The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan gives us Rebekah's final argument to Isaac, and it is pointed. "I am afflicted in my life on account of the indignity of the daughters of Heth. If Jakob take a wicked wife from the daughters of Heth, such as these of the daughters of the people of the land, what will life be to me?" (Genesis 27:46).
The daughters of Heth are Esau's wives. Esau had married two of them — Judith and Basemath — and, the Torah tells us plainly, they were a bitterness of spirit to Isaac and to Rebekah (Genesis 26:35).
The strategic mother
This is one of the most elegant pieces of domestic diplomacy in the Torah. Rebekah does not tell Isaac, your son Esau is planning to kill our son Jacob, so we need to send Jacob away. That would force Isaac to choose between his sons in a way he could not bear. Instead, she names a problem they both already agree about — Esau's disastrous marriages — and uses it to secure Jacob's safe departure.
By the end of this conversation, Isaac himself will send Jacob away. He will do it because he is worried about the family line, not because he knows about the murder plot. Rebekah has gotten exactly what she needed without ever burdening Isaac with the truth that one of his sons is trying to kill the other.
What will life be to me?
The phrase is heartbreaking. Rebekah is saying: I cannot survive another disastrous daughter-in-law. I cannot watch Jacob make Esau's mistake. The Targum preserves her voice in its full wearied tone. Mah li chayim — what will life be to me?
The takeaway: mothers in the Jewish tradition are often the strategists the fathers do not see. Pseudo-Jonathan honors Rebekah as the one who saves the covenant with a single well-placed sentence.