Rebekah, page 33
But the Lord had known the weakness of Abimelech’s position, and that’s why he sent Isaac there. The miracle was not that Abimelech exploited their presence and in exchange Isaac got water for his flocks during a drought. The miracle was that Isaac asked the Lord with faith that he would be answered—or at least with hope—and the Lord answered him, and for the first time in his life Isaac was happy in the confidence of the Lord.
Esau, true to form, lasted only one day at well-digging, and then he was off with Nebajoth, one of Ishmael’s sons, on a hunting expedition into the rocky country south of Gerar. “We have meat,” said Rebekah. “We have enough meat to feed ten thousand. What we need is water. Will you find us water in the desert and bring it home to us on the backs of asses?”
“Father likes the venison I bring him,” said Esau. “He’s an old man. Don’t you think an old man should have things he likes?”
“He needs your help more than he needs venison.”
“He has servants,” said Esau. “But he has no deer in all his flocks and herds.” Then Esau laughed and went on his way.
Jacob saw it all, of course, and when Esau was gone said to his mother, “He thinks it’ll be like hunting in the hills near Kirjath-arba.”
“And it won’t be?” asked Rebekah.
“There are streams and pools in the mountains of Canaan. But south in the Negev there are no streams.”
“Why do you know this and he doesn’t?” asked Rebekah.
“Because I know everything the shepherds know, and the shepherds know that they can’t take a flock into the Negev and hope to bring back even half of them. The lions know where there are tiny shaded pools they can lap from, and so do the small deer and mountain goats they prey on. So there are always lions to take the sheep that don’t die of thirst.”
“Is your brother in danger?”
“In danger of coming home exhausted and empty-handed.”
“Of dying? Is it that bad?”
“Mother, Esau’s a good hunter. He’ll have the water he needs with him, and when he sees that he’s running low, he’ll come home. As for the lions—Esau will no doubt bring home a lion skin to show off. Even if he finds no deer, he’ll not come home without blood on his hands.”
“What about you?” asked Rebekah, suddenly curious.
“What about me?”
“Could you kill a lion?”
“I have killed lions, Mother. I’m a shepherd, and it’s a season of drought. The lions come down out of the mountains, following the game, and they’re following the water.”
“But you never bring home the skin. I never hear of your doing such things.”
“It would shame me in front of the other shepherds, to be caught bragging to my father and mother about doing what every shepherd does.”
“The other shepherds brag all the time.”
“They’re not the son of the patriarch,” said Jacob.
As long as she was asking, she might as well learn the rest. “What about in battle?”
“Against what foe?”
“The enemies we sometimes face. Raiders. Soldiers.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never fought against a man.”
“Oh.”
“Why are you asking such questions, Mother? Is there something you know about, that you haven’t told me? Is there a war coming?”
“No, I don’t—I hope not. I just wondered—because you’ve killed lions and I didn’t know it . . .”
“I’m no match for Esau when it comes to fighting, Mother. He loves it and he’s been practicing all his life. I hate it and I’ve learned only what I need to in order to fend off raiders and thieves. They aren’t usually the best fighters anyway so they’re easily frightened away. That’s the total of my experience of battle—frightening away marauders by showing them that we won’t run away ourselves at the sight of them.”
Something sank inside Rebekah’s heart. Because she could not forget that Esau had once threatened to kill Jacob, and even though he almost certainly didn’t mean it, it would have been nice to think that Jacob could protect himself.
Though in truth, no one was safe if someone wanted to murder him and didn’t care about the consequences. Unless the Lord was protecting you, and then no enemy could touch you. Jacob’s protection would never be sword or spear in his hand, but rather faith and goodness in his heart.
And in faith and goodness, he was as skilled and practiced as Esau was with bow and javelin.
Esau came home empty-handed, as Jacob had foretold, and he and Nebajoth and the men they had taken with them were all exhausted and famished. Jacob had seen to it that plenty of lentil pottage was kept ready for them, so that whenever they returned they could eat without waiting. They were so hungry they ate it all—though apparently it never occurred to Esau to thank Jacob for having provided for him. Rather he took it as his right to be served by his younger brother.
During their time in Gerar, true disaster struck. The blotches in Isaac’s eyes finally grew to block his pupils entirely. He was utterly blind.
Rebekah came to find him on one of his last days with vision, and found him in his tent, bowed over a parchment, weeping.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I can’t remember what it says.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could always make out enough of the writing to remember the words and say them aloud, but I can’t even tell which prophet’s story this is.”
Rebekah glanced down at the parchment. It was the first time she had been allowed to read one of the holy writings for herself—and she hadn’t actually been allowed this time, either. Yet she felt no excitement about it, because everything was swallowed up in Isaac’s grief at his blindness. “At the head of the parchment,” Rebekah said, “it says that it’s the book of Enoch, written in his own hand as a testament to and condemnation of the people who for their love of bloodshed have rejected the Lord their God.”
Isaac sat in silence.
Was he angry that she had read from the scripture? “Do you need me to read more?”
He shook his head.
She reached out and took his hand, meaning to comfort him. Instead, he wept again.
She saw how old he had become. His hair was white, his beard speckled like new-broken granite. And with the white splotches on his eyes, he seemed to have lost much of the fire that she had always seen burning in him.
He was going to die.
Not tomorrow or the next day, but his body was aging faster than his father’s had. And with his vision gone, as it nearly was, he would lose much of his hope, much of his reason to live.
She thought of her father then, and how he had raged when he lost his hearing. But his deafness had been caused by an accident and a sickness that followed it. It came on him suddenly, in the robustness of his middle age—and even he had lost much of his vigor because of it, until Laban and Rebekah had restored it to him with their efforts to write to him, to be his ears.
“Isaac, you won’t have to go without reading the holy writings. Let me and Jacob and Esau read them to you.”
“It’s too late,” said Isaac. “I always thought I had more time.”
“More time for what?”
“For copying,” he said. “Father didn’t let me have them during his old age—I think he was more and more afraid that I might lose one or damage it. And after I got them, I copied a few but I knew I’d have plenty of time after my sons took over the work of the camp.”
“So let your sons do the work of copying. It’s their work eventually.” Well, it was Esau’s work, but she knew which son actually had the patience to do it. As for that, why not make the most audacious offer? “I can help. My hand is as clear and clean as this.”
If he even heard her, he gave no sign.
“I’ll never see the words again.”
“Neither will your father. The advantage you have is that you’re not dead, so at least you’ll hear the words as we read them to you.”
“Yes,” said Isaac. “Yes, I see the wisdom of that.” He stilled his weeping. “I’m sorry you saw me being so weak. Grieving for my eyes like a child who lost a toy.”
“I saw my father’s grief when he lost his hearing. Losing your vision is harder. Of course you grieve.”
“It wasn’t for my eyes, Rebekah, truly it wasn’t. I give thanks that I ever had them. I grieved because . . . just when the Lord gave me vision in the spirit for the first time, he’s taken away the vision of my eyes. What have I done to be so unworthy?”
“This isn’t a punishment,” said Rebekah. “It’s . . . part of life. These things happen to people. You’re not the first blind man, or we wouldn’t already have a word for it, would we?”
“I know,” he said. “And yes, Rebekah, the work of copying must be done. If the Lord makes me blind, then my sons have to be my eyes and hands. And if the Lord has given me a wife who can read and write, I would be ungrateful not to let you be my helpmeet in this as in all other things.”
He had heard her offer, had thought about it, and without Abraham here to be adamant, he could see that the old rule was not helpful now, and change it.
He reached out and touched her face. “There’s one gift in my blindness, though. You’ll always be as beautiful in my eyes as you are today.”
“You’re so silly, Isaac. My beauty fled years ago, such as it was. I’m an old woman. Though of course I’m still but a child compared to you.”
He laughed. “Ah, but you’ve stayed beautiful. In fact, you’ve grown more beautiful with every day and year that’s passed. Even when we argue, you know, I still marvel that the Lord loved me enough to give you to me as my wife.”
“Oh, come now. You just didn’t know it, but I was the first of the plagues the Lord sent to you, blindness being by far the lesser one.”
He kissed her, and then let his lips explore her cheeks, her eyes, her brow. “I can depend on you,” he said.
“For everything.”
“You’ll be my eyes. Whatever you see, you’ll tell me.”
“I will.”
“I’ll always see truly, with you as my eyes.”
“As truly as I see. I can’t be any wiser for you than I am for myself.”
“That’s vision enough for me,” said Isaac.
“And you have the Lord to speak truth into your heart.”
“Yes. I do.”
Thus began the precious months in which Jacob and Rebekah copied the scriptures, reading aloud to Isaac as they did. He would interrupt them and explain what Abraham had told them this or that passage meant, and when they copied it out, they would add Isaac’s explanations and read them back to him. They would sometimes interrupt with questions, and Jacob often discussed doctrine with his father while Rebekah kept on writing.
It was wonderful to see Jacob and Isaac sharing the holy writings this way. To hear how Jacob’s voice was the same as Isaac’s, how his tone echoed his father’s inflections. And gradually Jacob began adding his own insights and speculations about the implications of the scriptures, as Isaac nodded encouragement or offered countersuggestions.
Through all of this, Esau came once or twice, early on, but he quickly lost patience and left, and then stopped coming in the first place. Rebekah never bothered to point out Esau’s absence to Isaac. Why provoke a quarrel, when the point was so obvious that even a blind man could see it? Especially a blind man.
But if Isaac saw, he gave no sign.
Meanwhile, Isaac’s people had prospered so much in the land near Gerar that he needed more servants to tend his flocks and fields and orchards, until he had as many servants as he had had before he sent half of them with Eliezer. The people of Gerar began to be envious, and then frightened. “How do we know they won’t decide they want to possess our city?” they said, and there began to be quarrels between men of Gerar and Isaac’s men over the use of the wells. Of course Abimelech denied any knowledge of what his citizens were doing, and of course Isaac and Rebekah pretended to believe his protestations. But they understood that Abimelech did not dare to stop his people from what they were doing, or he would be accused of already being under Isaac’s control, and one of his many rivals would rally support against him.
Since Abimelech was helpless to stop the fighting, Isaac’s answer was to send his men to dig another well farther from the city, and even as they were digging it, men of Gerar came to harass them, claiming that any water that came out of it should belong to them because it was on land within sight of the walls of Gerar. Isaac named the well Esek, meaning “strife,” and they used it for a few months, till a new well even farther away could be dug, at Sitnah.
But even that one became a point of contention, until Isaac had his men dig yet another well in poorer land that was so far from Gerar that it would take half a day for the men of Gerar to reach them to cause trouble. And at this well, Rehoboth, there was no more contention.
But of course it did not have as much water in it as the previous wells had had, and they needed yet another. Isaac rode a camel that was led in front of the others, following a winding path among hills pocked with outcroppings of rock and covered with sun-browned grass. Finally Isaac told the boy leading him to stop. The spot seemed to Rebekah to be no more inviting than any other, but Isaac said, “Tomorrow we’ll begin to dig here.”
Such was their respect for him that none of the servants said, This is just the sort of place a blind man would choose. But they had to be thinking it.
That night, sleeping in the same traveling tent with Isaac, Rebekah awoke to hear him mumbling in his sleep. It seemed not to be a nightmare, and so she did not waken him, but lay there and listened. The words surfaced in isolation and meant nothing to her. Finally he grew still, and she realized from the way he was breathing that he was no longer asleep.
“What was your dream?” she asked him.
“The Lord came to me,” said Isaac.
She became more alert, and leaned over him. In the darkness she saw nothing, yet his voice told her that he was filled with emotion. She glided her hand along his chest to his neck, then up to his cheeks. Sure enough, tears had flowed from his eyes across his temples and into his beard.
“What did he say?” asked Rebekah.
“He said he was the God of my father, and told me not to be afraid, because he’s with me. He said he would bless me and multiply my seed for Abraham’s sake, because he was such a good servant.”
Rebekah knew that even in the midst of this vision, Isaac would hear only that it was Abraham’s worthiness, not his own, that the Lord was honoring.
“Tomorrow we’ll write the Lord’s words,” said Rebekah. “I’ll be your hand, and we’ll write an account of your vision in the book of Isaac.”
“There is no book of Isaac,” he said.
“Didn’t you write about the Lord telling you to go to Gerar instead of Egypt?”
“It didn’t seem important. Not like the visions my father had.”
“If the Lord thinks it’s important enough to speak to you, how can you say that it isn’t important enough to write it down?”
“I can’t write anything. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blind.”
“But you have my hands, or Jacob’s hands, if you think it has to be a man. You’ve had the vision you wanted all your life, and you have to write it down so your children and their children will know of it.”
“If the Lord wanted me to write, he wouldn’t have made me blind.”
“If the Lord wanted you not to write, he would have taken you home. He hasn’t, so you’re still here, and as long as you’re here, you’re the only one who can write, or cause your words to be written down by another. Your words, Isaac. That’s what matters, not whose hand makes the actual letters on the parchment.”
He was silent for a moment. “You’ll write faithfully the words I say.”
“Of course.”
“But I don’t know how to say it.”
“Just tell what happened. Tell what the Lord said. You don’t have to write eloquently. You’re not giving a speech to an army, urging them to battle. You’re telling what the Lord did. Tonight in your sleep he came and spoke to you. That’s all you have to say.”
“To you it’s easy, because the responsibility isn’t yours. There won’t be copyists year after year, writing down the same ill-sorted words and thinking, ‘Isaac—his writing is nothing like his father’s.’”
“They won’t think such a foolish thing, and even if they did, would you let pride or shame stop you from writing? What do you care what they think of you, as long as they know of what the Lord has said and done?”
Esau, true to form, lasted only one day at well-digging, and then he was off with Nebajoth, one of Ishmael’s sons, on a hunting expedition into the rocky country south of Gerar. “We have meat,” said Rebekah. “We have enough meat to feed ten thousand. What we need is water. Will you find us water in the desert and bring it home to us on the backs of asses?”
“Father likes the venison I bring him,” said Esau. “He’s an old man. Don’t you think an old man should have things he likes?”
“He needs your help more than he needs venison.”
“He has servants,” said Esau. “But he has no deer in all his flocks and herds.” Then Esau laughed and went on his way.
Jacob saw it all, of course, and when Esau was gone said to his mother, “He thinks it’ll be like hunting in the hills near Kirjath-arba.”
“And it won’t be?” asked Rebekah.
“There are streams and pools in the mountains of Canaan. But south in the Negev there are no streams.”
“Why do you know this and he doesn’t?” asked Rebekah.
“Because I know everything the shepherds know, and the shepherds know that they can’t take a flock into the Negev and hope to bring back even half of them. The lions know where there are tiny shaded pools they can lap from, and so do the small deer and mountain goats they prey on. So there are always lions to take the sheep that don’t die of thirst.”
“Is your brother in danger?”
“In danger of coming home exhausted and empty-handed.”
“Of dying? Is it that bad?”
“Mother, Esau’s a good hunter. He’ll have the water he needs with him, and when he sees that he’s running low, he’ll come home. As for the lions—Esau will no doubt bring home a lion skin to show off. Even if he finds no deer, he’ll not come home without blood on his hands.”
“What about you?” asked Rebekah, suddenly curious.
“What about me?”
“Could you kill a lion?”
“I have killed lions, Mother. I’m a shepherd, and it’s a season of drought. The lions come down out of the mountains, following the game, and they’re following the water.”
“But you never bring home the skin. I never hear of your doing such things.”
“It would shame me in front of the other shepherds, to be caught bragging to my father and mother about doing what every shepherd does.”
“The other shepherds brag all the time.”
“They’re not the son of the patriarch,” said Jacob.
As long as she was asking, she might as well learn the rest. “What about in battle?”
“Against what foe?”
“The enemies we sometimes face. Raiders. Soldiers.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never fought against a man.”
“Oh.”
“Why are you asking such questions, Mother? Is there something you know about, that you haven’t told me? Is there a war coming?”
“No, I don’t—I hope not. I just wondered—because you’ve killed lions and I didn’t know it . . .”
“I’m no match for Esau when it comes to fighting, Mother. He loves it and he’s been practicing all his life. I hate it and I’ve learned only what I need to in order to fend off raiders and thieves. They aren’t usually the best fighters anyway so they’re easily frightened away. That’s the total of my experience of battle—frightening away marauders by showing them that we won’t run away ourselves at the sight of them.”
Something sank inside Rebekah’s heart. Because she could not forget that Esau had once threatened to kill Jacob, and even though he almost certainly didn’t mean it, it would have been nice to think that Jacob could protect himself.
Though in truth, no one was safe if someone wanted to murder him and didn’t care about the consequences. Unless the Lord was protecting you, and then no enemy could touch you. Jacob’s protection would never be sword or spear in his hand, but rather faith and goodness in his heart.
And in faith and goodness, he was as skilled and practiced as Esau was with bow and javelin.
Esau came home empty-handed, as Jacob had foretold, and he and Nebajoth and the men they had taken with them were all exhausted and famished. Jacob had seen to it that plenty of lentil pottage was kept ready for them, so that whenever they returned they could eat without waiting. They were so hungry they ate it all—though apparently it never occurred to Esau to thank Jacob for having provided for him. Rather he took it as his right to be served by his younger brother.
During their time in Gerar, true disaster struck. The blotches in Isaac’s eyes finally grew to block his pupils entirely. He was utterly blind.
Rebekah came to find him on one of his last days with vision, and found him in his tent, bowed over a parchment, weeping.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I can’t remember what it says.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could always make out enough of the writing to remember the words and say them aloud, but I can’t even tell which prophet’s story this is.”
Rebekah glanced down at the parchment. It was the first time she had been allowed to read one of the holy writings for herself—and she hadn’t actually been allowed this time, either. Yet she felt no excitement about it, because everything was swallowed up in Isaac’s grief at his blindness. “At the head of the parchment,” Rebekah said, “it says that it’s the book of Enoch, written in his own hand as a testament to and condemnation of the people who for their love of bloodshed have rejected the Lord their God.”
Isaac sat in silence.
Was he angry that she had read from the scripture? “Do you need me to read more?”
He shook his head.
She reached out and took his hand, meaning to comfort him. Instead, he wept again.
She saw how old he had become. His hair was white, his beard speckled like new-broken granite. And with the white splotches on his eyes, he seemed to have lost much of the fire that she had always seen burning in him.
He was going to die.
Not tomorrow or the next day, but his body was aging faster than his father’s had. And with his vision gone, as it nearly was, he would lose much of his hope, much of his reason to live.
She thought of her father then, and how he had raged when he lost his hearing. But his deafness had been caused by an accident and a sickness that followed it. It came on him suddenly, in the robustness of his middle age—and even he had lost much of his vigor because of it, until Laban and Rebekah had restored it to him with their efforts to write to him, to be his ears.
“Isaac, you won’t have to go without reading the holy writings. Let me and Jacob and Esau read them to you.”
“It’s too late,” said Isaac. “I always thought I had more time.”
“More time for what?”
“For copying,” he said. “Father didn’t let me have them during his old age—I think he was more and more afraid that I might lose one or damage it. And after I got them, I copied a few but I knew I’d have plenty of time after my sons took over the work of the camp.”
“So let your sons do the work of copying. It’s their work eventually.” Well, it was Esau’s work, but she knew which son actually had the patience to do it. As for that, why not make the most audacious offer? “I can help. My hand is as clear and clean as this.”
If he even heard her, he gave no sign.
“I’ll never see the words again.”
“Neither will your father. The advantage you have is that you’re not dead, so at least you’ll hear the words as we read them to you.”
“Yes,” said Isaac. “Yes, I see the wisdom of that.” He stilled his weeping. “I’m sorry you saw me being so weak. Grieving for my eyes like a child who lost a toy.”
“I saw my father’s grief when he lost his hearing. Losing your vision is harder. Of course you grieve.”
“It wasn’t for my eyes, Rebekah, truly it wasn’t. I give thanks that I ever had them. I grieved because . . . just when the Lord gave me vision in the spirit for the first time, he’s taken away the vision of my eyes. What have I done to be so unworthy?”
“This isn’t a punishment,” said Rebekah. “It’s . . . part of life. These things happen to people. You’re not the first blind man, or we wouldn’t already have a word for it, would we?”
“I know,” he said. “And yes, Rebekah, the work of copying must be done. If the Lord makes me blind, then my sons have to be my eyes and hands. And if the Lord has given me a wife who can read and write, I would be ungrateful not to let you be my helpmeet in this as in all other things.”
He had heard her offer, had thought about it, and without Abraham here to be adamant, he could see that the old rule was not helpful now, and change it.
He reached out and touched her face. “There’s one gift in my blindness, though. You’ll always be as beautiful in my eyes as you are today.”
“You’re so silly, Isaac. My beauty fled years ago, such as it was. I’m an old woman. Though of course I’m still but a child compared to you.”
He laughed. “Ah, but you’ve stayed beautiful. In fact, you’ve grown more beautiful with every day and year that’s passed. Even when we argue, you know, I still marvel that the Lord loved me enough to give you to me as my wife.”
“Oh, come now. You just didn’t know it, but I was the first of the plagues the Lord sent to you, blindness being by far the lesser one.”
He kissed her, and then let his lips explore her cheeks, her eyes, her brow. “I can depend on you,” he said.
“For everything.”
“You’ll be my eyes. Whatever you see, you’ll tell me.”
“I will.”
“I’ll always see truly, with you as my eyes.”
“As truly as I see. I can’t be any wiser for you than I am for myself.”
“That’s vision enough for me,” said Isaac.
“And you have the Lord to speak truth into your heart.”
“Yes. I do.”
Thus began the precious months in which Jacob and Rebekah copied the scriptures, reading aloud to Isaac as they did. He would interrupt them and explain what Abraham had told them this or that passage meant, and when they copied it out, they would add Isaac’s explanations and read them back to him. They would sometimes interrupt with questions, and Jacob often discussed doctrine with his father while Rebekah kept on writing.
It was wonderful to see Jacob and Isaac sharing the holy writings this way. To hear how Jacob’s voice was the same as Isaac’s, how his tone echoed his father’s inflections. And gradually Jacob began adding his own insights and speculations about the implications of the scriptures, as Isaac nodded encouragement or offered countersuggestions.
Through all of this, Esau came once or twice, early on, but he quickly lost patience and left, and then stopped coming in the first place. Rebekah never bothered to point out Esau’s absence to Isaac. Why provoke a quarrel, when the point was so obvious that even a blind man could see it? Especially a blind man.
But if Isaac saw, he gave no sign.
Meanwhile, Isaac’s people had prospered so much in the land near Gerar that he needed more servants to tend his flocks and fields and orchards, until he had as many servants as he had had before he sent half of them with Eliezer. The people of Gerar began to be envious, and then frightened. “How do we know they won’t decide they want to possess our city?” they said, and there began to be quarrels between men of Gerar and Isaac’s men over the use of the wells. Of course Abimelech denied any knowledge of what his citizens were doing, and of course Isaac and Rebekah pretended to believe his protestations. But they understood that Abimelech did not dare to stop his people from what they were doing, or he would be accused of already being under Isaac’s control, and one of his many rivals would rally support against him.
Since Abimelech was helpless to stop the fighting, Isaac’s answer was to send his men to dig another well farther from the city, and even as they were digging it, men of Gerar came to harass them, claiming that any water that came out of it should belong to them because it was on land within sight of the walls of Gerar. Isaac named the well Esek, meaning “strife,” and they used it for a few months, till a new well even farther away could be dug, at Sitnah.
But even that one became a point of contention, until Isaac had his men dig yet another well in poorer land that was so far from Gerar that it would take half a day for the men of Gerar to reach them to cause trouble. And at this well, Rehoboth, there was no more contention.
But of course it did not have as much water in it as the previous wells had had, and they needed yet another. Isaac rode a camel that was led in front of the others, following a winding path among hills pocked with outcroppings of rock and covered with sun-browned grass. Finally Isaac told the boy leading him to stop. The spot seemed to Rebekah to be no more inviting than any other, but Isaac said, “Tomorrow we’ll begin to dig here.”
Such was their respect for him that none of the servants said, This is just the sort of place a blind man would choose. But they had to be thinking it.
That night, sleeping in the same traveling tent with Isaac, Rebekah awoke to hear him mumbling in his sleep. It seemed not to be a nightmare, and so she did not waken him, but lay there and listened. The words surfaced in isolation and meant nothing to her. Finally he grew still, and she realized from the way he was breathing that he was no longer asleep.
“What was your dream?” she asked him.
“The Lord came to me,” said Isaac.
She became more alert, and leaned over him. In the darkness she saw nothing, yet his voice told her that he was filled with emotion. She glided her hand along his chest to his neck, then up to his cheeks. Sure enough, tears had flowed from his eyes across his temples and into his beard.
“What did he say?” asked Rebekah.
“He said he was the God of my father, and told me not to be afraid, because he’s with me. He said he would bless me and multiply my seed for Abraham’s sake, because he was such a good servant.”
Rebekah knew that even in the midst of this vision, Isaac would hear only that it was Abraham’s worthiness, not his own, that the Lord was honoring.
“Tomorrow we’ll write the Lord’s words,” said Rebekah. “I’ll be your hand, and we’ll write an account of your vision in the book of Isaac.”
“There is no book of Isaac,” he said.
“Didn’t you write about the Lord telling you to go to Gerar instead of Egypt?”
“It didn’t seem important. Not like the visions my father had.”
“If the Lord thinks it’s important enough to speak to you, how can you say that it isn’t important enough to write it down?”
“I can’t write anything. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blind.”
“But you have my hands, or Jacob’s hands, if you think it has to be a man. You’ve had the vision you wanted all your life, and you have to write it down so your children and their children will know of it.”
“If the Lord wanted me to write, he wouldn’t have made me blind.”
“If the Lord wanted you not to write, he would have taken you home. He hasn’t, so you’re still here, and as long as you’re here, you’re the only one who can write, or cause your words to be written down by another. Your words, Isaac. That’s what matters, not whose hand makes the actual letters on the parchment.”
He was silent for a moment. “You’ll write faithfully the words I say.”
“Of course.”
“But I don’t know how to say it.”
“Just tell what happened. Tell what the Lord said. You don’t have to write eloquently. You’re not giving a speech to an army, urging them to battle. You’re telling what the Lord did. Tonight in your sleep he came and spoke to you. That’s all you have to say.”
“To you it’s easy, because the responsibility isn’t yours. There won’t be copyists year after year, writing down the same ill-sorted words and thinking, ‘Isaac—his writing is nothing like his father’s.’”
“They won’t think such a foolish thing, and even if they did, would you let pride or shame stop you from writing? What do you care what they think of you, as long as they know of what the Lord has said and done?”
