“It wasn’t just the rains or the rivers rising, the way that we see every year with the Nile or the Euphrates.”

Rebekah almost laughed at that—as if she had ever seen the Nile, or lived close enough to the Euphrates to know the seasons of the river.

“The great ocean was broken up and leapt over its shores.”

“How could that be?” she asked him. “The waters pouring upward?”

“All things are possible with God,” said Eliezer.

“But there has to be more to the story than that.”

“Isaac will read it to you sometime, I’m sure of it. There are two different versions of the story, but one of them was written in Noah’s own hand, and he saw it, so it must be true.”

He also explained that the cities of the coast were new. “There used to be nothing but fishing villages along the Canaan shore. But then traders came from islands out in the Great Sea, and merchants began to prosper from the trade. Abraham understood at once. These foreign merchants were tired of having to deal with the seafaring traders of Sidon and Tyre. They’re hoping to establish these cities of the Canaanite coast as rivals to the Phoenician cities. But it will never work, not the way they’re doing it.”

“Why not?”

“Because there has to be someone to trade with,” said Eliezer. “Sidon and Tyre, Byblos, Ugarit—all the great cities of the north—they’re in the perfect position, between the sea and the great kingdoms of the plain-between-the-rivers. Huge caravans go from the coast toward Babylon, Sumer, Ur-of-the-South, and even beyond, to the Medes, the Elamites, the Persians, and kingdoms so far we’ve never heard of them. But here, what lies behind the coast? Great kingdoms? That’s laughable. You can see these hill villages that are being reestablished, and beyond these hills is the valley of the Jordan, which is prosperous enough these days. But then comes nothing but savanna and desert, a land for wandering herders like us, but there aren’t enough of us. We buy what we buy, but you can’t build a city from the profits of trading with us.”

Rebekah had never heard anyone speak like this, viewing the world as a great whole, not just individual cities and their hinterlands.

“My master sees more than that,” said Eliezer, chuckling. “He knows the names of the stars, including the one closest to where God dwells.”

“God lives on a star?”

“Near a star. The stars are suns, like the great fire in our sky, only very far away. And they have worlds around them also. God made them all.”