Genesis 24: Extraordinary in the ordinary
Read: Genesis 24
In Genesis 24, like many historical books, we again have another piece of narrative that at first glance it can be difficult to know what to say about. Like the previous chapter, Genesis 23 (and many others) God does not directly speak, and neither is there any explicit teaching or prophecy. The whole event appears to take place at Abraham's instigation and there is no obvious doctrine to be taken from this example. Moreover, it is yet another story which involves customs very different to our own: the oath the servant takes, the arranged marriage within relations (although not without the consent of Rebekah), the hospitality shown to travellers, the giving of a dowry, Rebekah veiling herself before Isaac prior to their marriage. Nonetheless, despite the cultural differences, this is in some ways a very commonplace story. Is this just a story of a servant doing his job and some matchmaking with a happy ending?
In situations like this the key thing is to look, not for what is par of the course for the time, but what is different or noteworthy. My starting point in this enquiry is this: the faith of the servant.
When I was searching for the Corrie ten Boom quote I'd often heard and read for yesterday's post, I came across another one: Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire? Like so many others, I so often find myself turning to prayer when my own plans fail. I can imagine this story being written with someone like me as the servant: the servant would go from house to house searching out a suitable wife - someone from Abraham's wider family. Eventually, he would throw his hands up in desperation and pray to God, and there, at the next house, a suitable wife would be found.
This story couldn't be more different. The servant arrives outside the city, and the first thing he does is pray:
“O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. Behold, I am standing by the spring of water, and the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water. Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink’, and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.” (Genesis 24:12-14)
In this case, the servant asks for a sign. Given that God already knows our prayers, it is possible that God put that sign in the servant's heart to ask for. However, the sign itself is not arbitrary - Rebekah proves her character by her willingness to attend to not only the needs to the stranger but also his camels.
Once he has found that Rebekah is indeed of Abraham's family, the servant's response is, again, one that demonstrates a life that knows that God is in control, as he bows his head and worships, saying:
“Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness towards my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsmen.” (Genesis 24:27-28)
We started with the individual - one man doing his job but doing it with faith, trusting in the Lord and his purposes. However, when we 'zoom out' we also see the significance of this very ordinary story. It is the story that is the next step in God fulfilling his promises to Abraham. Abraham even reminds his servant of one of these promises in the opening paragraph (The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ Genesis 24:7) This part of the story is pivotal in ensuring that Isaac, Abraham's heir through whom God promised to fulfil his promises, in turn has his own offspring and God's plan through the nation of Israel comes into fruition. And so, even without the direct voice of God, we see his plan being unfolded through the lives of these ordinary people - through his answer to their prayers, their declarations of his faithfulness (not just at the current time but over the course of Abraham's life), and the fact that at the end of the story, Isaac ends up with a wife with whom he appears to be in love with.
In the big and the small, this passage has reminded me of something I have been reading recently - that whilst we often tend to strive for the extraordinary, the Christian life is usually very much about the ordinary. But God makes the ordinary extraordinary. Here we have a story of a servant going about his job and a young woman being married off but the servant sets about it in an extraordinary way with faith and dependence on God, and uses the actions of these individuals to build the next chapter in his rescue plan for humanity.
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