Chapter 10

The Seed of Abraham

 

Contrary to what Rebekah had been led to expect, Keturah was flawlessly gracious. She embraced Rebekah at once and seemed genuinely dismayed that the wedding had already taken place, and insisted that there would still be a feast as if the wedding still lay in the future.

“Isaac was beginning to be like an aging uncle,” said Keturah. “He was just pottering about mumbling things from the holy books and looking confused when anybody talked to him. But now—it’s as if you took twenty years off his age!”

“I hope he doesn’t do the same to me,” said Rebekah.

Keturah looked puzzled for a moment, and then laughed. “Of course! You’re not twenty years old yourself, are you! I am, though. Barely!”

“Still, that’s not such a great difference in our ages.”

“It’s our husbands who are old men!”  Keturah laughed aloud at her own joke. Then she leaned close to Rebekah. “I notice you had the self-control not to look around and see whether Isaac heard me. That’s good—some women think their husbands are babies and have to be protected from everything.”

Rebekah wanted to say, Even a grown man might wish to be safe from insult in his father’s house, but in truth Keturah had said nothing wrong, and perhaps the only reason Rebekah felt snippy about it was because of what Isaac and Eliezer had said just before they arrived at Isaac’s camp. All Keturah was doing was trying to make friends with her.

Or . . . perhaps she was asserting seniority because of her age, so Rebekah would not challenge her leadership of the women.

“I think,” said Rebekah, “that Isaac is planning for us to live at Lahai-roi. I hope we visit here often enough for us to become friends.”

Keturah’s expression changed to one of mock dismay. “Oh no, it’s going to be awkward for a few days.”

“Why would it be?” said Rebekah.

“Because Abraham is absolutely determined that his grandchild—the birthright grandson, to be exact—is going to grow up right here where he can keep an eye on him.”

“Well, perhaps that’s a decision that can be made when I’ve actually given birth to such a child,” said Rebekah.

“I don’t know. When Abraham gets an idea in his head . . .” She leaned close to Rebekah, as if confiding a secret. “He’s a very old man, you know, and he gets impatient when people don’t see things his way immediately.”

“I’m sure everything will work out,” said Rebekah. “No need to think about that now.”

“I hope you do end up living here,” said Keturah. “Even though it does mean you’ll be ruler of the women.”

Rebekah at once protested, though in fact she was relieved that Keturah had brought up the subject and declared her own disadvantage so cheerfully.

Keturah dismissed her objections. “Don’t be absurd, Rebekah. I may be a wife here, of sorts, but I’m not the wife.”

Rebekah did not say that technically a concubine was more servant than wife. “I’m not the wife either,” said Rebekah. “I’m the son’s wife.”

“But he’s the son, and that makes you the wife. The one who will bear the birthright boy.”

“May God grant that prayer,” said Rebekah.

“If he hasn’t already,” said Keturah.

Did she really say what Rebekah thought she said?

“Oh, don’t blush and look shy. Isaac has been shockingly chaste. I assumed the reason he married you so quickly was because he couldn’t wait a moment longer!”

Rebekah looked away, not wishing to continue that line of discussion. “I wonder what I should call him.”

“Your baby?”

“Your husband.” She had always thought of him as Uncle Abraham, but now he was her father-in-law.

Keturah laughed loudly. “Oh, everybody calls him Father Abraham except me, I just call him Abraham. In public. What I call him in private is private.”

She grinned as if she was dying to tell. But Rebekah continued to look off into the distance and said nothing to encourage that topic, either.

So Keturah went on. “And Isaac, of course, he just calls him Father.” And then, as if it were a secret: “One thing you have to know—in this camp, what Father Abraham decides is what will happen. He talks to God, you know.”

“So I heard,” said Rebekah dryly. “But that’s how it is with every herding family. The patriarch is the judge and lawgiver. He’s what a king would be, in a city.”

“Only the kingdom is very small,” said Keturah, laughing.

“In this case,” said Rebekah, “the kingdom is very large.”

“Well, for a camp I suppose it is, but I’ve seen the cities of the coast.”

“Really? All of them?”

“I’ve actually been in Gerar.”

“It must have been impressive,” said Rebekah. “I hear it’s almost a tenth of the size of Byblos, and Byblos is large enough to be considered a good-sized town in Egypt.” Rebekah felt just a little bad about letting herself get caught up in a contest of words with Keturah, but there was something about her that just made Rebekah want to argue.

“Oh, I know, all those magnificent places, so far away. Abraham’s been to Egypt, you know.”

“I’ve heard stories,” said Rebekah.

“But still, how can you call Abraham’s camp a large kingdom, if you’re going to go comparing Gerar to the cities of Egypt!”

“Because Uncle Abraham’s kingdom is the whole world, Keturah,” said Rebekah.

Keturah looked at her as though she were out of her mind. “Well, I think King Abimelech of Gerar would have a different opinion.”

“The name Abimelech suggests that he’s a worshiper of Molech,” said Rebekah. “And if that’s the case, then he believes, at least in principle, that it’s a good thing to burn children alive to please his god.”

“What does that have to do with the size of kingdoms?”

“It means that in the eyes of the only true and living God, Abimelech is a petty king serving the most vile of false gods. While Uncle Abraham has the birthright of God, which lifts him above all kings of all lands.”

Keturah got a strange look on her face. “You don’t really believe he’s above all kings.”

“You’re his wife, and you don’t?”

“I just . . . no one ever said it quite that way. But now I think about it, I suppose it’s true. What an odd thought. That here in this camp, the shepherds take their instructions from . . . the king of the world.”

“Let’s just call him the steward of the kingdom of God.”

“Now you are joking, to call Abraham a steward! That’s making him like Eliezer!”

“To God,” said Rebekah, “Abraham is like Eliezer.”

“My husband is no servant,” said Keturah, getting a little upset.

“All human beings are either servants of God, or servants of his enemies,” said Rebekah. “So I think your husband would prefer you to think of him as the servant of God.”

“Now I know why Abraham won’t let women even look at the holy writings,” said Keturah, and she turned her face a little, putting an end to that line of conversation.

Which was fine with Rebekah, because Keturah’s last remark stabbed her to the heart, though Keturah could not have known that it would. Uncle Abraham wouldn’t let women so much as see the holy writings? Keturah must have misunderstood. Or maybe she had been forbidden to see them because she was so flighty that . . . no, there was no use in speculating. She would simply ask him. He couldn’t refuse her. She could read, after all. And if she was trustworthy enough to be wife to one heir of the birthright and mother of the next, surely she could be trusted to look at the writings that were part of the birthright.

Deborah rescued her from the stalled conversation with Keturah by coming to whisper to her about how one of the handmaidens was being very forward with some of Abraham’s shepherds. Keturah overheard and started to say, “Oh, let girls be girls,” but Rebekah was already on the way. Let girls be girls? Well, why not let lambs be lambs and wolves be wolves? What would happen to the flocks then? Deborah knew better than Keturah the consequences of letting young people go wherever their desires might lead them. The whole idea of caring for children was to keep them from doing stupid, dangerous, wicked things that could not be undone, until they learned enough self-control and good judgment that they could be expected to make their own decisions. Not one of these girls was at such a point—least of all the one who was flirting, since the very act of enticing a shepherd who had been alone in the hills for weeks or months was proof enough of idiocy.

Naturally, the flirt—Miriel, a girl who was certainly of marriageable age—was pouty and resentful when Rebekah called her away and warned her against giving some shepherd the wrong idea about her availability. But it was one of the other girls who, overhearing it all, made the obvious retort: “It’s easy for you, you’re married!”

“For a day,” said Rebekah. “And what kind of marriage do you think I would have had if I had been the kind of girl who went about flirting with shepherds?”

Miriel gave one sharp bark of a laugh.

“What was funny about that?” asked Rebekah, trying to keep anger out of her voice.

“You were never going to marry a shepherd,” said Miriel. “But that’s who we are going to marry. Like our mothers did.”

It was a telling point. Rebekah started to answer with some kind of explanation about how these shepherds weren’t looking for more than a momentary wife, when she heard Isaac’s voice from behind her. “You’re mistaken, girl,” he said. “That’s exactly what Rebekah did marry.”

Of course all the girls blushed and hid their faces and the sillier ones giggled, but Rebekah realized that of course he was right. She wished she had thought of saying it herself. Except that it was better coming from him; if she had said it, it might have sounded as though she were denigrating her own husband, who was, after all, heir to the birthright, and not just a shepherd at all.

When she pointed this out to him as they walked toward Abraham’s tent, Isaac only laughed. “Still a matter of shepherding. People don’t understand what it means to be a shepherd. You aren’t master of the sheep. They’re too stupid to have a master because they don’t understand obedience—only imitation of the other sheep, and fear of predators. No, a shepherd is servant of the sheep, protecting them, bringing them to food. And that’s what we are to all our people—weren’t you shepherding those girls? And with the holy writings, well, they have a life of their own, much greater and longer than my own life could possibly be, and I will only serve them for a time.”

“And part of that,” said Rebekah, “is keeping them from danger.”

“There are predators,” said Isaac. “Sometimes I wish no one knew about the birthright. There are those who think that if they could get their hands on the holy writings, it would make them prophets, like Father.”

“Has anyone tried to steal them?”

“Father is a great man, and people fear his wrath. It may be a different story when a weaker man has the birthright.”

It took Rebekah a moment to realize that Isaac meant himself. “You’re not weak,” she said, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“I was pleased to see how strong you are,” said Isaac, deflecting her reassurance. “There you were, speaking like a stern mother to a girl who has to be older than you.”

“Oh,” said Rebekah. “Well, yes, I am, but I . . .”

“But you have been mistress of your camp. Eliezer told me something of your life. To believe your mother was dead when she was not—I don’t know if I could ever . . .”

Forgive. She knew what word was next. She looked up, expecting to see anger. Instead, she saw that his eyes were full of tears.

“Isaac,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Just . . . my mother,” said Isaac. “Thinking of my mother.” He brushed away a tear. “As I said . . . a weaker man.”

“I hope,” said Rebekah, “that someday I have sons who love me so much they would shed a tear for me a year after I died.”

“I have no doubt that you will be such a mother,” said Isaac.

“And you will be a father like Abraham,” said Rebekah.

But to that, Isaac said nothing, and she wondered why not.

Uncle Abraham’s tent stood in splendid isolation, on the top of a knoll, and there were men whose sole duty, apparently, was to keep people from approaching, for unlike the tents of most great patriarchs, there was no busy coming-and-going. Yet the work of a patriarch was to deal with the needs of his people; how could Abraham rule if he saw no one?

She understood, however, when she saw him, for he was older than any man she had ever seen. He sat in the door of his tent, on a low stool with a back to it, so he did not have to keep himself upright, and he seemed to be asleep, though his left hand trembled slightly even in slumber. His face was gaunt, hollow under the cheekbones, as if each year had eaten away a little at his cheeks until he had only a parchment’s thickness of skin hiding his teeth and jawbones from view. Indeed, his face seemed little more than a skull with skin and wisps of hair and beard reaching out in every direction as if they grew with no goal but to escape by whatever route they could find.

If Isaac had said, “Oh, look, Father seems to have died,” Rebekah would not have been surprised. But then, as they approached, the old man’s eyes fluttered open and he slowly turned his head to regard them. He moved no other part of his body and said nothing until at last they were standing before him.

“Sit down,” he said. “Don’t make me lift this old head.”

His voice was thin and reedy and full of air, like a whisper with only a hint of melody in it. It was hard to hear him.

They sat on a rug that had been laid out for visitors. There was a patch of bare earth between their rug and his, and for a moment Rebekah found herself reaching for a stick so she could write, as she had for so many years written every word she said to Father. But if Abraham was deaf, no one had mentioned it. She held the small stick she had picked up and played with it in her fingers, feeling a little foolish.

“She’s a beauty,” said Abraham.

Rebekah bowed her head.

“The Lord has been kind to me,” said Isaac.

“Couldn’t wait for me to perform the marriage,” said Abraham.

Isaac said nothing.

Abraham said nothing. Waiting for an answer?

Finally Rebekah spoke. “The Lord seemed to be acting in haste, and so we hurried,” she said. “I hope we did right.”

“You did what your husband said,” Abraham answered. “No one can fault you.”

Still Isaac said nothing.

“Talk to me, Isaac,” said Abraham. Then, to Rebekah, “He’s stubborn when he’s pouting.”

Was Abraham trying to tease Isaac out of his silence? If he was, it didn’t work. Rebekah did not look at Isaac, though, for that would seem a tacit admission that she, too, thought he needed to speak.

“What am I to call you?” asked Rebekah. “All my life I’ve spoken of you as Uncle Abraham.”

“Call me Grandfather,” said Abraham, “so your children will learn to call me that.”

Rebekah realized at once that this was the good choice, for no one else in camp would be bearing him grandchildren—it was a name for her alone to use, at least until she had children who could speak.

“Grandfather,” she said, “I hope you’ll pray that I conceive a son very quickly.”

“I pray for that every day,” said Abraham. “I don’t know how long I have to live, and I want my grandson close to me.” He coughed—a weak, empty cough that seemed to shake his whole body to produce only the slightest of sounds. “I don’t mind this nonsense of camping out at Lahai-roi for now, but when that first son is born, you two will come home.”

Finally Isaac spoke. “Thank you for the invitation, Father,” he said. “I’ll consider it.”

“Why do you defy me?” asked Abraham.

Isaac said nothing.

Abraham spoke to Rebekah. “I won’t have this boy growing up soft. Too close to his mother. Women can’t help it, they treat their boys as babies far too long, and it breaks their spirit. I indulged Sarah because she treasured Isaac, but at what cost to him?”

She could hardly believe he was criticizing Isaac this way in front of her. The tension between father and son was so thick that Rebekah felt as though she could hardly breathe. But then, as she thought about it, Isaac wasn’t the only target of Abraham’s soft, sharp words. How dare he assume that just because she’s a woman, she would be too indulgent with her son?

Maybe nobody else stood up to Abraham in this camp, but Rebekah had no intention of turning over her firstborn son to this old man to raise. “You aren’t suggesting that you intend to take our son away from us and raise him yourself?” asked Rebekah.

Abraham coughed again, then laughed dryly. “Oh, that would be sad, wouldn’t it. A baby raised by an old man who has to sit in the sun just to keep his body from getting as cold as death in the middle of the day.”

“We’ll do all things according to the will of the Lord,” said Isaac softly.

Abraham spoke to Rebekah instead of Isaac. “He sounds obedient, doesn’t he? But I know defiance when I hear it.” He turned to Isaac. “And I’ve done nothing to deserve that attitude from you, my son. Nothing but give you all that I have.”

Rebekah could not keep still. “He wasn’t defying you, Grandfather, he—”

“‘According to the will of the Lord,’ he said,” Abraham echoed. “Meaning that unless I’m prepared to say the Lord told me they must live with me, he’s not going to do it.”

“That’s not at all what he meant. That’s—”

“That’s exactly what I meant,” said Isaac.

The words hung in the air like the aftermath of a thunderclap.

Abraham finally broke the silence. “You see the dangers of interpreting for your husband.”

“She’s loyal,” said Isaac. “To her family. And to God.”

“Eliezer told me the story of her refusal of Ezbaal,” said Abraham. And he began to laugh. It sounded like reeds brushing against each other in a breeze.

Isaac also laughed, a deep, throaty sound that was rich with life.

There they were, laughing together, and Rebekah was baffled. Until this moment it had felt like a war between them—the last thing she had ever expected—and yet now they were laughing like old friends. What was going on between them?

“Poor Ezbaal,” said Isaac.

“The Lord chooses strong women for us, my son,” said Abraham.

“She’s already standing up to you,” Isaac pointed out.

Rebekah wanted to protest, but of course he was right, so what was the point of arguing?

“I’ve never had a shortage of people who stand up to me,” said Abraham. “In my old age, I wasn’t wishing for yet another.”

“The Lord sends us what we need, not what we want,” said Isaac with a smile.

“I hate it when you quote me to myself.” Abraham turned to Rebekah. “Let me tell you right now, so you know: I like you. I like everything I’ve heard about you and I like what I’ve seen. But if the Lord wants somebody else to make the decisions here, all he needs to do is take me home. I’m ready whenever he wants me back. Until then, I’ll listen to what you have to say, but I hope you’ll do me the same courtesy. At least try doing it my way before you decide I’m wrong.”

“Grandfather,” said Rebekah, “in all matters pertaining to your household, you’ll have my perfect obedience. But I, not you, am the one the Lord chose to be the mother of my children. And if he wants someone else to do that job, all he needs to do is have me die in childbirth. It happens all the time. But if I’m still here after our first son is born, then I will be his mother.”

Abraham studied her for a moment, smiled broadly, then turned to Isaac. “Mark my words, she’ll spoil the boy.”

Did that mean he was giving in? Rebekah thought not. He was merely choosing not to press the issue further right now.

“I’ll make sure she doesn’t,” said Isaac. “But for the moment, I’ll be content if the Lord gives us a boy in the first place. And just so you know, Father, Mother never spoiled me. She was harder on me than you ever were. Perhaps you’ve forgotten how rigorous she was.”

“I miss your mother too, you know,” said Abraham. “Every hour of every day, I have things I want to tell her. And ask her. And show her. It’s as if I lost half myself.”

Once again Isaac said nothing, and this time Rebekah knew enough to keep silent herself.

Abraham, therefore, was the one who broke the silence, explaining to Rebekah, “Isaac doesn’t like it that I took Keturah as a wife.”

“I’m perfectly happy for you,” said Isaac. “I appreciate your waiting until Mother was buried.”

His voice was completely level, not a hint of sarcasm, but Abraham recoiled as if someone had thrown something at his eyes.

“Your mother is my wife forever,” said Abraham. “Worlds without end, she’s half my self.”

Isaac said nothing.

Again, Abraham directed himself to Rebekah. “He was always with his mother like a moth around a flame, darting everywhere but never very far.”

Abraham seemed to expect some kind of answer from her, but as long as Isaac wasn’t answering, Rebekah did not want to say anything more. She had already gotten herself into enough difficulty.

But no one was speaking, and Abraham was looking at her with such intensity that she could no longer keep still. “I wish I could have known him as a child,” said Rebekah. “But I grew up hearing legends about his birth.”

“Ah, the legends, the stories,” said Abraham. “The myths, the outright lies. Gossip. Slander. Scandal.”

“Miracles, that’s all I heard,” said Rebekah.

“Truly?” asked Isaac.

“In my father’s house,” said Rebekah. “I once heard something else from visitors, but in my father’s house, there were no stories but of God’s goodness to Abraham and Sarah.”

“Then you heard the truth,” said Abraham. “God has blessed us beyond all measure.”

Again a silence fell, but at least this time it didn’t follow some jab from one of the men, or some foolish statement of Rebekah’s. It seemed contemplative.

“I wish I had known her,” said Rebekah.

They both knew she meant Sarah. “She was born to be a queen,” said Abraham.

“I thought it was her older sister who—”

Abraham interrupted her with a sharp dry laugh. “Qira. If she was a queen, so is every ewe in the flock. So much strength, but all of it devoted to getting her own way, and none of it to serving her husband or her children.”

“Father likes to tell about Qira,” said Isaac, “because it always amazes him how different two children of the same father can be.”

Again a silence fell, and for some reason Rebekah thought that this was the awkward silence following a thrust in their duel. But who did the stabbing this time? And who was stabbed?

Then she put it together. Abraham’s remarks about how soft Isaac was because Sarah was too protective of him. And now Isaac talking about how different two children of the same father could be. It was about Ishmael. Isaac was making a jab at himself. And Abraham was letting it stand.

But why? Ishmael was a great lord of the desert, everyone knew it—he was feared by anyone who might be his enemy and shunned by his rivals, who dared not face him. He went where he wanted, from well to well, and took what he needed. He was also known as a generous man, but when you can take anything you want, simply leaving people with what they already had can seem like generosity. He was ostensibly a worshiper of the God of Abraham—at least it was said that he bowed down to no other god. But he was certainly not what anyone could call a holy man, not in any of the stories Rebekah had heard.

If Abraham thought her husband was weak, surely it did not imply that he thought Ishmael was strong!

Whatever was going on here was too deep for her. If it wasn’t a war, it was some kind of struggle between father and son. Yet when they laughed together—she had never seen Father and Laban seem so close, so at one with each other.

One thing was certain. She did not dare bring up what Keturah had said, about women being forbidden to see the holy writings. If he was already talking about needing to oversee the rearing of a grandson that hadn’t even been conceived yet, the last thing she needed to do was to give him grounds for thinking of her as even less trustworthy than he already did.

So she asked for the one thing she had wished for in her and Isaac’s hurried wedding. “Grandfather,” she said, “will you bless our marriage?”

Isaac moved next to her, and she looked up to see him gazing at her. Had she said something wrong?

“My wife is wiser than I am,” said Isaac. He turned to Abraham. “Will you, Father?”

Tears came to Abraham’s eyes. “The old man still has a few blessings in him,” he said. “Come here, children. Kneel before me. Hold hands, yes, like that.” And there on the spot he gave them a blessing such as she had never heard Father give in all the marriages he had blessed. Abraham promised them great blessings in life and after they died as well, and he placed them under the covenant that he himself had made with God, that as long as they obeyed the Lord they would be blessed with progeny as numerous as the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky.

At the end of it, Abraham put a hand on her shoulder and said, “I love most in all the world the kind of people who put themselves in the Lord’s hands with perfect trust. Eliezer told me that you were that kind of person. As long as you bend to the Lord’s will, I can put up with a little defiance of mine. Not a lot, but a little.” He smiled. “My son deserves to be happy. I think, with you, he will be.”

Rebekah found herself weeping. This was the Abraham she had longed to meet, not the old man gibing at his grown son, but the voice that pierced her to the heart with the words of God. She could feel the power of what he was saying; it was the way she felt when God had filled her with the knowledge of what she was to do. Peace and perfect trust, that’s what it was, knowing that God held her in his gaze for this moment, and knew her, and loved her, and wanted her to be happy.

That night there was feasting, and all the next day Rebekah was introduced to Abraham’s servants, and to friends and visitors who had come from nearby to meet the wife of Abraham’s heir. There was singing and dancing. The food was magnificent, the stories enthralling. They could not have shown her more honor.

But none of it could still the fire that burned in her from having Abraham rest his hand upon hers and Isaac’s and blessing their marriage to last forever, like his own marriage with Sarah, even beyond the gateway of the grave.

She did not even mind so much the disappointment of not having seen the holy writings.

After all, someday they would be Isaac’s, and he would make his own rules about who could and could not see them.