Dearest Lavan,
With all my heart let me commence with the deepest expression of gratitude for taking Yaakov into business. In case it was not bounteously clear at the wedding, you diffused a predicament in our family very similar to how the birthright turned Lot against Abba Betuel, so I knew your compassion for what Yaakov underwent would be sufficient to assist him without context. I have nothing but gratitude for how you brought Yaakov on as an untried associate and trusted divine providence that a free spirited shepherd who hadn’t found himself in his late seventies would get his act together; but even if no one else saw Yaakov’s promise, I knew you couldn’t have picked a mensch with more potential. I worried for years that you wouldn’t see what I see in him, and what his father never has. You can’t possibly know the nakhes I’ve taken in reading letters from Yaakov about his success.
Which makes it doubly so abominable that I must speak to you so plainly, please forgive me for speaking to you with great vexation, just for a moment. I know I declared to you at the wedding that it was an unfair trick you pulled on Yaakov in front of his hundred-twenty year old mother who’d journeyed for six months to kvell over her son marrying the love of his life, and I know I’m an outsider to your situation, but I feel the need to re-emphasize how it wicked and hard-hearted it was. You gave my son permission to marry Rokhel, you knew Rokhel was the daughter he wanted to marry, and Yaakov swears that all the contracts he signed with you said ‘Rokhel’, not ‘Leyah’.
Yitzhak’s old and blind. We have no adult male of proper bloodline in Canaan to run the business but Esav, a son with so much seykhel he sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. He put half our money into this huge investment on getting a hunt-for-profit license, which he heard a tip is the next field to be fruitful, but we don’t even have a field for a hundred miles in any direction. I had Eliezer-ibn-Eliezer draw up a report about it. HIs findings showed that big game has a high short-term yield but the hunting bubble could pop very soon. You verily did it because you find Yaakov valuable. I’m so happy Yaakov’s employment worked out as it has, but we need Yaakov to return as soon as possible to run our business, and he won’t return without Rokhel as his wife. Please, I’m begging you, let him marry Rokhel so we can bring him and his family back to his old mother before she breathes her last.
Barukh Hashem and much love,
Rivka
------------------------
Dearest Rivka...
It’s been nearly 90 years since you left for Canaan and I still have to remind you to stay out of my business. This kind of meddling is why you never got married until you were 40. I don’t know why you need Yaakov to return so badly. You very proudly told me at the wedding of the influence you now wield in House Avraham and your success steering them toward successful policies, so why then do you need Yaakov? Incidentally, it was very tactful of you to come to the wedding without your husband, since the whole party would have recognized your husband as Yishmael, who allegedly disappeared with his mother eighty years ago, but it was clear from the way you spoke about “Yitzhak” that you two are having trouble.
So since you claim you’re an accomplished person of business, I will to explain all this to you businessman to businessman, though I imagine this is a station in life you’ve earned completely by marriage. A true official of his house still picks the weeds with the bondsmen, bends down to pick up the stones, and gets on his knees to wash the sheds, helps clean sheep drek off the backside wool,; and his hands have bloody scabs from plucking the chickens. Perhaps you’ve occasionally done jobs like that, but the Rivka I remember wouldn’t have.
I will also explain this situation parent to parent, of which you’ve obviously done an exemplary job at even if you clearly play favorites. Geb a kuk Rivka, I don’t know why you or Yaakov would think an eighty-four year old man has any business marrying a girl who’s barely 19, let alone the twelve-year-old she was when Yaakov first kissed her. Yaakov swore he thought she was at least ten years older, but even if she were 22, what the hell is a seventy-seven year old doing proposing to someone more than a half-century his junior? I thought I was doing the right thing by separating them, but please understand, this compromise is win/win for everybody.
Perhaps you haven’t read the tablets for the last half century but just in case it slipped your mind, the Sumerian Empire just collapsed. It almost killed me, Yaakov, Leyah and Rokhel, thousands of ten-thousands more, and let’s not forget that the whole mess started over that stupid dispute Avraham got mixed up in over the Vale of Siddim. Yaakov and I just spent seven years moving the family out of Ur and re-establishing ourselves in Kharan, An & Enlil and Enki be praised. It’s a miracle we’re alive and we entirely have Yaakov to thank. Without whatever angels bless him, there’d be no Terakh House anymore.
So in spite of his questionable taste in women, the House of Terakh loves him. He’s a sheep broker with skill by the terracubit, and has it in him to be a visionary in our fields. Maybe a mensch like Yaakov could have found himself sooner had his mother disciplined him more, but he’s exactly the kind of trail smart entrepreneur that’s indispensable to the survival of Terakh House. What would Yaakov do in Canaan anyway? You undertook so much toil to get him out of that desert where the only body of water is more dehydrating than the sand, how long would Yaakov stay if he ever came back? I guarantee, either Yaakov or his kids will end up going to Egypt where the jobs are and there are growth fields.
You don’t even need Yaakov. In spite of how abysmally you speak of him, Esav is clearly thriving. I’ve seen your portfolio. Your dividend constantly increases, even from what it was when “Yitzhak” was the boss. Your livestock business expands every quarter and Esav’s created a whole second arm of your securities by moving House Avraham into big game, and even a prodigy son like Yaakov would be as helpless as Esav against drought. There’s nothing that Yaakov can do in Khevron that Esav can’t, and what would Yaakov do for House Avraham that he doesn’t do here on a larger scale?
As for Leyah, whenever you meet her again, an’shallah, you’ll understand. She’s lovely in every aspect, and is so much the better embodiment of wife and mother than her sister. Yaakov is his grandfather’s grandson in such innumerable ways who never stops dreaming extravagantly, but Leyah will talk him down from those heights he always sees. She’s pragmatic, grounded, never makes a fuss, and OK, she has lots of pockmarks from when she had staphylococcus, but you didn’t see what she went through. Before the illness she was just as captivating as Rokhel, but she had boils on every parasa of her body. She was in excruciating torment and couldn’t leave bed for a year, but never complained, never screamed, always apologized for inconveniences, always reminded Rokhel about her incomplete textile weaving - not that Rokhel ever finished... It’s miraculous Leyah’s alive. She always had the most beautiful eyes in the world and no boil could ever revoke them.. She never once had a suitor, but she deserves a family as much as Yaakov and Rokhel, honestly more. Even if Yaakov is not in love with her, they were always friendly since he came to us and she clearly loves him. It will be an excellent marriage and she’ll create for him the most marvelous family. Who needs to love their spouse?
Rokhel, on the other hand, is both vexatious of spirit and vexes it. She is unmistakably beauteous, but she’s troublesome and reckless, has a egregious temper, severe trouble with bearing false witness, and quite honestly I worry she’s a kleptomaniac. She would tell you her suitors left because they saw how in love she was with Yaakov, but she got multiple suitors to leave by offering them a night with her handmaid, Bilhah, whom, to be perfectly honest, is my illegitimate daughter. A potential scandal is doubly possible if it’s found out that one daughter of mine is pimping another, even if the second daughter is illegitimate. Let’s hope that Rokhel will calm down, but she’s a true wild child, and Yaakov has no idea the whirlwind he reaps if or when they marry.
But here’s the real reason I had to prevent that marriage, of which Yaakov knows absolutely nothing. Hopefully my sharing this secret with you will convince definitively that I’m dealing with him honestly, and if I’ve withheld the truth it’s because I’ve looked out for best interests of everyone. After such a brazen prelude, I suppose it ought go unmentioned that this part stays between us on the pain of enmity between our houses. I’m sorry to threaten something so extreme, but as you’ll see, this secret is verily that grave.
Of course, the official record is that Rokhel is still pure, but the truth is that my furrier bondsman got her pregnant. He seduced her by making her a really tacky coat. Aside from everything else, the coat was a monstrosity, it has… well… it has a lot of colors.... I can’t even give it to another tribe as a gift.
Rokhel, thinking of no consequence, surrendered her virginity and brought shame on us all. I had no choice but order our healer to abort the baby. He warned me that after taking the potion, Rokhel wouldn’t have children for another thirty-three years. Rokhel doesn’t know that, Yaakov doesn’t know that, I don’t want them to ever find out, and I beg on the price of friendship between our houses that you never forewarn either.
So instead I put Yaakov on a second, more lucrative contract of similar duration. Let’s all give this another seven years. Yaakov will stop being angry when he has kids and realizes what a great wife Leyah is and hopefully her younger sister still will stop being a korveh. If Yaakov still wants Rokhel, Rokhel will An-willing calm down and they can try to have that kind of marriage they still fantasize about every day, usually in front of Leyah. Meanwhile, Leyah will do the work of being a real wife.
An & Enlil and Enki be praised and all my love,
Lavan
-------------
Dearest Lavan…….
I yet again regret writing you to protest Yaakov’s treatment but what choice have I? Yaakov just sent me ten cuneiform duplicate invoices demonstrating you’ve paid him 18% his full earnings. His letter informed me that every time he raises a new cattle herd, he creates much better herds than yours. Please understand, this is no imputation on your skill as a cattle trader, Yaakov rather thinks you’re saving money by starving the animals. What shepherds do to their animals in private is their own matter, but for you to pull rank and commandeer his better-fed herd just before harvest in exchange for your drek herds is unconscionable. Whatever the state of the herd you hand Yaakov, he always creates more good herds to harvest only for you to steal his herds again.
Look Lavan, it’s bad enough you cheated Yaakov on his wedding, but you pleaded with Yaakov to stay in your firm because of the better professional opportunities, only for you to steal his business. Every time you steal merchandise from him, he creates better profits for you out of the bopkes you hand him, only for you to leave him with bopkes again.
All he wants is to return with his family to Canaan and make an honest living. I know we’ve always had trouble Lavan, but I honestly never thought you were a gonif.
Baruch Hashem and Love….
Rivka
---------
Dearest Rivka……….
I deserve better from you. You know perfectly well that when I took Yaakov in he was so dysfunctional that on the morning he arrived he’d smoked so much hash that he was literally seeing angels walking up and down a ladder. Now, when he’s nearly ninety, he finally gets his act together and absorbs invaluable corporate experience, and that’s not enough? You remember Dad, do you really think Abba Betuel was any different with me than I am with Yaakov?
I know you love your son, but you have another son whose scribe writes me of his treatment. Esav is doing better than ever for House Avraham, but after what they wrote me it’s a little tiresome to read you accuse me again of dishonesty. That birthright was Esav’s by natural right, and not only didn’t you demand Yaakov return it to its rightful owner, you deliberately tricked ‘Yitzhak’ into giving Yaakov the blessing too.
Do I really have to remind you that our firm’s ‘tricks’ are the reason you have any sons at all? You’re the one who wanted to marry that crazy side of the family which claims they’re ‘chosen’ by a god they never see, cuts the foreskin off its babies but doesn’t sacrifice them on an altar, and thinks themselves so morally superior to the rest of the world that they whore out their wives and expel their concubines; and don’t think all this ‘exiling’ is over either just because your meshuggeh father-in-law is gone. How many of your grandchildren will even be able to stay in Canaan? Your side of the family is so fucked up that your favorite son had to run away to save his life. Fortunately he had a rich uncle to employ him, though not as rich now…
I’m sorry if my letters’ tone is too harsh, honest to gods I am, but the head of the house always gets the plumb herds, that’s the way it’s always been; you know that very well, but what you might not understand is how difficult things still are. Whatever luxury we knew in the old days of Ur, An & Enlil and Enki be praised, that’s over now. We came to this new country with nothing, and over fifteen years of onerous labor we’ve built a successful multi-empire syndicate that still isn’t half the organization we had in Sumeria, a which I needn’t remind you was liquidated due to anti-semitic discrimination.
I’m just trying to keep expenses low, and as head of Terah House, if I didn’t take the best shares, Yaakov’s life would be threatened. You never met my son, I discipline him as best one can a schnorrer, but he runs with a very bad crowd of Assyrians. If I let Yaakov keep the best herds, what defense has Yaakov if Boer decides Yaakov is a threat to the inheritance Boer refuses to work for? Yaakov’s not a hunter-gatherer like his brother, and even if Boer is as short as all of us, his friends are not, and any one of them could make quick work of your son.
Rivka, please understand, I love you, I love Yaakov, I love Leyah and Rokhel, even if Rokhel is a hur…, and I want to see them all thrive. I’m doing what I think is best for us all, especially Yaakov, and very soon he can choose whether to be head of House Terah or House Avraham.
As a show of good faith, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Kharan’s annual livestock fair is in half a year. In six months we’ll have more goats and sheep than any of us know what to do with. Yaakov will get all the black ones, all the spotted and speckled ones, and I’ll just take the pure white.
Your loving but unappreciated brother, An & Enlil and Enki be praised,
Lavan
-----------
Dearest Lavan………….
I really can’t believe I have to do this yet again. I read this new promise to Yaakov with jubilation, it was really was wondrously generous, but I just received a letter from Yaakov relating that you removed all the non-white livestock and herded it three days journey away so Yaakov couldn’t find it. If your word was a stick you couldn’t lean on it.
Is Esav paying you to fercockt all this?
Rivka
-----------
Dearest Rivka…………………………………….
I’d say I’m shocked by your tone but that’s demonstrably untrue. As I said, if my son got word that Yaakov would keep the best herds, what defense would have Yaakov if Boer determined I consigned Yaakov the inheritance Boer believes to be his by natural right?
Well, Boer got whispers of our arrangement just hours after I sent the letter. If I respect Yaakov’s safety and his children’s, if I appreciate my own, there was no alternative but send the cattle elsewhere and disenable Yaakov to take them.
Even if that’s what I did, even if Yaakov is furious, the security of us both hinges on each other and he verily has me to thank for no hazard nearing him or his family. Neither he nor I would be imperiled had he trusted I’ll recompense him properly at the earliest occasion, but instead he stayed up all night painting all manner of spots on the remaining livestock and I had to grant him permission to keep it. Ever since, my son howls at me every day about how I permit Yaakov to grow richer than we and how I swindle him out of his inheritance. Hence we live every day with foreboding that he gets Assyrians entangled in our business disputes. The Mesopotamian police will only vouchsafe so much sanctuary.
The Assyrian Empire draws nearer and nearer by, and you have no idea what Assyrians are like. We must to do everything feasible to evade obligations to them. Every one’s a farbrekher. They assault their neighbors, burn their cities to the ground, then do the same to their next neighbor. I’ve seen Assyrians slice off a man’s hands, feet, ears, nose, then make him watch as they throw his wife off a high tower. I’ve seen them behead a child, flay alive his brother, then roast a third brother over a fire. In peacetime Assyrian cities beat criminals and whip debtors to death, pull out their tongues, gouge out their eyes, impale, behead, make them drink poison, burn children in front of their parents, and not as a sacrifice! And I can tell you right now, one day they’ll come for Canaan too.
So as you see, I don’t expect gratitude, but appreciation is indisputably what I’m owed. Every decision I make is to protect the House of Terakh, of which Yaakov is our most important component. Yaakov no longer wishes to be head of Terakh House, what a misfortune that is for us all, but if ever he does again he’d immediately ascertain it would be no easier for him to honor vows and covenants than ever it was for me.
All my love which verily, you currently do not warrant, but I miss Ur and remember our fatter times with little but deep affection, An & Enlil and Enki be praised,
Lavan
PS. Esav is not paying me, but did visit during his year-long hunting excursion upon my invitation, and while here, asked for the hand of my bondswoman, your ‘stepdaughter,’ Mahalat daughter of Yishmael, a father who supposedly no longer exists. In other words, Esav’s own illegitimate half-sister. Esav has unwittingly put you in an awkward position that, considering your recent treatment of me, is a cause of slight amusement. You’ll now have to legitimize “Yitzhak”’s daughter from when he was Yishmael and all sorts of Amorites will be sniffing at why the bride of a legitimate son of Yitzhak has a father who suddenly ‘disappeared’ a century ago yet looks like a female version of her husband, and has the same town of origin as his mother, An & Enlil and Enki be praised.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Lavan….
How could you not tell me that my son was living in this kind of danger every day for eighteen years? Are you exaggerating or have you deliberately withheld what kind of neighborhood you live in all this time? You had us believe you were running a respectable business, but now you’re telling me that you’re almost a hundred thirty years old and you’re running businesses like you’re still hustling that backgammon racket out of Zaydie Nakhor's barn! For our entire lives, you told me I would have no mind for business because I’m a woman, and for our entire lives I’ve watched you senselessly put our family’s lives on the line just so you could make a profit. For my entire life, I’ve watched you manipulate your station as undisputed heir, your long tenure as head of the house, and your maleness to get away with the most flagrantly cruel behavior. You tell people exactly what they want to hear, and do exactly what they need you not to. What was the point of Abba and Zaydie passing over my suit to be heir to the House of Terakh if you ran the House for the good of yourself only as I knew you would from the time we were thirteen? Maybe you’re right, maybe a woman would run this business less ruthlessly. Perhaps in four blinks of an eye, the House of Avraham will let a woman run the organization and do a vastly superior job to men like you.
The time has arrived and long since passed for Yaakov to return. Yitzhak dropped into a coma the day after Esav’s wedding and is unlikely ever to awaken. So as it happens, with Yaakov gone and Yitzhak incapacitated, I am Vice-President of the House of Avraham. As you know, I have the authority to order Yaakov’s return without Esav’s permission - and by the way, I’m sure Esav’s marriage was entirely your idea. By my authority, Yaakov is to return to his real household forthwith so he may assume charge of his birthright and run the house of his ailing father, as he should have done twenty years ago.
Rivka
---------
Dear Lavan,
As I’m sure you discern by the time you obtain this letter, Yaakov and his mishpokha are well on the path to Canaan. Within seven days of transmitting my previous letter I immediately appreciated we had no alternative to escorting Yaakov home by any and all measures, even if it entails Yaakov absconding under shield of night with your daughters and grandchildren and all their worldly goods (such as you let them have any). I knew you’d never apprise Yaakov of my order and would bear false witness to retain his perpetual service, therefore I posthaste dispatched Eliezer-ibn-Eliezer to deliver the command of homecoming.
I am deeply unhappy relations between our houses arrived at such a juncture. I yearn for another way, but you’ve become a hazard to the security of our family. I saw no recourse and even Esav concurred once I informed him.
I wish you only the best of fortune, which I’m sure you will always have, and for your household to be fruitful and multiply. B’Ezrat Hashem, such destiny we all shall have, whether in this world or the next. In the meantime, I reluctantly send you my deepest love,
Rivka
---------
Dear Rivka,
I had indeed realized Yaakov absconded with his family mere hours after they abandoned us, but I’d already determined to let them go and would have granted my approval to evacuate just the next morning. You’d have never been able to accuse me for a moment of delaying them for a moment but for that my daughter, Rokhel, whom Yaakov taught all there is to know of your house’s god, stockpiled hoards of gods for their journey from my own assemblage. Knowing the statues would easily be discovered and how much their presence would offend you and even Yaakov I immediately took my best horses to reach them, quickly took my gods back and said a swift goodbye to my family whom I love dearly on the best and most forgiving terms. Rokhel will now be your problem, a true Jewish Arabian Princess.
I too am genuinely unhappy for your perpetual exceptions to my treatment of Yaakov but all I’ve done was for my family’s good - my good is his good, his good is his family’s good, our family’s good is your family’s good. You have the luxury of contemplating our situation with a 650 mil distance. In my position, you’d make no decision differently. You cannot tell me I’ve withheld the dangers of our situation because I know I’ve sent decades of correspondence about it. There is nothing I’ve kept from you, and while you kvelled over your son you had neither eyes to see nor ears to hear the dangers we’d passed in the exodus from Ur to Kharan, An & Enlil and Enki be praised. Nothing here in Mesopotamia is more treacherous than Sumeria ever was, or Canaan is. If I spared explicit details, it’s because I know how you worry for Yaakov, but this is why I’ve consistently advised you you’re not a person of business at heart. You never understood the risks involved, you never wanted to understand, and if you did you’d never sleep.
You’re absolutely correct, I’ve dismissed you for being a woman for a century, and it’s neither just nor righteous. I swear before the Divine An that I do surely repent for a century of maltreatment and plead both An’s mercy and yours; but I do know you Rivka, and whether it has anything to do with your womanhood, I know that even if you had the kishkes for running a business, being a woman would make running a family house still more laborious for you than even for me. You were always smart, and being perceptive and astute is helpful in commerce, but what’s essential is chutzpah of steel - which hasn’t been invented yet, but you know what I mean. You would not merely spend a century avoiding fraud, you’d spend a century evading men who know that to raise a woman to household head emperils every powerful man, and therefore must make an example of your very brutal death. To die in your own bed, you would have to be their killer before they were yours. However, to be perfectly frank, my estimation of your temperament has undergone drastic metamorphosis. What changed my mind was reading of how you defrauded your own son, and after reading of that, I don’t know which I’d worry more about: whether you haven’t any killer instinct, or whether you have too much.
And therefore, if “Yitzhak” is in a coma, there is no sense in longer keeping the deepest conceivable secret from you. Had I ever related this information before now you’d have immediately told Yaakov, and he’d either leave or see through the lesson I strove so fiercely to impart.
Three days before Yaakov arrived at my well, high on hash, and if you recall, without any official announcement, I received a letter from Yitzhak/Yishmael about which he clearly never confided in you. He ordered me to burn after reading immediately; nevertheless I remember every word of agony your husband conveyed.
The original deception which endowed Yitzhak/Yishmael his lifelong prosperity was already a near-century past, yet the shame of living Yitzhak’s life dashed him every day of it, as did the guilt of incorporating my house in your house’s deception; but in light of new events, he particularly grew horror-stricken by his notion that deception is inbuilt into the entire House of Avraham’s future, and your house’s idea that there is only one god who rules over all creation will be eternally tarnished with an original sin of dishonesty, which shall repeat from generation to generation for as long as the House of Avraham exists.
Quite candidly, I always thought the idea was a shandeh. Living is hard enough without telling people they’ll be more honest and decent if they believe in a god who controls all, reads all thoughts, and follows them everywhere. This idea alleged to redeem the world and make people act more decently and ethically with one another will imprison every mind who believes it and only make believers suffer more, thereby causing more lies, more violence, more covetousness. It will turn everyone who believes it into a meshuggener like Avraham.
When Yitzhak/Yishmael perceived how quickly you reverted to deception when you second-guessed your husband’s judgement, and how quickly your favored son agreed to conspire, he knew his notion of inbuilt dishonesty was entirely correct, and I do not doubt that when Esav unwittingly married his half-sister, the terror of what he perceived to be a grave sin sent him into a sleep from which he shall never wake.
Yitzhak/Yishmael saw that Esav was a slow learner, but he was good natured and only wished to do right. When Esav handed Yaakov his birthright as a joke, and Yaakov immediately claimed that Esav’s joke was a serious exchange and threatened to burn the birthright altogether rather than return it to the rightful owner. Yitzhak/Yishmael understood that however shrewd and charming, Yaakov was dishonorable and false-hearted.
And you not only believed Yaakov, you helped one son steal your other son’s blessings and all of his possessions! That was your plan, Rivka, not Yaakov’s. Thanks to you, Yaakov is the designated heir and there was no way Esav or Yitzhak/Yishmael to reverse such a traitorous machination. Yet it was Esav, not Yaakov, who ran the House of Avraham brilliantly for twenty years, and the cataclysms you predicted for Esav’s stewardship never materialized.
What Yaakov required, Yitzhak/Yishmael wrote to me, with underlining, was brutal discipline. According to your husband, Yaakov’s perfidious ways were due to his mother’s cosseting him and her insistence on his perpetual assignment to undemanding jobs with cattle herds while Esav executed grave labor in the desert of hunting large animals, requiring him to be absent from home for months of grinding toil, without food and sometimes without water for days, endangering his survival against all manner of savage beast. Whether Esav has any brains, he has the seykhel for business, he has the kishkes, and he has the…
Accordingly, if Esav was wroth enough to say he wanted to murder Yaakov after learning the betrayal of his own brother and mother, he soon thereafter recognized he didn’t mean it; and even if he did mean it at the moment he said so, he has since repented his action all the days of his life.
Were you paying attention, you’d observe Esav has long since absolved both his brother and, much more obviously, you. His scribe writes me that Yaakov’s return shall be welcome with a celebration of hundreds of Hittite guests. Yet neither Yaakov nor you have forgiven me my deceptions of Yaakov, deceit on levels self-evidently more trivial than your betrayal of your own son and husband.
Nonetheless, when I heard all which Yaakov did, I appreciated straight away that this is a potential makher with the chutzpah to be a great entrepreneur, but he required apprehension of business’s risks, he needed to accept the price of success, he needed to grasp exactly what it means to be a cattle trader and abide all the ferocious humiliations of apprenticeship in just the manner did I. Being a boss is no easier than being an associate. This is the way Abba learned, the way Zaydie learned, the way apprenticeship is always done, and I guarantee was done much more ruthlessly in the past.
I don’t expect to be thanked, but Esav assured me Yaakov will return a hero. Esav is nearly 100, claims he has enough and makes plans for retirement; and even if he stays in Canaan, you now have two sons near home who can run the House of Avraham brilliantly and make a living that keeps all your grandsons out of the slave house in perpetuity. Meanwhile, the House of Terakh has yet no capable heritor, and at the age of a hundred thirty, I cannot long yet retire to enjoy the bread I eat from the sweat of my face. You cannot conceive of how onerous it is to work as arduously at one-hundred-thirty as one did at thirty. I worry I am smitten with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart. At times I even believe I’m hear the voice Avraham heard all those years ago….
An & Enlil and Enki be praised, all my love, and your welcome,
Lavan
No comments:
Post a Comment