Free Rebekah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card

her—indeed, by his lights, he was trying to save her from embarrassment.
     
    “Say this, then,” she told him. “Say that he must talk to me before promising anything, because I must be able to worship God all my life, in the way that God must be worshiped.”
     
    “I will say what my mistress requires of me.”
     
    “All I need is for him to talk to me before he gives his word.”
     
    “And if he gives his word without talking to you?” asked Pillel. “And Ezbaal turns out to be a fervent worshiper of Ba’al and Asherah who requires his entire household to bow down to them and dance and celebrate before the images?”
     
    “Then Father will either break his word or he will have to live on, knowing that he sent his daughter to live with a husband who will hate her, because I will never bow down or dance or sing or tithe or do any kind of worship before an image of Ba’al or Asherah. Before I did such a thing, I would die.”
     
    A smile came to the corners of Pillel’s mouth. “It is easy for a child to speak of dying before obeying. But when the father of your children demands that you—”
     
    “I will bear no children to a man who does not serve God,” said Rebekah.
     
    Pillel’s face darkened. “You may be sure,” he said, “that I will report this conversation to your father.”
     
    “That is all I ever asked of you,” said Rebekah.
     
    Pillel made no move to leave.
     
    “Well?” asked Rebekah.
     
    “Well what?” asked Pillel.
     
    “Aren’t you going to go tell Father what I said?”
     
    “There is no urgency,” said Pillel. “They can’t begin discussing you until after they’ve feasted, and almost certainly not until the next morning. I’ll take an opportunity to speak to him privately, before the matter can come up.”
     
    That was all she had ever asked him to do, but now it sounded like a threat. Pillel clearly thought less of her for this.
     
    Was he right? Had she somehow misunderstood what Father believed?
     
    With no one else to turn to, she finally resorted to talking with Deborah. After the meat was roasting, Rebekah left the women to do their work and returned to her tent for Deborah to dress her hair and help her into her finest clothing. No matter how things turned out, if she was to be seen she had to look her best so as not to shame Father.
     
    “Deborah,” said Rebekah, “what do you know about God?”
     
    “He made everything,” said Deborah. “He is king of the whole world. Even the lions and bears.”
     
    “You know they have gods of stone in the cities. We never bow down to those.”
     
    “No, never,” Deborah agreed.
     
    “Do you know why?”
     
    “No,” said Deborah, wonderingly, as if she sensed she were about to be let in on a great secret.
     
    “No, I mean really, do you know why?”
     
    Deborah looked puzzled and thought long and hard. “Because we have better gods here?”
     
    Better gods. The stone images Terah made. But then what else would a simple-minded woman like Deborah think? She could not possibly understand the complicated reasoning that allowed Bethuel’s house to bow down before stone images of God while refusing to bow down before stone images of Ba’al, who was, supposedly, the very same God, merely with different priests.
     
    For that matter, you didn’t have to be simpleminded for the distinction to seem meaningless. Once you knelt before an image of stone, the stone began to be your god, and not the God the stone supposedly represented. It was that simple and always had been. That was why Abraham did not claim Terah’s images along with the birthright. He knew the images were false by their very nature, and could never be anything else. The keeper of the birthright knew that every stone of the earth showed the power of God, but none could contain his image.
     
    Father has been wrong, just as his father was wrong, and Terah before him.
     
    How do I know these things? How can I be so sure? If my