Context No. 1011 of 4322 · Genesis
Context · Reflection
Genesis 24:55-60: in context
55Her brother and her mother said, “Let the young lady stay with us a few days, at least ten. After that she will go.” 56He said to them, “Don’t hinder me, since the LORD has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my master.” 57They said, “We will call the young lady, and ask her.” 58They called Rebekah, and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will go.” 59They sent away Rebekah, their sister, with her nurse, Abraham’s servant, and his men. 60They blessed Rebekah, and said to her, “Our sister, may you be the mother of thousands of ten thousands, and let your offspring possess the gate of those who hate them.”
Abraham's servant has traveled far to find a wife for Isaac, and God has led him unmistakably to Rebekah. Now he wants to leave at once and bring her back, but her brother and mother want her to stay ten more days. The servant presses, do not delay me, the LORD has prospered my way. So they decide to ask the young woman herself. They call Rebekah and put the question plainly: will you go with this man? And she answers, in two words, I will go. So they send her off with a blessing, that she would become the mother of thousands.
The heart of the scene is Rebekah's answer, I will go. She is asked to leave her family, her homeland, everything familiar, to travel to a distant country and marry a man she has never met, on the strength of a servant's testimony that God has arranged it. And she does not hesitate or bargain for the extra ten days her family wanted; she simply says, I will go. It is a striking act of faith and decisiveness, stepping into an unknown future because she is persuaded God's hand is in it. Her yes echoes the earlier faith of Abraham, who also left his country at God's call for a land he had not seen, and it looks ahead to another young woman who, told of an impossible calling, would answer, let it be to me according to your word. Faith often comes down to a moment like this, a plain question about an unseen future and a simple willingness to go. Rebekah's two words launch her into the covenant story.
When God's leading points me toward an unknown future, do I bargain for more time and safety, or can I answer as Rebekah did, simply, I will go?
Sources
- Genesis 24:58: will you go with this man? And she said, I will go
- Genesis 12:1: go from your country and your kindred to the land that I will show you
- Luke 1:38: let it be to me according to your word