“More likely people will think the whole camp was scarred by the pox,” Laban muttered. But when Father spoke to him about all this veil-wearing, Laban wrote what Rebekah had said. “Let it be known that our young women are modest, not vain like the city girls. Let it be seen as humility before God.” And, once again, Father gave in.

“Armies may tremble before a man’s mighty sword, but no man can stand before a household of women,” said Bethuel. Often.

So passed the months and years, as Laban learned how to manage great herds and how to lead men in battle, and Rebekah learned how to manage a household, with all the weaving and cooking and planting and harvesting and preserving that filled each day from dawn to dusk. She learned to judge the ripeness of beans and the strength of thread, how to help a woman give birth and how to turn milk into cheese or ferment it into yogurt, how to make bread rise and how to season and cook a lamb so it would have the robust flavor of wild deer.

By the age of fifteen she knew the names of all the women and men of the household, and all the children, too, as surely as Father and Laban knew every bearing ewe and every new kid and calf. “The women and children are my flock,” she once told Laban, when he seemed surprised that she bothered to learn the names of useless children. “Where do you think tomorrow’s shepherds will come from? They’re the children I teach to water and weed the garden. If they come to you knowing how to work hard and take responsibility even when no one is watching, it’s because someone like me has done her job well.”

Laban repeated her words to Father, to his friends, to everyone who would listen. “What woman has ever been as wise a mistress of a household as Rebekah? Her veil conceals a beautiful face, but her face conceals wisdom and virtue. So the veil, by hiding the distraction of her beauty, becomes the window to her soul.”

When Rebekah learned that Laban was saying such things about her—not just in the camp, but in town when he went there to sell woollen cloth, cheese, and leather—she forbade him to praise her so immodestly. “All women do these things, foolish boy,” she said—though of course he was three hands taller than her, with a surprisingly thick beard for a man of only seventeen years. “The only reason it surprises you is because you never saw our mother doing it.”

“Well, there you are,” he said, as if this proved his point. “You never saw her either, and yet you learned it.”

“I saw what needed doing and did it,” she said. “You’d think I had saved a kingdom or healed a leper or found a spring in the desert.”