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 CHAPTER THIRTY
Isaac and Rebekah, Genesis 24:1 - 24:67.

THE FACTS!

Abraham is old and blessed.

Abraham sexually harasses his eldest servant.

Abraham makes his servant swear he will not marry Isaac or let Isaac marry a Canaanite woman. One of those.

The servant must go find a woman who is related to Isaac for Isaac to wed.

"What if the woman isn't trusting enough to follow an old servant back to a strange land to marry a man she's never met? Should I bring Isaac to her? Or should I knock her out and put her in the trunk of a camel? No, no! Just kidding!" questions the servant.

Abraham responds, "God told me to take a wife for Isaac from my homeland but he warned against sending Isaac to my homeland. Even if she will not follow, do not let Isaac go to my homeland."

The servant touches Abrahams upper thigh and swears.

The servant takes ten camels and travels to Nahor.

The servant tells God how it will go down by the well where the women fetch the water. If the woman lets the strange man sip from her pitcher without worrying about cooties or backwash, she shall be the woman Isaac marries. She must also offer the camels water or no deal!

Rebekah approaches the well with a pitcher on her shoulder.

The servant could tell Rebekah was a virgin by the way she looked. Or walked, maybe. Or maybe she had a pin or a medal.

The servant asks for a drink of water and she gives it to him.

Rebekah also gives water to the camels.

Even though God seemed to have set up the deal just like the servant asked, the servant sits wondering if God had provided him with Isaac's wife. Like master, like servant!

The servant steals a golden earring of one shekel weight and golden bracelets of ten shekels weight from Rebekah. Unless he gives them to her. That seems more likely!

The servant asks her about her father and if there is room in his house for him and his ten camels.

Rebekah says she is the daughter of Bethuel, son of Milcah and Nahor.

Rebekah says they have room and provender and straw enough.

The servant blesses God for so easily allowing him to find a woman related to Isaac.

Rebekah runs home to fetch her brother Laban.

Laban saw the rich gifts given to his sister and says, "Lucky!" Then he runs to the well to make sure the mark, I mean, guest hadn't left. He courteously asks the man into his house. No, just kidding! He says, "Sheesh! Why are you still standing around out here? Don't you know I've fixed up the guest room for you and your camels? Gosh!"

The servant ungirds his camels and washes his feet.

Meat is served to the servant but he refuses to eat until he can explain why he's there.

Laban says, "What the heck are you even talking about?"

The servant says, "My master Abraham is very, very, very, very, very, very rich, thanks to God."

Laban says, "I could make that much money in five seconds!"

And then the servant recaps the whole first half of this Chapter because this Chapter is so long, it was probably time for a reminder about what happened or the reader might have forgotten.

The servant finishes with, "Let me know if Rebekah will come with me as Isaac's wife."

So Laban says, "Heck yes!"

Bethuel says, "We cannot argue for or against this as it was commanded by God. There be Rebekah. Take her and go and let her be her cousin's wife."

The servant bowed and worshiped God and gave Rebekah jewels of silver and gold and raiment. He also gave Laban and Rebekah's unnamed mother a ring of Invisibility.

Everybody ate and drank and tarried.

The next day, the servant said, "Let us go now!"

Rebekah's mom says, "Not yet. Let her remain her for, say, um, ten days? Or ten months? Or a year? Or something."

The servant says, "Hinder me not for the Lord is with me! No, no! Just kidding! It's just His angel."

Laban says, "Get off my property!"

Rebekah's mom says, "Let us ask the opinion of my daughter on this very important matter even though her opinion wasn't very important when he agreed she would marry your master's son."

Rebekah says, "I will go." Rebekah's mom probably made a face or cried or something.

Laban says, "You are my sister so you should have millions of ninja seeds which will own the gates of people you hate."

Rebekah and her nurse go away with the sevant and the camels.

Meanwhile, back at Beer-Lahai-Roi (where Hagar met the angel of the Lord), Isaac prays at eventide.

Isaac lifts up his eyes and sees the camels coming.

Rebekah lifts up her eyes and sees Isaac and runs in slow motion across the field toward him. Wait, that's from the movie script. Actually, she asks who that is and the servant says, "That's your future ex-husband! No, no! Just kidding!" and she puts on a veil.

The servant tells Isaac about his adventure.

Isaac takes Rebekah into his tent and does it to her which makes her his wife.

Doing it to Rebekah comforts Isaac for the loss of his mother Sarah.

STUDY QUESTIONS!
Question God and Religion!

Why is this Chapter so long? Oh wait! I know the answer to this one! It's because the stupid servant can't make a long story short.

Is cupping someone's testicles The Bible version of a pinky swear?

If the angel of the Lord told you to get your son's wife from your homeland, wouldn't you think he was speaking pretty literally? Or would you put the task on a servant? I guess servants really aren't individuals but extensions of their masters, so that's probably why Abraham didn't think twice about sending his eldest servant. It can't be because he feels too old to travel since he sends a servant that's probably older than he is now!

I'm not sure I understood what was supposed to happen if the woman wasn't willing to follow the creepy old guy back to Canaan to marry the mystery man. Was Isaac just supposed to never marry? Or was Abraham basically telling the eldest servant not to return if he didn't have a woman? It sounded like a minor threat to me. "Don't you come back here without a woman! Because my son can never marry a Canaanite and he can't ever go to Haran to find a woman but he must marry a woman from Haran. So, you get my drift, right, Mr. Eldest Servant?" And then he'd do the thing that is winking when you're kidding around but is the thing you do when you're being deadly serious. Like make the slitting the throat motion, maybe?

What does it mean to ungird your camels? Oops! I mean, did 'he ungirded his camels' sound dirty to you too?

Can you believe the servant dictates to God the conditions under which he'll know the right woman has come to the well? I can! Because I'm pretty sure what Rebekah did for the servant is what any woman would have done. The servant knows he can't head back to Canaan without a woman, so he sets the conditions to the bare minimum. He knows a woman will give him and his camels water because what does it cost her? Nothing! She's being polite! And I'd bet 75% of the women going to the well would have done the same thing.

Why wouldn't Rebecca consider whatever the crazy stranger offers after he immediately gives her gold bracelets and a gold earring? Did you picture her looking like Wonder Woman after she got the bracelets? I did! And then did you picture her naked? If you said yes, are you a woman? Now I'm picturing a woman picturing Wonder Woman naked! If you don't like the Drawing Time section for this chapter, you should draw that!

Why does The Bible insist on retelling the entire story about the elderly servant at the well with Rebekah when the elderly servant tells the story about the elderly servant at the well with Rebecca? Couldn't they have saved room by just saying, "The elderly servant relates how he met Rebekah at the well to Rebecca's father."?

Did I punctuate the last sentence of that last paragraph correctly?

Isn't anybody concerned about all the ambiguous pronouns in The Bible? Sometimes context helps differentiate which person is the subject of the sentence. But remember good old Cheesdick? Even expert Bible Readers can't be absolutely positive about who was tithing whom way back then.

Don't you love camels? I was wondering why camels were used this time instead of asses.

Rebekah's mother and brother are like God and wish for people's seeds to possess the gates of their enemies. What in the world does that mean?

If the original Bible is divinely inspired and the King James translation is divinely inspired, then how come the King James Version says Rebekah's mom asks the servant to wait ten days before Rebecca goes with him yet the Greek or Hebrew text (I don't know which one was used here!) can be translated as ten months or a year or ten days. Couldn't God be more accurate in his inspiration? The King James Version does give you the choice in a footnote though, so I guess they wanted you to realize that nobody knows how long the crazy mother needed to keep Rebekah around. Except for God and he decided not to be very clear about it. I guess it doesn't matter since Rebecca doesn't want to remain with her family any longer anyway.

Did 'and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, behold, the camels were coming' sound disgusting to you too?

Why is this Chapter so long and I can hardly think of any Study Questions for it? I guess that means it's the most believable Chapter of The Bible so far! That makes sense since it is about a man getting a bride by showing her how extremely rich he is and giving her lots and lots of gifts.

According to some user of the Internet Movie Database, 'Simon!' is Mexican slang for "Hell, yeah!"

The Italicized words in the King James Bible are words that weren't literally translated from the Greek but added due to the differences in grammar and sentence structure to make the English translation read properly. Just like any translation. But try reading The Bible by leaving out all of the italicized words. You'll find it reads decently anyway. I think the translators went a little overboard. Unless it's not that way at all. Who can tell?

Rebekah spells her name with a 'k' because she was the first person to be named Rebecca and she didn't know she was spelling it wrong.

The Bible is one of the best known books ever written. So it must be acceptable to extend the word count of your novel by having one character repeat what has happened almost word for word to another character. Imagine doing that after writing fifty pages! You've got a 100 page book on your hands! And then pretend another guy comes along who just missed the story and said, "Why's everyone laughing?" Then the guy has to tell the story again and BANG! 150 pages! Or 200 if you have the guy telling the story tell the story of him telling the story that the guy just missed too!

The writers of The Bible really missed a good chance at making this Chapter a really funny buddy road trip type movie! The eldest servant should have had a sidekick like a teenage Egyptian and they would have had all sorts of crazy adventures because the eldest servant would say things like, "I say, chap, we can't do that!" And then the Egyptian sidekick would be all, "Lighten upizzle, old mandiddle! We gonna get this par-tay star-tayed!" And then they'd kick up the jams and the hos would bust out the liquor and the eldest servant would probably slip on a banana peel or something clumsy that an old stuffy white guy might do at a big hip hop party. Someone else can punch up the script later. I'm just the big picture guy!

A. Why doesn't God want Isaac to marry a Canaanite? Is this going to happen with every generation of Abraham's descendants? Are they all going to have to go back and marry a descendant of Nahor? Or a descendant of Haran if he had any descendants before he died? Nahor lives in Haran! Does that clear anything up?
B. How did Rebekah comfort Isaac over the loss of his mother? Be as graphic as possible.
C. Is Isaac's love for Rebekah replacing his love for Sarah? Is that why mothers always hate their daughters-in-laws (if the mother is still alive, and you know Sarah would have hated Rebekah!), because the wife is replacing them? Isn't that disgusting? How can mothers think that way? They often say sons want to kill their fathers and have sex with their mothers but it seems like mothers are the perverted ones! I've never known any guy who wanted to do it to his mother!

DRAWING TIME!

Draw two pictures of Rebekah. Make one as the servant saw her, so that it's obvious she is a virgin. Make the other pictures obvious she isn't a virgin.

WHAT DID CHRISTIAN LITERALISTS LEARN?

Marry your own kind.