“No, don’t be angry,” Father soothed him. “It’s nothing more than a testament to your sister’s beauty. The boy is still entranced!”

Laban wrote in the dirt, “I should have killed him here.”

Rebekah punched him in the arm, thinking he was merely exaggerating, but Father took him seriously. “Perhaps,” he said. “Pillel even offered to have him killed for me.”

“Father!” Rebekah cried, and even though he couldn’t hear her, he certainly could read the expression on her face.

“He committed a crime worthy of death,” said Father simply. “I could have killed him then in perfect justice. But now? No. I let him go, and that’s that. You’re not to do anything either, Laban. Do I have your word?”

Laban set his lips and hesitated.

“I want your oath before God,” said Father. “You will cause no harm to Belbai, yourself or by anyone else’s hand. Swear!”

Laban wrote the oath Father demanded.

“And don’t think,” said Father, “that God will not hold you to that oath just because you wrote it instead of saying it with your lips.”

Laban rolled his eyes.

“The boy has done well for himself,” Father said. “In fact, he’s really quite clever. He took his knowledge of writing and started teaching it to other poor boys in the streets of Byblos. Now they call themselves scribes, and they write things for people. The regular scribes were outraged and tried to get it stopped, but since they weren’t using cuneiform, they weren’t actually doing the same thing, or so the judge ruled. And since our writing system is so much easier to learn—so few characters to memorize!—Belbai can train his boy-scribes in no time, and soon they were all over the city, offering their services for even the most casual messages, and at a half the normal price. Now he’s rich. He owns a house. His mother has servants of her own.”

“From something he stole from us,” Laban wrote.

“I don’t recall ever trying to keep this a secret,” said Father. “It’s a gift of God. And even though it was intended for writing the holy words, I don’t think it offends God that we use these letters to help a deaf man hear—or to help a poor lad prosper in a faraway city.”

Rebekah took Father’s view of it—she didn’t see what Laban was so angry about. It was a little mad of Belbai to think there might be a chance that Father would let him have Rebekah as a wife, but she certainly didn’t begrudge him his ambition or the prosperity that came from it. Indeed, it was ambition that had gotten him in trouble in the first place, only now it was working for him instead of against him.

And it was flattering that the thing he wanted to do was marry the girl he had once longed for in camp.

When she told all this to Mother, she took a darker view. “Unless of course he was brooding and seeking vengeance and hoped to have you as his wife in order to mistreat you.”