Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 24-25.

I usually write about the servant of Abraham seeking, and finding, a wife for Isaac when I read this passage.  However, today I want to focus on what it says about Jacob and Esau.  Until today, it never occurred to me that Rebekah’s difficulty in having children might be related to Sarah’s difficulty in having children.  After all, Rebekah’s father was Sarah’s nephew (we normally think of him as Abraham’s nephew, when we think about it, but Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister, and thus either the full sister or half-sister of Nahor).  I am not sure that is significant, but it never crossed my mind before that Rebekah was related to Sarah.  More importantly is the reason we know that Rebekah had difficulty having children: Isaac prayed to the Lord on her behalf.  Two sentences later, the writer tells us that Rebekah went to inquire of the Lord.  I never thought about how important those two sentences, one about Isaac’s relationship with God, and one about Rebekah’s, are.  Genesis has a lot about Abraham’s relationship with God, and a lot about Jacob’s, but it tells us very little about Isaac’s relationship with Him.  Yet later, especially in the New Testament, people identify God as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”.  Isaac is every bit as important to them in understanding who God is as Abraham and Jacob.  And what do we know about Isaac’s relationship with God?  Isaac prayed for his wife!

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.