekah found herself getting nauseated from the swaying of the camel. After throwing up twice, she had to get off and walk.

When she was still nauseated the next two evenings, without coming anywhere near a camel, she began to suspect that it might be with her the way it was with some women, who threw up frequently during the early stages of pregnancy. She said nothing about it to anyone, but of course word got around that she was sick most days, and that led to the inevitable gossip, so that only two weeks later Isaac came to her and said, “Am I going to be the last to know?”

“Last to know what?”

“That you’re expecting a baby.”

“No, you’re apparently second from last, since
I
don’t know.”

“You don’t? Then why are all the men talking about how all the women are talking about how you’re throwing up all the time because you’re pregnant?”

“Because I’ve been throwing up a lot, and whether I’m pregnant is always one of the most thrilling topics of speculation in this household.”

“So . . . you’re not pregnant.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then you
are
pregnant.”

“I don’t know.”

“What are you doing to me? Either you are or you aren’t.”

“That’s true. Either I am or I’m not. But it’s too soon for me to be sure. I might just have some disease. Or there might be some food my body suddenly doesn’t like.”