Genesis: Chapter Twenty-Four (Isaac and Rebekah)

In which Abraham sends a slave to make sure that Isaac marries a Nahorite and God makes sure that Isaac marries his cousin.

"Abraham was now very old," (24:1) but how old is very old? Sarah died at 127. At 100, she questioned her ability to bear child at that age. Noah died at 950, but that was right after God promised shorter lifespans.

Abraham gets his top-ranked slave (talk about a glass ceiling) and makes that slave swear an oath. Obviously, they didn't have Bibles around to swear by, so Abraham has the slave display his sincerity by placing his hand underneath Abraham's thigh. (24:2-4)

And the promise made? That the servant will not allow Isaac to marry a Canaanite. That the servant will return to the land of Abraham's origin and bring back a wife from there.

This is a good display of the kind of in-group selection and out-group exclusion that so much religion iconifies. This is why different religions and even different sects of the same basic religion don't get along. This is why Catholics decry Protestants who decry Episcopalians who decry non-denominational churches, and so on. It began in the Bible as a racial or tribal thing. Abraham doesn't want his son to marry an impure Canaanite.

But the slave suggests that it's unlikely a woman will follow him. After all, it's a very scammy-sounding thing. Imagine for a moment that you're a woman living in the middle east. One day a random slave claiming to be the servant of a guy named Abraham (who, by the way, was known by a different name, Abram, before he left his home) shows up, claiming the Arab Formerly Known As Abram (later known simply as ‽) has died. The slave asks you to traverse the desert to meet a kid who needs a bride. The kid, of course, will claim to be Abraham's son, but won't be able to prove it because Abraham is dead and can't speak, and may not even be recognizable what with the months of rot and decay that's eaten away at his flesh in the intervening months, and now you've been conned into marrying this Isaac dude with half his dick cut off.

The slave suggests that, given the above proposal, it's unlikely Abraham's last will and testament will be executed according to plan. The slave asks if he should instead take Isaac back to Nahor to pick up chicks.

Abraham declines on the basis that God has granted the entirety of the Canaanite land to Isaac's descendants.

So what's the big deal with him marrying a Canaanite, then? If it's all his land in the first place, why aren't the people therefore his people? Why not start a new breed of mixed race people and call them Isaacites?

Abraham makes a promise on behalf of God: "He will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there. If the woman is unwilling to come back with you, then you will be released from this oath of mine." He fails to mention that if the woman is unwilling to return to the land of the Canaanites, then God has failed, and is either not omnipotent or not willing to act on behalf of his Chosen One.

They complete their oath, and the slave takes off with ten camels carrying various goods. (24:5-9) A nonspecific amount of time later, the slave arrives in Nahor. He waits by the town well until dusk, hoping to catch some lady friend eyes there. He says a brief prayer asking for a specific dialogue to take place.

"Please let down your jar," he will say, "that I may have a drink."

She will respond, "Drink, and I'll water your camels too."

And with that, the unnamed slave will know he's found the right woman for Isaac. No, he doesn't need to know about the girl's physical beauty or if she and Isaac have compatible personalities or if the girl is already betrothed. He only needs a commonplace response to a commonplace question to know that this is the girl for Isaac.

And so it happens that a similar conversation takes place between Slaveboy and a girl named Rebekah. No, it's not identical. Actually, it's rather different by any legitimate standard of comparisons.

Slaveboy doesn't even start the conversation right to begin with: "Please give me a little water from your jar."

She responds, "Drink, my lord. I'll draw water for your camels too, until they have had enough to drink." (24:17-19)

She does as she says she will. Meanwhile, Slaveboy prepares a bribe of a gold nose ring and two gold bracelets. He asks who she is. She claims to be the daughter of Milcah and Nahor.

I rifled through pages to discover that this makes her and Isaac first cousins. Again, Abraham has gone out of his way to make sure that the family remains as incestuous as possible.

He asks to spend the night, offering the aforementioned payment, and she agrees to loan him some sleeping arrangements. Slaveboy somehow takes this as evidence that God has named Rebekah to be the woman that he should return to Canaan with.

Rebekah takes him back to her family's home and gives Slaveboy some food. He refuses to eat until she hears out his proposition, however. Rebekah's brother Laban encourages him. Slaveboy recounts the story of this chapter from the beginning, in about as many words (this part runs through verses 24:34-49), making sure to mention that Abraham is super rich because God.

"Because God?" says Laban and his father Bethuel. "Can't say no to God! Take Rebekah when you leave! Let her marry this half-dicked guy you speak of!"

Bronze Age desert nomads were evidently very gullible.

In 24:52-54, Slaveboy pays them off and demands that he and Rebeka leave the next morning.

But finally he meets some resistance. They argue for several verses about whether or not the paid-for whore gets to stay at home for ten more days before leaving. They eventually agree to see what Rebekah thinks about this whole thing.

She agrees to leave immediately because, as Kanye "Jesus" West might say, she ain't messin' with no broke niggas.

So they send her on her way, and say a little prayer for her in 24:60...

Our sister, may you increase
to thousands upon thousands;
may your offspring possess
the cities of their enemies.

How nice. They might as well have just said,

Our sister, may you fuck a lot
and have lots of inbred babies;
may your babies make lots of enemies
and then slaughter them all.

So Rebekah gets on one of Slaveboy's camels, and they head back toward Canaan.

They meet Isaac in a Negevian field meditating one evening. Rebekah covers herself as they approach because being seen by him is probably punishable by cactus rape or something. Slaveboy fills Isaac in on what took place (but manages to do it all in a single verse, 24:66, this time).

In the span of a single final verse, Isaac moves into his dead mother's tent with Rebekah, and they marry, and he falls in love with her (that's the cactus rape part), and Issac is now "comforted after his mother's death" (24:67).