The Sons of Isaac(29)
Her mother and the servants ran along beside the camels until they came to the well, and then they stood weeping and waving as long as they could see them.
Rebekah had a moment of sadness as she realized that she was actually leaving her family and everything that was familiar. She turned to look back again and again; the familiar faces were all the more dear as they gradually faded from sight. Even more touching had been her old grandfather standing at the door of the courtyard with Bethuel. He was too old and feeble to follow them to the well. She would always remember that just before she mounted her camel he had reached out to her and whispered, “Abraham’s God has won again, and perhaps it’s for the best.”
* * *
Rebekah was flushed with the thrill of adventure and young enough to spend very little time grieving over leaving her family. It never occurred to her that it would be very difficult, even impossible, for her to repeat this trip and come to see them.
As she and her handmaidens rode along, they sang and from time to time called to each other remarking on the emerging wonders around them. Eleazar was thoughtful enough to ride back and explain many things about the landscape they were passing or the customs of the people they were about to meet. The camping in the early evening was the favorite time for everyone. They loved to sit around the campfire enjoying the snap and crackle of the burning twigs while watching for the rising moon. Then, long before daybreak they were up and mounted ready to ride again. They must make the most of the cool hours before the sun rose.
Rebekah asked many questions and Eleazar was able and willing to answer as many as possible. She was curious about the reason her uncle had chosen to leave the rest of the family. She wanted to know why they were living in tents away from the cities. She knew very little of her cousin Isaac, and of course she was most curious about him.
“Isaac is very handsome,” Eleazar told her. “Perhaps his most outstanding quality is a special charm that makes it easy for him to make friends. If someone doesn’t like him, it bothers him. He’s not content until he has managed to make that man his friend. He admires his half-brother Ishmael because he is a rather rough fellow who hunts and fights and is good at besting any opponent, but I find Isaac easier to live with.”
When they retired to their own tents, the talking didn’t stop. Each one came with new questions and some came with answers. One of the handmaidens, Tesha, had the news from her camel boy that Isaac had never gotten over his mother’s death. Rebekah fingered the bracelets she was wearing and thought about what it must have meant for Isaac to have sent her such dear treasures. Just wearing the bracelets made her feel a special kinship with her aunt Sarah.
She was learning many things about her aunt and each revelation made her more real. She knew that Sarah had been barren for many years. She could just imagine how difficult that would have been for her. Everyone believed only evil women or women under some terrible curse from the earth goddess were barren.
Rebekah spent some time thinking about blessings and cursings. Words had real power. Even a powerful curse written on a small bit of parchment and buried in a secret place could make someone ill.
Blessings could be just as powerful and would help a person overcome any difficulty. A blessing given by a parent or a priest was very strong. Usually only the sons in the family, and especially the firstborn son, received any blessing from their father. How amazing it was that her father had given her his blessing. It was more precious to her than great riches.
She was to be the mother of many. There would be no barrenness for her. She would give her husband strong children. She had been given that promise in the blessing of her father.
Then the strange blessing. What did it mean? “Let thy seed possess the gate of them that hate them.” She pondered on this a good deal. She knew very well that whoever controlled the gate of a city was in charge. So she finally decided it meant that even though the people within a city hated her descendants, her descendants would be in control of things. What an amazing, wonderful blessing.
She was elated with the blessing until she began to ponder on why the people of any city would hate her descendants. This was a great puzzle. It was only much later that she began to glimpse the larger meaning of the strange blessing.
She had a small brass mirror, which she looked in from time to time. The handmaids were always borrowing it. It was blurred and shaky but you could get some idea of how you looked. She had heard all her life that her aunt Sarah was the most beautiful woman in Ur and she worried that Isaac would think her too plain and ordinary to take her place. Maybe he would be sorry he sent his mother’s gold jewelry to her. She wondered if she would ever be to him what his mother had been, and how would she know.