Rebekah: Women of Genesis (14 page)

“Ezbaal is a loyal man. Once you have a place in his life, he’s loyal to you forever. Unless you betray him, of course, and then . . . well, he makes a marvelous friend. If he takes you under his protection, you are as safe as you can be in this world of wild beasts and marauding men.”

And on they talked, about Ezbaal, about husbands, about city life, about the places she’d seen, all kinds of things, until it was so late that they were both yawning, and not for the first time, and Akyas finally said, “My dear child, my dear young woman, my dear
friend,
your coming to me tonight was the kindest thing anyone could have done for me. You were the answer to my prayer, in fact.”

That made Rebekah a little uncomfortable, since of course Asherah didn’t exist and therefore couldn’t have answered anyone’s prayer. But . . . maybe God heard the prayers of those who believed in false gods, and counted their faith as if it were faith in him, until they learned better. “Well, you were
not
the answer to my prayer,” said Rebekah.

For a moment Akyas looked taken aback, so Rebekah hurried to finish her sentence. “You were the gift that God gave me without my even having to ask. Because
he
knew I needed you, even if I didn’t know it myself.”

A smile spread across Akyas’s face. “Oh, you have a silver tongue.”

“If I do, I must have got it from my mother, since Father’s as blunt as a camel’s snout.”

Akyas laughed at that. “Good night, Rebekah. I’m gaining so much more than a husband tomorrow. Will you . . . even though I wasn’t here to raise you, all these years you were growing up, will you let me pretend that I was? Will you let me think of you as my true daughter?”

“I hope I prove worthy of your thinking of me that way,” said Rebekah.

“And I hope I prove worthy of your thinking of me, someday, as your mother.”

Rebekah kissed her cheek, and in so doing realized for the first time that they were exactly the same height. How could she ever think of a woman who was never
bigger
than her as her mother? She remembered most of the women in the camp as being giants compared to her, when she was a child.

But that wasn’t really what Akyas wanted, was it? She wanted reassurance that she would be welcomed in her proper role in the household, and not be resented by the woman who had been the ruler of women before she came.

So she answered with the words that would reassure Akyas while still being truthful. “I don’t really know what it’s like to have a mother,” she said, “but with your help, perhaps now I can learn.”

Rebekah insisted on walking her to her tent. “I’ve walked these paths for years, in darkness and light. There’s not an insect here that I don’t already know by name just from the buzz.”

“Then I’m glad I have you for my guide.”

They said their good-nights at Akyas’s tent door and parted with another kiss and an embrace that surprised Rebekah by its intensity. She returned to her own tent, to her own bed, feeling glad that she had dared to go and visit Akyas.

Chapter 5

There’d been many a servants’ wedding in Rebekah’s life, but those were simple affairs. Those that were wholly sworn to Father could not marry without his consent. He always gave it, with a prayer and a blessing, and the couple would move in together and that was that. The servants who were sworn for a set time could marry as they wanted—but still needed Father’s permission to set up a tent within his camp, so it amounted to the same thing. He usually gave them a good rug for the marriage bed. What the hirelings did was their own affair, because of course their families didn’t dwell in Bethuel’s camp. Still, there was always some kind of celebration among the servants, and the gift of a kid or a lamb for the feast.

None of this had prepared Rebekah for a wedding of the ruler of the household. Everyone came into camp except those needed to protect the distant-grazing flocks and herds, and there were guests from the nearby towns and villages, too. There were enough animals roasting to deplete the herds of many a lesser lord, and Father offered a sacrifice to God in a most solemn ceremony at dawn, so that the smell of cooking and burning meat filled the air like heavy incense, though there was plenty of that, as well.

Through all of this, Ezbaal was prominent, his laugh heard everywhere, his smile given to everyone. He hardly left Father’s side, which of course meant that Laban had to stay with them, to write down Ezbaal’s words. Father enjoyed every minute of it, and when Laban and Rebekah talked about it during one of Laban’s rare moments of freedom, he said, “Father said a couple of times that Ezbaal reminds him of his own youth. But I think it’s that Ezbaal is the kind of man Father
wishes
he had been.”

“Or the kind he wishes
you
were,” Rebekah suggested helpfully.

“But I already am,” said Laban with a grin. “Far and wide my enemies quail at the mention of my name.”

“Fortunately, you have no enemies,” said Rebekah, “so we’ll never know.”

At last, when the sun was halfway to noon, the actual ceremony began. Father made a great show of giving a bridegift of a substantial number of animals to Ezbaal, following which Ezbaal gave a dowry for Akyas of equal value. In fact, though numbers were not mentioned, Rebekah was quite sure that the dowry was not just equal in value, but consisted of precisely the same animals that Father had just given to Ezbaal. The difference was that now the animals belonged to Akyas, though of course they would be mingled with Father’s herds, and the ownership would matter only if, for some reason, the marriage ended and Akyas went away.

Not until these matters were taken care of did the women start singing an old song that served as the signal for Akyas and her two female companions to emerge from their tent. Akyas was veiled exactly as Rebekah was, and there was murmuring at that, though by now everyone had known she was going to do it.

The women came to stand beside Ezbaal, who then made a grand show of stepping over to Father and bringing him to stand in the place where he had been. Laban came with Father, and now Akyas beckoned to Rebekah to come and stand beside her, writing stick in hand so she could write whatever Akyas said, just as Laban had been writing Ezbaal’s words. Rebekah suspected that the speeches might have been much longer and more eloquent had it not taken so much time for each word to be written down.

The words of the ceremony were simple, Father vowing before God to protect and provide for Akyas and her children as long as he lived, and Akyas vowing to serve him and his children with perfect love throughout her life. Rebekah noticed that she did not swear in the name of any god at all, no doubt to avoid giving offense by mentioning a false god in Father’s camp.

When the oaths were all taken—Rebekah having written the words of Akyas’s vow in the dirt—Ezbaal gave a great cry, of the kind shepherds give that can be heard a long distance in the dry desert air. Then he turned to Father, and Laban wrote his words as quickly as he could.

“Bethuel, it’s done, and you’ve been a patient man to wive her wrapped in a veil. But now it’s time for you to see the face you’ve vowed to keep with you throughout your life.”

By the time Laban wrote “face” in the dirt, Bethuel had caught the drift and turned expectantly to look at Akyas. But Akyas leaned down to Rebekah and whispered, “Ask your father to read
all
the words Ezbaal just said.”

Rebekah rephrased it a little. “Your bride hopes you will read all of her brother’s words”—so the request wouldn’t seem so peremptory.

Father dutifully turned and read the rest—which consisted of the reminder that he had vowed to keep her for life. He looked a little puzzled, and Rebekah understood why. It seemed odd for Akyas to insist on reminding him of something so obvious. It could only make Father worry about what must be wrong with her, that she would insist that he was bound. What difference did it make, in a world where a man could divorce his wife merely by saying so and sending her away, regardless of any vow that had been given?

“My word is given and I will stand by it,” said Father. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

At that, Akyas turned to Rebekah. “Since my veil is coming off, my dear daughter—for now I may call you that truly, may I not?”

“Yes, of course,” said Rebekah.

“Since my veil comes off, isn’t it time for all faces to be seen? Ezbaal asked me to ask it of you, but in truth I would have asked you anyway. For my sake, won’t you take off your veil first?”

It wasn’t an unreasonable thing to ask—after all, Ezbaal was now Rebekah’s uncle, and there was no reason to hide her face from him. So Rebekah was surprised at how reluctant she felt to unveil in front of everyone like this. Hadn’t she run around this camp all her life, unveiled, until the last couple of years? It wasn’t as if she loved having the thing over her face. But it felt almost like stripping herself naked in front of strangers, to reveal her face with everyone watching like this.

Yet she could not refuse, so up came her hands despite her reluctance, and in a moment she was handing the veil to Deborah, who quickly straightened Rebekah’s hair before she turned back to face the company.

There were low whistles and murmurs from Ezbaal’s company, topped at once by Ezbaal’s booming voice, shouting, “Bethuel, you fraud!
This
is the face you swathed like a leper? Look at her—between her face and the sun itself, who can say which shines with more beauty!”

Rebekah blushed at the extravagant compliment.

Akyas leaned down to her. “I had no idea he was going to embarrass you like that,” said Akyas. “But he’s not one to contain his feelings, and you are truly lovely in the light, my child. Ezbaal embarrasses you because he feels so keenly the loss of his chance to wed you.”

Ezbaal was not finished. “If all the worshipers of the god of Bethuel had daughters like this, all the other gods would soon be out of business!”

This was coming perilously close to blasphemy, but Laban dutifully wrote the words for Father, who smiled and said, “It was never
my
choice to veil her, my brother Ezbaal.”

“But it was definitely my choice to veil Akyas,” said Ezbaal. “For hers is the only beauty that can be fairly said to approach that of your daughter.”

“Hush now, Ezbaal,” said Akyas. “You will raise expectations that I can only disappoint.”

Rebekah hurriedly wrote those words for Father to see, even as Akyas reached up and removed her veil. She turned and gave it to “Mother,” then turned back, as Rebekah had done, to face the whole group. Rebekah, of course, caught these movements only out of the corner of her eye, until she had finished writing. And when she looked up, it was not at Akyas—whom she had already seen unveiled on two occasions—but at the onlookers, who were strangely silent.

Indeed, Rebekah was surprised to see that some of Father’s servants had actually turned their backs, and most of the rest were looking at the ground as if they could not bear to look at Akyas. What could possibly be wrong? Rebekah turned to look at her, and still could not fathom their response. Akyas was far more beautiful in daylight than she had been by lamplight. With her hair pulled back from her face, the shape of her face was full and gently rounded, with lips shaped to smile and eyes filled with silent delight. She seemed, in fact, to be oblivious to the embarrassment of Father’s servants, and by her expression one might think that they were reacting with the kind of appreciation that had greeted Rebekah’s unveiling.

Father, too, was looking at the ground, and Rebekah knew from his posture and expression that he was either very angry or deeply embarrassed. Or both.

Meanwhile, Laban stood there with his eyes so wide with surprise that he might have been looking at some divine apparition. He kept looking from Akyas to Rebekah and back again, until finally he laughed nervously and said, “Come on, Rebekah, you have to have noticed.”

“Noticed what?” asked Rebekah.

“The two of you,” said Laban. “I mean, you’re as alike as two ewes.”

Whatever
that
meant, since shepherds prided themselves on knowing each sheep from all others in the flock.

Rebekah felt Akyas’s arm around her shoulder, and Akyas’s voice near her ear. “Do you think she’s grown up to look like me, Laban?” asked Akyas. “I see much of her father in her as well—it has only made her prettier, I think.”

What did she mean by
that?
She spoke as if she were . . .

“I don’t know what I’ve done, Ezbaal,” said Father, his voice low and grave, “to deserve such a bitter prank as this.”

“This is no prank,” said Ezbaal. “When her husband cast her out for no greater sin than praying for Asherah’s protection over her daughter, she eventually came to my father, who quietly adopted her as his daughter—as my sister. It was all handled with discretion—we wanted no fight with a man as powerful as her husband was, especially with the mighty Abraham as his near kinsman. She came with me as my sister, with no other purpose in mind than for her to catch a glimpse of her beloved boy all grown now, and the girl she gave birth to fifteen years ago now in the first bloom of womanhood. It was you, not I, who proposed marrying her.”