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

There are two questions which always cross my mind when I read the account of Abraham sending his servant to get a wife for Isaac.  First, why was Abraham so adamant that Isaac not marry a Canaanite woman?  Second, why was it even more important that Isaac not go back to the country from which Abraham came?  There is a simple answer to the second question, although I’m not convinced it is complete.  Abraham’s father had started the leave the land to which Abraham did not want Isaac to return, but got sidetracked.  Only for Abraham to resume the journey and come to Canaan, a land which God promised to his descendants.  So, we conclude that Abraham did not want Isaac to reverse the journey which he had taken.  Canaan was the land which God had promised to Abraham and he did not want his son to leave that land.  So, that answers that question.  Except that it seems to me that there is more to it than that.  Which brings us to the first question.  Again, there is an easy, simple answer: Abraham did not want Isaac to get assimilated into the culture of the land of Canaan.  He wanted Isaac to raise a family with the values which Abraham had brought with him from his home.  That works, but once again it feels like there is more to it than that.  I feel like the answers I mentioned above are not wrong, but I think that they are incomplete.  Unfortunately, I do not know what the complete answer is.

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

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

I try to make my posts about the ways in which the passage applies to our lives or beliefs, but for the last several days they have been more speculation which has been triggered in my mind by what I have read.  While the latter is not what I consider ideal, it is something I expected to happen from time to time when I started doing this blog.   I write this blog in order to inspire myself to regularly read the Bible.  I hope that it inspires those who read it to do the same, even if only to see if my speculation has any basis in what is written.

Sorry for that long preamble to today’s blog, but once again I have been inspired to speculate about something.  So, when Jacob was born we are told he was given that name because he was clutching the heel of Esau, his older (even if only by moments) brother.  If you read the NIV translation notes you learn that Jacob means in Hebrew “he grasps the heel”, and that it was a Hebrew idiom for “he deceives”.  Now, I had heard several speakers, and read it as well, that Jacob was well-named.  As we see later, Jacob uses deception on several occasions throughout his life to get what he wants.  All of the previous commentators I have seen who commented on this idiom implied that those who named Jacob, presumably Isaac and Rebecca, named him this either because they took his grasping of his older brother’s heel as an indicator that he would be a deceiver, or that them so naming him was an indicator that he would become a deceiver.  However perhaps the deceptive behavior of Jacob, the son of Isaac, caused the Hebrew word for “he grasps the heel”, to become an idiom meaning “he deceives”.

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

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

We have two stories here where there is a subtext about what is going on that I do not think we entirely understand.  Usually, when I write about such things it is because I have had an insight giving me thoughts about what that subtext means.  Today I am writing about it because there are elements to this subtext I never noticed before, but I have no idea what the writer is hinting at.  So, we have the stories of Abraham’s servant finding Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife and the story of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob.  When Abraham’s servant wants to be on his way to take Rebekah back to Isaac, her mother and her brother try to convince him to stay for 10 days, but he insists on leaving immediately.  What I find interesting about this exchange is that it seems to contain elements similar to the negotiations Abraham had when he bought the land for Sarah’s burial.  Actually, the first part of this which I thought seemed to indicate the writer saying something I could not quite make out was when Rebekah answered the question about whose daughter she was by listing her grandfather and grandmother.  Then in the story of Esau and Jacob the writer concludes it by saying that Esau despised his birthright in a way which seems to imply more than just that.  All of this says something about the meaning of family, but I am not sure what.

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

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

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

In previous years I have written about how Abraham wanted Isaac to marry a woman from his home country. from among his relatives.  Yet, under no circumstances did he want Isaac to return there.  If a woman from there could not be found to come to the Land of Canaan to marry Isaac, then Isaac would be free to marry a Canaanite.  However, this year I want to write about how God provides and confirms His will to us.  Abraham believed that God wished for his son, Isaac, to marry a woman from among his relatives (I wonder what impact how Ishmael, whose mother was an Egyptian, turned out had on this).  So, Abraham had his servant vow to go and find Isaac a wife from among them.  When Abraham’s servant got to the land where Abraham’s relatives lived, he did not know how to find the right woman for Isaac.  So, he laid out a fleece (which is an interesting expression to use here, since it would be many hundreds of years after this story when the event from which that expression comes occurred).  Abraham and his servant believed that they understood what God wanted, but they laid things out so that God could confirm their decisions.  This sort of confirmation from God that we are following His will is not just for great men of God like Abraham.  When my wife and I were planning our wedding, we had picked out a date, but because of events beyond our control we had delayed booking a hall for the reception until just a few months before that date.  Then we decided we wanted to hold the reception in a hall which had deep meaning for her family.  When we approached the hall owner and said, “We would like to have our reception here.”  He responded, “Well, I have no open Saturdays for the next two years.  Except for this one Saturday.”  Which was exactly the day we wished to schedule it.   My immediate thought was that one day down the road there would be a time when we wondered if we did the right thing by getting married.  This was God giving us the answer to that.

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

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

I find it interesting that Abraham wanted his son Isaac to marry a woman from his homeland, just as later Isaac sent Jacob there to find a wife.  However, I want to highlight today that Abraham insisted that under no circumstances should Isaac return to Abraham’s homeland in order to get a wife there.  Abraham insisted that the woman to be Isaac’s wife must come to the land of Canaan.  Then when Abraham’s servant found Rebekah, not only was she willing to travel to the land of Canaan to marry Isaac, she was eager to be on her way.  While I am sure that the story that Abraham’s servant told about how God answered his prayer played a role in Rebekah’s willingness to pick up and leave her home to marry a man she had never met, it seems to me that she also had a strong desire to leave her family behind.  I could speculate on her reasons, but what I really want to point out is that God had prepared her to go.  Something about her circumstances with her family made her eager to move on when God asked her to do so.  In the same way, God will prepare us to move on when that is His plan for us.