The Sons of Isaac(40)

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.





Ten 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.