Bible Commentaries

This chapter is complete in itself and is a perfect idyll. Abraham was well stricken in years. Sarah was dead. Isaac, the son of Abraham, was still unmarried. In the interest of the divine program Isaac must not marry a Canaanite nor go back to find a bride among the people who had been left behind. Thus Eliezer was sent to seek a bride among his own kindred. Of course, the story is Eastern, and gives the account of how the quest was undertaken and rewarded.

In this story Laban appears and his masterfulness is manifest in the way he acted as host in the house of his father. Rebekah's consent to go showed her responding to the divine purpose and her willingness to move forward along the divine pathway.

The story of the woman going the long distance toward her new home, and of Isaac, the man of quiet, passive faith, meditating in the field at eventide, is picturesque and full of beauty. Apart from these details of the faraway land, we have here a beautiful picture of an ideal marriage. It is the union of a man and woman on the basis of identity in principle. By faith Isaac waited and by faith Rebekah obeyed. It is, moreover, the union of opposites. In Rebekah faith was adventurous and bold. In Isaac faith was retiring and meek. The two lives were made one on the basis of response to a common principle. Two natures utterly different, yet complementing each other, were united for the fullilment of a divine purpose. In the story of these two as it proceeds we shall come across failure on both sides, but here the shadows have not gathered, and the faith of Abraham is rewarded in the union of his son, a man of passive faith, with Rebekah, a woman whose faith is adventuresome and bold.