ABSTRACT

My reading of Rebecca and Isaac’s narrative supports Susan E. Haddox’s observation that the “man most favored by God often appears less masculine” than the man God does not favor.1 Haddox and I agree that God’s preference for the “less masculine” patriarch reflects how much God values the quality of submissiveness – a quality associated often with women in the Bible – and one, according to Haddox, that “is not part of the standard construction of masculinity” in the Bible.2 Although I would argue that Isaac is the most submissive of the patriarchs, Haddox observes that all the chosen patriarchs “show themselves willing to worship and submit to God, at the cost of their masculine honour and even their lives.”3