The words outraged her with their unfairness, and Rebekah answered quickly, in the first heat of her anger. “The great sorrow of my life is that my husband is blind to the son who loves God and obeys his parents.”

Isaac left her then. As usual, the argument quickly receded and they conversed normally again, but the words stayed in Rebekah’s memory and poisoned everything that happened afterward. There were times when she would have rebuked Esau and charged him to do better, but she held her peace because her husband would think she hated her firstborn. And there were times when she would have delighted in Esau and shown her deep love for him, but in her stubbornness she refused to let her husband see her delight in the young hunter, when Isaac still showed no favor to the son who deserved it more.

As for Jacob, what could she do except try to help him move beyond the deep void in his life that only his father’s love and respect could truly fill?

The wall in the family was fully built, and named, and she and Jacob stayed on one side of it, and Isaac and Esau on the other, even as they went through the motions of being one family, unchanged.

The girls felt it, too. Little Deborah, the eldest of the three, doted on Jacob, who always had time for her even when he was hard at work with the sheep or in the fields. Little Sarah, the second, was devoted to Esau, who always brought her snatches of bright cloth from the city, or a soft rabbit skin from his hunting, or a strange butterfly, or a rare fruit. Only the baby, Qira, did not choose sides—but when Rebekah was upset, Qira would fuss at her breast, as if the milk had soured and Qira could not abide the taste of anger.

With Rebekah fussing at him less, and Isaac favoring him all the more no matter what he did, Esau slipped ever further out of control. Jacob came to her once and told her, “I think Esau has taken a wife in the city of Gerar.”

“It’s not a wife you take when your parents haven’t been told,” said Rebekah, but despite her ironic tone, her heart was sinking at the thought of what it would mean for the birthright, to be in a household headed by an idolatrous woman.

“I heard his friends tease him about having a baby coming.”

“In front of you?”

“Esau was quick to deny it, and his friends saw how angry and worried he was and immediately they denied it. But Mother, even if she’s a Canaanite and not a Philistine, how much better is it to have the holy writings in a house where Asherah is worshiped than in a house that serves Molech?”