The servant has already prayed at a well and watched Rebekah answer before he finished asking. Now he has to convince everyone else. Laban runs out to meet him and hospitality is offered, but the servant will not eat until the record is straight. 33"I will not eat until I have said what I have to say." He lays out for people who were not at the well what he asked God for and what God did, and asks them to read it as he has.
They read it rightly, at least at first. 50"The thing has come from the LORD; we cannot speak to you bad or good." But confessions made at night can lose their nerve by morning, and when the servant asks to leave, the family stalls. 55"Let the young woman remain with us a while, at least ten days." The servant, who has already seen the LORD's hand once, will not wait on custom. 56"Do not delay me, since the LORD has prospered my way." Caught between a servant in a hurry and their own second thoughts, the family does something no one has yet done in this arrangement. They ask Rebekah. 58"Will you go with this man?" 58"I will go."
Much rides on that word. Abraham was once told to leave his country and his father's house for a land he had not seen, and he went. Now his servant's testimony has reached a young woman, and she answers the same call with the same readiness, leaving her mother's household for a husband she has never met, on another man's word about what God had done.
Isaac, meanwhile, is doing something quieter. 63"Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening." He is alone and still carrying the weight of a mother three years in the grave. He 63"lifted up his eyes and saw" the camels coming, and in the next verse Rebekah 64"lifted up her eyes" and saw him. Two people who have never spoken, looking up at the same moment from opposite directions. She veils herself, the servant reports everything, and the story ends with affection. Genesis says of Isaac, 67"he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." Grief persists here, met by a love that arrived because God had been at work before either of them knew the other's name.
Paul would later tell husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25). The pattern was old before he wrote it down. A bridegroom's love given to a bride who was sought out, called from a far country, and freely received is the pattern that runs from a tent in the Negeb to the cross. We are the ones who were sought before we knew we were being looked for, the ones a servant's testimony was sent to find. The question put to Rebekah is put to us too. Will we answer the call that has gone out on our behalf, or stall ten more days as her family nearly did?
Grace only asks, and waits to hear whether we will say what she said.
Prayer
Father, we are often the family stalling at the door, wanting ten more days before we answer what grace is waiting to hear. Thank you that you sought us as that servant sought Rebekah, because you had bound yourself in love to bring us home. Give us hearts as ready as hers to say "I will go" when we hear what you have done. Comfort us in our losses as you comforted Isaac. In Jesus' name, amen.