Double Trouble

Last Sunday, we marveled at how God providentially orchestrated the match of this man, Isaac, to that woman, Rebekah, in holy matrimony. “Isaac was a son of forty years when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to himself as wife” (Genesis 25:20). And so we expect this to be the start of a beautiful and fruitful story. Isaac, sole son of Sarah, didn't even exist when God pledged to make Sarah an ancestress of nations and kings, and that Isaac would surely have “his seed after him” (Genesis 17:16-19). Isaac was a boy when God pledged to Abraham that “through Isaac shall your seed be called” (Genesis 21:12). When Isaac was spared, God swore to multiply Abraham's seed through that son (Genesis 22:16-17). When Rebekah went off to marry him, Bethuel and Laban unknowingly echoed that oath, blessing her that “your seed may become thousands of ten thousands” (Genesis 24:61). Now, “after the death of Abraham, God blessed Isaac his son” (Genesis 25:11). What could that mean, if not that his oath be upheld?

But here comes the painful phrase we'd hoped we'd left behind chapters ago in another generation: “barren was she” (Genesis 25:21). It seems so unfair. Isaac hasn't done anything to deserve it; neither has Rebekah. They had every reason to think children would grace their house swift as could be. It seems so pointless. Why, when the world's future blessing hinges on the seed of Isaac and Rebekah, would God allow this failure? They must be at a loss when their fertility becomes apparent. From them, one preacher long ago chided his congregation that “whenever you see pious people devoted to religion yet childless, don't think it is the result of sin,” but recognize that “many reasons for God's designs are beyond our ken.”¹

We remember how Abraham and Sarah handled this – ducking, complaining, protesting, finally circumventing through surrogacy by 'opening' their marriage to Hagar. Isaac doesn't imitate them. Maybe, now that he's reconnected with Ishmael and heard what it was like growing up in that mess, he sees better the dire costs of monkeying with marriage. Despite his father's concubines and Rebekah's grandfather's concubine, Isaac and Rebekah live as committed monogamists by conviction.² Instead, Isaac pours his tears into the jar of One who is greater than he. That long-ago preacher put it beautifully, that “when he saw nature impeded, he ran to the Creator of nature and pressed him by his prayer to loose the bonds of nature.”³

Before the verse is done, we read, “the LORD was supplicated toward him,” that God heard and was appeased by this impassioned plea, that God took action (Genesis 25:21). But we later find out that the birth comes when Isaac is sixty years old (Genesis 25:26), and we already heard that they married when he was forty. So that painful phrase, “barren was she,” is the spectre haunting their marriage bed, not for the first or the second year alone, but for nearly two decades. Now, that means that either Isaac twiddled his thumbs for nineteen years before trying prayer, and then God leaps into action immediately;⁴ or that Isaac “spent twenty years praying and beseeching God, and only then,” after those decades, “he attained his wish.”⁵ Until that precious day arrived, “Isaac poured out his soul before the Lord many a year, only to hear the deafening roar of silence.”⁶

For nineteen years, Isaac and Rebekah internalized the words of the future psalmist, that “I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2). It would have been easy for them, at their fifth or tenth or fifteenth anniversary, to give up – to write it off as unheard; to quit; to stumble and fall in their faith; to conclude that there's nobody home up there. “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7) – this they could have disbelieved. But they didn't. Isaac prayed still as that nineteenth anniversary came and went. God had accomplished whatever he'd meant to do by the delay. So he proved he'd been hearing Isaac all along. Didn't Jesus urge his disciples “that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1)? But all too often, we too soon “lose heart and fall away if the response to prayer is not immediate.”⁷ Isaac shows us a better way.

But now to Rebekah, who, “by her patience, undid the knot of sterility.”⁸ The first trimester's already begun as the happy news dawns on her, and she excitedly tells Isaac. The second trimester gets underway. And things begin to get hard. She's been around pregnancies all her life, but this was so much worse than she'd thought to expect. Feeling pains from within, she stammers out, “If so, why is it this to me?” (Genesis 25:22). Her words don't add up to anything, as if she were kicked from within before she could get out the whole sentence.⁹ All she knows is, it hurts and she's worried. She's worried because, as miraculous as the pregnancy is, every mother fears the prospect of miscarrying her child.¹⁰ She's worried because, in a world where dying in childbirth is fairly common, now “she questions whether she will survive.”¹¹ Had she known this would be so sharp and tumultuous and perilous, maybe she would've asked Isaac to wind down his prayer spree sooner!

In her worries and perplexities, Rebekah could have resorted to the moon worship in which she was raised; but two decades with Isaac have taught her better.¹² “She went to inquire of the LORD,” the true God (Genesis 25:22). With the old problem of barrenness, Isaac pleaded with God in Rebekah's very presence, and obtained at length an answer in deeds; with the new problem of pregnancy, Rebekah doesn't turn to Isaac but leaves his presence, and obtained promptly an answer but in words.¹³ Where'd she go? Did she hike to Salem to consult Melchizedek?¹⁴ Did she stop at Beer-lahai-roi to seek out Hagar's angel?¹⁵ Did she call out over one of Abraham's old altars?¹⁶ Genesis lets us wonder. But God speaks to Rebekah in her storm.

And the very first word of that divine message is this: “Two” (Genesis 25:23). Suddenly, things click into place – it isn't only one child into whom God has poured life in her womb; Rebekah is carrying twins. And twins, starting in the second trimester, begin to interact with each other, even more than they do their own bodies or the wall of the womb.¹⁷ As for her fierce discomfort, “the children struggled within her” – or, better translated, “the sons crushed each other in her innards” (Genesis 25:22). No wonder she hurts: had she an ultrasound machine, the screen would've displayed WrestleMania! But as God's words unfold, Rebekah can take heart. He doesn't halt the MMA match in her uterus, but he assures her that she and both these children will survive.

The details of what God says demand attention, since we “live... by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). “Two nations are in your womb,” he begins, “and two peoples from your soft guts shall be separated.” This isn't just personal, it's social and political. “And people shall be stronger than people.” Even now, it's like they're in combat for supremacy, to see who will triumphantly claim the title of firstborn.¹⁸ Then, the twist: “The greater shall serve the lesser” (Genesis 25:23). At least, that's one way to read it. Or you could hear, “the greater, the lesser shall serve,”¹⁹ or maybe even, “greatly shall the lesser one toil.”²⁰ For that matter, what do 'greater' and 'lesser' mean here – older and younger, bigger and littler, or something else?²¹

In pagan cultures, oracles could be notorious for their ambiguity – divine messages so wrapped in mist that the meaning couldn't be nailed down until after the fact, like when the Lydian king Croesus fought the Persian Empire after two oracles predicted that, if he did, he'd “destroy a great empire” – only for it to turn out that the empire they meant wasn't Persia's but his own.²² In the pagan world, such ambiguity served two purposes: as a trap for the overconfident, and to cover all contingencies. But when it comes to the things of God, this “built-in uncertainty” serves other aims.²³ It veils the future, to “purposely conceal rather than reveal,” because, as Moses teaches, “the secret things belong to the LORD our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29).²⁴ It invites us to exercise discernment, and maybe even to lend our hands. By the time Rebekah sees four infant eyes, she'll probably have an opinion about what it all means; as she raises them, she'll be informed by the prophecy as she understands it; and her influence may be how the word comes to fulfillment.²⁵

But that word already had a meaning the moment she heard it. Malachi took it as a sign that God had chosen one of the twins but not the other (Malachi 1:2-3), a message many Jews took as meaning the unchosen brother was rejected by God.²⁶ The Apostle Paul took Malachi as a lens for reading Rebekah's pregnancy (Romans 9:13), musing that God's choice was already made and shared mysteriously with the mom at a time when her kids “were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad” (Romans 9:11). So God's choice between them couldn't hinge on their deeds, since they didn't yet have any. It couldn't be explained by their heritage, because Rebekah “conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac” (Romans 9:10). We can't even blame their age, because even though one has to be born first, their conceptions are as simultaneous as can be.

So why had God spoken? “In order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls” (Romans 9:12). “These things are recalled,” adds St. Augustine, “for the purpose of smashing and overturning the pride of persons who are unthankful for the grace of God and who dare to boast of their own merits.”²⁷ It turns out that election isn't about heritage or effort or the designs of the stars, but depends “on God who shows mercy” (Romans 9:16), on the unaccountable recklessness of Divine Love pouring himself out hither and yon, in measures known only to eternity.²⁸ God's sovereign mercy will make the difference between these twins, separating them from their shared womb, yet without injustice to either child – who, bear in mind, are both God's gift to their father's tenacity, since, as St. Gregory said, “predestination is fulfilled through prayer.”²⁹ And if God elected one of two from the womb, know that God “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:6). Yes, “God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13). So “be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you will never fall” (2 Peter 1:10).

Rebekah's now endured the tightening turbulence, feeling as though the border of the Gaza Strip runs between her fallopian tubes. And, at last, “her days to give birth were completed,” and – as she's already deduced – “behold, there were twins in her womb” (Genesis 25:24). So picture the scene. Her water's broken. She's in her tent, in the pangs of labor. Isaac paces outside. Within, her experienced nurse Deborah acts as midwife, with Rebekah's maids as gofers and backups. She breathes, she pushes; Deborah sees the crowning head. A boy begins to emerge, though he might not take blue ribbon at a baby parade any time soon. He's beefy and ruddy, as if baked too long; more than fuzzy, his skin feels like he's fully clothed in furs. Had a modern doctor been on the scene, he might've diagnosed the tyke with congenital hypertrichosis.³⁰ But this is the firstborn of Isaac, and the first to open Rebekah's womb. Looking back, they'll name him Esau, maybe “the mantled one.”³¹

But though Rebekah pushes and pushes, Esau can't get all the way out. His leg's stuck. Soon, Deborah realizes why. The membranes separating the boys had both popped; Esau's leg had been pressed to another face, and that child's hand had gripped Esau's ankle with a potent grasping reflex. It was as though the second child were dragging his brother back; Deborah no doubt had to intervene to get Esau free. As the arm withdrew, Esau could be freed, and once his umbilical cord was severed, with nail marks on his heel to recall what happened, now the second twin could be delivered, smooth as butter.³² Esau's “brother came out, and his hand grasped the heel of Esau, so his name was called Jacob” (Genesis 25:26) – which literally cries out, 'May God protect him,' but which sounds a lot like the word 'heel,' not to mention 'to cheat.'³³ His name foreshadows an ambition to get ahead by tripping others – a child “grasping, rivalrous, devious, supplanting, and most unbrotherly.”³⁴

From womb to the light, God is showing a “historical blueprint” of things to come.³⁵ Moses called the Edomites “the people of Esau, who live in Seir” (Deuteronomy 2:8) – 'Edom' means 'red,' due to the territory's red sandstone, and 'Seir' means 'hairy,' due to the hair-like brushwood on the hills, but Esau's birth foreshadows it. Israel itself was known as “Jacob” (Isaiah 2:6). So the crashing around in Rebekah's womb pointed to “the Edomite and Hebrew nations” living in fraternal unease.³⁶ Little sooner had the Red Sea closed than Hebrews were singing how “now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed” (Exodus 15:15). Though Edom refused to let Israel through, Moab's hired prophet foresaw how “a star shall come out of Jacob” so that “Edom shall be dispossessed..., and one from Jacob shall exercise dominion and destroy the survivors of cities” (Numbers 24:17-19). Rebekah's hope and Balaam's oracle gained clarity in the days of David when, winning a victory, “throughout all Edom he put garrisons, and all the Edomites became David's servants” (1 Samuel 8:14). That wasn't the end of the story, not by a long shot; but more at another time.

As for the twins, the bouncing baby boys can't stay babies. “The boys grew,” we read, and as they mature, we see the very different people they're becoming. On the one hand, “Esau was a man skillful in the hunt, a man of the field” (Genesis 25:27). He's plainly “an outdoorsy sort of man,” a country boy, a blue-collar fellow, who today would sport his camo and hunting vest and keep his NRA membership card in his back pocket while “running about through the woodlands.”³⁷ Esau is strong. Esau is brawny. Esau is a man's man. He's not at all squeamish about his hunting trips with bow and arrow, or the game he brings home to mom and pop.

Jacob isn't much like Esau. Genesis pictures him “dwelling in tents” (Genesis 25:27). Maybe you could call him “a home-lover,”³⁸ “a man who naturally preferred to stay at home.”³⁹ If Esau's outdoorsy, Jacob's indoorsy. If Esau's blue-collar, Jacob's white-collar. If Esau's a barbarian, Jacob's civilized.⁴⁰ Early Jewish readers read into Bible that Jacob, unlike Esau, learned how to read and write.⁴¹ They took the tents as schools, saying Jacob “attended the house of study” and “dwelt in the schoolhouses” to become “perfect in every good work.”⁴² Genesis describes Jacob as maybe a 'blameless man,' or 'quiet man,' or 'mild man.' It's unsure what's meant, but he's like Job in being 100% committed – to what, we'll have to wait and see.⁴³

The word 'love' has shown up in the Bible twice so far; now it gets doubled to four. “Isaac loved Esau, because his game was in his mouth, and Rebekah loved Jacob” (Genesis 25:28). Remember, when first these would-be parents met, where was Isaac? Out wandering and meditating “in the field” (Genesis 24:63). Where'd he then take Rebekah? “Into the tent” (Genesis 24:67). Isaac likes the field, and favors the son who does the same; Rebekah is placed in the tent, and favors the son who stays close to there.⁴⁴ But we've noticed that Rebekah is energetic and forward, while Isaac is more retiring and passive. Isaac loves the field, but he's no hunter. What he sees in Esau is a son who melds his own love of the outdoors with the vital energy he so admires in Rebekah, and they make him proud; Esau feeds him what he can't feed himself. Rebekah sees in Jacob a son who brings into her domain the contemplative mindset she's come to appreciate in Isaac, a son who needs her and whom she can protect and keep close, whose outlook she approves.⁴⁵

None of this is to say Isaac wishes Jacob weren't around, or that Rebekah turns up her nose at Esau – far from it! But the Bible lays bare how each parent forms a special attachment and alliance with exactly one of their two twin sons, each openly giving that son preferential treatment over the other.⁴⁶ It's our first clear case study in this family dynamic, one Genesis will unpack over generations, and bear out the New Testament observation that “where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice” (James 3:16).

Beyond the family dynamic, Genesis calls us to respond to Jacob and Esau here as characters. It's easy for us to have a great admiration for outdoorsy, extroverted, athletic people like Esau and their perceived virtues; but we might stretch it into a disdain, be it quiet or vocal, toward indoorsy, introverted, studious people and their perceived vices: “Oh, Esau's such a go-getter, so strong and vibrant, nothing like that soft layabout Jacob and his wussy life; what a shame Jacob won't cut the apron strings, get a real job, and bring home some bacon.” Or we could go the other way around: “Oh, Jacob's so bright and well-spoken – nothing like that boorish, unkempt Esau who never got hooked on phonics; what a shame Esau plays all day and won't get buckle down to brass tacks – or take a shower.” Maybe, like Isaac, you find yourself esteeming the Esaus of the world or your house. Or, like Rebekah, maybe you've got a fondness for the Jacobs. But we haven't gotten to the moral qualities of these men; their inclinations, interests, and careers aren't that. It isn't better or worse to be a man of the field than a dweller of the tent. The brothers each “followed their natural predilection” – and that's okay.⁴⁷

But these natural predilections bring us to a specific day in young adulthood when each makes a choice. Esau's been out hunting in the woods, but for all his skill, today he's got little to show for it. Maybe the animals have seasonally migrated, or maybe it's a string of bad luck, or maybe the famine that'll kick off chapter 26 has begun already.⁴⁸ Either way, Esau stumbles from the field to the tents, whether that means the family camp or, more likely, Jacob's tent pitched among the shepherds with the flocks.⁴⁹ Esau's worn out by a hard day's labor. He'd reckoned he'd have fresh meat by now, but he doesn't. His stomach thunders. His mouth is dry. His passions are alarmed. He feels faint. Then he sees his little brother, tending a bubbling pot over a fire pit (Genesis 25:29). Esau sniffs at the air as steam ascends to his nostrils; he starts salivating. Peering into the pot, he can't make out ingredients, just the color of the surface – a delightful red, by far his favorite color. It reminds him of the blood flowing satisfyingly from where his arrows hit their marks. Maybe that's what's in there, a nice blood broth.⁵⁰ The stew smells hearty; maybe the pot's hiding what's left of his last catch.⁵¹ Esau craves it.

So he says to his brother, “Feed me now some of the red... this red... – I'm faint!” (Genesis 25:30). Esau's not as eloquent as others in the Bible; his language here is “uncouth and abrasive.”⁵² He stumbles and stammers as he describes the dish, not by its substance, but by its accidents his eyes apprehend. He says only the color, being “so inarticulate that he cannot name the food that Jacob is cooking.”⁵³ And when he demands to be fed, he uses the word, not for a human eating, but for an animal chowing down. He wants to gulp down the red stuff like the predatory lion tears raw meat, a phrasing that hints at Esau's “animal-like lack of self-command.”⁵⁴

Jacob could – and would, we'd expect – just see his brother's need and have mercy on him. Moses says it's a sign of a cursed age when a man would “begrudge food to his brother” (Deuteronomy 28:54). Solomon says that even if it's your worst enemy who's hungry, “give him bread to eat... and water to drink” (Proverbs 25:21). But Jacob's not really a mercy type of guy. He is, however, a young man who, ever since his infancy, has been grasping after what Esau has: the position of firstborn, to say nothing of a father's approval. Jacob may not be a physical go-getter, but he's deeply and quietly ambitious. He's been watching and waiting through these years for an opportunity, a chance he might just have something Esau wants.⁵⁵ Say what else you want about Jacob, but he “can wait, postpone gratification, and think of the future.”⁵⁶ And now the time has come. Earlier, we read that Esau was a skilled hunter, but today he looks inept; we read Jacob as a simple man without guile, but today he shows himself shrewd as a serpent.⁵⁷ Ironically, now Jacob's the skilled hunter, who craftily uses food as bait to lure and catch his prey – his brother.⁵⁸ Maybe later, when journalists interview Jacob's neighbors, they'll all say, “I never would've expected this; he always seemed so quiet.”

So what is it Esau has and Jacob wants? What we read as 'birthright' is, more literally, the status of firstborn. In their world, to be firstborn in any family was a very honored position, one of respect and prestige; it meant you symbolized your father's strength, “preeminent in dignity and preeminent in power” (Genesis 49:3). It came with rights and responsibilities. At the father's death, the firstborn by default got a double share of inheritance; since Isaac's got just two boys, the difference between birthright and no birthright is a full third of the family estate. Also, the firstborn would naturally assume leadership of the clan and exercise authority over his brethren – so Esau's birthright suggests his future supremacy over Jacob. Not just that, but the firstborn often acted in a priestly capacity in the domestic circle, which is why the firstborn of the people were consecrated and would've been priests if the Levites hadn't been substituted for them (Numbers 3:12-13).⁵⁹ Jacob wants all that.

Thus, when Esau demands whatever's red in that pot, approaching the matter like an animal growling at a dish, Jacob turns to the civilized domains of law and commerce: “Sell me, as of this day, your birthright” (Genesis 25:31).⁶⁰ It sounds absurd. To trade away, at minimum, a third of the family fortune for a single bowl of soup? Get real! But listen to Esau. “Esau said, 'Behold, I'm on the way to death; of what use is a birthright to me?'” (Genesis 25:32). There are two ways to take what he's saying. One is that he's so weak of hunger right now that he thinks his life is in danger if he doesn't eat immediately.⁶¹ The other is that Esau lives such a dangerous life as an archery hunter in the woods that he's got no confidence he'll outlive his dad anyway.⁶²

Now, if Esau means the second, then we already see a problem: he doesn't believe in the promise, doesn't get what God said to Rebekah. If he means the first, then a bowl of stew wouldn't be enough to save him; plus, his later behavior puts the lie to any claim to be starving. Esau might be exhausted, might be very hungry, but he's in no mortal danger here.⁶³ Esau has just inherited his mom's dramatic flair (cf. Genesis 25:22). But he's faint enough, hungry enough, that the mysterious redness in the bowl has a mesmerizing power over him, reaching through his eyes and stomach to his soul, drawing him magnetically in. He's willing to deal.

Jacob has a suspicion, though, that Esau will have regrets once the moment's passed and he's forgotten the taste of his mouth and the fullness of his belly, which comes and goes. The benefit of hindsight will make the whole transaction seem like a bad joke. So if Jacob wants to leverage this to a lasting advantage, all sales must be final. That's why he demands Esau swear an oath as part of the transaction. And Esau raises no objection. “He swore to him and sold his birthright to Jacob” (Genesis 25:33).

Then “Jacob gave Esau bread and a stew of lentils” – that's what was in the pot: not blood, not meat, but some porridge of red lentils and grains, a common dish rich in proteins and carbohydrates.⁶⁴ As for Esau, we now get a rapid-fire series of five verbs to close out the chapter, recreating for us a “chilling, sullen atmosphere”:⁶⁵ “And he ate and he drank and he rose and he went and he despised – (Esau did) – the birthright” (Genesis 25:34). Esau sold off the most precious thing he had, greedily wolfed down some food and drink, then worldlessly lumbered away without a moment's reflection. He just did not care.

And here's where our natural sympathy for Esau has to break down, and our skepticism of Jacob's own conduct might even begin to lessen. After all, Jacob might've reasoned, if Esau can be tempted that easily to give up his standing as firstborn, then how could he fulfill the role's responsibilities? “It is incumbent upon every priest... that he should not be... satisfied by the eating of bread” and stew.⁶⁶ In this light, Jacob didn't so much buy the birthright – Genesis says Esau sold, not that Jacob bought – as Jacob “redeemed from an unjust possessor something that was owed to him” instead, by the prophetic decree of the Almighty.⁶⁷ In fact, some early Christians read Jacob's ambitious maneuvering as actually an act of faith, a display of how strongly he trusted in the truth of the prophecy spoken before he was born.⁶⁸ By faith, Jacob claimed the birthright.

There's not as much, in the end, to be said for Esau. The New Testament barely mentions him, but when it does, it's as an example here of who not to be. “See to it that there be among you... no fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for a single meal sold his birthright” (Hebrews 12:16). What has Esau done wrong? First, in not caring about what he was given from birth, Esau displayed his “ingratitude,” being “unappreciative of the precedence given him by nature itself.”⁶⁹ Second, Esau shows that his view of the world was distorted by lack of self-control and forethought. Esau comes across here as utterly “controlled by his bodily desires,” like any animal can be but as it's gloriously human to not be.⁷⁰ Esau shows us a sad glimpse into “unrestrained greed,”⁷¹ and was held up as a warning that “those who do not govern their own selves are worthless in judgment”⁷² – that you can't make good decisions or even form good opinions if you don't make any effort to be well-ordered within, to control your lower self by your higher.

Third, in his great impatience, “Esau put lower things before higher,”⁷³ “counting the fullness of his stomach to be more important than his own dignity, for which he cared nothing..., accounting momentary enjoyment as more excellent” than “the glory that was laid up for him.”⁷⁴ Esau “sells his eternal inheritance for a bit of food,”⁷⁵ opting for “momentary pleasures... even at the expense of future material or spiritual privilege.”⁷⁶ His body weighs more to him than his soul. The present has a reality to him that the future can't. Esau illustrates “the ultimate inversion of proper values.”⁷⁷ He gets life woefully backwards, “for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).

And fourth, as some ancient Jewish readers saw, Esau's assumption that his allegedly impending death would render irrelevant his birthright – the birthright that came with such great promises – was effectively a rejection of eternity. In this act, Esau implicitly “denied the life of the world to come.”⁷⁸ It's little wonder that, mired in disbelief, his answer to Jacob boils down to, “Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (Isaiah 22:13).⁷⁹ Esau is just fundamentally disinterested in what comes after his span on earth, whether that means his legacy on earth or his own fate beyond earth.⁸⁰ It never occurs to him that it'll be through the chosen brother that will pass a line leading to the ultimate Seed of Abraham: the Messiah; and so, by surrendering so cheaply the birthright of this chosen family, Esau has renounced the prospect that he could have the matchless spiritual honor of serving the world by becoming a forefather of Jesus Christ. Instead, he'll be father the likes of Doeg, Haman, and Herod.

Esau isn't disinherited, as Ishmael was, but he's lost something incredibly precious and missed out in a way few others ever could. But now the author of Hebrews pokes us in the ribs and says through gritted teeth, “And how about you?” If, as we heard last week, Rebekah might stand allegorically for the Church, then there's a reading, among others, where Jacob and Esau show us two types of Christians: those who set their hearts on eternity, and those who don't. For “in the Church..., both good and bad people are found, two people struggling as in the womb of the spiritual Rebecca,” wrestling “in the womb of the Church until judgment day.”⁸¹ It would be such a relief if Christians all lived up to their parentage, if we all exemplified discipleship. But we don't. There are people in the Church who make their own the mind of Christ, and those who cling to their own.

So Esau stands here, lentils dotting his beard, as a warning to “the carnal ones among the people of God” now as then,⁸² to Christians who, despite being in Christ, “are still of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 3:3), Christians who fail to “abstain from the passions of the flesh” (1 Peter 2:11). These are “those in the Church who are slaves to temporary pleasures and satisfactions,” who “are materialistic in life, materialistic in faith, materialistic in hope, materialistic in love.”⁸³ Of such, it might be said, to borrow the Apostle's words, that “their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).

Esau “bought permanent regret at the price of a moment's pleasure.”⁸⁴ What better statement is there to sum up what it means, as a Christian, to turn back to sin? Ours is a precious birthright, this grace of God that makes us alive; but do we sell it for a meal here, a thrill there, an easier hour now and again? “Are we, like Esau, so taken with this world's offerings that we 'despise' God's promises in Jesus?”⁸⁵ May we not be immoral, not be profane, not be so shortsighted and contemptuous of grace! “Let us learn the lesson never to neglect the gifts of God, nor forfeit important things for worthless trifles.”⁸⁶ For “the grace of God has appeared..., training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior” (Titus 2:11-13).

Granter of Success

Genesis. We've foraged elsewhere for over two months, during the weeks of my sabbatical. Now, as we pick up the Scriptures together and turn back to the Bible's first book, we might have forgotten where we were. Let's remind ourselves of the gist of things so far. All things have their beginning in God – the God who is Trinity, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the God who is Love. Because God is Love, he necessarily was fulfilled in his own life and goodness and being in eternity; and because God is Love, he freely created a world, not that he might seek fulfillment in it, but that it might enjoy fulfillment in him. All things surged into existence, made for God; but little sooner had we appeared than we derailed the purpose of the whole by surrendering to the voice of temptation and doubt and self-seeking. Grasping prematurely and presumptuously, we sinned against the beauty that was and could have been, and crafted instead the groaning life of woe, to spite Relentless Love.

In telling Israel and us of these things and what came after, the revealing God took the paler stories of the pagan cultures and transfigured them into something very different. In place of the pagan myths where the world was built on battle and bloodshed among the ancient gods, God turns it into a story where the one God peacefully constructs the world to be his holy temple, where all things reach their climax in the celebration of divine order. In place of the pagan myths where humans are clay and divine blood sculpted to toil in the gods' place as slave labor, God turns it into a story where, from dust and divine breath, humans are sculpted to be radiant images manifesting the one God's splendor. In place of the pagan myths where the building blocks of civilization came down as divine gifts on the wise and the weak, God turns it into a story where they're an afterthought tacked onto Cain's legacy of violence against Abel – and yet these inventions remain amenable to redemption. In place of the pagan myths of a heroic age where demigods gain legendary fame through mighty achievements and military prowess, God turns it into a story of nameless monster-men whose brutality but highlights the horrors of a world gone to hell. In place of pagan myths where the great flood told of divine peevishness, arbitrariness, and shortsightedness, God turns it into a story that bespeaks Divine Love's infinite determination to remake and renew the world from its worst – thus learned Noah. In place of pagan propaganda boasting of an empire's eternal glories and limitless potential, God turns it into a story casting lordly emperors as rebellious Nimrods, powerless in the long run of history. In place of Babylonian lore about their temple-speckled city's privileged place in the world as the gate of the gods where all goodness flows to, God turns it into a story of Babel's religious rejection, casting Babylon as a scene of scattering and divine abandonment. And yet, amidst it all, where pagan stories of humanity tended to be firmly fixed within their cultures, God offers in these old Hebrew Scriptures a picture of all nations as brothers and cousins, and the pagan peoples of the world as beloved prodigal sons whose greatest need across the earth is to rise and come home to the Father of All.

With these playfully redeemed stories in the background, God's revelation next applies a microscope to human history, bringing into view not a potent hero or a princely son or a primeval sage, but a seemingly cursed everyman chosen in his humble obscurity and invited on a mysterious and unthinkable adventure. Abram – later Abraham – is summoned to begin with a great renunciation of all that he was, in favor of a vision of what he could be made: a man whose name God, not himself, would magnify; a man whose life, when turned inside out, would be blessed and a blessing to the world. And with his intrepid yes began a saga now running longer in the book than the whole tale from the dawn of time to the first mention of his name. Over and over through his stumbling journey, he receives immense promises and covenants first by pure and simple faith, though by the day of fulfillment, his loving obedience has been woven in to make the gifts crowns. The promises include descendants for this childless man, land for this pilgrim far from home, a nation to proceed from this solitary nobody. And yet, through turns of international intrigue and domestic disharmony, Abraham is slowly forged into the father of faith, who begins – by faith, and by faith that works by love – to reap the gleaming firstfruits of his hope. His struggle climaxes with his last and greatest test. Where initially in faith he had to renounce his past, so lastly in faith would he have to renounce his future, returning it to the hands of the God who disguised his love. Trusting, reasoning, following, obeying, loving, worshipping, Abraham stepped forth to sacrifice the very heart of the promise; and, the demands of death being deferred, instead life and glory crowned his career and cemented his son Isaac as the man given supernaturally back to the world as if from the depths of the grave.

That done, “for all intents and purposes, [Abraham's] biography is complete.”¹ All that remains is epilogue. In chapter 23, with legal negotiations ending with the entombment of the late Sarah to suffuse the soil, we saw this Abraham acting faithfully in the interest of the gift of the land. But that leaves the other branch of the promise yet unprotected: the pledge of seed to inherit. For whatever may hold for his other children, Abraham's heir apparent has become a man tested on the altar, but not yet on the marriage bed. Isaac is a bachelor. And before Abraham's days are done, it's his responsibility, before God and by his culture, to address that situation.

Before we even got down the mountain or knew of Sarah's demise, already we had foreshadowing of a solution. On the tails of heavenly heraldings of blessing for his future seed, Abraham hears – it isn't said from whom – the news of his long-lost brother Nahor, the one who caught up with their father Terah in the turf around Harran in northern Mesopotamia. Nahor, who'd married his niece Milcah, sister of Lot, had been blessed with eight kids by his niece-wife and four by his concubine Reumah – if you're counting, that adds up to twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Nahor (Genesis 22:20-24). Of those by the legitimate wife, the youngest was Bethuel, and we get a sneak preview of the fact that Bethuel has a daughter.²

As chapter 24 opens, we hear now: “Abraham was old, going on in days, and the LORD had blessed Abraham in everything” (Genesis 24:1) – a thing we wouldn't expect to hear about a widower, and yet human loss was no impediment to the riches of his faith.³ Old Abraham has a servant, whose name is left untold and who's shown as “the oldest of [Abraham's] household, who had charge of all he had” (Genesis 24:2). Effectively, this is his chief steward, his prime minister, “invested with considerable power and responsibility.”⁴ He's prudent, he's tested, and years of experience have taught him the answers to the question, “What would Abraham do?”⁵

It's because Abraham is so advanced in days that he urgently needs to finish this last responsibility and get the ball rolling toward grandchildren. And so to this chief steward he entrusts the vital mission: to arrange for the marriage of Isaac the heir – which may have been a delicate task to take up now, if, as some readers suspect, Isaac and Abraham have been a tad estranged since the knife came out on the mountain top.⁶ Abraham lays down just one guideline to follow: the wife cannot be “from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell” now, but the servant must go “to my kindred” to pick out Isaac's bride (Genesis 24:3-4). That means retracing Abraham's steps from chapter 12, five hundred miles or more. But we know that long-distance marriage arrangements weren't unheard of back then, among the elite; we have record of international royal marriages arranged through high-ranking court officials across similar distances.⁷

Before committing, the chief steward has a question. Suppose the woman he finds who meets the criteria isn't willing to take the trip? Should he come back and fetch Isaac to go meet her there (Genesis 24:5)? Absolutely not, says Abraham (Genesis 24:6). Abraham explains to his servant that “the LORD, the God of heaven,” is the one who originally took Abraham “from my father's house and from the land of my kindred,” and that same God “spoke to me and swore to me, saying, 'To your seed I will give this land'” (Genesis 24:6). Isaac, the seed, must never leave that land. As God swore on God to Abraham, so Abraham wants the servant to swear by “the LORD, God of heaven and God of earth,” to carry out this mission to fulfillment (Genesis 24:3). If the servant has concerns, Abraham has two words. First, a failsafe: if the chosen woman refuses to follow, then the servant is freed from his oath; he can't override her free will. Second, an assurance: the God who swore “will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there” (Genesis 24:7). “I have no doubt that the Lord will take care of you.”⁸ Abraham thus “entrusted [Isaac's] betrothal to divine providence.”⁹

And that's all the steward needed to hear. “The servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him about this thing” (Genesis 24:9). It's a custom that befuddles scholars, but St. Augustine called it “a great prophecy concerning Christ, because the Lord himself, the God of heaven and the Lord of earth, was to come in the flesh which was generated from that thigh.”¹⁰ And that's who this is ultimately about: Christ, who had been promised through the natural line of descent from Abraham through Isaac and his bride-to-be. This steward's mission is to arrange the match of the ancestors of the Savior of the world.

Abraham's directions are a tad vague, but the steward goes to Aram-naharaim, which is the (later Aramean) land of Naharima in the Great Bend of the Euphrates.¹¹ The journey to get there would've taken about a month or so, at least.¹² We'll later learn that the chief steward hasn't gone solo; he's got a staff of fellow-servants under his direction (Genesis 24:32, 54, 59). They make their trip on ten camels, and a camel in those days woulve' been basically “a Bronze Age luxury car,” the equivalent of a fleet of Ferraris pulling up in Aram-naharaim.¹³ Not only that, but the camels carry “many choice gifts,” the shiniest treasures from Abraham's vaults.¹⁴ No wonder the steward doesn't go alone; he's got an “armed escort” as sure as any armored truck.¹⁵ The month's journey being uneventful, we park the camels in the vicinity of the village spring outside either Harran or Nakhur, whichever is meant by “the city of Nahor,” somewhere Abraham's nephews might be (Genesis 24:10-11).¹⁶  

So what does the steward do first, now that he's arrived? Simple: he prays. The man prays for the mission he's on. It's all the more remarkable because this prayer comes straight from the heart – there's no formality to it – and it's spoken by a nameless man.¹⁷ But he dares to pray to “the God of my master Abraham” (Genesis 24:12): the steward has a relationship with Abraham, who has a relationship with the LORD, and so by the transitive property, the steward can relate to God on that basis.¹⁸ The steward asks for two related things: for God to “show kindness to my master Abraham,” and for God to do so by “granting success before my face today,” success here and now where he can see it and know (Genesis 24:12).

Now the servant sets up, in his prayer, a test. Young women from the city are approaching to do their last chore, which is to haul water out of the well into jars and take it back home. The servant intends to approach them and ask for a drink from their jar, even though he's a stranger to whom they might feel no sense of obligation.¹⁹ The steward asks God to orchestrate it so that one will not just grant his request but go beyond it; and he asks God to “let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac; by this I shall know that you have shown kindness to my master” (Genesis 24:13-14), if God should now “guarantee the coincidence.”²⁰

Now, remember what Abraham's criterion for Isaac's wife was: she had to be from Abraham's kindred, which most people around here aren't. That's the only thing Abraham specified; he trusts his servant to take care of the rest. So the steward has now supplied his own criteria. The woman must be God's choice, and that must be obvious based on her lavish generosity to a stranger – the generosity Abraham himself would show, so that this union with Isaac would introduce “no difference of values” to the family.²¹ So here are three standards: Isaac's wife has got to have the right heritage, the right character, and divine appointment.

Before the steward even wraps up the last words of his prayer, a young woman catches his eye. He has no idea yet if she meets any of those three standards, but she's “very good to behold,” a village beauty queen (Genesis 24:15), and we're told she's a virgin, suggesting the virtue of chastity (Genesis 24:16). The steward also notices that, in a world where being sent to the well at dusk was a chance for village women to take time socializing and gossiping, this young woman stands out by being all business.²²

As she starts to walk away with her full and heavy jar on her shoulder, the steward runs to intercept her, asking humbly for just a sip of water – a modest request (Genesis 24:17). She obliges, deftly swinging the jar down in her hands for him (Genesis 24:18). The servant drinks in suspense, and only when he's done does she make the offer he's been waiting for. She offers to give water to his camels – and not only as a token gesture for each, but to keep watering them “until they have finished drinking” (Genesis 24:19). She empties out the water she meant to bring back to her family into a trough, and then runs energetically back to the well to haul up more water. Now, for ten camels to have their thirst quenched would have taken more than 250 gallons of water, which meant maybe a hundred trips to the spring and back.²³ Think about what that says of her – at the end of the day when she expected to get this last chore over with, she'll leap into action and invest an hour or two of extra labor just to make sure that even the animals are fully satisfied. That's “heroic strength and generosity.”²⁴

Through all this, Abraham's chief steward “gazed at her in silence,” “studying the maiden's very words, her gaze, her walk, her appearance, everything about her,”²⁵ “to know whether the LORD had prospered his way or not” (Genesis 24:21). He's stunned speechless, absolutely amazed, dizzied by the excess. He's convinced – but he's still cautious. He still doesn't know if she meets the requirement of being of Abraham's kindred.²⁶ What he sees looks like a clear answer to prayer, but people in the ancient Middle East trying to get answers from the gods always double-checked even what seemed clear as day.²⁷

So first he gives her “a recompense and reward for her courtesy,”²⁸ which in retrospect is a downpayment on her bride-price, in the form of gold bracelets and a gold nose-ring. Then, with her attention secured, he asks two questions. First, what family are you from? That will clear everything up. And second, can we all stay in your father's house (Genesis 24:23)? Clever man that he is, by asking about her father's house, he's implicitly verifying she isn't already married.²⁹ She answers both questions promptly and abundantly.³⁰ Where he asked after her father's name, she gives him not only her father's name, Bethuel, but the names of her paternal grandparents, Nahor and Milcah (Genesis 24:24). Where he asked about room for the night, she not only offers it but specifies provisions for the camels (Genesis 24:25).

With answers that more than suffice, the steward is overcome by awe that, with little more than a general region to go on, he'd been led precisely to his master's nephew's home and to his daughter, the grandniece of Abraham – and what girl could fit any better what Abraham was asking for? There is no standard either Abraham or his steward came up with that she doesn't fit. She's a perfect match, 10 out of 10. She's a godsend; this is just so meant to be. So the servant bows down and names the LORD in this pagan place, uplifting the LORD's kindness and faithfulness to Abraham. He confesses that God “saw to the outcome of all these events.”³¹

As he praises, the young woman – Rebekah – learns three things she couldn't yet have known. First, this man with the luxury rides full of treasure isn't a great nobleman rich in his own right, but the servant of a man who's far greater still. Second, this greater master has a personal God whose name might be somewhat familiar to her, even though her own family has a tradition of moon worship. And third, this great master is a long-lost member of her own family's clan, matching the stories she's no doubt heard of her grandpa's stray brother. And so, with her characteristic verve, the young woman takes to running to her mom to share this news (Genesis 24:28). I wonder whether she ran with a full jar of water on her shoulder, or whether she left her jar behind in her haste.

Among those who catch word is her brother Laban, who – in what seems like Bethuel's absence or ailment – has a leading guardianship role over Rebekah. His attention is ensnared by her bling; so, with dollar signs in his eyes, he runs (which runs in the family, I guess) to find the steward and make good on the offer of hospitality Rebekah had already made (Genesis 24:29-31). Laban's perception of the steward as “blessed of the LORD” is no doubt based on the many treasures he has with him,³² but the steward zeroes in on the fact that Laban acknowledged the LORD – that, even out here in pagan country with the moon men, there's an openness there.³³ The steward follows; he and his men unload the camels, wash their feet, come to the table. Ordinarily, it was impolite for a host to question a guest until after the guest had eaten; but the servant himself breaks the protocol by refusing to eat until he's shared what he's come to say – which is fine by Laban (Genesis 24:32-33).

The next stretch of verses (Genesis 24:34-48) sounds awfully repetitive, and it is, on purpose. The steward rehearses for the family everything we've just read since the chapter started. So we're meant to listen carefully for how he tailors it – the things he adds, subtracts, rewords, reorders. He leaves out Abraham's memory of being called away from his land and kindred, and the fact that Isaac is forbidden to ever go back there. Why? To avoid unnecessary offense. To that end, he also skips over the promises and covenants. What he does add is a description of how wealthy and powerful the LORD made Abraham, and a statement that Isaac is designated the sole and exclusive heir of all this – underscoring a trait that makes Isaac a most eligible bachelor. He adapts the vocabulary he uses, sticking in extra positive references to their family, and mentions the oath to find Isaac's wife only from them – all things that would flatter without seeming heavy-handed. And he reorganizes his story to erase any room for doubt that Rebekah is the one intended.³⁴ In the end, the steward's discourse is a tale of “God's providence so manifestly in action” as to be beyond reasonable doubt.³⁵

Finally, the steward wraps up his speech, which has highlighted the divine appointment of this whole situation, by coming to his goal: a marriage proposal to Rebekah on behalf of Abraham's son Isaac, Bethuel's cousin. And he presses the family to reach their decision as her legal guardians. He sets before them a choice. There's one path, which is “to show kindness and faithfulness to my master” Abraham by honoring his petition for a marriage match between Isaac and Rebekah. Then there's the other path, which is to refuse kindness, to refuse faithfulness, to spurn the proposal and thereby defy the manifest will of God. Either way, they're to answer now, so that, if need be, he “may turn to the right hand or the left” to continue his quest (Genesis 24:49).

As Rebekah's guardians, we hear from Laban and, for the first time, from homebound Bethuel. They may be in paganism's grip, but they know when a god's will is clear – and the LORD's is. Just as they know the steward isn't really free to turn to the right or the left, so they confess they can neither reject or initiate what God has already moved – “we cannot speak to you bad or good” (Genesis 24:50).³⁶ So they announce their acceptance: “Behold, Rebekah is before you. Take her and go, and let her be the wife of your master's son – as the LORD has spoken!” (Genesis 24:51). That seems to settle it: they consent to the marriage, and do so in explicit submission to the word of God! No wonder the steward worships yet again. “In everything that happened, he gave thanks to the Lord of all..., who prepared everything in advance and, in response to the patriarch's prayer..., conducted the whole business for him.”³⁷

From Abraham's treasures, he doles out to Rebekah her fuller dowry now in clothes and jewelry, and also pays the customary compensation to her family for the daughter whose labor will no longer be in their house – but he bucks custom by giving to the family last and the bride-to-be first.³⁸ What comes next is the betrothal feast where representatives of both families eat and drink (Genesis 24:53-54). But then comes the next morning, where things hit a potential snag. The steward's goal is to get the bride back to her still-oblivious groom, and so far he's soft-peddled the imperative of him being bound to the promised land – so when he asks to be promptly dismissed, Laban and Mrs. Bethuel stall. It was customary for there to be extended farewell ceremonies, time to prepare a daughter materially and emotionally for her new life. What the steward asks is, yet again, a breach of protocol. The family insists on delaying departure for “days or ten” (Genesis 24:55). The steward balks, hinting that to tarry would be to kick against the goads of God (Genesis 24:56).

So Laban and Mrs. Bethuel suggest a way to resolve this impasse: they'll “call the young woman and inquire at her mouth,” asking her directly, “Will you go with this man?” (Genesis 24:57). It's an odd sequence, but it brings us back to the servant's original worry, which was that the young woman would refuse to follow him to the promised land (Genesis 24:5). He was never worried about her family's will; he was worried about hers, the only word that can dispel his oath. Everything hinges on what comes out of her mouth next, and now is where we as readers realize that nobody has actually asked Rebekah yet.³⁹

What she says is as short and sweet as Hebrew can be: one word, two syllables: “I'll go” (Genesis 24:58). With that, she undoes the knot, releases the tension, endorses the message, enables the action. Think what this means for her. Rebekah, having grown from this pagan branch of the Terah family tree, is confronted by a call to give up everything familiar for a land she's never known, for a groom she's never seen, for a future she can't predict. But she'll take the offer on faith, she'll step out in hope. She'll surrender what she has, she'll say goodbye to the people and places she knows. Why? Because she's found herself swept up in the best-laid plans of a good God who, though maybe strange to her, has made his kindness and faithfulness known, and “she knew it was the will of the Lord that she go.”⁴⁰ Does that remind you of anybody? It should! Rebekah, with her determination to go despite the implicit temptation of mother and brother to stay, “recapitulates the pattern of Abraham.”⁴¹ And she does so even though she's got no supernatural voices or visions spurring her on, not even an inner prompting in the depths of her heart, only an everyday trust that behind the scenes of natural means is the hand of the Holy.⁴²

Once she's spoken, the matter is settled. Her family dismisses Abraham's steward and his fellow-servants, and not only Rebekah but her former wet-nurse Deborah, who would've helped raise Rebekah and will be ideal to stay on as her chaperone, plus several maidservants, Rebekah's closest gal pals since childhood – this was how a princess would be sent off, and so is she.⁴³ There's only one last thing they have to say: “Our sister, may you become thousands of ten thousands, and may your seed possess the gate of his enemies!” (Genesis 24:60). If their parting blessing sounds at all familiar, again, it should! Before Abraham descended from Mount Moriah, the LORD swore to him to “surely multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the lip of the sea, and your seed shall possess the gate of his enemies” (Genesis 22:17). Without any way to know it, Laban and crew have applied to her the very words of God to Abraham and, through him, to Isaac. One early Christian remarked here that “the Lord of all arranges for the future to be foretold even by non-believers.”⁴⁴ This is just one more way of confirming that this is a heaven-made match, that this is providence at work.

With that, the caravan leaves Aram-naharaim for south Canaan, over a month away. But we leapfrog that time and, with a change in scenery, find ourselves with Isaac living in the semi-desert Negev, coping with his grief for his late mother (Genesis 24:62). One day, as the sun is nearing the horizon, Isaac is in the field, and he's doing... something. There are bunches of ways to read this Hebrew word. Maybe he's walking around, maybe he's talking, maybe he's praying and meditating – when, just then, he “lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, there were camels coming” (Genesis 24:63).

With a handy switch of perspective, now we're with Rebekah, and at the very moment Isaac lifts his eyes to the approaching camels, she on camel-back lifts her eyes and sees him, “and when she saw Isaac, she fell from the camel” (Genesis 24:64). Translators like to soften this for the sake of her dignity, but camels are tall, and there isn't a gentle way to get down while they're in motion. Rebekah's eagerness suggests that the vision of Isaac arrests her attention; it's like a scene out of a Hallmark Channel movie. As Isaac walks their way, she asks the steward, “Who is that man, walking in the field to meet us?” And now comes the simple, surprising answer. “The servant said, 'It is my master'” (Genesis 24:65). All through the chapter, this steward defined himself as “Abraham's servant” (Genesis 24:34), who swears to “Abraham his master” (Genesis 24:9), who prays to the “God of my master Abraham” (Genesis 24:12); Isaac, when mentioned, has been the steward's “master's son” (Genesis 24:51). But now, says the steward, “He is my master” (Genesis 24:65). The saga of Abraham has ended. The torch has passed from father to son.⁴⁵ Isaac must become patriarch; will Rebekah be his matriarch?

Responding to the information, Rebekah “took her veil and covered herself” (Genesis 24:65). Unlike parts of the Middle East today, Hebrew women didn't veil themselves just to be in public; this is a cue from Rebekah that she's there for a wedding.⁴⁶ And now “the servant told Isaac all the things he had done” (Genesis 24:66). The whole mission is laid bare; the results are placed at the new master's feet. The servant has done his part, he fulfilled his oath to the old master, he brought Rebekah on a long journey, but now what if Isaac says no? What if he doesn't like the looks of her? What if he feels pressured and offended? What if he turns her away? What if Isaac even reveals he married a Canaanite woman in the Negev while the steward was gone, and made all this effort pointless? What then?

But of course that doesn't happen. This was God's will. And Isaac, in freedom, accepts. “Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother,” vacated by Sarah's death three years earlier, “and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; so Isaac was consoled after his mother” (Genesis 24:67). So ends the story. It's an arranged marriage, to be sure.⁴⁷ Rebekah's had weeks on the road to pester the steward for Isaac intel, but Isaac hadn't so much as heard of Rebekah when he made his bed that morning. Yet each of them, in this night, gives the consent that ratifies a true marriage, and then they consummate it. Why? Not just because they trust their families and their wisdom, but because they trust that God is the author of the profound love they discover.

It's a sweet and beautiful story, with a fair number of things to teach us about marriage, this being the first time in the Bible the word 'love' is put in the context of a husband and wife. But there are three other key takeaways God intends for us here. First, take a good look at Rebekah. Early Christians, as they read the verses she came on stage, saw “a healthy and hospitable maiden, one whose demeanor would show her to be eager for love.”⁴⁸ They took note of her “ineffable enthusiasm..., her modesty, her surpassing humility, and the extremity of her hospitality.”⁴⁹ They took Rebekah as a model of a virtuous woman, and so should we. She's modest and humble, she's chaste and conscientious, she's generous and strong, caring and daring. She's an example, not just for women, but for all of us. Even without the benefits of the truth she'll come to know, even without special revelations, she's a junior Abraham in the midst of the natural world of secondary cause-and-effect.

Speaking of that world, this chapter is a celebrated case study in divine providence. There are no miracles here – no laws of biology transcended, no heavenly apparitions, no shouts through the clouds; water stays water, not wine. And even so, the LORD is speaking. God has all these things in his hand, moving them toward his ends without ever running roughshod over the freedom we – Abraham and steward, Isaac and Rebekah, Laban and you and me – enjoy on our lower level of causality. God, operating at a higher level as first cause, is sovereign and guiding events, ordering all things sweetly. The eyes of the characters on the page, the eyes of the people in history, are opened, two by two, to how “the guiding hand of Providence is present from first to last” in what might otherwise be dismissed as “the commonplace and the natural.”⁵⁰ God's angel goes before the prudent and pious steward, just as God's ministering angels go before each human born into this life. The God of heaven, the God of earth, wants to providentially guide your life to lead you to the prospect of glory; attend patiently.

But for the last lesson, we have to climb from the letter to the spirit, and realize what this chapter signifies. In a nutshell, what's going on here? A father is taking action to secure for his son and heir a qualified bride, and doing so through the mission of his servant, who will bring the bride to her groom so that life may go on. And what's the story of the world? The Father taking action to secure for his Son a qualified Bride through the mission of his servants. In the pages of Genesis 24, Christ is “signified by Isaac.”⁵¹ For just as Isaac was the sole heir of Abraham, so Christ is God's only-begotten “Son whom he appointed heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2). Who, then, does Rebekah point to? In her, the great teachers of faith saw, “there is clearly revealed the beauty of the Church.”⁵² The Church is “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,” the True Rebekah for the True Isaac (Revelation 21:9), the Christ who is “the Holy Church's Bridegroom.”⁵³

So who is the steward who goes forth? Some said the prophetic words of the Old Testament, for “the Church followed the prophetic word, to be sure,”⁵⁴ so that “just as through Abraham's servant a bride is brought for blessed Isaac, so by his prophetic word the Church... is invited to Christ the True Bridegroom.”⁵⁵ Others have suggested Christ himself in his dual role, or even the Holy Spirit venturing into the world at Pentecost.⁵⁶ But the Spirit filled first and foremost Jesus' apostles, “who became keepers and stewards of the mysteries, having in their hands, so to speak, everything in their master's house.”⁵⁷ No wonder St. Paul told the Church how he felt “a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). The apostles “became, as it were, those... who lead forth the Bride” to her Bridegroom,⁵⁸ meeting the Bride at the well of baptism, adorning her with the golden treasures of the grace of God, and discipling her for the journey. “Rebecca would not be led to Isaac if she did not say, 'I am going,'” one old saint pointed out, and “neither would the Church be joined to Christ if she did not say, 'I believe!'”⁵⁹

But if Rebekah stands allegorically for the Church, she stands tropologically for the human soul – because each and every soul is individually sought for a relationship with Jesus Christ.⁶⁰ “All these things which are written are mysteries. Christ wishes to espouse you also to himself.”⁶¹ On this level of meaning, Rebekah stands for “the soul thirsting for God,” for “no sweeter names can be found to embody that sweet interflow of affections between [Christ] and the soul than 'bridegroom' and 'bride,'” as St. Bernard put it.⁶² Each soul who says the yes of faith, the 'I'll go' of faith, is “receiving at present the blood of her Spouse as a precious dowry,” and will “later receive the dowry of his kingdom.”⁶³ Your soul has been sought. Your soul has been favored, adorned with the gold of the Spirit. Your soul is being led, carried away, to the joy that's set in store.

But that's not the only role for us to play. For with the Holy Spirit going before us, we are servants and camels on a journey to find our Isaac's bride in the next soul, and in the next, and in the next. We don't have to be the chief steward, but we're bound to go with that grace, to make the journey, to seek out those prepared for their espousal, to diplomatically win them for the promised land. Because God is Love. He has been since before the first dawn. He made this world because he is Love. He made you because he is Love, and he made that prodigal-son soul out there because he is Love. We are sent to secure the Son his bride, to lead that soul to Jesus. That's our task, as fellow-servants participating in the apostolic mission: to “summon to the wedding banquet..., bringing near those yet far off and joining them to Christ, binding them together in the unity of the Spirit.”⁶⁴ As we marvel at the sovereign providence of God, as we imitate the virtues we've read, as we recognize in Isaac and Rebekah the mystery of Christ and his Church, may we both marry our souls to Christ and win others to his love. Amen.