Isaac’s Marriage: The Happiest in the Bible
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answer was, “The thing proceedeth from the Lord: we cannot speak
unto thee bad or good. Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take her, and
go, and let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the Lord hath spoken.”
Rebekah Believes God Has Spoken
Rebekah herself was consulted as to whether she would go to 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 with the morning they set out on the homeward journey.
Abraham dwelt at Beersheba, and Isaac, who had been attending the
flocks in the adjoining country, had returned to his father’s tent to wait
the messenger from Haran. “And Isaac went out to meditate in the
field at the eventide: and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold,
the camels were coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when
she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the
servant, What man is this that walketh in the field to meet us? And the
servant said, It is my master: therefore she took a veil, and covered
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herself. And the servant told Isaac all things that he had done. And
Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and
she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after
his mother’s death.”
Abraham had marked the result of the intermarriage of those who
feared God and those who feared Him not, from the days of Cain to his
own time. His own marriage with Hagar and the marriage connections
of Ishmael and Lot, were before him. The father’s influence upon
his son Ishmael was counteracted by that of the mother’s idolatrous
kindred 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 endeavored in vain to overcome.
Abraham’s early teachings had not been without effect upon Ish-
mael, but the influence of his wives resulted in the establishment of
idolatry in his family. Separated from his father and embittered by the
strife and contention of a home destitute of the love and fear of God,
Ishmael was driven to choose the wild, marauding life of the desert
chief, “his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him.”