Rebekah’s Story – part 2

It was a couple of days before everything was settled. Mother had insisted that I would take my old nurse with me. According to mother she would keep me from getting into too much trouble. All this negotiation gave me time to talk to Eliezer about the life that Abraham and Isaac lead, and what Isaac was like. I left aboard one of Eliezer’s camels. I should have been sad, knowing that it was unlikely that I would ever see my mother and brother again, but I was just so happy to be leaving. The journey was wonderful. Every day there were new places to see, new people to meet. I know some people get sick travelling on a camel, as they roll like a wave on the big seas, but I had no problems. I expect that Eliezer got really bored with me asking so many questions, but he was very patient with me, teaching me about the family, and explaining what my duties and responsibilities as the wife of Isaac would be.

Eventually Eliezer told me that we had nearly reached the place where Isaac pitched his tents, and it suddenly dawned on me what I had done. I had left my home, and everyone I knew to live with a man I had never met, in a country I had never seen. To live in tents not the security of a house. What had just seemed like a great adventure suddenly seemed very real, and something that I could not longer get out of, even if I had wanted to. There was nowhere else I could go.

When Eliezer pointed out a man in the far distance, and said that it would be Isaac, I had him stop the camels. I think that at this point he became seriously worried about me, as I had become really quiet over the last few hours. I got down off my camel, and asked him to unpack one of the baskets for me. I took out of it a piece of fine material, and put it over my head. I wanted to be able to see Isaac before he saw me, and just give myself a moment to decide whether this was a good or a bad idea, even though I knew that I could not now change what I had done. Then I set off to walk to meet Isaac, and he, seeing us began to walk towards me. As he came closer I saw a dark haired, dark eyed man, taller than I, burnt brown in the sun, with laughter lines around his mouth and eyes. I stopped a few feet away from him, while Eliezer went forwards and spoke to him, explaining who I was, then Isaac walked up to me, and lifted my veil, and looked down at me. He must have liked what he saw, for he smiled, and leant forwards and gently kissed me on the cheek. Then he took my hand and began to lead me towards a large tent made from goat skins erected in the shade of a few trees next to a nearby river. As we reached the tent I turned and looked back at Eliezer standing watching me. He lifted his hand and gave a little wave. I took a deep breath, and at Isaac’s gentle pull on my hand, I walked through the flap into his mother’s tent to begin my new life as his wife.

Rebekah’s Story – part 1

It is so long since I lived in a city, that I have almost forgotten what it is like to live in a house with four square walls and a roof. I was not unhappy there, but I was restless, so restless to leave and to see more; more people, more places, more everything. After the evening meal, sitting round together drinking wine and eating fruit from our trees, my father would tell stories of our family. My favourites were the stories of my grandfather’s brother Abraham, who had left the city during a severe drought, and was now living somewhere many miles to the west of us, in a land bordering the great seas. We would get to hear more stories about Abraham from merchants as they travelled from the seas across our land to the lands in the East where silk and spices come from. I longed to meet this wonderful uncle.

My days in the city were filled with routine. I had to help with the grinding of the flour for our meals, or the harvesting and preserving of our crops. There was water to draw from the well, several times a day. I quite enjoyed going to the well. It was good to be able to stop for a while and chat with the other women waiting for their turn to lower the bucket and fill up their jars, before putting them on their heads and carrying them home. We had servants to help of course, but everyone has to do their share of the work around the house and in the fields.

I remember well the day a man, a stranger to our town, came to the well, just as I arrived to fill the last jar of the day. He spoke our language well, but it sounded different when he spoke to when I or my family spoke. I liked listening to the strange lilt of familiar words. I pulled up the bucket from the well, and offered him a drink, which he gratefully accepted. I then offered to give the rest to his camels, who looked really tired and dusty, as if they had been on a long journey. He brought his beasts to the animal trough, and they began to drink. I have never seen anything like it before. The man began to talk to me as I pulled up a second bucket, and watched that disappear almost as fast as the first. When I got to the third bucket we had got onto first name terms, I was Rebekah and he was Eliezer. He said that he had been born in the city of Damascus, which was a trading city at a crossroads, so he had grown up meeting merchants from Egypt to the south going to Asia Minor and people from Lebanon crossing the desert to the Euphrates Valley. As he talked about the place and described it, I wished that I could go there and see it. I didn’t notice that eventually his animals stopped drinking, and my jar was still empty.

I quickly filled it, and would have left, had not Eliezer not asked me who my family were. I told him that my father’s name was Bethuel, and my grandfather Nahor. Some impulse made me add that I also had an uncle Abraham who was my grandfather’s brother. At this the man sank to his knees and began to pray loudly to his God, thanking him for having led him to the right woman. I looked around, expecting to see someone else arriving at the well, but there was no one else around. He got up off his knees, and before I could move, he had grabbed my hand and placed two golden bracelets on my wrist. He then gave me a ring, which he instructed me to put in my nose. I had only given him water for his camels, so this did seem a rather extravagant response. The bracelets were nice though.

When I got home, I had to tell my mother what had happened. Well, she had noticed the ring in my nose! She immediately sent my brother Laban out to go and find the stranger and bring him home. She wanted to know what he was playing at. Laban hurried off, and returned with Eliezer, who, said he had been waiting for him. Mother offered him food and drink, which he took gratefully, and as we all sat down together to eat and drink, he explained that he was a servant to Uncle Abraham, and had been sent to find a wife for his son Isaac from among his kin. When he arrived in the city, he had absolutely no idea how to go about finding the right woman, so he had prayed to his God, Yahweh, for the right woman to come to the well and water his camels for him. I had come and while chatting to him, watered his camels. When he discovered I was of the family of Abraham, he knew that his search was over. My mother and brother were not quite so certain about that, but Eliezer was very persuasive, talking at length about the Abraham’s wealth and how many sheep, goats and donkeys he had and what Isaac would inherit. I needed very little persuading. I wanted to get out of here, and if that meant being married to a sort of cousin, even if he was a complete stranger, then that seemed like a good deal to me It would give me what I had always wanted; to see more of the world. I couldn’t wait to leave and set off on this new phase of my life.