“The inheritance is whole. It will go to one son, not the other.”

“The birthright is whole,” said Rebekah, “but you know you’ll give half of the flocks and herds and servants to one son as a gift, and the other half to your heir as his inheritance. Call it what you will, it amounts to the same thing. They’ll each get half of the half of your holdings that you now have left.”

“So I leave each of them with a quarter of the strength that my father left to me.” Isaac said it with a note of despair in his voice.

“That’s absurd,” said Rebekah. “The strength of your father was always faith in God, and when he and Sarah were alone in Egypt during the drought, God made them mightier than Pharaoh.”

“Yes, well, that was Father. And Mother.”

“And this is you. All the flocks and herds could be swept away in a moment, and you would still be Isaac.”

“And you would still be Rebekah. But we’d be very very poor.”

They laughed together.

“The wealth is what we give our children who haven’t the faith to rely on God,” said Rebekah.

“The girls will all be like their mother—like stone in their faith,” said Isaac.

“I only worry about Esau,” said Rebekah.

“You don’t need to worry about him,” said Isaac. “His faith is strong.”

Rebekah wondered how he could say that with such confidence. “What sign of faith have you seen in him?”

“He and I speak of the things of God often,” said Isaac.

“Even if Esau really does think of God when he’s talking to you,” said Rebekah, “that still doesn’t account for when he’s out on the hunt with his wild friends or with one of Ishmael’s sons, which is even worse. Do you think he’s thinking of God when he’s out stalking some animal to kill it, or in some town or other, playing at whatever games he plays?”

“Games?” asked Isaac. “What kind of games do you think a young man Esau’s age plays?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been a boy. Not that Esau is a boy anymore. He says he’s going hunting, and he comes back with a smirk on his face and says the deer were elusive today, and I keep thinking it’s no hart he hunts, but hinds.”

Isaac got a distant look on his face. “He knows the law of chastity,” he said. “He assures me that there is no girl whose virtue is in danger from him.”

“Which leaves a vast number of girls whose virtue was ruined long ago,” said Rebekah. “My concern is whether Esau’s virtue is in danger from them.”

“How did we get from our children’s inheritance to Esau’s endless faults?”