overriding value in God's human construct that women in Genesis threaten to undermine, women also obstruct the "natural" course of history which God has set in motion as part of his ideal world. After God reconstructs the world through Noah and then begins with Abraham as the forefather of a select nation, the divine element recedes from the world slightly, and a natural historical course begins to play out through the momentum that God has initiated. The first incident in Genesis in which a woman interferes with this momentum involves Rebecca, who intervenes on behalf of her second born son, Jacob. The second involves Leah who heavily veils herself, tricks Jacob, and takes her younger sister's place under the bridal canopy.As a result of Rebecca's manipulative directives, Jacob, the younger son, inherits the divine blessing from Isaac, though it is clear from the text that Jacob's brother, Esau, had been Isaac's favored child. Rebecca's actions are subversive because they result in the violation of the law of primogeniture that seems to have been the standard practice of inheritance in the book of Genesis. And by reassigning the inheritance, Rebecca threatens to destroy the course of event's God has anticipated en route to the creation of his select nation. While the text shows that Rebecca had received a prophecy that "the older would serve the younger" (25:23), whenever women in Genesis take assertive actions that ramifications, strife always ensues. Just because Rebecca received a prophecy, there is no indication that she was in any position to actively seek its fulfillment. Jacob, as a result of his mother's initiative, is forced to flee his home for fear that Esau will kill him. The enmity between the brothers endures, and just as Sara's infertility caused familial dissension, Rebecca's actions likewise cause divisiveness in the House of Isaac and its descendents. Unlike the instances where the men in Genesis take the fat...
