Rebekah: Women of Genesis (42 page)

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then it only means that the choice is up to you, and whatever you choose will please the Lord.”

Isaac grinned at her. “Now you’re sounding like the kind of believer you said your mother was—you’ve set a test for the Lord that the Lord can’t fail.”

“But we’re not testing the Lord,” said Rebekah. “We already know that the Lord is God. We’re seeking to know his will. And he
will
answer.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we need him, and he won’t fail us.”

“No. But
I
might fail us.”

“The only way you could fail us, Isaac, is if you heard the Lord’s answer and disobeyed it. Or if you refused to ask him, because you didn’t believe he loved us enough to answer.”

So Isaac, full of self-doubt and clinging to his faith in God, went to pray. In the morning he awoke Rebekah by coming into her tent and whispering in her ear. “I dreamed a dream,” he said.

She came out of the fog of sleep to hear him telling of how he saw himself among dying cattle, and dipping down into a well only to come up with jars full of sand. In his dream he said what he had been saying in his prayers—I see nothing for us to do but to go down into Egypt. “And then there was a voice in my dream telling me not to go to Egypt, but to stay in Canaan. The wells our family used to control near the cities of the coast are no longer used, with Eliezer gone. If I go to Abimelech, the king of Gerar, he’ll let us use the wells as long as we need them.”

“
Let
us use them? They’re ours by right. Your father dug them!”

“Let him think he rules, let him think the wells are his to share with us,” said Isaac. “I have the Lord’s promise—the same one he gave to Father, only now he has sworn to fulfill the oath with me. My children will multiply as the stars of heaven, he said, and they’ll be given all these countries, and through my seed all nations of the earth will be blessed.”

Then Isaac wept in her embrace, in gratitude that the Lord at last had spoken to him, as he spoke to Abraham, and accepted him as the heir to Abraham’s covenant. “You believed when I did not.”

“You always believed in God,” said Rebekah. “It’s yourself you doubted, and I knew better, because I can
see
you.”

“And I can’t see anything,” said Isaac ruefully, for his eyes were getting old and he couldn’t see far-off things clearly. Worse, there were white patches in his eyes growing out over the pupils, cutting off part of his field of vision. But for now, he could see what he needed to—that the Lord had not abandoned him, but would lead him to safety.

Only Esau resisted the move. “I can’t hunt there in the plains,” he said. “It’s all farmland, orchards,
tame.
”

“You can hunt where you’ve always hunted,” said Isaac. “You’ll just have to go farther and work harder to get there.”

“You might try staying with the camp and helping us redig the wells near Gerar,” said Jacob.

“I’m not a well-digger,” said Esau contemptuously.

“We’ll all be well-diggers,” said Isaac, “until our flocks have the water they need.”

“Of course, Father. I was only teasing Jacob. As if
he
needed to teach me my duty!”

They went to the wells near Gerar and it all happened as the Lord had promised. It wasn’t exactly a miracle—the Lord didn’t force Abimelech to be generous where his father had been haughty back when Isaac first gave up the wells. What Rebekah gathered from the ladies of Gerar whom she visited with while Isaac negotiated with the king was that the crown rested very loosely on the head of this current Abimelech, whose mother had been only a concubine and whose people had actually preferred a different brother who had happened to be away from Gerar when the old king suddenly died. Having Isaac’s large camp and hundreds of servants in the hills overlooking the city changed the balance of power in the city, for Abimelech made a great show of his friendship with Isaac, implying that if anyone attempted to revolt against him, he’d be able to flee to the camp of his friend Isaac and bring down an army of Hebrews to subdue Gerar and restore Abimelech to power.

But the Lord had known the weakness of Abimelech’s position, and that’s why he sent Isaac there. The miracle was not that Abimelech exploited their presence and in exchange Isaac got water for his flocks during a drought. The miracle was that Isaac asked the Lord with faith that he would be answered—or at least with hope—and the Lord answered him, and for the first time in his life Isaac was happy in the confidence of the Lord.

Esau, true to form, lasted only one day at well-digging, and then he was off with Nebajoth, one of Ishmael’s sons, on a hunting expedition into the rocky country south of Gerar. “We have meat,” said Rebekah. “We have enough meat to feed ten thousand. What we need is water. Will you find us water in the desert and bring it home to us on the backs of asses?”

“Father likes the venison I bring him,” said Esau. “He’s an old man. Don’t you think an old man should have things he likes?”

“He needs your help more than he needs venison.”

“He has servants,” said Esau. “But he has no deer in all his flocks and herds.” Then Esau laughed and went on his way.

Jacob saw it all, of course, and when Esau was gone said to his mother, “He thinks it’ll be like hunting in the hills near Kirjath-arba.”

“And it won’t be?” asked Rebekah.

“There are streams and pools in the mountains of Canaan. But south in the Negev there are no streams.”

“Why do you know this and he doesn’t?” asked Rebekah.

“Because I know everything the shepherds know, and the shepherds know that they can’t take a flock into the Negev and hope to bring back even half of them. The lions know where there are tiny shaded pools they can lap from, and so do the small deer and mountain goats they prey on. So there are always lions to take the sheep that don’t die of thirst.”

“Is your brother in danger?”

“In danger of coming home exhausted and empty-handed.”

“Of dying? Is it that bad?”

“Mother, Esau’s a good hunter. He’ll have the water he needs with him, and when he sees that he’s running low, he’ll come home. As for the lions—Esau will no doubt bring home a lion skin to show off. Even if he finds no deer, he’ll not come home without blood on his hands.”

“What about you?” asked Rebekah, suddenly curious.

“What about me?”

“Could
you
kill a lion?”

“I
have
 killed lions, Mother. I’m a shepherd, and it’s a season of drought. The lions come down out of the mountains, following the game, and they’re following the water.”

“But you never bring home the skin. I never hear of your doing such things.”

“It would shame me in front of the other shepherds, to be caught bragging to my father and mother about doing what every shepherd does.”

“The other shepherds brag all the time.”

“They’re not the son of the patriarch,” said Jacob.

As long as she was asking, she might as well learn the rest. “What about in battle?”

“Against what foe?”

“The enemies we sometimes face. Raiders. Soldiers.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never fought against a man.”

“Oh.”

“Why are you asking such questions, Mother? Is there something you know about, that you haven’t told me? Is there a war coming?”

“No, I don’t—I hope not. I just wondered—because you’ve killed lions and I didn’t know it . . .”

“I’m no match for Esau when it comes to fighting, Mother. He loves it and he’s been practicing all his life. I hate it and I’ve learned only what I need to in order to fend off raiders and thieves. They aren’t usually the best fighters anyway so they’re easily frightened away. That’s the total of my experience of battle—frightening away marauders by showing them that we won’t run away ourselves at the sight of them.”

Something sank inside Rebekah’s heart. Because she could not forget that Esau had once threatened to kill Jacob, and even though he almost certainly didn’t mean it, it would have been nice to think that Jacob could protect himself.

Though in truth, no one was safe if someone wanted to murder him and didn’t care about the consequences. Unless the Lord was protecting you, and then no enemy could touch you. Jacob’s protection would never be sword or spear in his hand, but rather faith and goodness in his heart.

And in faith and goodness, he was as skilled and practiced as Esau was with bow and javelin.

Esau came home empty-handed, as Jacob had foretold, and he and Nebajoth and the men they had taken with them were all exhausted and famished. Jacob had seen to it that plenty of lentil pottage was kept ready for them, so that whenever they returned they could eat without waiting. They were so hungry they ate it all—though apparently it never occurred to Esau to thank Jacob for having provided for him. Rather he took it as his right to be served by his younger brother.

During their time in Gerar, true disaster struck. The blotches in Isaac’s eyes finally grew to block his pupils entirely. He was utterly blind.

Rebekah came to find him on one of his last days with vision, and found him in his tent, bowed over a parchment, weeping.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I can’t remember what it says.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could always make out enough of the writing to remember the words and say them aloud, but I can’t even tell which prophet’s story this is.”

Rebekah glanced down at the parchment. It was the first time she had been allowed to read one of the holy writings for herself—and she hadn’t actually been allowed this time, either. Yet she felt no excitement about it, because everything was swallowed up in Isaac’s grief at his blindness. “At the head of the parchment,” Rebekah said, “it says that it’s the book of Enoch, written in his own hand as a testament to and condemnation of the people who for their love of bloodshed have rejected the Lord their God.”

Isaac sat in silence.

Was he angry that she had read from the scripture? “Do you need me to read more?”

He shook his head.

She reached out and took his hand, meaning to comfort him. Instead, he wept again.

She saw how old he had become. His hair was white, his beard speckled like new-broken granite. And with the white splotches on his eyes, he seemed to have lost much of the fire that she had always seen burning in him.

He was going to die.

Not tomorrow or the next day, but his body was aging faster than his father’s had. And with his vision gone, as it nearly was, he would lose much of his hope, much of his reason to live.

She thought of her father then, and how he had raged when he lost his hearing. But his deafness had been caused by an accident and a sickness that followed it. It came on him suddenly, in the robustness of his middle age—and even he had lost much of his vigor because of it, until Laban and Rebekah had restored it to him with their efforts to write to him, to be his ears.

“Isaac, you won’t have to go without reading the holy writings. Let me and Jacob and Esau read them to you.”

“It’s too late,” said Isaac. “I always thought I had more time.”

“More time for what?”

“For copying,” he said. “Father didn’t let me have them during his old age—I think he was more and more afraid that I might lose one or damage it. And after I got them, I copied a few but I knew I’d have plenty of time after my sons took over the work of the camp.”

“So let your sons do the work of copying. It’s their work eventually.” Well, it was Esau’s work, but she knew which son actually had the patience to do it. As for that, why not make the most audacious offer? “I can help. My hand is as clear and clean as this.”

If he even heard her, he gave no sign.

“I’ll never see the words again.”

“Neither will your father. The advantage you have is that you’re not dead, so at least you’ll hear the words as we read them to you.”

“Yes,” said Isaac. “Yes, I see the wisdom of that.” He stilled his weeping. “I’m sorry you saw me being so weak. Grieving for my eyes like a child who lost a toy.”

“I saw my father’s grief when he lost his hearing. Losing your vision is harder. Of course you grieve.”

“It wasn’t for my eyes, Rebekah, truly it wasn’t. I give thanks that I ever had them. I grieved because . . . just when the Lord gave me vision in the spirit for the first time, he’s taken away the vision of my eyes. What have I done to be so unworthy?”

“This isn’t a punishment,” said Rebekah. “It’s . . . part of life. These things happen to people. You’re not the first blind man, or we wouldn’t already have a word for it, would we?”

“I know,” he said. “And yes, Rebekah, the work of copying must be done. If the Lord makes me blind, then my sons have to be my eyes and hands. And if the Lord has given me a wife who can read and write, I would be ungrateful not to let you be my helpmeet in this as in all other things.”