Originally published on the Doxa blog.
The servant was up early. The night before, he had finally eaten, the silver and gold and the clothing had been handed round, and the family had given its answer. In the morning he said one thing: "Send me on my way to my master" (Genesis 24:54).
Rebekah's brother and mother wanted more time. "Let the girl remain with us ten days or so. After that, she may go" (Genesis 24:55). It was a fair request from a mother whose daughter was about to ride hundreds of miles south with a stranger and might never come home.
The servant asked them not to wait. "Do not delay me, since the LORD has made my journey a success" (Genesis 24:56). He had watched God answer a prayer at the spring before he finished praying it, and for him that answer settled the matter.
What did Rebekah say when they asked her?
So the family did something unusual for the time. "We will call the girl and ask her opinion" (Genesis 24:57). They put the question to her: "Will you go with this man?"
"I will go," she replied (Genesis 24:58).
In Hebrew her answer is one word, elekh. It comes from the verb God used when He first spoke to Abraham and told him to "go to the land I will show you" (Genesis 12:1). Two generations on, a young woman in the same family hears an account of what the LORD has done and answers with the same verb.
She had never seen Isaac. All she knew of him came from one evening of the servant's story: a son born in his mother's old age, an oath, a silent prayer at a well, and the gold on her own wrists that matched it.
Her family sent her off with a blessing: "May your offspring possess the gates of their enemies" (Genesis 24:60). None of them had stood on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had sworn the same promise to Abraham: "Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies" (Genesis 22:17).
How does Rebekah's journey point to Jesus?
The camels reached the Negev at evening. Isaac had gone out to the field, and he looked up and saw them coming. Rebekah got down from her camel and covered herself with her veil. "Then the servant told Isaac all that he had done" (Genesis 24:66), and Isaac brought her into his mother's tent. "And Isaac loved her and was comforted after his mother's death" (Genesis 24:67).
Peter wrote this to believers who had never met Jesus in person: "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him" (1 Peter 1:8). That is Rebekah on the camel. Every believer has come to Christ the way she came to Isaac, through a faithful account of what God has done, and has set out toward Him before seeing His face.
What does this teach about knowing God?
Rebekah went on the strength of what she had heard, and she came to know Isaac at the end of the road. Knowing God works the same way. We hear what He has said and done, we hold onto it, and we go. Each stretch of the journey, we know Him a little better, and we find we have been known by Him all along.
Read it back before you decide
When God speaks to you, record it in the Doxa app with the date and the details, the way the servant could recite every step of his journey. Then, when a decision comes and the people you love ask for ten more days, you can read back what He has already said and answer from it.
What has God already said to you that you could read back this week?
Keep exploring. If this raised a question, or brought back something God has said to you, take it further. Ask Doxa. It answers from Scripture, real stories, and your own journey, free in your browser. No signup to start.
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Also please feel free to read the Doxa Deeper Dive below where we delve into the original language and historical context.
The Doxa Deeper Dive
The Second Time the Bible Says 'Love'
Originally published on the Doxa blog.
"And Isaac loved her" (Genesis 24:67). The verb is ahav (H157), and before this line it appears only once in the whole Bible.
Where does the Bible first use the word love?
The first time is two chapters back, and God says it, calling Isaac "your only son Isaac, whom you love" (Genesis 22:2). Scripture's first love is a father's love for his son, named by God in the same sentence that asks for that son on an altar.
The second time is here, and its subject is the same Isaac. The son who carried the wood up Moriah and came down alive now loves the bride who has been brought to him from far away. An English reader meets the word love on almost every page of a modern Bible and has no reason to count. Genesis puts the two uses in a row: the father loves the son, and then the son loves his bride.
The New Testament speaks of both loves in that order. At the Jordan a voice from heaven said, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!" (Matthew 3:17). Paul writes that "Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). Genesis had set them side by side long before.
What did it mean to possess the gates in the ancient world?
The blessing Rebekah's family gave her turns on two words. The first is sha'ar (H8179), the gate. In a walled city of the ancient Near East the gate was the town square and the court. Elders sat there and cases were heard there. One chapter earlier Abraham bought his burial cave "in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city" (Genesis 23:18). Whoever held the gate held the city's justice and its defence.
The second word is the verb yarash (H3423), to take possession, to inherit. Deuteronomy uses it dozens of times for Israel taking the land. So to possess the gates of your enemies meant sitting where the enemy's elders had sat and deciding the city's life from there. It was a large thing to wish on a girl leaving home on a camel, and it was larger than her family knew.
How did Israel first hear this blessing?
Genesis was first heard by Israel, a people taught to say when they brought their firstfruits, "My father was a wandering Aramean" (Deuteronomy 26:5). The father in that confession is Jacob, Rebekah's son. Genesis later calls her "the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean" (Genesis 25:20). When Israel heard an Aramean family bless their mother on her way out of Aram, they were hearing about their own beginning.
They also knew whose words those were. The LORD had sworn on Moriah, "Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies" (Genesis 22:17). A nation that took the cities of Canaan, and later settled its own disputes at the gate, heard Laban's household repeat God's oath to Rebekah almost word for word without knowing it was His. Jesus picks up the same picture when He says of His church, "the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).
What was Isaac doing in the field?
"Early in the evening, Isaac went out to the field to meditate" (Genesis 24:63). The verb, lasuach, from suach (H7742), appears nowhere else in Scripture, and translators have long argued over it. Some ancient versions read it as to walk. Most connect it with siach (H7878), a verb for going over something out loud, in complaint or in praise. The psalms use siach for turning over what God has done: "I will reflect on all You have done and ponder Your mighty deeds" (Psalms 77:12). Read with that in mind, Isaac in the field at dusk is a man talking God's works over with Him.
Isaac had just come back from Beer-lahai-roi (Genesis 24:62). That well took its name from what Hagar told the LORD there, "You are the God who sees me" (Genesis 16:13). Isaac had come from the well of the God who sees, and that evening he "looked up" and saw. The same Hebrew phrase came on Moriah, when "Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram in a thicket" (Genesis 22:13). Isaac looked up the way his father had looked up on Moriah, and once again what came into view was God providing for him.
What does this show about knowing God?
Isaac was in the field at dusk, going over God's works with Him, when the answer to the oath sworn on Moriah came across the Negev on a camel. That is how we come to know God and be known by Him. We keep what He has said and talk it over with Him, evening after evening, until we look up and see Him keeping it.
Keep a record in the Doxa app of what God has said and done, so that on an evening like Isaac's you have His works in front of you to go over with Him.
Keep exploring. If this raised a question, or brought back something God has said to you, take it further. Ask Doxa. It answers from Scripture, real stories, and your own journey, free in your browser. No signup to start.
Questions and comments are welcome below.
Download Doxa, the app for recording, weighing and remembering prophetic encouragement.