The Sons of Isaac (15 page)

In the darkness she felt under her sleeping mat and pulled out the soft, woven cloth given her by Rebekah’s mother. With slow, careful movements, she unwound it and at last held the small image in her palm. She could feel its cool smoothness, the rounded stomach, and the straight, almost rigid legs. The nose was sharp and the head small. She wanted to look at it. The moon was full, and so without waking the other serving girls, she crept out of the tent into the bright moonlight.

Sitting with her back to the tent, she held the little figure in the light so she could get a better look.
She’s ugly,
she thought with surprise.
I would have thought she would be beautiful. Everything about her is so carefully chiseled but the head and face are almost carelessly done.
The eyes were two slits and the mouth another slit, while the nose seemed to have been pinched into shape.

It seemed rather strange to Deborah that the carefully rounded stomach and the prominent V where the legs came together were the only parts well done.
It’s as if the head is unimportant and only the childbearing parts are to be valued,
she thought. She had to admit to herself that to most men, a woman was worse than useless if she could not bear a child.

The next morning when the other women had gone about their chores and she was alone with Rebekah, she brought out the carefully wrapped packet. “You have wanted an image of the goddess from Ur and here it is,” she said as she carefully unwrapped the packet and handed her the small figure. “It was given to me by your mother before we left Haran.”

“My mother gave you this?” Rebekah asked as she turned the little figure around and looked at her from every angle.

“She wanted to be sure you had all the help you might need.”

Rebekah was so moved she couldn’t speak. Two tears dropped on the small goddess and she impulsively kissed the ugly face. “It must be one of the images my great-grandfather, Terah, made before he left Ur,” she said.

“It was one of your family’s most treasured possessions. Only your mother’s great love for you could have persuaded her to part with such a prize.”

Rebekah smiled through her tears. “Now I know I will have a child. This is a sign, a good omen.”

“I should have given it to you years ago, but I knew that Isaac and his father would not approve.”

“Of course, they are men,” Rebekah said. “They don’t understand such things. Their God is for men and now I know, it is only a goddess that can give a child.”

Rebekah studied every feature of the small image, then kissed it again and tied it into the soft folds of her mantle. “And what is this cloth it came wrapped in?” she asked.

“Those are swaddling clothes for the baby. She wove them herself of the finest threads.”

With eyes shining and hands trembling, she carefully folded the soft, white cloth. “It’s my mother’s own weaving,” she said.

From that time on, Rebekah depended on the little image from Ur and gave up all hope of any help from the God of Isaac and Abraham. She asked two things of the little idol, first to give her a child and second to keep her husband from taking another wife as his father had done.

Surely now she would have a child.

T
en years had passed since the fateful visit to Gerar, and since that time Rebekah refused to go near the town. Even though Keturah and her children went often with Abraham, still Rebekah would not go. “I can deal with my problems better in familiar surroundings,” she said.

She meant that the people in Abraham’s camp were all very supportive and many of them secretly brought her special herbs, potions, and charms that were to be a sure cure. She accepted all advice and welcomed all concoctions no matter how disagreeable they might be. She secretly felt that in time, after she had suffered enough, the goddess would take pity on her and give her the child she so desperately yearned for.

As time passed with no results, she began to beg Isaac to take one of her handmaidens as his mother, Sarah, had given Hagar to Abraham. “This will give us a child,” she said wistfully.

Isaac rejected all of her suggestions. He stood firm in his belief: at the right time Elohim would grant them the child that had been promised. He was so sure of the promises given to his father that he never doubted that Rebekah would soon be with child.

Then something happened that caused even Isaac to doubt and begin to question everything he had taken for granted. His half brother Ishmael came riding into their camp with regal pomp, splendor, and show of wealth. His twelve sons rode on each side of him while his wives and their servants stretched out into the distance behind him.

With a great flourish of filial deference, Ishmael bowed low before Abraham, then raised the hem of his father’s garment and kissed it. As he rose and stood aside, each of his sons came forward and did the same. Abraham was deeply moved. Ishmael was tall and handsome and his sons were strong and agile. More than that, Ishmael had brought gifts from the rich coffers of Egypt: rare perfumes, ornate jewelry, robes woven with intricate designs, incense, casks of unguents and fragrant oils.

“I have come to see my father,” Ishmael said.

Though Abraham and Isaac ordered guest tents to be set up, Ishmael insisted on raising his own tent for himself. It was not woven of dark goat hair but was of skins sewn together and lined with fragrant drapery of Egyptian make.

Everything he owned seemed to be made with the very finest craftsmanship. His clothes were of Egypt’s most costly linen and he wore a pectoral of precious stones set in polished brass. His sandals were gilded leather and his cloak was fringed.

Abraham ordered a great feast and the men sat long into the night around the fire discussing all that had happened to them and remembering the past. When it grew very late on the last night and everyone had drifted off, leaving only Isaac and Ishmael alone, the discussion took a more personal turn. “I was jealous of you,” Ishmael said at last. “You were to have the blessing and were to be given the birthright.”

Isaac grew very still and pensive. When he spoke it was with an air of real sympathy and understanding. “I didn’t understand at first but now I do. For thirteen years you had been my father’s firstborn and the delight of my mother. When I was born, everything changed for you, didn’t it?”

“Yes. I never had known that Hagar was my mother until then. It was a terrible blow.”

“And then my mother sent you away. That must have hurt the most.”

There was a long silence and then Ishmael spoke in a low, tense but controlled voice. “No, the greatest hurt came in knowing I was not to have the blessing of the firstborn or the birthright.”

“And I suppose you are still pained.”

Ishmael laughed a hard, forced laugh. He broke in half the small stick he had been absentmindedly holding and threw the pieces into the fire. “No, no, I am not pained anymore,” he said.

Isaac was surprised. “You no longer want the blessing or the birthright?”

Ishmael laughed again. “Look at me. I have more flocks and herds than my father, my sons own towns and live in stone castles, my coffers are full of gold and silver. I want for nothing. What greater blessing can my father give me?”

Isaac reached out and filled Ishmael’s cup with more wine. “And,” he said, “you have not mentioned your twelve strong, handsome sons or that I have none. If anyone is going to be the father of nations, it seems obvious; it will be you.”

Ishmael toyed with the fringe on his cloak and smiled. “I wasn’t going to say it, but it does seem rather obvious who has the blessing and the birthright.”

“It has been almost twenty years since I married Rebekah, and in all this time we have not been blessed with even one child.”

“Can you still be expecting Elohim to give you a child?”

“Yes,” Isaac said slowly. “He is our only hope and He has promised.”

Ishmael’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. “You believe then. All that our father has spoken, you really believe.”

“Yes,” he said as a look of intense pain crossed his face.

They remained silent for a few minutes listening to the snapping of the thorns in the fire and the whirring of bats above their heads. Finally Ishmael roused himself to go and then, being reminded of something, sat back down. Impulsively he leaned over to look more closely at his brother and said in an almost kindly manner, “You could get another wife, you know.”

“No,” Isaac said with surprising force. “Elohim has promised and I will hold Him to His promise.”

Ishmael was startled. He didn’t answer for a few minutes but he was puzzled. “What makes you so sure you can trust this Elohim of our father?” he asked at last.

“I have learned through painful experiences that He can be trusted. However, one may have to wait until all hope is gone.”

“I don’t understand,” Ishmael said.

Several minutes passed. Isaac seemed to be struggling within himself, not wanting to share something so personal. “You must have forgotten,” he began finally. “I am the son of a mother who was ninety years old when I was born. She and my father had given up all hope. She laughed at the angels who told my father she would conceive.”

“But you weren’t there. You’ve just heard about it. You’ve had no personal experience with this Elohim.”

Isaac stood and helped Ishmael to his feet. He placed his hand on his brother’s arm and seemed about to say “good night,” then he hesitated. “It’s true, I was not there, but when the bigger challenge was given, I was very much there.”

“You mean the sacrifice. I didn’t understand that either. If you were Elohim’s chosen, how could He take such a chance? You could have been killed.”

There was now a long pause as Isaac seemed to be reliving the whole episode. When he spoke his voice was low and his words measured. “I was actually tied as an animal is tied for sacrifice. He placed me on the altar.” He did not look at Ishmael but off into the distance as though he was seeing all that happened. “Our father actually raised the knife.”

“Do you really think he would have been able to kill you?” Ishmael whispered in a hoarse voice.

“Of course,” Isaac responded without hesitation. “Our father was serious. If Elohim told him to do something, he would do it.”

Ishmael shuddered. “I’m glad I was not the chosen or blessed of my father. Do you sometimes wish he had picked me and let you be free to do as you pleased?”

Isaac kicked at a stone until it spun loose from the sand and went rolling down a small incline. “No, if I escaped the fright of the sacrifice, I would have also missed the joy of the ram in the thicket.”

“So you think Elohim put the ram there?”

“Of course, it was the angel that told my father not to harm me. He had already raised the knife when he saw the ram in the thicket.”

“I have been told our father gave the place its name,” Ishmael said. “Jehovah-Jireh … the Lord will provide.”

The two stood by the fire mulling over their conversation and the strangeness of their lives. At last Ishmael heaved a sigh of relief as he said, “I now understand many things, and it is good I was not chosen by my father for the birthright or the blessing.” The two embraced and then without another word walked silently away from the fire into the shadows and each to his own tent.

*  *  *

Isaac did not go right to sleep. Instead he lay wide-awake watching the tent cloth billow and fold and hearing the tent poles creak and groan. He found himself puzzling over the birthright and the blessing. What were they worth when it seemed that a man like Ishmael could find the same results without the restrictions and discipline? Ishmael prayed but he didn’t presume to hear the voice of Elohim. He had entered into the covenant through circumcision, but he was not to have the birthright or the special blessing, and so it seemed that he wasn’t expected to regulate his life in such a strict way.

The more he thought about it, the more he grew confused. Ishmael did not have to live apart from the men of the cities. He could even keep an idol in his house and not feel guilty.

He remembered asking his father about the blessing and receiving a very strange answer: “It is not just that we are to be blessed but that through us the whole earth will be blessed,” his father told him.

It was only after Ishmael had gone that Isaac learned the real purpose of his visit. He had come to ask Abraham for a blessing on his twelve sons and also to tell him that Hagar had died. He had buried her in an ancient, pagan temple on the coast of the Red Sea. This temple was built around a strange stone that had fallen from the sky and was considered sacred.

*  *  *

Several days passed before Isaac rode out to check on the men who stayed with the herds. He and his men rode up the dry riverbeds and circled the jagged mountain ranges to come at evening to an oasis where his herdsmen were camped. He found them all doing well with no reports of sickness or attacks from wild animals. He ate with the men, and when the moon came up he unrolled his pack and slept out under the stars close to the fire.

He often studied the stars, remembering always that his father had said Elohim had promised him descendants as the stars. Sometimes he would hold a fistful of sand and watch it pour in a thin stream onto the hard-packed earth. “Your descendants shall be as the sands,” had been quoted to him over and over again. What did that mean, he wondered, if your wife was barren and had been barren for twenty years?