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