After Sarah’s death, Abraham starts looking for a wife for Isaac. Now Abraham is almost hundred and forty years old by this time and is too old to travel himself.

So he sends his most trusted servant almost nine hundred kilometers back to his hometown of Mesopotamia to find a wife for Isaac from his father’s household. He also insisted that Isaac should not leave the land and that his servant go alone on the journey.

The author of Genesis has created an arch between the two chapters. In chapter 23 Isaac looses his mother but is comforted at the end of chapter 24 when he brings Rebekah into his mother’s tent.

Rebekah replaces Sarah as the leading lady of this story and we see God leading this family even while they are making seemingly arbitrary choices, regarding a burial site and perhaps a not so arbitrary choice in finding a life partner for Isaac.

Questions Discussed in this Podcast –

V4: Why does Abraham not want Isaac’s wife to be from Canaan but still wants Isaac to live only in Canaan?
V12: Why does the servant only identify God as Abraham’s God and not his own, though he expects a sign directly from God?
V18: Why would Rebekah draw water for a stranger as well as for his camels?
V25: Does hospitality run in Abraham’s entire family?
V50: How do Laban and Bethuel say that this union is from the Lord when they don’t even know who God is?
V67: Why does Isaac bring Rebekah into his mother’s tent?
What can we learn from Rebekah’s attitude when she left her house immediately to marry Isaac?