Genesis 24
Today we learn, in great detail, about how Rebekah comes to be Isaac’s wife. Abraham gives his right-hand man the task of finding Isaac a wife from his previous homeland, from among his kindred. Abraham adamantly charges him not to get a wife from among the Canaanite population (among whom they are sojourning) and also not to take Isaac back to the old country. Instead, the servant is to go fetch a cousin from far away and bring her back to be Isaac’s bride. The entire operation then becomes an undertaking of faith.
So why does Abraham give these particular directives? I think it is safe to say that he is primarily looking out for Isaac’s spiritual welfare. He does not want a Canaanite wife, because such would surely be a snare, pulling Isaac away from faith in the one true God. And he does not want Isaac to be drawn away from the land of his birth, thereby disregarding his promised inheritance, and reversing God’s command to dwell there.
Why Abraham wants Isaac’s wife to be drawn from his kindred (i.e., a cousin) is less clear to me. We know that returning to the same small gene pool is not a healthy practice (as the royal houses of Europe can surely attest!), so I can only assume that Abraham’s family as a whole has some semblance of faith in God, and that this is what Abraham wants to draw upon. It’s hard to tell, though, because as things play out, it is not entirely clear that Abraham’s family “back home” is particularly faithful…
In any case, at this point in Abraham’s life journey, it seems likely that Abraham is following the Lord’s direction. It is also clear that his servant does his best to likewise discern the Lord’s leading. May we do likewise.
Occasionally it’s helpful to build a family tree, verbally if not diagrammatically. So for our purposes we began with Abraham and Nahor as brothers (Genesis 11:27). They also have another brother, Haran, who is Lot’s father. So when Abraham and Lot travel together to Canaan, Lot is Abraham’s nephew.
Now the next generation, the cousins: (1) Haran has Lot, (2) Abraham has Isaac, and (3) Nahor has Bethuel (Genesis 24:24).
Finally, a third generation: (1) Lot has two daughters (Genesis 19), nothing more relevant from this line, (2) Isaac has Jacob, and (3) Bethuel has Laban and Rebekah.
It gets confusing in that Isaac, from the second generation marries Rebekah from the third generation. That is, he is marrying his cousin’s daughter. This generational divergence has resulted from Abraham’s advanced age (100) when Isaac was born. Note that Abraham has a son (Isaac) while his brother, Nahor has a grandson (Laban).
The final confusion comes when Jacob marries Leah and Rachel – both daughters of Laban. Although Jacob and Laban belong to the same generation as far as the family tree goes, (1) Jacob is much younger than Laban, owing to Abraham’s late fatherhood, and (2) Laban truly is Jacob’s uncle, since he (Laban) is Rebekah’s brother.
Again, the confusion arises because of Abraham’s advanced age at Isaac’s birth. I hope this helps.
Fred, of course, is reading ahead a bit, as we have not quite gotten to Rachel and Leah yet, but that’s OK. 🙂 We might also note that Isaac is 60 years old when Jacob and Esau are born (Gen. 25:26), which adds a bit to the “generational divergence” that Fred notes.
So long as we’re on this topic, though, we may as well explore things a bit further. As Fred says, it may get a bit confusing, and from a genetics perspective it gets, well, “interesting”! Consider the following additional bits of information:
So, let’s consider Jacob’s children (Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Joseph, Benjamin, etc., whom we’ll get to soon) and how they relate to Terah (Abraham’s father). Terah is their:
Yep, sometimes Biblical orthodoxy can be a bit unorthodox!
Thanks for adding on, John. Although I went forward beyond our reading, I had not gone backward beyond Abraham; adding Terah gave us even one more generation!
At least from Terah on, there is a pattern of the tribal chiefs marrying within their ranks. Bloodlines play a very important role in the history of the Old Testament, leading to our Savior, of the line of David, and to Israeli citizenship through the maternal line even today. And then there are us gentiles, grafted in. God’s plan is mysterious and amazing! Thank you Lord for seeking us out. In Epiphany, Spirit, help us to spread Your light throughout the whole world.
I enjoy genealogy and had in the past diagrammed out through Fred’s comments but had never looked at the great-great-grandparent etc. thing before. It does seem to me that if God wanted to amplify a genetic line through time, this was the way to do it!