Rebekah: Women of Genesis (37 page)

And then he spoiled it all by saying, “And
this
boy will grow up to be a
man.
”

It made her want to scream with frustration. Didn’t Abraham see how utterly insulting his remark was? It implied that if they hadn’t brought Esau to Abraham, the boy would
not
 have grown up to be a real man. It also implied that some other boy had not grown up to be a man, and whom could he mean but Isaac?

He’s an old man who says what’s on his mind, Rebekah reminded herself.

He’s an old man who should know better, she answered silently.

And I’m still the mother of both my sons. I’ll cling to what I have, and leave God to watch out for the things that I can’t control.

The circumcision was a simple ceremony. Isaac did it himself, and because Ishmael did not make the journey, though Keturah’s sons were all on hand, there was no tension in the camp, only rejoicing.

And when the festivities ended and they settled in to their new life in Kirjath-arba, Rebekah was pleasantly surprised that she did not have the constant interference from Keturah that she had expected. Keturah came by at least once a day, but she offered no advice or criticism. Instead she brought figs or dates, or curdled milk or fresh cheese or some other particular treat, and cooed over Rebekah’s sons without ever comparing them to her own.

When Rebekah commented on this to Isaac, he only smiled.

“You did something,” Rebekah said.

“Father did,” said Isaac.

“But you asked him to.”

“I suggested to him that it was not so much him that you wanted to avoid here in Kirjath-arba, but Keturah. He understood immediately.”

For some reason, it really bothered her that Isaac would say such a thing to Abraham. “If that had been all, I would never have refused to come.”

“You’re here now, and Father doesn’t feel as hurt and confused as he did, so what’s the harm if I leaned a little more heavily on one side of the story than another?”

Now she realized why it bothered her so much. It was a lie between a son and his father. And she had no patience with people who told lies to the ones who trusted them most. “The way my father led me to believe my mother was dead, because it made things a little easier to explain?”

Isaac frowned. “I think your father’s story made things easier for himself, while
my
story made things easier for my father.”

She wasn’t letting him off so easily. “And therefore easier for you, too.”

Isaac thought for a moment, then got up as if to leave.

Suddenly all her words to him came back to her and she realized how awful she had been. “Wait, Isaac, please, I wasn’t calling you a liar.”

Isaac stood there, saying nothing.

“All right, I was, but I was wrong. It’s not the same thing at all.”

“Rebekah, I have work to do. Let’s not make a quarrel out of this. Whether you like what I said or not, my purpose was to make things easier for
you.
”

“Please don’t go, Isaac. I won’t quarrel. I really—what I want is to know what you meant by saying that your father felt—what did you say?—hurt and confused. I never saw that.”

“I did,” said Isaac. “I know him, so I know what it looks like.”

“All I ever saw was him being stubborn. And disdainful of both of us.”

“Rebekah, my father is a kind man. A loving, generous man. But this whole business with children—it frightens him. It’s the most important thing in life, having children, raising them. And he thinks he didn’t do a very good job.”

“That’s what makes me furious with him! He says it right in front of you, as if you were a terrible disappointment to him.”

“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” said Isaac. “But it’s not as if it’s a secret. People have only to meet Ishmael, and then meet me, to know that any father would be disappointed that I was the heir, and Ishmael was not. Ishmael has the strength to hold on to what he’s been given.”

“To the cattle, yes. The sheep, the men with swords, the
things,
yes.”

“It’s how the world measures a man, Rebekah. It’s as unfair as the way the world measures women according to the children they’ve produced. My mother was a great woman before she gave birth to me. You were the best woman alive even before these boys were born.”

She waved his flattery aside. “But a prophet of God shouldn’t measure his son the way the world does. No father should.”

“How did this become about me?” asked Isaac. “And why are we discussing this?”

“Because I want to understand your father. I loved him all my life, and now . . . now he seems to be my most relentless opponent.”

“How can you say that? We live in the circle of his protection, his love and goodness are all around us in the loyalty and love of the men and women who serve him. He’s my father!”

“What greater enemy could I have, than the man who hurts my husband most deeply and who wants to raise our firstborn without our influence?”

“That’s not who my father is at all.”

“It’s all I’ve seen.”

Isaac just stood there, shaking his head.

“Then explain it to me!” Rebekah pleaded.

“Maybe the best reason for us to come to Kirjath-arba is for you to see who my father really is.”

“Maybe I’ll see who he is about the same time he sees who
you
are.”

“He sees me,” said Isaac. “You don’t. But I’m glad you don’t. It feels good to have your love and respect, even though the fact that I don’t deserve it turns it to ashes sometimes in my mouth.”

She would have answered that, but he kissed her to silence her and then Esau started complaining and Rebekah had no choice but to let Isaac leave.

As the boys learned to walk and talk, toddling about the camp, the differences between them became clear to everyone. If there was something to climb, Esau climbed it; something to get stuck in, Esau was stuck in it. Rebekah assigned two of her handmaidens to take turns watching Esau even when he was sleeping—it took him only a few moments after waking up to be in a place where he might fall into a crevice or tumble onto a fire, or where a scorpion or a serpent or even a prowling lion might find him. It did no good to tell Esau what to do—he was deaf whenever he was being told what he may not do.

Jacob, on the other hand, while he was every bit as curious, was also obedient. When Rebekah told him not to follow his brother into danger, he heard her, and while he might protest, he stayed close by. And he was more predictable. Once he got interested in something, he would stay at it for hours. Not that what he did was always good. He once dug up an entire row of onions just to see if they all had those little bulbs growing among their roots under the soil, and he once endangered the whole camp by systematically dropping rocks down the well to hear them splash, running the risk of filling it higher than the water level. Jacob seemed oblivious to the rebukes of the servants until Rebekah explained to him why it was bad to fill the well with rocks. “That’s something an enemy might do,” said Rebekah. “We protect our own wells and keep the water clear so we and all the animals can have plenty to drink.” When he understood that he might have deprived the flocks of their water, he began to cry, and he never threw anything down a well again.

Esau and Jacob were both fascinated by animals, but again, in different ways. The only time Esau showed patience was in stalking some hapless creature—an insect, a bird, a spider, a cat. He could move so slowly and imperceptibly until the moment that he pounced that he caught mice with his bare hands, and once Rebekah saw him come within a handsbreadth of catching a quail.

Jacob never stalked anything, but he seemed to have a natural affection for the herding animals and the beasts of burden. He was riding kids as if they were full-grown asses when he looked too small even to climb onto one, and when he adopted a runt puppy or a sick lamb, it always thrived under his care.

They were both remarkable boys, and there were stories to be told about both of them. But it bothered Rebekah more and more that Abraham and Isaac only told visitors the stories about Esau, especially reveling in the tales of how headstrong and daring he was—never disobedient or foolhardy, though in Rebekah’s view those were the more appropriate terms. The boy’s mouth was still full of childish mispronunciations, and he had already learned that when he disobeyed his mother or did something breathtakingly dangerous, Mother would be full of rebukes, but Father and Grandfather would laugh about it later as they told the tale again and again.

“You’re encouraging him to be rebellious,” said Rebekah to Isaac. “The more you laugh at his antics, the more he thinks that by disobeying me, he’s pleasing you.”

“He’s a good boy,” said Isaac. “He has to be brave. He has to think for himself, trust his own abilities.”

“Don’t you care that he could die doing some of the things he does?”

“The Lord will watch out for him,” said Isaac.

“Why do you think that?” said Rebekah. “Because he’s the heir? Because in case you didn’t notice, the Lord sent us two boys. Did it never occur to you that he did that because we might well need a spare?”

“He is constantly watched over,” said Isaac. “You see to that, and I don’t interfere. He can hardly breathe without some woman’s voice saying, ‘Don’t do that, Esau, don’t go there, little Edom.’”

“Like your mother used to do with you.”

“My mother never had to,” said Isaac. “I would never have dared to do the things Esau does. He’s going to be a great man, like his grandfather.”

“More like his uncle,” said Rebekah.

“We’ll make sure he grows up loving the Lord. After all, he doesn’t have Hagar breathing poison into his ear every day the way Ishmael did.”

“He’ll become the man he thinks you want him to be,” said Rebekah, “you and your father.”

“Exactly,” said Isaac. “What do you want to do, turn him into another Jacob? Puttering around after his mother as if he were attached to you at the ankle?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re making the boy weak. Always hugging the animals and crying when they’re hurt.”

“As, for instance, the time Esau threw stones at a puppy until he blinded it.”

“A dog that slow is no use to us anyway,” said Isaac.

“I can’t believe you said that.”

“Oh, of course that was wrong, and didn’t I punish Esau for it?”

“And then sat there while his grandfather told Keturah’s boys about how it showed Esau was a born hunter. ‘If he can do that to a puppy when he’s five, what do you think he’ll do to a lion when he’s fifteen?’”

“Father’s greatest joy is to watch the boys.”

“To watch Esau.”

“He loves Jacob, too.”

“Your father said that the vision I had while they were in the womb was a true one. Well, part of that vision was that the elder boy would serve the younger.”

“Yes, I remember that well,” said Isaac.

“You treat Jacob as if he didn’t exist.”

“Oh, I’m quite aware that he exists. What you don’t seem to understand is that those words in your vision weren’t a commandment, they were a warning.”

“A warning!”

“To beware of the younger boy, or else the elder will end up serving him.”

“Look at the two boys!” cried Rebekah. “They’re both clever and quick, but Jacob is obedient whenever he understands what we expect of him, trying to be a good boy always, while Esau seems to look for ways to flout the rules we lay down for him and make us angry.”

“Esau is the elder son,” said Isaac. “And the heir.”

“Jacob is the son who might grow up to be as good a man as his father,” said Rebekah.

“As weak a man, you mean,” said Isaac. And, as usual, he cut off the argument at that point, refusing to hear for the hundredth time Rebekah’s protests about how Isaac was not weak at all.

What made Rebekah most furious, though, was when Abraham tried to get five-year-old Esau interested in the holy writings. At age five! When Rebekah was still barred from so much as looking at them, Esau was taken into his grandfather’s tent and shown them all and told that someday they’d be his. Predictably, of course, he became bored almost immediately, and this time, at least, Abraham did not appreciate his disobedience. It became a contest of wills between them, and on the third attempt, Esau ended the matter by tearing one of the fragile parchments on which one of the most ancient documents was written. Abraham’s roar could be heard all over the camp, and Isaac spent the next three days making ink and copying the document onto a fresh parchment while it could still be pieced together and read.

Yet not once did anyone suggest that Jacob should be taught to read.

“When your father had no son,” said Rebekah, “my father was trained to read so that he could preserve the birthright, if it happened to fall to him. Shouldn’t we train Jacob, too, in case something happens to Esau?”