Genesis 24.64-67-Isaac Meets Rebekah and Consummate Their Marriage
Wednesday April 26, 2006
Genesis: Genesis 24:64-67-Isaac Meets Rebekah and Consummate Their Marriage
Lesson # 134
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 24:62.
This evening we will study Genesis 24:64-67, which records Rebekah’s arrival with Eliezer and the consummation of her marriage to Isaac.
Genesis 24:1 presents an introductory statement regarding Abraham’s age to begin the chapter and demonstrates the urgent need to secure a bride for his son.
Genesis 24:2-9 records Abraham commissioning his servant in his household to go back to Paddan Aram and secure a bride for Isaac among Abraham’s relatives.
Genesis 24:10-27 presents Abraham’s servant providentially meeting Rebekah at a well in Nahor in Aram Naharaim.
Genesis 24:28-49 records Abraham’s servant Eliezer recounting for Rebekah and her family his mission and God’s providence in directing him to Rebekah and it also records him proposing marriage.
Genesis 24:50-61 records Rebekah and her family’s response to Eliezer’s proposal of marriage.
Genesis 24:62-67 presents Rebekah and Isaac meeting in the Negev and as a married couple enter into Sarah’s tent.
Genesis 24:62, “Now Isaac had come from going to Beer-lahai-roi; for he was living in the Negev.”
Genesis 24:63, “Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, camels were coming.”
The statement in Genesis 24:63 that Isaac “lifted up his eyes and looked” parallels the statement in Genesis 24:64 that Rebekah “lifted up her eyes…and saw” and expresses the fact that they got their first glimpse of each other simultaneously indicating an immediate attraction, which we call “love at first sight.”
Genesis 24:64, “Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel.”
Rebekah dismounts from her camel in order to show respect to her intended husband (Josh. 15:18; 1 Sam. 25:23).
The Word of God commands Christian wives to show respect for their husbands.
Colossians 3:18, “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”
1 Peter 3:1, “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives.”
Genesis 24:65, “She said to the servant, ‘Who is that man walking in the field to meet us?’ And the servant said, ‘He is my master.’ Then she took her veil and covered herself.”
Rebekah veils herself only to identify herself to Isaac that she is the bride and this was not done by the women of the patriarchs (see Genesis 12:14; 38:14), although it was customary to veil the bride in the marriage ceremony.
Genesis 24:66, “The servant told Isaac all the things that he had done.”
Genesis 24:66 records that Abraham’s servant Eliezer “told all the things that he had done,” which means that he recounted for Isaac his mission and God’s providence in directing him to Rebekah and the response of Rebekah and her family to his proposal of marriage to Rebekah.
Eliezer would have told Isaac of the character of Rebekah that she displayed to him, which identified her as the one that God had designed for him and he would have told him of Rebekah’s great physical beauty as well.
Proverbs 12:4a, “A wife of noble character is her husband's crown.”
Proverbs 18:22, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD.”
Proverbs 31:10, “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.”
This report from Eliezer concerning the character and beauty of Rebekah would give Isaac assurance that she was his wife that God had designed for him.
The fact that the Word of God records that Eliezer gives a report to Isaac and not Abraham does not mean that Abraham was dead since he lived another twenty-five years (see Genesis 21:5; 25:7, 9, 20).
The Word of God omits Eliezer’s report to Abraham because the emphasis in this point in the narrative is upon Isaac and indicates that Isaac is the successor of Abraham and Rebekah the successor of Sarah in the plan of God.
Genesis 24:67, “Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her; thus Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.”
The fact that Isaac was said to be “comforted after his mother’s death” indicates that he was very close to Sarah and was a “momma’s boy.”
This statement demonstrates the deep psychological insight Moses must have had into human nature.
In a normal, mother and son relationship, the death of a man’s mother is one of the hardest separations to bear and there is in marriage a fulfillment of the love a boy learned from his mother.
Isaac found the consolation he had looked for after Sarah’s death in his life with Rebekah.
The fact that Rebekah was brought by Isaac into his mother Sarah’s tent, a place of honor, identifies to the patriarchal household that she is the successor to Sarah.
Isaac brought Rebekah into Sarah’s tent since it would have been improper of him to immediately bring her into his own tent before the marriage ceremony.
The statement “he (Isaac) took Rebekah and she became his wife” means that Isaac and Rebekah consummated their marriage through sexual intercourse.
The statement “he (Isaac) loved her (Rebekah)” refers to the personal love and affection and emotional involvement that existed from the beginning between Isaac and Rebekah as husband and wife.
Isaac and Rebekah’s marriage was obviously an “arranged” marriage.
Do you notice that personal love and affection, romance came last, not first, in this chapter?
Isaac learned to love his wife in time since for him romance came after marriage, not before it, which leads me to a principle: Romantic love is never the basis for marriage, but rather marriage is the basis for romantic love.
Personal love and affection, i.e. romance follows rather than prompts the sexual union, which is the case in arranged marriages and not in marriages that are not arranged.
In this arranged marriage, romance is the fruit of the marriage and the sexual union and not the basis for it.
The fact that Rebekah was brought to Isaac follows the pattern of the first marriage between Adam and Ishshah.
Genesis 2:18, “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.’”
Genesis 2:19, “Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.”
Genesis 2:20, “The man gave names to all the cattle (behemah, “domestic animals”), and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast (chayyath, “wild animals”) of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”
Genesis 2:21, “So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs (Hebrew: mitsal`othav, “portion of his side”) and closed up the flesh at that place.”
Genesis 2:22, “The LORD God fashioned (Hebrew: banah, “to build, construct”) into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.”
Genesis 2:23, “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’”
“Woman” is the noun `ishshah (hv*a!), which denotes the woman as the physical counterpart of man and is used in the sense of a wife to whom the man is to be completely committed.
The fact that Adam was asleep while the Lord surgically removed a portion of his side for the construction of his wife is a lesson to Christian men who are single that when the Lord provides a wife, it will be painless.
The fact that the woman was constructed from a portion of Adam’s side and not from his head to rule over him, nor from his feet to be trampled upon by him, indicates that she was to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.
Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
The phrase “become one flesh” refers to the fact that there was a complete identification of personality between Adam and the woman in interests, pursuits, which was consummated in sexual intercourse.
Genesis 2:25, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”
Notice, also that Adam was created first and then Eve thus constituting a divine order between the sexes meaning that the man was designed to be the authority over the woman even though she was his equal (1 Tim. 2:12-14; 1 Cor. 11:1-12).
1 Corinthians 11:3, “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”
Since the Lord Jesus Christ arranged the first marriage and designed it for all members of the entire human race, both believers and unbelievers, it is therefore, to be honored.
Hebrews 13:5, “Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”
The “directive” will of God is that marriage was originally designed to be a life long commitment (Gen. 2:24; Matthew 19:5-6) but the “permissive” will of God has permitted divorce because of the fallen nature of man and negative volition to the Word of God on the part of one or both partners (Matt. 19:7-8).
Matthew 19:7, “They said to Him, ‘Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?’”
Matthew 19:8, “He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.’”
An example where the Lord permitted a believer to divorce his wife and remarry is Moses who according to Exodus 18:2 divorced his first wife Zipporah because she refused to obey the Lord’s commandment to circumcise his boys (Ex. 4:25; Lev. 12:2-3) and according to Numbers 12:1, Moses got remarried to a Cushite woman.
Husbands and wives are commanded in the Word of God to not withhold sex from each other but rather are to fulfill each other’s needs since the husband has authority over his wife’s body and the wife has authority over her husbands.
1 Corinthians 7:1, “Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
1 Corinthians 7:2, “But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.”
1 Corinthians 7:3, “The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.”
1 Corinthians 7:4, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”
1 Corinthians 7:5, “Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
Now, from a comparison of 1 Corinthians 7:2 with Genesis 2:18, we can see that there are three basic reasons for the institution of marriage.
(1) Genesis 2:18, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”
(2) Genesis 2:18b, “I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
(3) 1 Corinthians 7:2, “But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.”
Just as the moon reflects the light of the sun so the church is to reflect the character of Christ and in the same way, Christian marriage is to reflect the loving and caring relationship that exists between Christ and the church.
Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.”
Ephesians 5:23, “For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.”
Ephesians 5:24, “But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.”
Ephesians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”
Ephesians 5:26, “so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”
Ephesians 5:27, “that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”
Ephesians 5:28, “So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.”
Ephesians 5:29, “for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church.”
“Nourishes” is the verb ektrepho (e)ktrevfw), which refers to feeding and providing for your wife as you would your own physical body.
“Cherishes” is the verb thalpo (qavlpw), which refers to comforting and caring, for your wife as you would your own body, and suggests regarding or treating your wife as an object of affection and as valuable to you.
Ephesians 5:30, “because we are members of His body.”
Ephesians 5:31, “FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH.”
Ephesians 5:32, “This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.”
Ephesians 5:33, “Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”
“Respects” is the verb phobeo (fovbo$), which refers to not only honoring your husband but also treating him as a friend and fellow heir of the grace of life.