Week 2 Genesis 25-42
Week 1 ended with the story of Abraham’s servant’s search for a wife for Isaac – chapter twenty-four. The job was a biggish one. Abraham was an old man with the grim reaper breathing down his neck, so when he told his servant to go find a wife for Isaac he was also saying find a wife for your new boss. It’s hard to say how apprehensive the servant felt, travelling to another country, looking for an unknown girl, asking her to marry a guy who as far as she knew lived on the moon. It’s a pretty safe bet to say he was concerned.
He prayed about his assignment, asked the Lord to give him success in his mission, and then he did something that makes him – an uneducated guy living in the ancient world, a non-technological and unsophisticated rube – look pretty modern, pretty cagey. He asked for a testable sign.
He would ask a girl for a drink. She would give him water (she might have anyway), but then she would offer to water his camels (an very unlikely offer for her to make). And so he found Rebekah.
The story is a subtle mix of ho-hum day-to-day living: characters making decisions, wondering what to do, trying to be strategic; and then also, humming along quietly in not-so-ho-hum background corridors, other things are going on.