Rebekah: A Legacy of Division

Welcome back for the next post in a new series With Child: Meditations on the Meaning of Motherhood. If you missed the previous posts, you can read them here and here. Join me as I study the mothers of the Bible and discover what lessons can be learned from their lives. Come back each week for a new post in this series . . .

Gen. 27

Was it the prophecy of the older serving the younger that made Rebekah prefer Jacob to Esau? Or was it just that their personalities and interests were similar, making the relationship easy?

Regardless, both Rebekah and her husband Isaac loved one child over the other. And the effect of that was long reaching and disastrous.

Rebekah listens while Issac talks to Esau, the eldest. Discovering that her husband is planning on passing the blessing that God had given to Abraham on Esau, she may have panicked. What was happening? Didn’t God clearly promise at Jacob and Esau’s birth that the Esau would serve Jacob? Something had to be done!

Rebekah wastes no time. She masterminds a plot that deceives her husband and cheats Esau so that Jacob could prosper. And ends up dividing her family.

Although Rebekah had started out her marriage full of trust in God, now, she must have deemed that God needed some help. She had no qualms about what she was doing. So much so that when Jacob brings up a concern with her plan, she boldly proclaims, “Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go. . . ” (Gen. 27:13).

Whatever Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage had been in the beginning, no trust or respect was left. Their allegiances were to their children. As Gien Karssen writes in Her Name Is Woman, “Communications between Rebekah and Isaac had become poor. Their family unit had crumbled. It was parted into two miniworlds. One consisted of Jacob and herself, the other Isaac and Esau. It appears that the children had driven them apart.”

As mothers we are busy with raising our children. We care for their physical needs. We help them excel academically. We help them pursue athletic or artistic talents. We sacrifice for them in many ways. And all that can be good.

Unless we put our children before God. Unless we put our children before our husband.

The fact is, our children will suffer if we put them first to an unhealthy extent. And so will our marriage. “The point at which many marriages jump the track is in over-investing in children and under-investing in the marriage” (Howard and Charlotte Clinebell).

Rebekah paid a heavy price for her deception and for putting Jacob first. When Jacob flees Esau, who is now so angry that he’s out to kill him, it is the last time she sees her favorite son. Eventually, Jacob is reunited with his father and is forgiven by Esau, some twenty years later. But Rebekah does not live to see it.

Nor does she live to see that “the hatred kindled in Esau’s heart continued to future generations. For many centuries the Edomites, Esau’s descendants, would be enemies of Israel” (Gien Karssen, Her Name is Woman).

Rebekah’s legacy sobers me. It reminds me I can tear down my home with my own hands. It reminds me how much power I have over my children as well as my husband, for good or bad. It reminds me that if I put God first, all my other priorities will fall into place. And even when I fail, I know I have One who understands my weaknesses and can redeem all my sins.