Notable Women of Olden Time

by Anonymous

Henry the Fourth, of France, met his bride soon after she entered his kingdom, and mingled with her attendants, that he might watch her unobserved; and when his presence was announced she kneeled, and he gracefully raised her up. Napoleon entered the carriage of his Austrian bride, and announced himself, while she gazed with wondering eyes upon one, long only known as the enemy of her father's house and the terror of his kingdom. The meeting of the heir of the patriarch and his youthful bride is quite as interesting a scene as any of those recorded of more modern days.

And Isaac went out to meditate in the fields at eventide, and he lifted up his eyes, and, behold! the camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the servant, "What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us?" And the servant said, "It is my master;" therefore she took a veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done. And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her.

Rebekah seems to have made an affectionate, happy wife. Many years passed before children were born to Isaac; and when the twin boys, Esau and Jacob, were in childhood, there was evidently a marked difference in their characters. Esau was active, restless, and enterprising, He grew up a hunter,—daring and bold,—loving a life of change and adventure; while Jacob was a "plain man, dwelling in tents." Blindness was stealing over Isaac and unfitting him for the cares which rested upon him, for the supervision of his numerous servants and his many flocks and herds. During the frequent absences of Esau upon his hunting expeditions, these cares must have devolved upon Rebekah and Jacob. Her heart clung to the child who was ever with her in sympathy; while the tales of peril and adventure with which Esau enlivened the wearisome days of his father, were as acceptable to blindness and loneliness, as were the presents of the game he so frequently brought. "And Isaac loved Esau." Thus the injudicious fondness of the parents sowed the seeds of bitterness and alienation between the two brothers, and led to their mutual estrangement. The birth-right, which implied the inheriting of the blessing promised to the seed of Abraham, was despised by Esau, who, doubtless, in his prolonged wanderings from home, and his frequent associations with the inhabitants of the land, had been led to feel contempt for the worship and the promises of God, and in his reckless levity he transferred it to Jacob for "a mess of pottage," while he further alienated himself from his parents and brother by marrying the daughter of a Hittite. "This was a grief and sorrow of mind to Isaac and Rebekah." Forgetting the respect due to them as his parents; forgetting his own position as the eldest son of the heir of the promise; heedless of the example of filial deference shown by Isaac, and of all the care that preserved the family free from the corruption around them, he formed an union with those who were strangers to the faith of Abraham and of a race apostate from the worship of Jehovah. Yet, while mourning the perverseness of his favourite child, the father, aged and blind, did not propose to withdraw his favour from him; and, feeling that his infirmities increased, Isaac bade Esau with his own hands prepare him a favourite dish, that he might eat and bless him before his death. Did we better understand the customs of that age, we might find that Isaac was not merely influenced by bodily appetite, but that there might be a peculiar significance in the act.

We do not love to dwell upon Rebekah's deceit and the lessons of falsehood she taught her son—and the prophecy uttered before the birth of the children, neither justifies nor extenuates her guilt; for God has never taught his people, that to promote his plans they are to violate his laws.

Alienated from her elder son, we see Rebekah, by intrigue and treachery, seeking to advance the interests of the younger at the expense of the rights of his brother. As we read the sacred narrative, every sympathy is awakened in favour of the injured Esau, and we hear, with burning indignation against the author of his wrong, his pathetic cry, "Hast thou no blessing for me! Bless me, even me, my father!" But the artifice of the mother and wife was successful. She secured all she sought—and her success brought its own punishment. Dark clouds of hate settled over the household, and Esau waited only for the death of his father that he might destroy the life of his brother; and to save the life of her son, the mother was forced to send him into banishment. Again the intriguing, managing character of the mother appears. She assigned what might be a reason, but not the true reason, to Isaac. "I am weary of my life, because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?" The plea of the mother prevailed, and Isaac blessed Jacob, and he left the land of his father, ostensibly to seek a wife, but in truth to flee from the vengeance of his brother.

The son of the wealthy patriarch went not out like an Eastern suitor—not with a train such as Abraham sent when he wooed Rebekah for his son. To avoid the hate of Esau, he stole like a fugitive from the tents of Isaac; and, a foot-worn pilgrim, unattended, he sought the kindred of his mother. And here the mother and her favourite child parted. She had alienated his brother to promote his interests. She had sacrificed her integrity to secure his fortune, and her plan had succeeded. She had secured the object at which she had aimed, and yet in the result she had been forced to send forth her darling child—a homeless wanderer.

There is no reason to believe that the mother and the son ever met again. From this time she disappears. Surrounded by the alienated Esau's hated wives and ill-loved children, separated from the child of her affection, she may have sunk into a premature grave, or she may have lived many sorrowful years to feel the miseries she had drawn upon herself by her violations of the rules of rectitude, and an eager desire to promote the happiness of one child at the sacrifice of that of another.

There are still too many families involved in all the bitterness of domestic strife from the unjust partiality of one or both of the parents for favoured children. If, as children advance in life and their characters are formed, a calmer feeling succeeds the trembling tenderness which guarded their infant days, and our love to them (as to all other mortal beings) results from an appreciation of their characters, so that one may awaken a purer regard than another, this feeling is very different from that partial fondness which adopts one and gives him a place in our affection to the exclusion of another. That instinctive justice which compels a higher regard for the purer moral worth, will, of itself, prevent that parental partiality which leads to injustice or to an infringement of established rights and recognised principles. An unjust parent presents one of the most revolting pictures of human nature. The character involves a disregard of the most sacred ties and the tenderest relations. And whoever exhibits parental injustice, or that partial fondness which leads to injustice, at once destroys the affections and violates the moral sense. Families trained under such influences, still exhibit revolting scenes of human depravity—of bitterness, strife, alienation and revenge. Who can tell how much of the estrangement of Esau, and this early introduction of the worship of strange gods among his descendants, may have been induced by the conscious alienation of his mother, and the unjust preference of the interests of his brother? Had Rebekah, with a mother's love, striven to win her eldest son back to his father's tent and the altar of his God—had she still respected his rights and preserved his regard by undeviating truth and faithfulness, she would have retained a strong hold upon him, and her influence might have been long felt by her descendants, in restraining them from the sins of those around them.

We cannot yet part with the two principal actors in these sad scenes of treachery and deceit. We think of Rebekah, the companion of her blind husband—deprived of the son who had shared and alleviated her cares, and conscious of having awakened that bitter hate which would seek the blood of a brother—still following in her thoughts the footsteps of the wandering Jacob, feeling that by her own intrigues she had banished him from his home and her presence.