After I
wrote about Sarah yesterday, I realized I had to write about Rebekah, who
followed in her sacrificial footsteps and made the Abrahamic covenant a reality
through her marriage to Isaac.
No union of
two people had a more romantic beginning than the union of Isaac and Rebekah.
Isaac was
forty years old and Rebekah was a ‘damsel’ most likely in her teens (Genesis
25:20). There was a whole generation between them. Isaac’s mother Sarah was the
sister of Rebekah’s grandmother Milcah. This would make Rebekah half of Isaac’s
age, if not younger.
He was well-established
and rich, a man of God and the heir of the priesthood and the covenant which
would make him the progenitor of all the faithful. She was a righteous, young
beautiful virgin and everything Abraham desired for his son’s wife (Genesis
24:16)…like Sarah….and she was destined to become ‘a mother of nations’…..like
Sarah.
The
marriage of Isaac and Rebekah was born out of the covenant between Abraham and
his eldest servant whom he commissioned to travel back to his kindred in
Mesopotamia to procure a wife from his covenant family for his beloved son. Abraham,
who sought the blessings of the fathers and the priesthood could see that Isaac
could not for that reason marry a Canaanite. (Genesis 24:3-4; Abraham 1:1-4; 21-27).
I will not
recount here how successful the servant was in meeting Rebekah and her family
through the obvious spiritually engineered process. The amazing thing is that
Rebekah agreed to leave the security of her family and travel to a land she has
never been to, to marry a much older man she has never seen.
Picture a
man out in the field at the eventide spotting a caravan of camels approaching. A
young girl he has never before seen, wearing a vail across her face, alights
and is introduced as his wife. All Genesis records is that Isaac ‘brought her
into his mother’s tent, made her his wife and loved her’ (Genesis 24:67). You
can just feel the cupid’s bow, can’t you???
I am amazed
how men used to conquer the frontiers of this earth and women carved dynasties
by the children they bore.
The heathen
land of Canaan that Isaac and Rebekah lived in was not a paradise but it was
the promised land for their posterity and they embraced it with trust and
faith. Abraham passed on an estate of great wealth to Isaac which gave him a
position of influence and prestige in the land but here is the sting… Life is
not smooth sailing even for the most noble and chosen……
Like Sarah
who waited 25 years for Isaac, Rebekah waited 20 years to become a mother. Genesis
records that Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah and 60 years old
when she had Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:20,26). What went through their minds
for those 20 years, no doubt knowing the promises, would have tested them to
the limit….
We are told
that Isaac ‘intreated’ the Lord so that Rebekah could conceive (Genesis 25:21).
The dictionary defines this word as: ask earnestly, beseech, implore, BEG….
The faith
and trust paid of. Through one of the children Rebekah bore were all the
promises realized. Her spiritual acumen ensured the fulfilment of such as she acted
upon the revelation she received whilst pregnant with her twins that Jacob, the
younger of the two, would be the heir (Genesis 25:22,23). As Esau, who ‘despised’
his birthright, sold it to Jacob for a mass of pottage (vs 29-34), Rebekah
ensured the rights of the priesthood went Jacob, the next patriarch, who became
Israel (Genesis 27). Jacob’s 12 sons became the Tribes of Israel which roam
this earth to this day….through which all the nations of the earth will be
blessed.
Not as much
is known about Rebekah, except that she too, like Sarah, was spiritually in
tune enough to leave her family and follow a strange man into a strange country
to marry a 40 year old man she had never seen before to become a mother of
nations.
- CATHRYNE ALLEN
(Art: Isaac and Rebekah by Unknown Artist)
