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The Beginning of the End
with it. Then he said, “Now if you will deal kindly and truly with
my master, tell me. And if not, tell me, that I may turn to the right
hand or to the left.” The answer was, “The thing comes from the
Lord; we cannot speak to you either bad or good. Here is Rebekah
before you; take her and go, and let her be your master’s son’s wife,
as the Lord has spoken.”
Rebekah Believes God Has Spoken
Rebekah herself was asked whether she was willing to go so great
a distance from her father’s house to marry the son of Abraham. She
believed that God had selected her to be Isaac’s wife, and said, “I
will go.”
The servant, anticipating his master’s joy, was impatient to be
gone, and when morning came they set out on the homeward journey.
Abraham was living at Beersheba, and Isaac, who had been tending
the flocks in the adjoining country, had returned to his father’s tent to
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wait for the messenger from Haran. “And Isaac went out to meditate
in the field in the evening; and he lifted his eyes and looked, and
there, the camels were coming. Then Rebekah lifted her eyes, and
when she saw Isaac she dismounted from her camel; for she had said
to the servant, ‘Who is this man walking in the field to meet us?’
The servant said, ‘It is my master.’ So she took a veil and covered
herself. And the servant told Isaac all the things that he had done.
Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent; and he took
Rebekah and she became his wife, and he loved her. So Isaac was
comforted after his mother’s death.”
Abraham had noticed the result of intermarriage between those
who feared God and those who did not, from the days of Cain to
his own time. His own marriage with Hagar and the marriage con-
nections of Ishmael and Lot were before him. Abraham’s influence
on his son Ishmael was counteracted by the influence of Hagar’s
idolatrous relatives and by Ishmael’s connection with heathen wives.
The jealousy of Hagar and of the wives whom she chose for Ishmael
surrounded his family with a barrier that Abraham tried to overcome,
but could not.
Abraham’s early teachings had not failed to have an effect on
Ishmael, but the influence of his wives resulted in establishing idola-