Rebekah (32 page)

The next morning dawned too early, and Rebekah’s tension rose with her. She had been right to come here, to be with her beloved as they had not been in many months. How was it that they had allowed their sons to fill their days and nights, to keep them from each other?

And yet she knew the neglect was due in part to the conflict they faced about the promise she had received from the Lord—the promise that he struggled to accept. She had avoided his bed when he angered her, when he favored Esau over Jacob, and he had gone off on his desert treks over the same slight.

The thought shamed her. Had their love truly come to this—this vying for power and place between two sons? Would they really allow the future to pit them against each other?

She dressed quickly in the chill air, grateful for the sputtering wick that had not yet gone out. She refilled the oil in the lamp and moved through the spacious tent to the closed flap.

Isaac had somehow risen and left before she’d awakened. The thought made her heart skip and dance with sudden fear. Had Ishmael already left? Had he taken Esau with him? She should never have been so demanding the night before. Isaac’s pride could make him decide against her just to prove that he could. It was his decision, after all. And she could tell he did not agree with her.

She lifted the flap and blew out the lamp’s flame, then set the lamp on a low post near the entrance. Pink shades of coming sunlight bathed the eastern ridge, casting a rosy glow over the camp. Her feet felt the dew’s cool dampness as she walked hastily across the compound toward Ishmael’s tents. She found the tents disassembled and packed on camels already mounted by Ishmael’s sons. Isaac embraced his brother as they gave each other their final farewell.

She scanned the crowd, her heart pounding, searching. But there was no sign of Esau. Was he up ahead with the caravan or still in his tent? But surely he would be up and ready if Isaac planned to allow him to accompany these men.

Ishmael turned his back to Isaac and climbed atop his beast, commanding it to rise. And then they were off, traveling the merchant road to the south, headed back to Ishmael’s hills.

Isaac watched them go until they became small in the distance. At last he turned and saw her. He approached, smiling.

“I hope I did not wake you.” He traced a finger along the outside of her face, his expression warming her.

She shook her head. “No. I wanted, needed, to be up.” She glanced beyond him to the road. “So you told Esau no?” She longed to look at him, to read the emotions in his eyes, but could not bring herself to do so.

“What do you think?” His fingers beneath her chin coaxed her to face him, and she could not pull away.

“I think you did the right thing.” She was right, wasn’t she? “That is, I didn’t see Esau among the men.”

Isaac’s brows drew together, and a shadow passed through his eyes. He turned them both back toward the camp and placed one arm around her shoulders. “I have promised to let Esau visit soon. When he is a little older.”

She stopped walking, forcing him to halt with her. She must choose her words carefully. Did he not just give her what she
wished? Who knew what time would bring to them? Esau might decide a visit unnecessary, or Isaac might be convinced to change his mind. The thoughts calmed her anxiety, and she gave him what she hoped was a grateful smile.

“Thank you, my lord. Perhaps when he is older, he will be strong enough to withstand your brother’s influences.” She slipped her arm through his. “In the meantime, we must teach him more of Adonai and to be kinder to his brother, to be more like his father, to prepare them both for the future.”

She made a move to continue on, but Isaac did not join her. She turned back, realizing once again that she had said the wrong thing. If she could only make him see . . .

“Is something wrong, my lord?” She shivered, knowing the cool morning air was not the only cause, burdened by the look in his eyes.

“I know you are the mother of my sons, beloved. And I know you had a hard time when you carried them. Whether God spoke to you about them . . . I am not in the place of God to know such a thing. I did not hear the words, and I am not certain I accept them.”

Her heart sank in the space of a breath. “You don’t believe me.”

“I am not sure I want to.”

“But why? Is it because Jacob is not what you expected in a ruling son? Are you so ashamed of your younger son that you would pick the older, the one who questions your faith, ahead of him?”

The shiver grew until her hands shook. She wrapped her arms about her, begging her limbs to be still.

His heavy sigh filled the space between them. He dragged a hand over his beard, as though the action might force the words from his mouth. “I am not ashamed of Jacob, beloved. I just see more qualities of leadership in Esau. In time, if his faith grows and he learns greater trust in Adonai, he will make
a fine prince to carry on my father’s name. As the firstborn, that is his right.”

“Ishmael was your father’s firstborn, but God chose you.”

The words hung between them, slowly burned away by the heat of the rising sun.

Isaac looked westward, his face shadowed by the trees above them. “My father was promised a son by my mother. Ishmael would not have been born if my parents had trusted in that promise. As for our sons”—he turned to face her—“God has given me no such word or promise regarding either of them. While I do not deny that He could have spoken to you, I do not know.” He touched her cheek. “You were so overwrought, beloved. Could you not have heard what you wanted to hear to ease your burden?”

His words, his doubt, rocked her, until the shaking grew to shocked stillness.

“You think I am lying to you? You think the vision was all the working of an overwrought mind?” Her voice dropped in pitch with each word—words too unbelievable to utter, yet still they came. “If you do not trust me, your wife, who do you trust, Isaac? If our God speaks only to men, then how do you account for his visit to Hagar or his words to your own mother? If God did not speak to me, then who did? I did not make the words up in my mind. Adonai told me, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ If you do not believe this, there is nothing more I can say to you.” She looked long and hard into his eyes, her heart dying within her at the uncertainty she saw in his.

She turned away from him, tears clouding her vision, and ran all the way back to her tent.

Isaac slung a goatskin of water and another that held a mixture of dates, raisins, and almonds over the side of a
donkey, then fastened his pallet to the back. He left his tent standing, the rest of his provisions tucked inside. He would sleep under the stars or in the shelter of a cave this night, and perhaps many more nights to come.

Anger, vivid and deep, spurred him to hurry, to retreat from the battle he knew would be quick to ensue if he stayed. He loved Rebekah with an ache so fierce he feared it would consume him, and yet her insistence, her claims to knowledge he did not share, only fed his feelings of inadequacy. She questioned his leadership, did not respect his decisions—in fact, had not respected them since the twins were born, ever since he had merely humored her vision, never truly embracing it as his own.

Had Adonai truly spoken to her?

The question prodded him, its fervor relentless. He could not act on her word alone. How could he? Even his father had not been faced with such a plight, had he? He searched his mind for memories of the things either parent had told him, but emotion blinded him with every step.

He cinched the last of the provisions beneath the donkey’s blanket, gripped the reins, and started forward. Distant wails coming from Rebekah’s tent should have touched him somehow, made him turn back to her, to apologize for not believing her. But how could he? He was not ready to face her again. Not yet.

He plodded forward, grateful Haviv had been in the camp to accept his quick instructions. He moved past the circle of tents toward the road that followed the path Ishmael had taken that morning. Afternoon light was dappled where the clouds moved to hide the sun from view and then disappeared moments later to give the sun the space it demanded. Much as he needed such distance now from the clouded views of his wife and sons.

How had everything changed so quickly in the short week since his father’s death?

Emotion clogged his throat with the memories, but at the sound of running feet coming up the path, he tamped it down, quickening his stride. He would not let her persuade him to stay. He needed time alone.

But the sound was not that of a woman running. The footfalls were too heavy, too fierce. He turned to see Esau rushing toward him, his tunic girded about his waist, a sack flung over one shoulder and a bow and quiver over the other.

“Father! Let me come with you.” He pulled up beside Isaac and stopped, panting for breath. “I won’t be any trouble.” He lowered his sack to the earth. “See? I have brought all that I need.”

Isaac glanced from the sack to the bow and arrows, then looked into his son’s earnest gaze. His chest lifted in a sigh. How could he refuse him? But how could he allow this if he was ever to get any relief, any understanding of Rebekah’s claims?

“Please, Father. I could hunt for us. You know you prefer wild game to fruit and nuts.” His broad grin lit his dark eyes, coaxing a smile to Isaac’s lips.

“You would not enjoy my company, my son.” He stifled the urge to sigh once more, instead turning to continue on his way.

Esau hurried to join him, keeping pace at his side. “I do not care if we talk. I just want to be with you.”

His young legs slowed to match the donkey’s stride while Isaac’s mind churned with reasons to make him turn back the way he had come. But a part of him wanted him here, needed the reassurance that Esau was not what Rebekah claimed. That he was right in his assessment of the boy.

He glanced at his son. Red hair poked beneath a striped turban—Rebekah’s handiwork—and his chin was beginning to show the same curly red hairs that covered his body and would fill his cheeks with the beard of a man. How different
this son had been from his twin, even from birth. Esau, the hairy one, while Jacob’s skin was smooth and light brown like his mother’s.

He looked at him a moment longer, then allowed a slight nod and was rewarded with Esau’s exuberant whoop. He chuckled and felt some of the anger dissipate. “Very well. You may come. But do as you said and keep your silence. I am weary of words.”

How often had he thought the same and said so to Rebekah? Why was it so hard to talk to each other as they had in the early years of their marriage? The twins had changed her, changed them.

They walked in silence, Esau keeping good to his claim to hold his tongue, until they had reached the field where the barley had grown to nearly full height. The harvest would be upon them soon if the latter rains fell as they should. But the season’s heat had been harsher than most, and the threat of drought worried him. He glanced at the sky, too bright in its nearness, then looked toward his son.

“We will make camp up ahead in the cave at the side of the hill.”

He motioned with his hand and looked at Esau, suddenly grateful for his company. As much as he enjoyed time alone, he did not realize how discouraged it made him feel, how often his thoughts circled back to the same things he had thought before, and how difficult it became to get past his frustrations. Had he done Rebekah a disservice by going off and leaving her alone with the servants so often over the years? And yet, some of his trips could not be helped. There were flocks to oversee and fields to attend.

“I am glad you came,” he said.

He smiled at Esau, pushing past the excuses that he continually raised against the boy’s mother. How could he treat the woman he loved with such distance? This was exactly
how his mother had treated his father after his binding, and he had hated the separation of his family. Why could he not break the cycle?

Esau’s wide smile warmed him. “I thought you might need someone . . . I heard Ima weeping.” He shrugged as though a woman’s tears were a daily occurrence. In truth, Rebekah rarely wept, and never so bitterly as he had heard this day.

“I should have gone to her.”

Dare he admit such a thing to a child? Well, not actually a child, but still young enough to not understand such things.

Esau reached the cave two steps ahead of Isaac and dropped his things onto the dry earth. He turned and took the donkey’s reins from Isaac’s hand. “She was not ready to listen to you, Abba. You were not ready to speak with her.” He tied the donkey to the branches of an overhanging tree. “You will settle things between you when we return.”

His confidence soothed some of the rough places in Isaac’s heart, but at the same time he knew it was not as simple as that. As long as he and Rebekah held to different goals for their sons, as long as she believed something he did not, there would be a divide between them—as wide a chasm as the Jezreel Valley between its opposing mountains.

The thought pained him, but he could not share it with Esau. Maybe it would be best not to think on such thoughts at all.