Episode 25 - Rebekah
Welcome back to the Proverbs 910 ministries podcast, No Trash, Just Truth. We are your hosts and co-founders of Proverbs 9:10 Ministries, Chris Paxson and Rose Spiller
Today, we are finishing up our series Women in Scripture by looking at Rebekah from the book of Genesis. But first, we an exciting announcement!
We do! In the next episode, we will be starting a series entitled, “Real Truth about Real Stuff.” In it, we will take a Biblical look at some hard topics like, “Why is God allowing so much pain in my life, is it Biblical to leave an abusive spouse, depression, demons, loneliness, yoga, politics, and much more!
But let’s wrap up the Women in Scripture series by looking at Rebekah. In Genesis chapter 11, Abraham, or Abram as he was known then, was chosen by God to be the first patriarch of God’s chosen people, which was first Israel, then later expanded to include Gentiles. At 100 years and 90 years old, respectively, Abraham and his wife Sarah miraculously have a son, Isaac, who was also chosen by God to be in the lineage of Jesus and the next patriarch of God’s people.
When Isaac was pushing 40 years old, Abraham realized his son needed a wife. He wanted to make sure Isaac got a proper wife, so he his servant back to the land he had come from, where Abraham’s brother, Nahor and his family still lived, to find Isaac a wife.
Abraham didn’t let Isaac go with the servant because Isaac was the son of the covenant that God made with Abraham in which the Lord promised to give His people the land Abraham was currently living in. Abraham doesn’t want Isaac to leave that land.
So the servant went alone and brought a bunch of gifts from Abraham with him. When he gets to Abraham’s brother’s land, he prays to God for a sign that he would find the woman meant for Isaac. Rose, asking God for a sign is wrong, so why is it okay here?
Chris, this is a tough subject. The Bible does show us occasions where God makes His will known to people in the Old Testament. But after Jesus’ coming, He has blessed all His people with a sign to know what His Will is. It’s called the Bible! God could still certainly give anyone a sign anytime He wanted – He is God! But generally, the Lord speaks to His people through Scripture.
This is an important point! There is nothing wrong with praying for God to help you make a decision, but first, before we do anything else, we need to make sure the decision we are making is a godly one and lines up with Scripture. Then, we can ask God to help us make it. Sometimes He will, and sometimes He won’t, but the point is, so long as you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul; and love your neighbor as yourself you can forge ahead confidently with whatever plan seems best.
In other words, when we are being obedient to what the Bible says –whether we have a clear sign from God or not, we should feel confident about moving ahead with a decision we make. And as we said, this time, God does answer the servant’s prayer and gives him a sign. Before the servant even finishes praying, Rebekah arrives. When Rebekah introduces herself to him, he finds out she is related to Abraham. She is his great niece, the granddaughter of his brother, Nahor.
And the scene unfolds just as the servant asked God for it to. The servant gives Rebekah a gold nose ring and 2 gold bracelets. She takes him back to her parent’s house to spend the night.
Her father is alive and at home, but it seems that her brother, Laban, is the one running things. When Laban sees all the expensive gifts the servant has, he is all about the riches! Even though these people are related to Abraham, they don’t share his and Isaac’s monotheism, that is, belief in One God. They are pagans. Even the meaning of Laban’s name is related to a moon god.
And you may be wondering if these people are pagans like the people in Canaan, why did Abraham insist Isaac’s wife come from them? They are pagans, but they are family, so they are not foreigners like the people from Canaan. They were Abraham’s people.
And since her family was most likely polytheistic – meaning they believed in many gods, we can concur that at this point, Rebekah also has pagan beliefs.
But after the servant tells them all why he was there, and the story of how he prayed to find Rebekah, they all see that Yahweh’s hand is in this.
Yahweh is the name sometimes used for God in the Old Testament. You always know where the name Yahweh was used, because the Bible will have “Lord” in all caps. The Bible has several examples of pagans and unbelievers, who, although they don’t acknowledge Yahweh is the only God, they do see that He is powerful and will concede that His hand is in circumstances.
So Bethuel, Rebekah’s father, and her brother, Laban say, “The thing has come from the Lord (Yahweh); we cannot speak to you bad or good. Behold Rebekah is before you; taker her and go, and let her be the wife of your master’s son.”
The servant gives expensive gifts to everyone in the family and tells them he wants to leave to go back to Canaan immediately. Rebekahs’ family wants her to stay for 10 days before leaving. Probably because they knew once she left, they would never see her again. But they agree to let Rebekah make the decision of when to leave.
Rebekah agrees to leave immediately. She believed Yahweh had chosen her for Isaac, and she was ready to get on with it. Before leaving, Rebekah’s family blesses her saying in Gen. 24:60, “Our sister, may you become thousands of ten thousand, and may your offspring possess the gate of those who hate him” Chris, that’s a pretty odd blessing.
It is, but this is Ligoneer Ministries’ take on it, “First, Rebekah’s name alludes to her favored status. Berakah is Hebrew for “blessing” and has clear phonetic affinities to Rebekah. Even clearer is the close similarity between “ten thousand” in verse 60 (rebabah) and the given name of Isaac’s wife. Plainly, the Lord chose Rebekah to bear grandchildren for Abraham long before she met the patriarch’s servant.” Rose, we know God’s inclusion of Rebekah in His plan to make a people for Himself started long before Rebekah was even born, before the foundation of the world actually, but it’s cool to see the evidence of it here.
It is! The servant takes Rebekah back with him, and there is a very sweet passage about the first time Isaac and Rebekah see each other. Gen. 24:63 – 67 says, “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening. And he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, there were camels coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she dismounted from the camel and said to the servant, Who is that man walking in the field to meet us? The servant said, “It is my master.” So she took her veil and covered herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done. Then Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother and took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her.”
Sounds like it may have been love at first sight! God blesses all 3 of the patriarch’s, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with truly loving their wives. But, Rose, I think we should pause here. Isaac’s and Rebekah’s story is more than just a good plot for a movie. It is a beautiful picture that points to Jesus.
It does, as does everything in the Old Testament. Chris, why don’t you start with the similarities between Isaac and Jesus.
1. Both Isaac’s and Jesus’ birth was foretold. Both were conceived miraculously. Both were named before they were born.
2. Both Isaac and Jesus were offered up as a sacrifice by their fathers. Isaac was as good as dead when Abraham was about to stab him, but God intervened and resurrected him from death. Everyone thought Jesus was dead until God resurrected Him on the third day.
3. Isaac’s father wanted a bride for him. God gave the church to be the bride of Christ
4. Isaac’s father sends his servant out to get bride for Isaac. God sent first prophets and then disciples to usher in the bride of Jesus (the church)
We also see similarities between Rebekah and the church (both brides)
1. Rebekah was chosen before she ever knew it. God chose those He would call to be His before the foundation of the world.
2. Rebekah was blessed and given lavish gifts. Once Christians are called into salvation by God, they are given spiritual gifts from the Holy Spirit, and then, of course there is eternal life in Heaven.
3. Rebekah is entrusted to the servant until she can be united with Isaac, her bridegroom. The church is entrusted to Christians until Jesus comes back to claim her.
4. Rebekah is loved by her bridegroom. Is there any love greater than Jesus has for the church?!
Whenever I am reading in the Old Testament, I love to stop every now and then and ask how does what I’m reading point to Jesus. And Isaac and Rebekah’s story pointing to Jesus is really cool.
It is. And continuing with their story, an incident happens in chapter 26 of Genesis. God renews the promise He made to Abraham with Isaac. There’s a famine in the land, and Isaac is thinking about going to Egypt, but the Lord tells him to stay, so he does and settles in Gerar. Rebekah was a beautiful woman, and some men in Gerar started asking about her. Isaac was afraid that if he said she was his wife, they would kill him to get to her, so he tells them she is his sister.
His rationale is that if they think Rebekah was his sister, they would treat him well to try and get to Rebekah. But this is a flat out lie. Rebekah is his 2nd cousin. God had just renewed His covenant with Isaac, and here Isaac is blatantly sinning against the Lord. And if you know the book of Genesis, you know that his father, Abraham, did the exact same thing with his wife – twice!
They stayed in Gerar for a long time, and from all indications, Rebekah went along with the lie. She is just as guilty. Numbers 32:23 says, “Your sin will find you out.” And that’s exactly what happens. The Philistine king was looking out his window one day and saw Isaac laughing with Rebekah. It must have been an intimate moment the king looked in on, because he calls in Isaac and confronts him saying in Gen. 26:9, “Behold, she is your wife. How then could you say, she is my sister?”
Isaac not only sinned by lying, but he put Rebekah in a potentially dangerous situation. Any one of the men of Gerar could have slept with Rebekah. Here we have the Philistine king, who is a pagan, confronting Isaac, God’s chosen, about his sin. The king knew Isaac was blessed by Yahweh, so the king says if anyone touches Rebekah, they will be killed.
If someone else had slept with Rebekah and she had gotten pregnant, it would have polluted the godly line. Isaac gave no thought to that, but God did, which is why things unfolded as they did. Despite Isaac’s selfishness and thoughtlessness, God was protecting Rebekah’s virtue and Jesus’ lineage.
And it’s not that Isaac doesn’t love Rebekah, he really does, he just made a real knucklehead decision because he was only worried about himself. Rebekah and Isaac are happily married, but like her mother-in-law Sarah was, Rebekah is barren. Almost 20 years later, no baby. Like Abraham and Sarah, they knew that God was creating a people for Himself through them, so also like Abraham and Sarah, it must have been frustrating when no baby was coming.
But unlike Abraham and Sarah, they do not take matters into their own hands. If you remember, when Sarah wasn’t conceiving after God promised she would, she “helped God’s plan along” by making Abraham sleep with her maid servant. The result was a baby who went onto to be the father of Islam.
Isaac handles things very differently. What did he do? He prayed for his wife. And almost 20 years later, she finally conceived. But it was a tough pregnancy. So tough, she asks God why is this happening to her?
God answers her in Gen. 25: 23, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.” As most of us probably know, those babies in Rebekah’s womb were Esau and Jacob. And God is telling Rebecca that He has chosen the younger son, Jacob, over the older, Esau. Something that was completely contradictory to the time
Throughout scripture, there are numerous passages showing that God divinely elects who will be His. This passage in Genesis is one of the clearest on that. God went against the norm of the younger son serving the older, and chose the younger son to be the heir. In Romans 9:11-13, Paul says about Esau and Jacob, “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad – in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who call – she was told, “The older will serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob, I loved, but Esau I hated.”
God wasn’t the only one choosing one twin over another. Gen. 25:28 says, “Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.” So Isaac favored Esau because they were hunters and outdoorsmen, but we aren’t told why Rebekah favored Jacob. Scripture prior to this tells us Jacob was quiet and more well rounded. Esau was the big jock in the family, and Jacob was the regular kid.
Maybe Rebekah favored Jacob because her husband favored Esau, or maybe it was because God had chosen Jacob that she loved him more. But God, the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of the universe can do whatever He pleases with His creation. He can choose whom He wants for whatever purposes He wants. We, however, are not God. Nothing good ever comes out of parents playing favorites. Everybody loses, even the kid that’s favored. It was no different with Esau and Jacob.
Esau grows up arrogant and headstrong even selling his birthright for a bowl of stew when he was hungry. He disregards his parents wishes and marries 2 foreign women who “made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.” According to Gen. 26:35
Esau marrying a Hittite woman would have devastated Rebekah and Isaac. And being dim-witted as he was, Esau tried to make up for this later by marrying a woman who was of his uncle Ishmael’s family. Ishmael was the son of the maid servant and Abraham, and was not part of God’s chosen people. So instead of making things right with his parents, he just compounds the problem!
Rebekah and Isaac have their fair share of sin, too, all stemming from their showing favoritism of one son over the other.
They sure do! As Isaac is nearing the end of his life, his eyesight is failing. He tells Esau to go and hunt some game and prepare a meal for him so Isaac can bestow a blessing on Esau. Rose, Isaac did have physical blindness, but he may have also had spiritual blindness. God told Rebekah that Jacob would be the chosen one who would be in the godly line and would receive the blessing. If Rebekah told Isaac that, and we aren’t told whether she did or not, but if she did, then Isaac is ignoring it because he wants Esau to have it.
We don’t know if Isaac knew, but we know for sure that Rebekah knew of God’s promise. And instead of trusting in what God told her that Jacob was the chosen one, she takes matters into her own hands. She hatches an elaborate plan to deceive her husband. The details are found in Gen. chapter 27, but here is the summary. Rebekah is going to make Isaac think he is blessing Esau, but it will actually be Jacob.
And she knows she needs to get this done before Esau comes back from hunting, so she has Jacob kill 2 goats, that she cooks just the way her husband likes them. Then because Esau was a really hair guy and Jacob wasn’t, she uses the goat skins to cover Jacob’s hands and neck.
She even goes so far as to make Jacob wear Esau’s clothing so he will smell like his brother.
She does. And if anyone thinks she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong since God had already ordained that Jacob was the chosen son, when Jacob worries that Isaac will figure it out and Jacob will bring a curse upon himself, she says in Gen. 27:13, “Let your curse be on me, my son.” She is fully aware there may be consequences for the sin she is about to commit and make her son commit, but she’s willing to pay the price.
That is favoritism and lack of trust in God at its most extreme! And if you know the story, Rebekah and Jacob pull off the ruse. While Isaac is at first confused that the voice sounds like Jacob’s voice, when he feels his hands and smells him, he is convinced it is Esau. Isaac bestows the firstborn blessing on Jacob.
And when Esau comes back, he is furious! So furious that Rebekah tells Jacob in Gen. 27 43 – 45, “Arise, flee to Laban, my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him.”
We really see Rebekah’s character here. She is the one who hatched the plan, deceived her husband, and cheated her son, Esau, yet she is taking no responsibility. Instead, she is throwing all the blame on Jacob.
Matthew Henry sums up this whole passage beautifully: “If Rebekah, when she heard Isaac promise the blessing to Esau, had gone, at his return from hunting, to Isaac, and, with humility and seriousness, put him in remembrance of that which God had said concerning their sons,-if she further had shown him how Esau had forfeited the blessing both by selling his birthright and by marrying strange wives, it is probable that Isaac would have been prevailed upon knowingly and wittingly to confer the blessing upon Jacob, and needed not thus to have been cheated into it. This would have been honourable and laudable, and would have looked well in the history; but God left her to herself, to take this indirect course, that he might have the glory of bringing good out of evil, and of serving his own purposes by the sins and follies of men, and that we might have the satisfaction of knowing that, though there is so much wickedness and deceit in the world, God governs it according to his will, to his own praise.”
And to get Jacob out of town, instead of telling her husband the complete truth, she tells them a half-truth. In Gen. 27:46, she says to Isaac, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?”
Rebekah was right in wanting to send Jacob away to get a wife from their family and not marry a foreign woman, especially because he was to be in the godly line, but she conveniently left out that she also wanted to get Jacob out of town and away from Esau because of the problem she caused!
And Chris, like Matthew Henry said, God brings good out of Rebekah’s sin. The good is that it gets Jacob to Haran, where he will meet and marry his 2 wives, Leah and Rachel. From these 2 women, and their 2 maid servants, come the heads of the 12 tribes of Israel.
God wanted and needed Jacob to go to Haran, so he used Rebekah’s and Jacob’s sin to do it, but that doesn’t excuse what they did in anyway. God’s will to have Jacob get the blessing would have been achieved no matter what, and God would have gotten Jacob to Haran no matter what – they didn’t need to commit sin to bring it to fruition. God does use our sin to accomplish His purposes sometimes, but it never excuses or relinquishes our responsibility for our sin.
That is a great statement to end on today. Just to wrap up Rebekah, we don’t hear anymore about her story until Gen. 49:31 long after her death where Jacob tells his sons to bury him with his first wife, Leah, the same tomb where Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebekah are buried.
We hope you have enjoyed our Women in Scripture series. As we said in the intro, we are excited to begin our “Real Truth about Real Stuff” series next episode. Thanks for joining us today! Have a blessed day!