Rebekah at the Well

Evening at a well. Ten thirsty camels kneel in the dust. A tired traveller whispers a prayer. And before he has even finished praying, a young woman walks out of the town with a water jar on her shoulder.

Abraham is old now, and Sarah has died. Isaac, the son of the promise, is grown but not yet married. So Abraham calls his most trusted servant, the one in charge of everything he owns, and makes him swear a solemn oath. “Do not take a wife for my son from the Canaanites around us. Go back to my homeland, to my own relatives, and find a wife for Isaac there.” “What if she won’t come?” the servant asks. “Then you are free from this oath,” says Abraham. “But the Lord, the God of heaven, will send his angel ahead of you.”

The servant loads ten of Abraham’s camels with gifts and sets out on the long road north and east, to the town of Nahor in the land between the rivers. He arrives at evening, the time when the women of the town come out to draw water. He makes the camels kneel by the well, and he prays. “Lord, God of my master Abraham, give me success today. Here I am by the spring. Let it be this way: the girl to whom I say, Please let down your jar so I may drink, and who answers, Drink, and I will water your camels too, let her be the one you have chosen for Isaac.”

Before he has finished speaking, out comes Rebekah, with her jar on her shoulder. She is the granddaughter of Nahor, Abraham’s own brother, though the servant does not know that yet. She goes down to the spring, fills her jar and comes back up. The servant hurries to meet her. “Please, give me a little water from your jar.” “Drink, my lord,” she says, and quickly lowers the jar for him. And when he has finished, she says, “I will draw water for your camels too, until they have finished drinking.” Ten camels. Think about how much water that is. She empties her jar into the trough and runs back to the well, again and again, until every camel has had its fill. And the man just watches her in silence, wondering whether the Lord has made his journey a success.

When the camels are done, he takes out a gold ring and two gold bracelets. “Whose daughter are you? Is there room in your father’s house for us to stay the night?” “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son of Nahor,” she says. “We have plenty of straw and feed, and room for you to stay.” And the servant bows his head and worships right there. “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not stopped showing kindness and faithfulness to my master. The Lord has led me straight to the house of my master’s relatives.”

Rebekah runs home with the news. Her brother Laban sees the gold and hurries out. “Come in, you who are blessed by the Lord!” But the servant will not eat until he has told his errand. He tells them everything: the oath, the journey, the prayer, the girl at the well. Laban and Bethuel answer, “This is from the Lord. Here is Rebekah. Take her, and let her be the wife of your master’s son.” The next morning the family asks for ten more days with her. The servant asks to leave at once. So they call Rebekah and ask her. “Will you go with this man?” And she says, “I will go.”

Far to the south, one evening, Isaac goes out into the field to think and pray. He looks up and sees camels coming. Rebekah looks up too, sees him, and slips down from her camel. “Who is that man walking toward us?” “That is my master,” says the servant. So she covers herself with her veil. The servant tells Isaac all that has happened. Isaac brings Rebekah into his mother Sarah’s tent, and she becomes his wife. And Genesis says simply, he loved her, and he was comforted after his mother’s death.

Wells were the meeting places of the ancient world, and drawing water was usually the work of women and girls, done in the cool of the evening, just as Genesis says. The Bible returns to this kind of scene more than once. Jacob meets Rachel at a well. Moses meets his future wife at a well in Midian. The literary scholar Robert Alter called this a type scene, a familiar pattern that readers would recognise. But Rebekah’s version has a twist. She is the one who acts. She runs, she draws, she decides. And a thirsty camel can drink a great deal of water, so watering ten of them by hand was hours of hard, generous work.

Rebekah at the well. You will find her story in Genesis chapter twenty-four. A servant prayed and trusted God to lead him. A young woman offered far more kindness than anyone asked of her, and then said, I will go. So here is something to think about. Where could you go beyond what is asked of you this week, just to be kind?