Possess the gates of all those who hate them. That sent a chill through her, when she thought about it. Yes, her children would become a great nation—but great nations have enemies who hate them and want to destroy them.

In our little encampment in the hills just outside Haran, who hated us? Our name is known, but no one resented us here. We were never important enough. But my children will be the chosen of God, and all those who hate the Lord will hate them.

O God of my father, she prayed, watch over my family. The family I leave behind, and the family my new husband and I will create. Let them have as much joy in their lives as I have had. And let them have no more sorrow than I have suffered. For surely none of thy daughters has ever been more blessed than I.

It seemed to her that she wept halfway to Damascus, but Deborah assured her later that she was smiling and happy during the whole trip.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Rebekah was surprised at how new the land seemed as their caravan made its way through the hills of Canaan. Everywhere, it seemed, people were tending to new olive trees and grape stalks, or building new houses. And the coastal cities that they could glimpse, now and then, when through a break in the hills the plain along the shore of the Great Sea came into view, seemed to gleam bright and new in the sun.

Eliezer seemed to have seen everything. The hill country had been so desiccated during the great drought of the past few generations that the villages were empty ruins, and only a few villages managed to hold on to life. The rest of the land belonged to the great nomad princes in those days. But now, with the rains more dependable again—though nothing like it had been before the drought, Eliezer assured her—the people could come back. “And where water is, people follow,” he said.

“You could not possibly be old enough to remember how things were before the drought.”

“Even my master isn’t that old,” said Eliezer. “But it was written down in the scrolls. The great plain between the rivers was all grass as high as your head, with clumps of trees everywhere. Elephants roamed free then, before the great hunters like Nimrod killed them all. These hills were heavily forested—all of them, not just the great cypress forests of Lebanon. But during the drought, trees did not grow back when the old ones were cut down, and the soil turned to dust and blew away. Great clouds of it, so it was dark for days at a time, the sun just a faint yellow disk in the dirty sky.”

It was hard to imagine such a cataclysm. But Eliezer assured her that the drought was nothing compared to Noah’s flood.