Rebekah

by Jill Eileen Smith

  Isaac pushed to his feet, frustrated with his insecurities, and turned to walk up the steps to the surface. He looked back one last time, bracing a hand against the wall. He should say something in parting, but there were no words left to say. She could not hear him from her place in Sheol, and he could not bring her back from there.

  He climbed the rest of the steps and moved forward, following the shaft of moonlight now coming through a break in the trees. A stirring in the brush at the edge of the clearing made him turn. Twin circles of light looked back at him—a jackal or a large cat. He stilled, feeling the whisper of wind against his cheek, the breath of God at his back.

  I am yours, Elohei Abraham. He had learned submission and trust through fear. Fear no longer bound him. Not fear of what God could control. Only fear of that which God gave free rein. Fear of men. Fear of relationships with those he did not trust.

  He held the animal’s gaze a moment longer, watching, waiting. The animal turned. A jackal. Ran back through the brush the way it had come. Isaac followed the opposite path toward his father’s house in Hebron.

  Voices, loud and boisterous one moment, muffled and angry the next, came from his father’s tent as Isaac entered the compound. He continued walking, trying to blot out the sounds of his father’s concubine Keturah, her animated voice rising higher against the booming insistence of his father.

  “They are too young. You cannot send them away! I will die if you do!” Keturah’s cries turned to sobs, and the tent grew silent except for her weeping. Isaac kept walking, weary of such exchanges.

  He moved to the central area of the camp where the fire still smoldered and Keturah’s older sons sat on tree stumps and large stones. Jokshan plucked a one-stringed lyre while Medan carved shapes from tree branches. Zimran, the oldest, was missing from the group, but nine-year-old Midian kicked debris into the fire, his actions threatening to put it out. He stopped at the sight of Isaac, his expression turning to a scowl.

  Isaac approached and sat on a log opposite the boys. “You play a fine tune,” he said, directing his gaze to fourteen-year-old Jokshan. “Perhaps it is time we built you a three-stringed lyre to increase your skills.” He studied the youth—the square jaw, the intense dark eyes staring back at him, the dark brows knit.

  “I don’t need your help. I can have one of the servants build me whatever I want.” Isaac sensed the boy’s arrogance and sought a way to break the tension. Keturah’s children were young enough to be his own, and with his father’s advanced age, they rarely enjoyed the lessons or the discipline Isaac had learned at his father’s knee.

  Isaac moved closer to the boy and extended a hand toward the one-stringed instrument. “May I?” He waited, expecting refusal, but resisted a smile when the boy complied. He turned the instrument over and smoothed a hand along the wood’s grain. “We could add strings to this one, but the sound would be better if the hole was bigger.” He returned it to the boy.

  Jokshan smiled, his teeth white against a tanned face. His heritage was darker-skinned than his father’s Mesopotamian tones—more like that of his mother’s Syrian ones. Normally a bit of a ruffian, Jokshan was one of the few of Keturah’s children who also showed a softer side, one that Isaac tried to nurture. But the mother offered the boys even less discipline than his father did.

  A commotion came from the tents, and Isaac turned at the ear-splitting screeches of Keturah’s second youngest, Ishbak, whose little legs pumped hard and tried to outrun his oldest brother, but quickly failed. Zimran grabbed hold of Ishbak, whose wail pierced through to Isaac’s heart. He stood, his blood pumping fast.

  Zimran whipped Ishbak upside down and carried him toward the fire pit, then dangled him by one leg over the fire. “You think you can steal from me and get away with it, you little beast! I’ll teach you to take what belongs to me.”

  Ishbak’s cries grew louder as Zimran lowered him, his hair nearly scorched by the low flames. “Abbaaaa!”

  Isaac came up behind Zimran and pulled a blade from his belt, touching it to Zimran’s neck. “Pull him away from the fire and release him. Now!”

  Zimran did not move. “You will not cut my throat, Brother. You do not have the courage. And this one needs to be taught a lesson.” Keturah’s sixteen-year-old carried himself like a man and was too bold for his age, reminding Isaac of his older brother Ishmael and a time when he was the one taunted by the elder son of Abraham.

  “Do not think me a fool, Zimran. You are not old enough to know what I will do. You have not witnessed what I will kill.”

  He breathed the threat into Zimran’s ear, satisfied when the boy’s eyes widened and he took two slow steps back from the fire. He released Ishbak, nearly dropping him into a heap. The three-year-old scrambled to his feet and ran, sobbing, toward his father’s tent, where Keturah and Abraham had emerged, disheveled and angry.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Abraham’s vibrant voice boomed from his tent to the central fire. By now the camp had come to life as though it were day. Isaac sheathed his blade and let it hang in the pouch at his side.

  “He threatened to cut my throat!” Zimran ran toward Abraham and fell to his knees. “Protect me from your son, Abba Abraham.”

  Abraham glanced up, meeting Isaac’s gaze. Isaac gave his head a slight shake. “The boy is mistaken, Father. He was the one threatening Ishbak, dangling him over the fire by one leg until his hair nearly caught fire. I merely gave him a reason to stop his foolish behavior.”

  Abraham’s shoulders visibly sagged at Isaac’s words, and Isaac hated the fact that they had to be said. But his father could not continue to ignore the behavior of Keturah’s sons, or soon they would cause serious mischief and misfortune.

  Abraham turned to Keturah, who held a sobbing Ishbak in her arms. She spoke something in the little boy’s ear, and at his nod, she reached for Zimran’s tunic, yanked him to his feet, and proceeded to whack his head with her free hand.

  “What is wrong with you that you would do such a thing? He is your brother! Do you not know that your father will send you away for such a thing? You are a foolish boy.” She smacked him again until the youth covered his face with his arms and fell to his knees again, trying to block her blows, sobbing like a child.

  “I’m sorry, Ima! But he stole my new carving knife, the one I traded with the Philistines to get, and he won’t tell me where he put it.” The words came out through broken sobs, and he turned to Abraham. “Please, Abba, don’t send me away!”

  Something twisted in Isaac’s middle at the plaintive cry, and he looked from his half brother to his father, seeing the telltale determined glint in his father’s eyes. Memories jolted him, vague yet still carrying with them a sense of loss. Ishmael had been sent away along with his mother when Isaac was near Ishbak’s age, and Ishmael not much older than Zimran was now.

  “Enough!” Abraham’s voice sounded weary, though for his age he still carried much strength. “Zimran, on your feet.” He tapped the boy gently with his staff, allowing no argument.

  The boy rose quickly from his crouched position while Keturah stepped back and wrapped both arms around Ishbak. A crowd of servants and Keturah’s other sons looked on.

  “Go to your mother’s tent at once. You will stay there until I can decide what to do with you.”

  At his father’s command, Zimran hung his head, shoulders sagging, and walked with weighted steps toward Keturah’s tent.

  Abraham turned to the three-year-old. “Did you take Zimran’s knife?”

  The child thrust a fist to his mouth and nodded.

  “Where did you put it?”

  Ishbak pointed toward the fire. “It fell out of my pouch when Zimran turned me upside down.”

  Isaac’s lips twitched, but he forced himself to hold back a smile. He moved closer to the fire, picked up a twig, and pushed the ashes around, searching for the small knife. Finding it, he dragged it away from the flames. Its carved wooden handle was scorched and ruined, the end already turned to a
sh. Only the blade remained.

  “It’s here.” He faced his father, who had come alongside him. “Though it won’t be much use to him now.”

  Abraham shook his head. “It would have been better if my other sons were all like you.”

  The quiet words surprised him. “They are young. You can still teach them obedience, as you so often taught me.” Their gazes held, the memories passing unspoken between them.

  “I am too old to teach them.” Abraham’s chest lifted in a sigh. “But you are right, of course. And soon it will be time to send them off, away from here . . . away from you.” His look held determination mingled with a hint of sadness.

  “Perhaps in a few years the timing would be better. The oldest is not even as old as Ishmael was then.”

  The promises had been for Isaac, not Ishmael, and neither Hagar’s nor Keturah’s children would share with him in his father’s inheritance. It was understood from the moment of his birth, from the moment his mother demanded Hagar and Ishmael be sent away. Keturah’s sons would fare no differently.

  “When the time is right, then,” his father said, his tone defeated. “I will not live to see their children or their children’s children.” He patted Isaac’s arm. “But before I die, I will find a wife for you, my son, and perhaps if Adonai wills it, I will hold your children on my knee.”

  Isaac leaned forward and kissed each of his father’s cheeks. “May it be as you have said, Father.”

  The older man returned his son’s kisses and cupped an aged hand to Isaac’s bearded cheek. “You understand why I took Keturah to wife?”

  It was a question, yet Isaac waited, not sure his father really wanted an answer.

  “Your mother did not disapprove.” He looked beyond Isaac as though his thoughts carried him to another era, to the changes that had come between him and Sarah after God’s test.

  “My mother had many struggles,” Isaac said at last. “She loved you until the end.”

  Abraham visibly relaxed at that, and he gripped Isaac’s arm. “She was a good woman. The most beloved mother of you, and my only love.”

  The words were soft, and Isaac wondered at the admission. His father had never shared such personal thoughts with him.

  “I think you are right that she loved me, but I do not think she ever understood or forgave me.”

  “I did my best to explain it to her.” Isaac felt the familiar sense of defeat that he had been unable to keep his parents’ marriage as close as it had been before that day—the day his father, in obedience to Adonai Elohim, had willingly bound him and laid him on the altar on Mount Moriah. If not for the startling voice of the angel of the Lord rumbling from the skies telling him not to slay his son, Abraham would have slit his throat and spilled his blood over the stone altar, giving back to God what God had given him.

  “I know you did.” Abraham’s tone held sorrow and a hint of regret. “I should have tried harder to convince her, but she would not speak of it to me.”

  In fact, Isaac’s mother had refused to even look in his father’s direction for a full year after the incident, until at last, through her servant Lila, she had suggested his father take another wife. For all of her hurt and anger at her husband, she could not bear to see him suffer and deduced that another wife could fill her place. Her only stipulation had been that any sons born of another wife could never inherit alongside her son.

  “We cannot undo what is past, Father. You did what Adonai Elohim required of you. I too heard the blessings that came from above after He stayed your hand. My mother did not have that privilege, and her faith, though strong, could not rise above her grief.”

  “Her sense of betrayal, you mean.” Abraham poked at the ruined knife with his staff. “I failed her one time too many.” He faced Isaac and cupped one hand on his shoulder. “But I will not fail her in my promise. I will send your half brothers to the east, far away from you, where they cannot trouble you.”

  Isaac nodded, measuring the pensive look in his father’s eyes. “When they are old enough to handle life on their own,” he said, relieved at the nod of acceptance that followed.

  “When they are old enough, they will go. After I have secured a wife for you from among my people.” He slipped his arm through Isaac’s and turned away from the fire toward his tent. “I will send Eliezer soon to Harran to the household of my brother’s sons to get a wife for you there.”

  6

  Dawn broke over the hills of Hebron, and Isaac emerged from his tent to the sound of finches, sparrows, and great gray shrikes chirping and warbling in the trees above. He glanced to his right, where the tent of his mother still stood like a monument to her memory. Someday he would bring a wife there, and she would bring life back into the camp and into his heart.

  The thought stirred his blood as he moved away from the tents toward the central fire, where Eliezer’s son Haviv sat blowing the steam from a clay mug.

  He looked up at Isaac’s approach and drank. “Care for some?”

  At Isaac’s nod, Haviv summoned a servant girl, who placed a similar cup into Isaac’s hands. He sipped, the taste minty.

  “Our fathers are in deep conversation already this morning.” Haviv inclined his head toward Abraham’s tent, and Isaac followed his gaze.

  “My father wishes to send your father on a journey to his homeland to find a wife for me.” Isaac accepted a plate of figs and flatbread from the servant and bit off one end of the bread, giving Haviv a pointed look. “I want you to accompany him.”

  Haviv swallowed his own bite of bread. “Your father’s homeland is a long journey. We could be gone two months.”

  “I have thought of that, but your brother can watch over my interests while you are gone. It is time Nadab took on a little more responsibility for the flocks and herds.” Isaac had been close to Haviv since childhood and had been grooming him to take Eliezer’s place, anticipating the day when Eliezer would be too old to oversee their household. But with the increase in livestock and servants and household goods, the job needed more than one man to do it well, and it was time he tested Nadab’s ability.

  “You are afraid my father will pick a virgin who is not pleasing to look upon, is that it?” Haviv’s right brow lifted, accompanying his smirk.

  “I am sure your father’s eyesight is still well and good. Consider the journey further training.” Isaac gave Haviv a sidelong glance. The man had become more friend than servant in recent years, making him a valuable asset. “Besides, if there is more than one cousin to choose from, your father might need some advice.” He took a long drink of the tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I trust you to help guide his choice.”

  Haviv chuckled. “Don’t think I do not see the gleam in your eye.”

  Isaac hid a smile, wondering what his bride would be like. That is, if one of his cousins would even agree to come to him. It would take a woman with a spirit of adventure to travel so far from her homeland. What would he do if she were unwilling to leave her parents? If no cousin could be found, what then?

  He turned at the sound of voices coming closer, men and women emerging from their tents. An infant’s cry came from across the compound as his father and Eliezer joined them around the fire. Isaac offered his father his seat, which he took with a grateful nod.

  “Eliezer has agreed to travel to Harran to seek a wife for you among my kinsmen. He is bound by my oath not to take a wife from among the people who live alongside us. You shall not marry a foreigner but a member of my own flesh and blood.” Abraham drew in a breath and slowly released it.

  “What if the young woman refuses to come back with him?” The possibility had turned over in Isaac’s mind more than once in the night, and he could not see a way around it. His father had married two foreigners, Hagar and Keturah, so why was it so important that he not follow in his footsteps?

  “Adonai Elohei of heaven and of earth will send his angel ahead of Eliezer to prepare the way for him.” His father’s dark eyes held
a look of certainty. “But if the woman refuses to come back with him, Eliezer will be free of the oath he has taken. If that happens, God will make another way.”

  Isaac finished the last of his drink and handed the cup back to a servant. “I want Haviv to accompany Eliezer on this journey, Father. With your permission, of course.”

  Abraham accepted food from the servant and nodded. “Whatever you wish, my son. Eliezer will take ten camels and six men with him. The woman will likely bring servants with her, so we will reserve three camels for the women. He will also gather household goods, jewels, and fabric to give in payment for the girl.” He fingered a slice of soft goat cheese. “I thought we should look at your mother’s jewels and choose something meaningful—a gift given only if the woman agrees to come.”

  Isaac ran a hand along the edge of his beard and nodded. His mother had owned many pieces of fine jewelry, gold and lapis lazuli being among her favorites.

  “Take plenty of silver and gold to give as gifts to her family. They must be compensated for the loss of their daughter.”

  “It shall be as you say, my lord.” Eliezer quickly finished breaking his fast. “I will get started right away.” He glanced at his son. “If you are to come with me, let us get started in gathering what we need for such a long journey.”

  Haviv followed Eliezer toward their tents, and Isaac took the seat beside his father. “Perhaps I will save the most priceless jewels, the ones my mother favored most, to give the woman myself.” He paused, reading his father’s expression. “It would have pleased her, I think.”

  Abraham smiled and continued to chew a plump date. “Yes, it would have pleased her.” His father regarded him for a long moment. “But if you truly want to bless your mother’s memory—may she rest in peace—never take another wife. Love only one woman all of your life.” He rubbed his mouth with a square piece of linen. “It is something I should have understood long ago.”