Rebekah’s Story (Genesis 24)

Ryan Scott Carrell - September 14, 2025

The story we’re looking at today has a lot to do with ancient customs, particularly regarding how the culture of the people who wrote the Bible understood marriage. And the way in which these customs are presented gives us a reminder of how distant we are today from the cultural norms of these stories. But what is fascinating is that underneath these cultural markers, we find ways in which these stories still have something to teach us today.

For the people who wrote these stories down, that was what these stories were intended to do for them, too. The people who wrote these stories were in exile. The home that they had known in Jerusalem was destroyed, and they had been marched away to live in a city where they were asking questions about their identity as a people, their relationship to others, and their relationship to God. Through their questions and the stories they told, we can begin to see a foundation upon which many of the themes of scripture will later be built. And one of those themes is God’s love and concern for the overlooked, the ignored, and the unworthy. 

When people in these stories fail to see that, they are gently or not so gently reminded of that fact. And other times, like in this story today, the story only moves forward because of a person who represents the traits of empathy and kindness God desires. In this story today, those traits are exhibited by a woman named Rebekah, and because of this, the story of the promise God made to Abraham moves forward. And that all begins with this scene.

Genesis 24:1-9 (NRSVUE)
1 Now Abraham was old, advanced in years, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. 2 Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh, 3 and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, 4 but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac.” 5 The servant said to him, “Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land; must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?” 6 Abraham said to him, “See to it that you do not take my son back there. 7 The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land,’ he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. 8 But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine; only you must not take my son back there.” 9 So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter.

The servant who took this oath traveled to the land, like he said he would, and he prayed.

Genesis 24:12-16 (NRSVUE)
12 And he said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. 13 I am standing here by the spring of water, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. 14 Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please offer 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.” 15 Before he had finished speaking, there was Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, coming out with her water jar on her shoulder. 16 The young woman was very fair to look upon, a virgin, whom no man had known. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up.

There a couple of things are going on here. The first is that Abraham’s servant made a very specific request that God would answer his prayer in a very specific way. We’ve all done something like this, where we’ve asked God to show us that we’re on the right path and headed in the right direction. So, the surprising thing isn’t the prayer; it’s that this specific prayer seems to get answered when this woman named Rebekah showed up and checked off that spiritual box. But this servant had other boxes that also needed to be checked, and the next box was her genealogy, particularly that she was related enough to be married.

The text gives us a roundabout way of telling us that Rebekah was Abraham’s great-niece, which made her his son’s second cousin. That’s not a red flag for them because in their world, marrying within the extended family was actually the ideal. It kept wealth, land, and loyalty within the clan, and more importantly, it preserved the family’s covenant identity, which we saw was a critical piece for Abraham when he made the oath with the servant. The author confirms Rebekah is available, which causes the servant to move quickly to meet her.

Genesis 24:17-18 (NRSVUE)
17 Then the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me sip a little water from your jar.” 18 “Drink, my lord,” she said and quickly lowered her jar…

That act of hospitality was crucial and expected, but what came next was unexpected.

Genesis 24:19-22 (NRSVUE)
19 When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.” 20 So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw, and she drew for all his camels. 21 The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful. 22 When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold nose ring weighing a half shekel and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels

Because of what archaeologists have told us about the jars from that period of time, we can ascertain that it would have taken Rebekah about eighty trips to get enough water for all of the camels, which was a radical act of hospitality that led the servant to make an immediate offer of marriage. Now, our cultural norms tell us it should be Isaac, the future groom, there, with a Tiffany engagement ring, but what we see in this story was the cultural norm of the ancient world. What might be unexpected is the extent of these gifts, which shows that the servant wasn’t messing around. The hospitality he saw from Rebekah made him convinced that she was the one. But the story isn’t finished there because her brother Laban shows up to give us a contrast to the character of Rebekah.

Genesis 24:29-31 (NRSVUE)
29 Rebekah had a brother whose name was Laban, and Laban ran out to the man, to the spring. 30 As soon as he had seen the nose ring and the bracelets on his sister’s arms and when he heard the words of his sister Rebekah, “Thus the man spoke to me,” he went to the man, and there he was, standing by the camels at the spring. 31 He said, “Come in, O blessed of the Lord. Why do you stand outside…

The author wants us to see that Laban’s motivation is based on what he can gain from this arrangement, which is why he only invited the servant into his home after he saw the gifts the servant had given to his sister. Rebekah’s motivation was compassion, generosity, and what the Hebrew people called chesed: a word that’s hard to define but easy to describe.

When Rebekah saw a stranger in need, she didn’t hesitate; she showed empathy, and she responded with kindness and care. That is chesed. In this story, and over and over again in scripture, we’re shown that this is what God desires most from his people. We find passages that say that in books like Amos, Micah, and Hosea. And we see it in the words of Jesus.

Matthew 25:31-40 (NIV)
31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Through these words, Jesus was teaching that he will show up in the lives of people we encounter, and our response to those people matters. And I want you to look closely at who it is that Jesus described here. It isn’t in the wealthy, the famous, or the beautiful where we will find Jesus; it’s in the stranger, the hungry, the naked, and the imprisoned where Jesus is found. And as we have looked at the stories these past few weeks, we see this wasn’t a teaching invented by Jesus; it was built upon the foundation of these stories in scripture, which over and over again invite us to see the image of God in every face we encounter.

In Rebekah's story, we don’t just see an ancient story; we see a foundational teaching of who God is and the kind of people he wants us to be. Rebekah's chesed, her instinctive kindness toward a stranger, was the very quality that made her suitable to carry forward God's promises to Abraham. For the people in exile, they wouldn’t have missed this.

Though they were separated from the home of their faith, they weren't separated from the activity of their faith. God's kingdom was with them wherever they chose to show empathy and compassion. Each act of kindness was an entrance into the eternal kingdom that had existed long before their exile and would continue long after their return, something Jesus pointed to in these words we just read. Look again at what he said.

Matthew 25:34 (NRSVUE)
34...the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…

Jesus says about this kingdom that it was "prepared for you from the foundation of the world." This means that when Rebekah chose compassion over convenience at that well, she wasn't just being nice; she was participating in God's eternal kingdom. When the exiles who read her story showed radical hospitality to their Babylonian neighbors, they were proclaiming that they were still living in the promised land of God’s kingdom, a kingdom that existed before exile ever happened. And when you and I choose to see the stranger, feed the hungry, and welcome the overlooked, we’re not just doing good deeds; we’re living out God’s desire for humanity to be people of kindness, compassion, and empathy stepping into the kingdom that God has been building since the foundation of the world. 

God’s kingdom isn't waiting for you somewhere in the future; it's available to you every time you show God’s love to the poor, hurting, and hungry. The Kingdom of God is yours to inherit, one act of radical hospitality at a time.

And that is why they told this story.