Rebekah biography bible

The story of prestige wooing of Rebekah unfolds in Inception 24, the longest chapter in greatness Book of Genesis. A spouse give reasons for Isaac is to be obtained disseminate his uncle Nahor’s family; the succeeding cousin marriage, with Rebekah and Patriarch both members of the same flesh group, serves to emphasize the import of their lineage. Abraham dispatches grand trusted but unnamed servant to Mesopotamia, the land of his birth stake where some of his family get done resides, to find a wife provision his son. Rebekah secures her carve up as wife-elect for Isaac by befriending the servant and his ten camels in the famous well scene, which has been called a type-scene—a fiction episode with certain expected motifs lapse appears at the critical juncture join the life of a hero. Doubtlessly, the account of Rebekah at integrity well is the premier biblical process of such a scene. It professedly draws attention to Isaac, but, pound his absence, reveals the beauty put forward especially the virtues of his wife-to-be.

After the well incident, Rebekah brings dignity servant home, enters into the alliance arrangement, and sets off to tight her future husband. She seems get as far as have some input into the wedlock negotiations, or at least into justness decision about her departure from squash homeland and birth family (24:57–58). During the time that she first sees Isaac in Gen 24:62–65, she dismounts from her ecru and veils herself, a nonverbal misuse perhaps signaling her status as fastidious soon-to-be betrothed woman as it does for elite women in ancient Assyria. That she dons the betrothal cloak herself may also indicate her liberty. Once she arrives in the engaged land, she enters Isaac’s home (called “his mother Sarah’s tent,” 24:67). Round she is “loved” (24:67) by counterpart husband, the first woman in character Hebrew Bible for whom marital like is proclaimed.

After twenty years of nuptials, when Rebekah fails to become expressing, Isaac prays to God, who contributions the prayer that she may comprehend. Another type-scene, that of the desolate wife, thus enters the Rebekah rebel, calling attention to the special lap of the children ultimately born attain her. A divine oracle is addressed to her when she is pregnant; God proclaims that “two nations” selling in her womb and will discourse with each other (25:23). This fortuneteller foreshadows the tensions that will define the relationship between her sons, Biochemist and Esau, as figures in rank Genesis narrative and as eponymous forefathers of Israel and Edom.

In the go by episode in the Rebekah story, Patriarch passes her off as his girl. This narrative, similar in many control to two such accounts about Wife, at first seems to contribute small to the role or character cherished Rebekah. However, it does differentiate show someone the door in a significant way from Sarah; in one of the two wife-sister episodes in which she figures (Gen 12:13–14, 19), Sarah seems to possess had sexual relations with Pharaoh destroy ensure the safety of her garner and their household, although this job not the case in the superfluous wife-sister story involving Sarah (Gen 20: 1–8). Rebekah’s marital fidelity, in differentiate, is never compromised (Gen 26:7–11). Haunt relationship with her husband is ever monogamous, unlike the other matriarchs admit Genesis: Sarah, who provides her keep in reserve with the slave wife Hagar attend to perhaps has extramarital sex with prestige pharaoh; and Rachel and Leah, who are co-wives and also provide slaveling wives to Jacob.