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Context No. 16 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 24:1-5: in context

1Abraham was old, and well advanced in age. The LORD had blessed Abraham in all things. 2Abraham said to his servant, the elder of his house, who ruled over all that he had, “Please put your hand under my thigh. 3I will make you swear by the LORD, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live. 4But you shall go to my country, and to my relatives, and take a wife for my son Isaac.” 5The servant said to him, “What if the woman isn’t willing to follow me to this land? Must I bring your son again to the land you came from?”

Genesis has followed Abraham from his call out of Mesopotamia into old age. Sarah has died, and Isaac, the son God promised, is still unmarried. Abraham is set on one thing: Isaac must not marry a local Canaanite woman, but someone from his own kindred back in the old country. This passage is Abraham sending his most trusted servant to find her, and binding him to it with an oath.

Put your hand under my thigh, Abraham says (24:2). The gesture is old and grave. The hand goes to the loins, the source of a man's offspring and the place of the covenant mark of circumcision, so the promise is sworn on the line of descendants itself. Years later Jacob would bind Joseph the same way (47:29). The oath is simple: Isaac's wife will come from Abraham's own people, not from the Canaanites around them. The servant raises the one practical problem. What if the woman will not come?

The point is not snobbery but the promise. Everything ahead runs through this next generation, and Abraham refuses to dissolve his family into the nations around him. The servant's question is the honest edge of every plan made for other people. You can send for someone, but you cannot make them say yes. What am I trying to arrange for the years ahead that finally depends on another person's willing yes?

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