So it oracle foreshadows the fresh new stress that will define the partnership between this lady sons, Jacob and Esau, given that data throughout the Genesis story and also as eponymous ancestors away from Israel and you will Edom
Another (once Sarah) of one’s matriarchs in the ancestor reports out of Genesis, Rebekah is one of the most common girls-when it comes to her productive character along with her control of situations-about Hebrew Bible. The newest incredibly constructed narratives inside the Genesis twenty four–twenty-seven establish how she will get Isaac’s spouse, brings birth to help you dual sons immediately following initial barrenness, and finally receives the key input the brand new lineage on her behalf younger son, Jacob, who’s destined to getting ancestor of all of the Israel. No matter if difficult to a few, the lady deception when you look at the manipulating Isaac to possess Jacob’s work with causes this lady portrayal as the an admirable and you may cocky woman.
, the longest chapter in the Book of Genesis. A spouse for Isaac is to be obtained from his uncle Nahor’s family; the ensuing cousin marriage, with Rebekah and Isaac both members of the same kinship group, serves to emphasize the importance of their lineage. Abraham dispatches a trusted but unnamed servant to Mesopotamia, the land of his birth and where some of his family still resides, to find a wife for his son. Rebekah secures her role as wife-elect for Isaac by befriending the servant and his ten camels in the famous Hookup dating free well scene, which has been called a type-scene-a narrative episode with certain expected motifs that appears at the critical juncture in the life of a hero. Indeed, the account of Rebekah at the well is the premier biblical example of such a scene. It ostensibly draws attention to Isaac, but, in his absence, reveals the beauty and especially the virtues of his wife-to-be.
After the well incident, Rebekah brings the servant home, enters into the marriage arrangement, and sets off to meet her future husband. She seems to have some input into the marriage negotiations, or at least into the decision about her departure from her homeland and birth family (–58). When she first sees Isaac in Gen –65, she dismounts from her camel and veils herself, a nonverbal act perhaps signaling her status as a soon-to-be betrothed woman as it does for elite women in ancient Assyria. That she dons the betrothal veil herself may also indicate her independence. Once she arrives in the promised land, she enters Isaac’s home (called “his mother Sarah’s tent,” ).
Just after 20 years from relationship, whenever Rebekah does not conceive, Isaac prays so you’re able to Goodness, which features the prayer that she get consider. Various other sort of-scene, that of the fresh bare wife, ergo enters the newest Rebekah facts, contacting attention to the unique part of the college students sooner or later produced to help you her. Good divine oracle is actually treated so you can her when she’s expecting; Goodness proclaims one to “a couple of regions” have the woman womb and can take on one another ().
Indeed there she’s “loved” () by the the girl partner, the initial lady on the Hebrew Bible to have exactly who marital like are declared
In the next episode in the Rebekah story, Isaac passes her off as his sister. This narrative, similar in many ways to two such accounts about Sarah, at first seems to contribute little to the role or character of Rebekah. However, it does differentiate her in a significant way from Sarah; in one of the two wife-sister episodes in which she figures (Gen –14, 19), Sarah seems to have had sexual relations with Pharaoh to ensure the safety of her husband and their household, although this is not the case in the second wife-sister story involving Sarah (Gen 20: 1–8). Rebekah’s marital fidelity, in contrast, is never compromised (Gen 26:7–11). Her relationship with her husband is consistently monogamous, unlike the other matriarchs of Genesis: Sarah, who provides her husband with the slave wife Hagar and perhaps has extramarital sex with the pharaoh; and Rachel and Leah, who are co-wives and also provide slave wives to Jacob.