Sarah Was Lied to and Rebekah Sent Warriors to the Road

The Morning Abraham Could Not Speak

Abraham had received the command. Take your son, your only one, the one you love. Go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering. He woke before dawn to obey, saddled the donkey, split wood for the fire, and found two servants and Isaac to bring with him. And then he had to get the boy out of the tent without telling Sarah where they were going.

So he lied. He sat before her and explained that Isaac was old enough now to study with Shem and Eber, the oldest of the surviving teachers, to learn Torah and how to serve God. Sarah agreed immediately. Of course she agreed. She had spent ninety years waiting for this child, grieved over him for decades before he existed, and here was her husband telling her the boy was ready to begin his education.

She held Isaac all night before they left. She kissed him. She went through everything he would need. Feed him when he is hungry. Give him water when he is thirsty. Do not let him walk alone on the road. Do not sit with him in the sun. Do not take your eyes off him for a moment. She thought she was packing a boy off to study. She was preparing him for an altar.

Sarah Read the Truth in His Face

Abraham took the boy to Moriah and raised the knife. The angel stopped him at the last moment. When Abraham came back down the mountain alone, Sarah understood from his face what had happened. The rabbis say she died of it, that the shock of knowing what had almost occurred killed her as surely as if it had.

Isaac at the Well and What He Did Not Say

Forty years later, Abraham sent his servant Eliezer to Aram-Naharaim to find a wife for Isaac. The servant came back with Rebekah. Isaac met her at a well in the field at evening, and he brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and they were married. The Torah is brief about this.

The rabbis noticed that the servant's account of the journey, which takes up an enormous amount of text in Genesis, ends the moment Rebekah agrees to come. After that, Isaac's inner life is almost invisible. He is a man who receives his wife, inherits his father's covenants, and digs wells. He is not a man who argues with anyone or changes the direction of events.

He was also a man marked by the altar. He had looked up at a knife and waited. Whatever was left of him after that morning had been shaped around the knowledge that his father had chosen God over him and that God had chosen him to survive it. The well at evening and the woman walking toward him through the field were what recovery looked like from the outside.

Rebekah Hears What the Boys Do Not Know

The twins were not yet born when Rebekah felt them struggling inside her. She went to inquire of God and received an answer that should have been delivered in the presence of both boys and their father. Two nations are in your womb. The elder will serve the younger.

She kept the information. Years passed. Esau grew up to be a hunter, red and rough, his father's favorite. Jacob stayed in the tents. When Isaac was old and his eyes were failing and he called Esau to give him the blessing, Rebekah moved. She had held the prophecy for decades waiting for this moment. She dressed Jacob in Esau's best clothes, covered his smooth hands with goat hair, put a bowl of savory meat in his hands, and sent him into his father's tent.

The Warriors on the Road to Aram

The blessing transferred. Esau came home from the hunt and found out what had happened and wept a great crying that the rabbis said could be heard across the world. Rebekah knew he would not forgive Jacob, and she sent her younger son away before Esau could reach him. She gave Jacob warriors for the road, armed men to escort him to Aram safely, and watched him go.

She did not see him again.