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 p