Isaac Marries Rebekah

The event

Abraham, now old, sends his senior servant back to his own country and kindred to find a wife for Isaac — under no circumstances is Isaac to marry a Canaanite, or to go there himself. The servant travels to the city of Nahor in Mesopotamia and prays for a very specific sign: let the right woman be the one who offers to water his camels too, not just himself. Before he even finishes praying, Rebekah arrives and does exactly that.

Rebekah turns out to be Abraham's own great-niece, granddaughter of his brother Nahor. Her family recognizes the servant's account as unmistakably the LORD's doing ("the thing has come from the LORD") and lets Rebekah decide for herself whether to go. She agrees immediately: "I will go." The journey ends with one of Genesis's most quietly beautiful scenes — Isaac out walking in the field at evening, Rebekah seeing him from her camel and covering her face with a veil, and Isaac bringing her into his mother Sarah's tent, where he is comforted after Sarah's death.

The whole chapter — the longest in Genesis — reads almost like a testimony of answered prayer, and that seems to be exactly the point: God's providence over ordinary decisions like whom to marry is as real, if less dramatic, as his intervention in covenant promises and miraculous births.

Dating

Isaac was 40 when he married Rebekah (Genesis 25:20), against a birth year of c. 2066 BC.

Scripture references

• Genesis 24:1-67