ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a woman's prayer and on the two modalities of sight as literal and metaphorical, perceptual and visionary. It explains the play Jacob and Esau, supplemented by a discussion of the medieval Latin Ordo de Ysaac et Rebecca and the early modern morality play Respublica, within a complex textual system that also highlights its Calvinist theology. In the sixteenth century, however, the playwright is left little recourse, and so Rebecca must necessarily herself reiterate the story of her revelation. Daring is very much a fitting word for the performance of a woman's agency in the books of Genesis and 1 Samuel, dramatized as well in Jacob and Esau and evident in the mixed and often troubled response of various Jewish and Christian voices. Yet, the significance of a woman's prayer for the Christian reader of the Bible should also be discussed within a wider, religious context.
