Torah for Christians: Women of the Bible: Rebekah

Transcript

TORAH FOR CHRISTIANS 

SEASON SIX          EPISODE FIVE 

REBEKAH

          Talk about the ultimate blind date! And she didn’t even use J-Swipe. I’m talking about Rebekah, the future wife of Isaac. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr. Welcome to Torah for Christians.

MUSIC

          Welcome to Torah for Christians. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr.

          We first meet Rebekah in Chapter 24 of Genesis. Abraham had just buried his wife, Sarah, in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. Notably, Isaac did not join his father when his mother was laid to rest. As we shall see, this is part of the story.

          Sarah had died immediately following the binding of Isaac. When Abraham returned to his homestead, he told Sarah what had happened – and why Isaac was not with him. The Midrash suggests that this news caused Sarah to have a heart attack and die.

          What does this have to do with Rebekah? In Chapter 24, we begin to find out. Abraham was wracked with grief. He was alone, without his wife, without her handmaiden Hagar, without Ishmael and most important, without Isaac. All he had was his unnamed servant, who we assume to be Eliezer, who is mentioned by name in Chapter 15. 

God had promised Abraham that his son, Isaac, would assume the Covenant but he was nowhere to be found. Plus, he had no wife. So how could Isaac father a great nation? Isaac, to be frank, needed a wife. And he needed one soon.

          Abraham knew that Isaac could not marry a Canaanite woman. Throughout the entire Bible, God and, in later times, the Prophets inveighed against Canaanite idolatry. The great fear was that the worship of Baal, worshipped as a bull, would lead the Israelites away from the one, true God. Abraham could not allow his son, however estranged, to marry a Canaanite. And so, he sent his servant back to his ancestral homeland to find Isaac a wife. Of course, he didn’t tell Isaac – just as he didn’t tell Sarah in advance what he was about to do when he took Isaac to Mount Moriah.

          One thing to consider before we actually meet Rebekah is why Abraham had to find Isaac a wife; why could Isaac not find his own wife? It has to do, I believe, with life expectancy and the culture of the time. People didn’t live long in those days; young men and women had to get married as soon as they came of age; they needed to raise a family quickly, for one of them, if not both, might be dead by the age of 30. Many of their kids might also die before they came of age. Many died as infants. So did the mothers. Parents had to find spouses for their children before they, and their children, grew old and died. Tempus fugit, time was fleeting.

          Now we have set the stage for the fateful encounter. Abraham charged his servant to find Isaac in his ancestral homeland. Abraham set the ground rules: under no circumstances is Eliezer to take Isaac back to said homeland; his future was in the Land of Canaan. Finally, God would send an angel before Eliezer to guide him on his way.

          Eliezer took a fleet of camels, along with jewels, foods and other gifts and made his way to Aram-Naharaim, the city where his brother Nahor had dwelt, in modern day Iraq. And then we see for the first time the classic test of honor found in the Bible; Eliezer made the camels kneel at the well, just when he knew that the women would be coming to fill their jars with water. After Eliezer offeried a prayer for guidance, Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, came to fill her jar. She offered to give Eliezer some water and then drew water for the camels. And I have to say, drawing enough water for 10 camels was no small task. After she watered the camels, Eliezer gifted her a heavy gold nose ring, as well as two heavy gold bracelets. When she revealed that she was the virgin daughter of Bethuel, the granddaughter of Milcah and Nahor, Abraham’s brother, Eliezer rejoiced. He knew that he had found a proper bride for Isaac. And then, Rebekah offered to host Eliezer – and the camels – at her father’s home. After all, offering hospitality to strangers was also an important Biblical imperative.

          After offering a long and detailed homily about his mission and purpose, Eliezer asked if he could bring Rebekah back to Canaan to be Isaac’s wife. Bethuel and Laban, his son and Rebekah’s brother, replied in tandem, “Since this word came from Adonai, we cannot speak to you bad or good.” They considered the matter out of their hands; God had decreed she go, so she should go.

          What is interesting in this part of the story is that Laban and Bethuel asked Rebekah if she wanted to go. She, surprisingly at least to me, agreed to go. 

          Here is where I return to my original question posed in the introduction: would you have accepted such a blind date? Let me rephrase: Would you have agreed to marry a man, no matter how much perceived wealth he had, without first meeting him? This was an arranged marriage on steroids.

          I don’t know if Rebekah was a woman of great faith and courage or if she was a fool. If she was a fool, and she didn’t know what she was getting into, then all that happened to her and her eventual family happened because of her poor choice in men and her misplaced faith in a strange man from a strange place, claiming to be the servant of her great-uncle.

          But I don’t think that she was a fool. I think that she was a woman of great faith. Throughout this chapter, Abraham’s kinsmen continuously invoke God as the one who desires that this marriage happen. Rebekah, IMHO, feels the same way. God has destined her to marry Isaac. While she might not have known this before, she realized that this was her fate as soon as she started wearing her gold nose ring. It was not just a gift; it was a sign.

          In this, the first part of Rebekah’s story, she is a passive voice – until her father asks if she would leave. Later, we will see that she grew into a woman of action. She was vital to the burgeoning of the nascent Jewish people.

Rebekah never returned to her father’s home. It’s easy to understand why; travel was dangerous and infrequent. Once a person left his or her homeland, which by the way was quite rare, they generally did not return, even for family events such as burials.

But I think that there was another reason why she never returned. We can compare her journey to that of Abraham’s. Abraham was an ‘Apiru, a wanderer, who migrated from Ur to Haran, and then to Canaan, where he lived out his life, in the land that God had promised to him and his descendants.

Rebekah lived a similar spiritual and physical journey. Undoubtably, she and Eliezer traveled the Fertile Crescent Road back to the Land of Canaan, just like Abraham had done years earlier. But she also embarked upon a spiritual journey; by leaving her family and their gods, Rebekah implicitly agreed to worship the God of Abraham and Isaac. She was to be the mother of a people.

This brings us to the end of Part One of the Story of Rebekah. As her journey to Canaan was coming to an end, she spied Isaac walking in the field, meditating in the heat of the day. When Rebekah saw him, the Hebrew says, “Vatipol m’al gemaleha.” In most English translations, the editors gently say that she “alighted from her camel” or “stepped off her camel.” But what the verb “vatipol” really means “to fall.” Rebekah saw Isaac and fell off her camel! Who said that the Bible didn’t have a sense of humor?

Either Rebekah saw Isaac and was stunned by his beauty – or she saw Isaac and fainted from fear. Perhaps he was ugly. Perhaps she was scared. The following verses explain what happened. Isaac took Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent as his wife. And he found comfort in Rebekah after his mother’s death.

Isaac might not have gone to his mother’s burial, but he truly loved her. She  had protected him from his predatory older brother, Ishmael. And perhaps out of love for his mother, but not necessarily because of his father, Isaac married Rebekah, who now stood in as a substitute for his mother. And while there is nothing wrong, to be sure, with loving one’s mother, this relationship between Isaac and Sarah is described here in very Oedipal terms. Whatever the reasons, the story of the next generation of Hebrews begins here. We’ll continue that story next week.

I want to thank you for listening to Torah for Christians, a top-20 site in the category of Jewish-Christian studies. On our next podcast, we will continue the story of Rebekah when we discuss her miracle pregnancy, the birth of the twins Esau and Jacob, and her machinations to assure her preferred son, Jacob, of Isaac’s birthright, the right to his property – and to his covenantal relationship with God. As we will see, she plays a key role in directing the Jewish story through Jacob and not through Esau.

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Again, thank you for listening to Torah for Christians. I wish you a blessed and wonderful week. Hinei Mah Tov … L’hitraot. Until we meet again. I’m Rabbi Jordan Parr and this is Torah for Christians.