“His faults aren’t endless, and I see his virtues as well as you do,” said Rebekah. “I’m proud of him. But what kind of keeper of the birthright will he be, when he takes no thought of the teachings of the prophets except when he needs to do it to impress you?”

“Do you think I’m so easily deceived as that?” asked Isaac.

“Yes, you are,” said Rebekah.

Isaac got the cold look that told Rebekah she was one sentence away from having him leave in silence.

“Isaac, it’s one of your virtues. You’re so absolutely honest yourself that it never crosses your mind that the person you’re talking to might be telling you only what you want to hear.”

“Esau loves the Lord.”

“And I tell you that he doesn’t,” said Rebekah.

“And Jacob does?”

“With all his heart.”

“And you know this because he tells you. How is that any different?”

“Because I don’t know it just from that. I see it in everything he does. Jacob keeps his word, even when it isn’t convenient. Can you say that about Esau?”

“Are you calling him an oath-breaker?”

“I’m saying he doesn’t do what he tells me he’s going to do, and when I remind him he either gets angry with me—‘Mother, I’m going to do it!’—or he laughs and says, ‘Didn’t I already do that?’”

“He’s just irresponsible.”

“All right, that’s as good a word as any.”

“But all boys are. They grow out of it.”

“Jacob isn’t. When he tells me a job will be done, he does it. Carefully and well, and takes pride in having done it for me. When will Esau start to grow out of this . . . irresponsibility?”

Isaac’s eyes flashed. Time for the silence now?

No. Though he didn’t look at her, his voice was hard and set—as angry-sounding as Rebekah could remember his ever being with her. “When will you understand that God’s decision in making Esau the firstborn is an irrevocable one? I’m not going to throw my firstborn out of his place and put his younger brother there, even if Jacob is your favorite child.”

“I love both my sons, and I want what’s best for them.”

“And somehow you decided it’s best for Esau to be rejected as firstborn? How much will he love God then?”

“Can you hear your own words, Isaac? Even you realize that if Esau were deprived of the birthright, his love of God would evaporate at once.”

“If he’s hurt that badly by his parents, in anger he might rebel against God in order to hurt us back.”

“But you were hurt by your father, and you didn’t rebel against God.”

“Rebekah. The birthright is Esau’s. And it’s the great sorrow of my life, that my wife despises her own firstborn.”