Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

REBEKAH

(Heb. riḇqâ)

The wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau; daughter of Bethuel and sister of Laban (Gen. 22:23; 24:29). When Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac from his Mesopotamian homeland, Rebekah is encountered at a well outside the city of Nahor (Gen. 24:11-49). She is described as beautiful, and her actions reveal her not to be a passive woman. Initially, her brother and father arrange with the servant to send Rebekah as a wife for Isaac. Ultimately, though, the text suggests that Rebekah chooses for herself to return with Abraham’s servant and marry Isaac (Gen. 24:58). The first encounter between the betrothed, Isaac and Rebekah, reads like a scene from a romance novel. Isaac readily accepts his new bride, and the text says that “he loved her” (Gen. 24:67). After a prayer by her husband, Rebekah’s barrenness is overcome and she conceives. During a difficult pregnancy, she prays to God and is told that she will give birth to two sons, two nations, and that the elder will serve the younger. After her children are born, Rebekah recognizes the differences between the two boys. She is fond of the younger one, Jacob, but Isaac loves Esau more (Gen. 25:21-28). When she overhears Jacob telling Esau that he is going to give his oldest son a blessing, Rebekah devises a plan to trick her husband into giving the blessing to Jacob instead. She instructs her son of everything he is to do in order to pull the ruse on his father, and her plan succeeds (Gen. 27:5-40). When Rebekah sees the intense anger of Esau toward Jacob, she decides that she must do something to protect her son. She convinces Isaac that Jacob should marry a woman from her own land. So, Jacob is sent away to find a wife, and his life is temporarily spared (Gen. 27:41-46). After this final act of insurance for her favorite son, Rebekah disappears from the narrative. Her death is not mentioned. In Gen. 49:31, however, her burial place is identified as being in the family cave in Machpelah, along with Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Leah. Through her trickery and extraordinary insight, Rebekah insures that the word of the Lord concerning her two sons, given to her during her pregnancy, is ultimately fulfilled. She is recognized as one of the four matriarchs of the Israelites.

Bibliography. S. P. Jeansonne, The Women of Genesis (Minneapolis, 1990); S. Niditch, “Genesis,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. C. A. Newsom and S. Ringe (Louisville, 1992), 13-29.

Lisa W. Davison

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

REBEKAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)