Because the babies were both just a little smaller than normal, the birth had not been particularly bad—there had been no tearing, and Rebekah recovered quickly. In fact, the nursing caused her more pain. No one had warned her how much it could hurt, to have a baby fasten onto her tender nipples like a wolf onto a donkey’s leg. Of the two, Jacob was the one she got used to most quickly, for once he was locked in place, he set to sucking away as placidly as could be, his cheeks pumping in and out, his breathing heavy, his eyes closed.

Esau, on the other hand, kept looking around, and would frequently stop sucking and let the breast fall away from his mouth. In moments, though, he would protest as if someone else had done this to him, and then reattach savagely, gnawing on the nipple to punish it, Rebekah supposed, for not having followed when he turned his head. It got so that she dreaded nursing Esau, and even though she understood that a baby that age had no idea of the pain it might cause someone else, she spent more time scolding him than singing to him.

So it was Jacob who heard all her songs every time she nursed him, and Esau who heard her complaints. “Don’t do that, you silly selfish greedy little boy,” she said. “I haven’t committed any sins worthy of that punishment.” She tried to be pleasant-sounding even as she scolded him, but in later years, when Esau drifted away from her while Jacob remained close, she wondered if the seeds of that had not been planted in those earliest days of their lives. Or was it the other way around? Esau’s tendency to look away, to constantly search for something better to look at than his mother’s breast, was it the first expression of his need to roam, his unwillingness to bend his will to someone else’s?

Abraham came out to meet them when they arrived at Kirjath-arba, and when Isaac took Esau from her arms, he gave the child to Abraham to hold. Then he went to the kneeling camel on which Deborah sat, and took Jacob from her, and brought him also to Abraham, and the old man nodded. But he did not relinquish Esau or even touch Jacob. As Rebekah clambered down from the camel, she realized that this must be what the Lord intended. Abraham’s heart would belong to the heir. The other son would be hers to raise. She grieved at the thought of Esau being drawn away from her as he got older; but at least God in his mercy had seen to it that she would not be left without a son to raise herself.

Abraham called to her. “Daughter!” he said. “You’ve made this old man’s heart glad, to hold this child in my arms today.”