Rebekah: Women of Genesis (9 page)

Rebekah left her words unchallenged. Time would tell whether she was a good girl or a bad one.

She was not yet fully dressed when Laban came to her tent. Hurriedly, she and Deborah pulled the finest gown over her head and then admitted him.

“Who’s writing for Father, if you’re here?” asked Rebekah.

“Pillel,” said Laban. “Not a patient writer. He keeps leaving out words and letters.”

Pillel would have the opportunity now to tell Father what Rebekah had said. Whether he chose to do it or not would be another story.

“It must be an important errand,” said Rebekah, “that brings you here and leaves Father to decipher Pillel’s writing.”

“You are not going to serve the dinner in Father’s tent,” he said.

This would be a sign of great disfavor, ordinarily, but Laban was smiling a little, which told her that it must not be bad.

“You’re going to be too busy dining with Ezbaal’s grandmother, his mother, and his sister.”

“Not serving them? Dining with them?”

“You’re to instruct our women to serve the same meal in both tents. And not the worst cuts of meat, either. Your meal is to be almost as fine as the one laid before Ezbaal.”

“Let me guess,” said Rebekah. “I’m not to wear the veil.”

“Not inside your own tent,” said Laban. “Not when the only people who will see you will be other women.”

“Too late to try for a case of the pox, isn’t it?”

“Don’t worry,” said Laban. “You’re ugly enough to frighten a goat into giving sour milk.”

“That’s a relief,” said Rebekah.

“Frankly,” said Laban, “I think the women will hate you.”

That would solve everything, wouldn’t it? But she still couldn’t bring herself to hope for it. “Why will they hate me?”

“Because next to you, they look like she-camels.”

“On a long journey, a man would rather have a good camel than a pretty woman.”

“Listen, my little lamb, there is no journey
that
 long.” With a laugh, Laban ducked back out of her tent.

“May I stay to see the fine ladies?” asked Deborah.

“Of course,” said Rebekah. It still bothered her, sometimes, that the woman who used to scold her when she was naughty—and still did, sometimes—had to ask Rebekah’s permission to stay for company. But of course she had to ask, because sometimes the answer was no, and Deborah truly did not have the judgment to make such decisions on her own.

The food was prepared, if not perfectly, then as best it could be on short notice early in the spring, when they were still living from last year’s harvest. Rebekah took her place on a rug in her tent, with Deborah tending to the flap. A quick instruction to a serving girl, a longer wait during which Rebekah tried to decide whether she wanted to make a good impression or a bad one, and then her guests were there, clapping their hands outside the tent.

Deborah opened the flap and admitted them; Rebekah rose to her feet to greet them with kisses. The grandmother introduced herself as Ethah and promptly seated herself in Rebekah’s own place—but of course the old can do what they like. Ezbaal’s mother did not let go of her shoulders after their kisses, instead holding her at arm’s length to look closely at her face. “You put a veil over
that?
” she said.

Rebekah only smiled in a way she hoped was enigmatic, and said, “What name should I call you?”

“You must call me Mother, of course,” said the woman.

Whereupon Rebekah resolved to call her by no name at all. She would not be tricked into intimacy so easily as that.

She turned to greet Ezbaal’s sister and found the woman to be different from the other two—taller, as tall as Rebekah, but with her hair so arranged that it served almost as effectively as Rebekah’s veil to hide her face. The woman’s hands trembled, and she could scarcely bring herself close enough to kiss Rebekah’s cheeks. What—someone here who was even more nervous than Rebekah? Why?
She
was not being examined by women who were deciding on her worthiness as a bride.

Or was she?

For the first time it occurred to her that there might be more to this visit from Ezbaal than merely to see if Rebekah might be an appropriate bride. After all, there were two marriageable men in Bethuel’s household, too. Laban, of course, was too young to be married to a mature woman like this. But was it possible that Ezbaal had brought his sister with an eye to trying to entice Bethuel to marry again?

It
was
rather odd that Father never married again after Mother died, thought Rebekah. Rich men often took several wives, yet Father had married only the one woman. Why hadn’t anyone brought a sister or daughter to visit him before?

“And what is
your
name?” asked Rebekah. “Or am I to call you sister?”

“Never that,” said the woman in a voice that sounded husky, as if she had been weeping. “Call me Akyas.”

The word meant “rejected” and it could not possibly be her name. But whatever game these women were playing, Rebekah would take it all in stride. She had a game of her own, and now that she had met them, she decided to play it. She did not want to marry into a household dominated by these women. The falseness of the mother, the rude presumption of the grandmother, and the strangeness of the sister—what place would there be for her in their household?

They conversed about nothing for a little while—the journey, the good winter rains this year—and then the food began to arrive. The women said nothing, of course, either to praise or criticize the food; indeed, they ate in virtual silence and took only small portions, except for Akyas, who ate nothing at all.

Finally, though, the grandmother, Ethah, began quizzing her. The test was underway.

“Who really cooked this food?”

“Why, the servants, of course,” said Rebekah brightly. “Don’t you have servants do the cooking in your household?”

“I meant which of the servants chooses what will be served, and how?”

“No servant, Ethah, but the daughter of the house.”

“No child your age can do that sort of job,” said Ethah scornfully. “The servants would mock your youth as soon as you turned your back, and do what they wanted.”

“Perhaps your grandson can ask my father how he chooses and trains his servants,” said Rebekah. “In all my life I have never seen servants behave as you describe. Does the bean paste displease you? I see you have barely touched it.”

“Too spicy,” said Ethah coldly. “Which is to be expected, when you let servants do it—
they
don’t have to pay for the spices, so what do they care?”

Rebekah immediately sent the serving girl for simple bean paste. “I fear that I’m the careless, wasteful one,” said Rebekah. “Perhaps in my desire to make a good impression, I used too much spice and marred the dish.”

“No, no, dear,” said “Mother.” “I find it nearly perfect.”

“Then you must tell me how I can improve it, so that someday I might earn your judgment of perfection.”

“But I haven’t the faintest idea of how to make it better,” said “Mother.” “You use a kind of bean we never grow or cook with.”

“The meat’s too good,” said Ethah, complaining again. “What kind of woman serves this quality to the women? It should have been reserved for the men, if you knew your manners.”

“But this
is
the second-best meat,” said Rebekah. “If you prefer, though, we can trade this dish with the servants—I would not be ashamed to have you see what we serve to them. My father and my brother understand cattle, so I can hardly do ill when cooking meat they raised and slaughtered.”

Did Akyas laugh softly, or merely stifle a belch? She continued to say nothing, which was beginning to irritate Rebekah.

Still, it was obvious that the grandmother’s grumpiness was being exaggerated, perhaps as a test of Rebekah’s patience and grace. And “Mother” was being just as unnaturally nice, to try to win her over. So far, Rebekah might very well have made an excellent impression. It was time to put a stop to that.

“I hope you don’t mind that we did not offer any portion to the gods,” said Rebekah. “But I don’t believe that Ba’al or Asherah are anything more than stone images, powerless to answer prayers, and the true God asks for larger sacrifices than to spill a bit of this and that at every meal. Besides, it spoils the rugs.”

“We do it over an altar dish,” said Ethah testily. “You might have provided one for
us
to use.”

“But in my tent there is only one God,” said Rebekah brightly. “I will have no mockery of the true God by permitting others to be worshiped here.”

Ethah smiled triumphantly at the others, as if she had just won an argument. “Mother” faltered a bit, but bravely tried to smooth it over. “All gods are the same God, in the end, don’t you think?”

“The living God is the only God,” said Rebekah. “All the imitations are simply a way for priests to maintain control over the poor and ignorant.”

“Now we see she’s filled with rage!” cried the grandmother.

“Why should I rage?” said Rebekah. “I speak only the simple truth. I have no cause to be angry with those who do not know the truth. I pity their ignorance, and seek to help them understand that the God of Abraham is the only true God.”

“God of Abraham!” cried Ethah. “Yes, the one who told him to take his favorite son up the mountain and sacrifice him!”

“That is not true,” said Rebekah. “Abraham has spent his entire life fighting against the monstrous practice of sacrificing human beings to these false gods.”

“But to the ‘true’ god he’ll sacrifice his own son, is that it?” asked Ethah. “Don’t you tell me it’s not true—my grandson is a good friend of Abraham’s firstborn, Ishmael, the one who was cheated out of his inheritance when that runaway priestess Sarah had the wretched little baby Isaac, no doubt by some kind of sorcery, which is probably why Abraham wanted to kill it. Ishmael heard the story from his own father. It happens that at the last minute Abraham turned coward and sacrificed a ram in his son’s place, but he had Isaac all tied up and ready for the blade!”

So the story originated with Ishmael. Of course it was not to be believed. Ordinarily, Rebekah would keep the peace by seeming to agree with her guests and keeping her own opinion to herself—but today that would not serve her purpose. “There you are,” said Rebekah. “Just one more example of the lies Ishmael tells in order to make it seem that Abraham was wrong to choose Isaac over him.”

“Have you ever met the old man?” asked Ethah.

“No,” said Rebekah.

“Well,
I
have, and I tell you that he’s a bloody-handed old hypocrite, who pretends to hear from his god, but he’s just using that lie to get people to do what he wants.”

“You have met Abraham,” said Rebekah with a smile, “and I have met you.”

The words hung there, as each of them understood the unspoken completion of the thought—that having met Ethah, Rebekah chose to believe in Abraham.

“So this is the woman who wants to be the bride of my grandson! A girl who insults her betters to their faces!”

“But I do not want to be the bride of your grandson,” said Rebekah. “Nor has anyone asked me to be his bride.”

“Don’t pretend to be such a fool as not to know why we are here!” cried the old woman.

That was when Akyas finally spoke. Or, rather, laughed—a low throaty chuckle that silenced everyone until she reached over and patted Rebekah on the knee. The touch chilled her. So did the laugh.

“Let us share in the jest,” said “Mother.”

“Of course Rebekah knows,” said Akyas. “She is acting this way because she wants us to hate her. If we take an ill report to Ezbaal, and he withdraws his offer, then she never has to have an argument with her father over the question of marriage.”

“Do you mean this girl has already made up her mind not to marry my grandson, without even having met him?”

“Ezbaal is twice her age,” said Akyas. “Even though
we
understand his worth as a husband, who could expect a child of this age to know what a husband looks like? She dreams of dashing young boys. Probably she already has her eye on some completely unsuitable shepherd. Girls this age always do.”

Rebekah almost spoke out angrily to deny this, but realized in time that, just as she had been playing a game with them, Akyas was playing a game with her. So she said nothing and did her best to keep her face a blank.

“See?” said Akyas. “She has control of herself—she wants to answer, but says nothing.”

“I think you’re putting too good a face on her,” said the grandmother. “You’re so eager for this match that you can’t possibly see anything but virtue in the girl.”

“But I’m not eager for the match,” said Akyas. “If it happens, so be it, I’ll join in the rejoicing. But I know something of unhappy marriages. Why should I wish such a thing on either my brother Ezbaal or this girl?”