Arranged marriages continue in a good many parts of the world to this day; it is only in our century in the Western world that they have become a thing of the past. How could a marriage arranged by God and his angel fail? Isaac and Rebekah loved each other from the start.
Love stories in the Bible tend to begin at a well, the common meeting place for nomads. Abraham’s servant went to the well in Aram-Naharaim—all the way back to Mesopotamia in the northwest. A young woman appeared, and drew water for the servant and for his camels. The servant asked her name, and when he learned that she was Rebekah, a young woman of Abraham’s tribe, he gave her the jewels Abraham had sent with him, and she hurried home with the news of the stranger’s arrival.
Laban, Rebekah’s brother, came out to meet Abraham’s servant, to give him food, and to make marriage negotiations. Laban, the negotiator. Years later, when Jacob fled to him and fell in love with his daughter, Rachel, he was a party to many more elaborate negotiations.
Laban agreed to the marriage of his sister, Rebekah, with Isaac. Rebekah, too, agreed, although she had never set eyes on the young man, and she set out with Abraham’s servant to go to the land of Canaan.
Isaac appeared to have had no objection to having a marriage arranged for him. One evening, while Abraham’s servant had not yet returned from his mission, Isaac went out into the fields to meditate. To meditate on the strange events of his life. On the wonder of the desert stars, and the incomprehensible maker of them all. Dis-aster was not for him. He was connected to the stars, and to the land, and to the tribe. While he was alone, meditating, he lifted up his eyes, and saw camels coming toward him. And he saw Rebekah.
Rebekah, in her turn, saw Isaac, and asked who the young man was. Abraham’s servant told her that it was Isaac, to whom she was betrothed.
Her heart must have lifted, for it was a brave thing for Rebekah to do, to leave her family and go to a strange land to be the bride of a young man she had never seen. Even though such was the custom of her people, it was still courageous. But as the story continues, it is apparent that Rebekah did not lack courage.
So Isaac took Rebekah for his wife,
and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.
Abraham, too, comforted himself; he married again, despite his advanced age, and had several more children. But, according to the story, it was to Isaac that Abraham gave everything he had.
And then Abraham died.
Isaac, and his half brother, Ishmael, buried their father. Isaac, the legitimate son of Abraham and Sarah, was the favourite. Ishmael was the child of Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid, according to the custom of the time. Hagar’s scorn of barren Sarah began a bitterness which only death could heal, and it is comforting to think that these two alienated brothers were reconciled, and that together they buried their father. They had played together as children. They came together as men, with their father’s death binding them, salving the old hurts. The schism caused by Hagar’s arrogance and Sarah’s resentment was finally healed.
There was no denial of death in those days of a sparsely-populated land. Now we hide it away in nursing homes and hospitals, prolong it, often painfully, with life-support systems. But for Isaac and Ishmael, birth and death were a natural part of life, and unless someone was killed by a wild animal or in an unforeseen accident, death was prepared for openly. I hope that the two brothers, together at last, were able to hold each other’s hands as well as their father’s. Now, in the bloody world of the Middle East, it is time for Isaac and Ishmael to clasp hands again. In the world of Islam, Ishmael is revered above Isaac but they laughed together as children, and God heard them both and loved them.
—
At Crosswicks we are dependent on a well for our water. But it was not until I stood on the sands of the Sahara that I consciously understood the importance of wells for the people of the desert, where the sun scorches the parched land and the sand blows constantly.
Before our trip to Egypt I read that people who wear contact lenses should leave them at home, the blowing sand is so pervasive. Since I do not see without contact lenses, leaving them at home was not an option for me, so I bought a pair of swimming goggles to wear over my contacts! On the day that we went to see the Sphinx and the great pyramids the wind rose, and we were caught in a sandstorm. I was more than grateful for my swimming goggles; they protected my eyes from the stinging sand far more effectively than ordinary spectacles would have, and while everybody else ran for cover, I was able to watch the strange beauty of the storm until the force of the sand, blowing in horizontal waves, stung my legs like shot and finally drove me to shelter.
No wonder women wear veils in that part of the world. The veils protect them not only from men’s eyes, but from the blowing sand.
A well provides not only water for drink, but irrigation for keeping an oasis green. A well is necessary for life.
When Abimelech sent Isaac away from Gerar, saying,
“Go from us, for you are mightier than we are,”
Isaac’s first priority was finding water. He pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and his servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdsmen of Gerar fought with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying,
“The water is ours.”
So Isaac’s herdsmen dug another well, and there was a battle over that one, too. So they went further and dug yet another well, and no one tried to take that one away from them, and Isaac called the name of it Rehoboth, and he said,
“For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”…And the Lord appeared to him that night and said, “I am the God of Abraham, your father; fear not, for I am with you, and will bless you, and multiply your seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.” And Isaac built an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent, and there his servants dug yet another well.
Digging a well in the desert is no easy chore. Water is not always reached at the first dig, or the second, or even the third. And often the digging has to be very deep before a spring is reached. But they succeeded in digging a well.
Then Abimelech came from Gerar, with two of his chief warriors, and Isaac said, “Why have you come after me, after you have sent me away from you?”
And Abimelech and his warriors said, “We saw certainly that the Lord is with you. Let there now be an oath between us, and let us make a covenant together, that you will do us no hurt. We have not hurt you, we have done only good to you, and we sent you away in peace. And we see now that you are the blessed of the Lord.”
And Isaac made them a feast, and they ate and drank together, and in the morning they rose early and swore to join each other, and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.
Isaac wanted peace. When he married Rebekah he must have thought that at last his life was going to move in quiet ways of love, harmony, and prosperity. Their marriage was one of deep love, but Rebekah had no children. Since it was the woman who carried and bore the children, it was assumed that the woman was at fault if the marriage was not blessed by babies. Childlessness was a source of humiliation to a woman. Rebekah’s childlessness must have seemed a bitter irony to Isaac, who had been born so late in his parents’ lives that they could have been his grandparents. How amazing was this God who had brought Abraham and Sarah to this strange country, who had given Sarah a baby in her old age, and then almost taken him away in that extraordinary demand for blood sacrifice! Now what was this God going to do about that rash promise that Abraham’s descendants, through Isaac, would be as numerous as the stars in the sky? What kind of a jokester God was this?
Perhaps Isaac had mixed feelings about the Creator of the universe, of the countless stars in the heavens, of the grains of sand in the desert, and of strange promises. But he entreated God, as the Hebrew patriarchs never hesitated to do, and at last he and Rebekah were given twin sons.
Rebekah had a difficult pregnancy:
The children struggled with one another inside her, and she said, “If this is the way of it, why go on living?” So she went to consult the Lord, and he said to her,
“There are two nations in your womb.
Your issue will be two rival peoples.
One nation shall have the mastery of the other,
and the elder shall serve the younger.”
The descendants of Esau were to be the Edomites, and those of Jacob the Israelites, and there was indeed to be enmity between them.
I wonder if Rebekah was sorry she had consulted the Lord? This was a hard prediction to carry with her through the rest of her pregnancy.
When the time came for her confinement, there were indeed twins in her womb, and a rough birthgiving, two babies, one coming immediately after the other, the younger grabbing his twin’s heel. Esau, the firstborn, was covered with red hair like a little animal. Jacob, the heel-grabber, was a fraternal twin, smooth-skinned and far from identical.
As they grew, Esau became a hunter, and Isaac’s favourite son. Jacob tended the land around the home tent, and was loved by Rebekah.
In The Parable of the Tribes, Alexander Schmookler points out that the world of the hunter was moderately peaceable. It was a sparsely-populated world. If the human being was to survive, interdependence was essential. It was only when one tribe grew stronger than other neighbouring tribes, had more children, cattle, goats, and camels, that trouble began, as was the case with Isaac and Abimelech. “The rise of agriculture made possible a more settled life with far larger populations living in the same territory.”
When wells were dug, and water made more available, the tribe tended to settle around the well. So, when Isaac’s wells, animals, and retinue prospered and enlarged, he had to leave Gerar. He left peaceably, but far too often the ancient Hebrew praised God for helping his tribe take over another people’s land.
The slaughter of tribes who worshipped alien gods, slaughter commanded by God, disturbs me. In Psalm 44, we read:
We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us
What you did in their time,
How you drove out the heathen with your hand, and planted our fathers in,
How you destroyed the nations, and made your own people to flourish,
For they did not get the land in possession through their own sword,
neither was it their own arm that helped them,
But your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance,
because you favoured them.
You are my King, O God,
send help to Jacob.
Through you we will overthrow our enemies,
and in your name we will tread under those who rise up against us.
This triumphalism is profoundly disturbing. But Scripture makes it clear that we are never to stay in one place, one way of thinking, but to move on, out into the wilderness, as El Shaddai moved Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As promised, they had many descendants and, alas, a large population seems to encourage war.
But on a planet where population has grown beyond bounds, this warring way of life does not work anymore. Wars in the name of religion not only give religion a bad name, they are a warning that it is time for us to move out of and beyond the old tribalism. Not easy, for it would seem that some form of tribalism is inherent in human nature. Science fiction writers often cast their characters in the old tribal mode, even when the tribe is the people of this planet, and the neighbours, “them,” are from other planets. In Star Trek, the tribe includes a Martian, so “us” is the solar system, and “them” (usually the bad guys) are from other solar systems. Sometimes it is this galaxy that is the tribe, versus other galaxies.
But everything we are learning about the nature of Being is making it apparent that “us” versus “them” is a violation of Creation. Tribalism must be transformed into community. We are learning from astrophysics and particle physics and cellular biology that all of Creation exists only in interdependence and unity.
In a recent article on astrophysics I came across the beautiful and imaginative concept known as “the butterfly effect.” If a butterfly winging over the fields around Crosswicks should be hurt, the effect would be felt in galaxies thousands of light years away. The interrelationship of all of Creation is sensitive in a way we are just beginning to understand. If a butterfly is hurt, we are hurt. If the bell tolls, it tolls for us. We can no longer even think of saying, “In the Name of the Lord will I destroy them.” No wonder Jesus could say that not one sparrow could fall to the ground without the Father’s knowledge.
Dr. Paul Brand points out that every cell in the body has its own specific job, in interdependence with every other cell. The only cells which insist on being independent and autonomous are cancer cells.
Surely that should be a lesson to us in the churches. Separation from each other and from the rest of the world is not only disaster for us, but for everybody from whom we separate ourselves. We must be very careful lest in insisting on our independence we become malignant.
If we take the whole sweep of the story, rather than isolating passages out of context, this is the message of Scripture. So now, as we take the next steps into the wilderness into which God is sending us; now, as the human creature has moved from being the primitive hunter to the land-worker to the city-dweller to the traveller in the skies, we must move on to a way of life where we are so much God’s one people that warfare is no longer even a possibility. It is that, or dis-aster, and we must not let Satan, the great separator, win.
The phrase, “the butterfly effect,” comes from the language of physics. It is equally the language of poetry and of theology. For the Christian, the butterfly has long been a symbol of resurrection.
The butterfly emerges from the cocoon, its wings, wet with rebirth, slowly opening, and then this creature of fragile loveliness flies across the blue vault of sky.
Butterflies and angels, seraphim and cherubim, call us earthbound creatures to lift up our mortal dust and sing with them, to God’s delight.
Holy. Holy. Holy!
Esau was a more primitive personality than Jacob. He lived for the moment, with little thought of the morrow or the consequences of his impulses. When he came home from hunting, famished, and saw that Jacob had made pottage (a delicious stew of rice, lentils, and onions), the smell was too much for him, and he asked Jacob to give him a bowlful.
Jacob’s response was hardly generous—surely he could have shared with Esau! But, no; he demanded Esau’s birthright as the price of a mess of pottage. Because Esau was famished and because that moment was all he was thinking about, he let Jacob trick him, and to fill his immediate need he thoughtlessly gave away his birthright as eldest son. While this was merely imprudent of Esau, it was a thoroughly dirty trick on Jacob’s part; but Jacob never hesitated to pull dirty tricks. And yet it was Jacob, not Esau, who became the third person in the trinity of patriarchs. Over and over in Scripture we hear the invocation: “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And God named Jacob Israel—one man as the icon of a nation.
Poor hairy Esau, more like a monkey than a man. Perhaps he compensated by becoming a mighty hunter, whereas Jacob, who was called to be Israel, stayed home with his mother. Jacob cooked the savoury smelling pottage Esau was so hungry for. Jacob did many things which today are considered effeminate. It is almost as much of a shock to us to think of Jacob staying around the tent, cooking rice, onions, and lentils, as it is for us to visualize Jesus eating at Matthew’s house with all those sinful people. Jacob, in a masculine world, had feminine qualities, and so, despite his cheating, he also had intuition and a willing suspension of disbelief.
Take a new look, these unexpected happenings seem to say. Jacob may not be who you thought he was. You may not be who you think you are, or who you think you ought to be.
The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lav
ished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves. God did not love Jacob because he was a cheat, but because he was Jacob. God loves us in our complex isness, and when we get stuck on the image of the totally virtuous and morally perfect person we will never be, we are unable to accept this unqualified love, or to love other people in their rich complexity.
If God can love Jacob—or any single one of us—as we really are, then it is possible for us to turn in love to those who hurt or confuse us. Those we know and those we do not know. And that makes me take a new look at love.
It is not easy. The forensic attitude is deeply ingrained. I need the help of the Holy Spirit in order to turn my demands for fairness to love, as (for instance) when I think about whoever it was who was willing to allow me to take the blame for something I did not do. It is not easy to reject the forensic response, but it is essential. And does it make any difference if I try to think of those two horrid men on my jury duty case with love? If the world and all of us in it are as interdependent as the physicists tell us, yes. If the butterfly effect is true, yes, it does make a difference. They don’t have to be perfect, or even repentant, to be loved. Of course they won’t ever know that I am trying to love them, but that does not negate love. Not if it is part of the love of God.
And Jacob received the beneficence of that love.
Why Jacob?
The stories of the great scriptural characters are not stories about fairness. Life is not fair. Indeed, the idea of fairness and unfairness didn’t come into being until after the Fall. In Eden there was no need to think about such things, because life was the joy of at-one-ment with the Creator. It is after the fracture of this union, this separation (the first apartheid), that we begin to get caught up in shoulds and oughts, and fair and unfair. Children tend to stamp their feet and cry out, “It’s not fair!” and very likely it isn’t. When we think in terms of fairness and unfairness, we begin to want to “pay back” whoever has been unfair, we begin to want to get even, to punish. That is the beginning of forensic thinking.
A Stone for a Pillow Page 4