Rebekah's Hoax

Matalon situates Rebekah among the women whose initiative drives Genesis and Exodus. He first maps the household: a husband whose love reads as dependence and consolation after his mother’s death, a father whose affection for Esau is bound up with the food his son supplies, and a mother whose preference for Jacob the text never explains. Against that background he weighs why Rebekah chose trickery over conversation, surveying midrashic and medieval answers, including Kimhi’s uncomfortable suggestion of jealousy. The consequences, from permanent separation to Laban’s substitution of Leah and the brothers’ bloodied garment, persuade Matalon that Scripture depicts the patriarchs as fully human rather than exemplary.