Genesis 24:64

These six verses close the longest chapter in Genesis. After Sarah’s death and burial (Genesis 23), Abraham, now old (Genesis 24:1), bound his most trusted servant by a solemn oath, with the servant’s hand under his thigh, to take no wife for Isaac from the Canaanites and to go instead to Abraham’s own kindred (Genesis 24:3–4). Marriage in Abraham’s family was a family matter, arranged to carry on the line and the inheritance, and Abraham wanted the son of the promise kept from the idol worship of the land. At the well in Mesopotamia the servant prayed for guidance, and the LORD led him to Rebekah (Genesis 24:10–27). Her family consented (Genesis 24:50–51), and she set out with him on the long road back to Canaan.

Now the story turns back to Isaac, and the timing is the LORD’s. Isaac is out in the field at the very hour the camels come into view, and two people who have never met look up and see each other across the open ground. Proverbs says that a man plans his way and the LORD directs his steps (Proverbs 16:9), and a psalm says that the steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD (Psalm 37:23). This evening shows both at work: the servant travelled, Rebekah agreed to go, Isaac walked out to think, and God brought them to the same field at the same moment.

The meeting matters far beyond one household. God had promised Abraham that he would make of him a great nation and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:1–3), and that promise was to pass through Isaac. His marriage is the next step toward Jacob, to whom God would repeat the same promise (Genesis 28:13–15), and toward the line through which the Messiah would come.

Verse 62 tells us where Isaac was before Rebekah arrived. His name, Yitschâq, means “he laugheth” or “laughter”, and he was the son born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. He “came from the way of the well Lahairoi”, and bôw is the common verb for going or coming.

The well’s full name is Beer-lahai-roi, “the well of the Living One who sees me”. It is the place where the angel of the LORD found Hagar after she had fled from Sarah, comforted her, and gave her a promise about her son Ishmael (Genesis 16:13–14). Isaac may have gone there to pray, as his evening in the field suggests, though the verse gives no reason for the visit. It is fitting all the same that the son of promise comes from a well named for the God who sees, on the evening when God’s care for him comes into view.

“For he dwelt in the south country” explains why he was there. The south country is the Negev, the dry, semi-desert south of Canaan, where Abraham’s family lived by its wells and moved with their flocks. The verb yâshab means first to sit down, and from that to dwell, remain or settle. Isaac was settled in the land God had promised his father, living there as the heir of that promise.

Isaac “went out to meditate in the field at the eventide”. The verb sûwach means to muse pensively, to think something over. The verse leaves his thoughts unspoken. He may have been turning over his father’s promises, the servant’s long errand or his mother’s death, or quietly seeking the LORD. What we are told is that he went out on purpose, alone, to think, and that this is where God brought him his answer. The ʻereb is evening, the time of sundown, when the day’s work is over. The sâdeh is the field, the open country away from the tents.

“He lifted up his eyes, and saw” is the Hebrew way of saying that he looked up. The verb nâsâʼ means to lift, ʻayin is the eye, and râʼâh is the ordinary word for seeing. Then comes “behold”, hinnēh, which turns our attention to what he sees: camels, gâmâl, coming toward him. The verb for “coming” is the same verb, bôwʼ, that brought Isaac back from the well in verse 62. As Isaac comes home, so does the caravan carrying his bride.

Isaac’s part in the story is a quiet one. While the servant travels, prays and speaks for his master, Isaac stays in the land, goes out to think and pray, and receives what God sends. His readiness and God’s providence meet in the same hour.

Rebekah “lifted up her eyes” with the same verb, nâsâʼ, and saw him with the same râʼâh, so the two look up and see each other in one evening. When she saw Isaac, “she lighted off the camel”. The verb is nâphal, whose usual meaning is to fall, and here it means to get down quickly from her mount. In that day a person dismounted before someone of standing as a mark of respect, and Rebekah does so at once, before a word passes between them. It is of a piece with the generous hospitality she had shown to a stranger at the well (Genesis 24:15–20).

Verse 65 tells us how she knew whom she was meeting. She asked the servant, “What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us?” ʼîysh is a man, a male person, and hâlak is the common verb to walk. Isaac is walking out across the field toward them, and the servant answers, “It is my master.” Through the whole journey his master has been Abraham. Here he gives the title, ʼâdôwn, to Isaac, Abraham’s son and heir.

“Therefore she took a vail, and covered herself.” The veil, tsâʻîyph, was a head covering large enough to cover her face, and kâçâh is the usual verb to cover. Strong’s gives its root sense as filling up hollows, and from that covering, whether with clothing or for concealment. A woman meeting her husband for the first time covered herself in modesty and respect, and by doing it Rebekah shows that she accepts the marriage and is ready to leave her father’s household for her husband’s.

Her respect for Isaac from the first moment is the character Proverbs prizes in a virtuous woman (Proverbs 31:10). Paul calls believers to submit to one another and speaks of a wife’s submission to her husband within marriage (Ephesians 5:21–24), and Rebekah’s gestures show that honour given freely and at once.

The servant’s last act in the story is his report to Isaac. He is the ‘ebed, the bondservant bound in duty and loyalty to Abraham. “Told” is çâphar, which means to count or number, and in the form used for speaking, to recount, tell or declare. “All things” translates dâbâr, a word that means word or speech and also matter or thing, so kāl-haḏḏəḇārîm is “all the matters”, the whole of what happened. The servant gives Isaac the full account, from his prayer at the well (Genesis 24:12–14) to the moment he bowed and worshipped the LORD for leading him to his master’s kin (Genesis 24:48).

So the report is a testimony to what God had done. At the well the servant had already blessed the LORD for his guidance (Genesis 24:27), and now Isaac hears it all and can receive Rebekah knowing that she was the LORD’s choice. Joshua says that of all the good things the LORD had spoken, not one failed (Joshua 21:45), and this household could say the same. The servant also shows what Paul requires of stewards, that they be found faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2). He carried out his charge to the end and gave an honest, complete account of it.

Verse 67 moves quickly from one action to the next: Isaac brought her into the tent, took her, she became his wife, he loved her, and he was comforted. The ʼôhel is the tent, the family’s home, and Strong’s ties the word to a root meaning to be clear or to shine, a tent being plain to see from far off. “His mother Sarah’s tent” was the tent where Sarah had lived as mistress of the household. Bringing Rebekah there gives her the place Sarah had held and joins her fully to the family.

In that day a man’s taking a woman into his home, once the families had agreed, made the marriage, and so “she became his wife”. This is the joining of husband and wife that God established at the beginning, when a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife (Genesis 2:24).

Isaac is the son of promise whom his father offered on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22), and Paul calls Christ the seed of Abraham to whom the promises were made (Galatians 3:16). Read in that light, the whole of Genesis 24 points ahead to Christ. A father sends his trusted servant to a far country to bring back a bride for his beloved son. She leaves her home for a bridegroom she has never seen, veils herself when he comes near, and he receives her with love.

In the same way the Father sends the Holy Spirit to gather a people from every nation for his Son. The Spirit testifies of Christ (John 15:26) and guides believers into all truth, glorifying the Son as the servant spoke only of his master (John 16:13–14). Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, to make it holy and present it to himself without spot (Ephesians 5:25–27). This likeness is drawn from the shape of the story itself, and we hold it as a picture beside what the New Testament teaches plainly.

The story also looks ahead to the end. Jesus promised to come again and receive his people to himself (John 14:3), and Revelation speaks of the marriage supper of the Lamb, when his bride has made herself ready (Revelation 19:7–9), and of the holy city coming down as a bride adorned for her husband (Revelation 21:2). Isaac found comfort when his bride came, and Christ already gives rest to all who labour and are heavy laden and come to him (Matthew 11:28).

This passage shows God at work in the ordinary life of a family: a journey home, a walk at dusk, a report, a wedding, a son’s grief. The God whom Hagar knew as the One who sees saw Isaac’s loss and met it in his own time. He worked through a faithful servant’s prayers and a young woman’s willing heart, and the end of it was love and comfort in a tent that had known sorrow.

Proverbs promises that when we trust the LORD with all our heart and acknowledge him in all our ways, he will direct our paths (Proverbs 3:5–6), and Genesis 24 shows that promise kept from the first prayer at the well to the last line of the chapter. Paul tells us that all things work together for good to those who love God (Romans 8:28), and Isaac looking up from his thoughts to see the camels coming is one small, clear picture of it.