It oracle foreshadows the stress that characterize the connection between their sons, Jacob and you may Esau, just like the numbers on Genesis story and also as eponymous forefathers out-of Israel and you may Edom
The next (after Sarah) of one's matriarchs in the ancestor tales off Genesis, Rebekah is one of the most popular females-regarding the girl active part along with her control over incidents-from the Hebrew Bible. The new beautifully developed narratives for the Genesis twenty-four–twenty seven establish just how she gets Isaac's wife, gets beginning to help you dual sons shortly after initially barrenness, lastly receives the key invest the brand new descent for her young man, Jacob, who is bound to feel ancestor of the many Israel. Though problematic for some, the woman deception during the influencing Isaac to own Jacob's work for contributes to this lady depiction due to the fact an enthusiastic admirable and you may assertive girl.
, 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 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,” ).
Immediately following two decades from wedding, when Rebekah fails to conceive, Isaac prays so you can Jesus, whom has the fresh prayer one she could possibly get consider. Several other kind of-scene, that the bare wife, therefore enters the Rebekah tale, getting in touch with awareness of the fresh new unique part of pupils sooner or later produced to their. A divine oracle is actually treated in order to the girl whenever she's expecting; God proclaims one to “a few nations” are located in the woman uterus and certainly will take on both ().
Around she's “loved” () by the this lady spouse, datingmentor.org/tr/interracialpeoplemeet-inceleme/ the initial woman throughout the Hebrew Bible for just who marital like is actually proclaimed
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.
