Genesis 24:54–61

Genesis 24:54 — Rest after Providence: The servant and his men eat, drink, and lodge with Rebekah's family. This communal meal is not incidental: in the ancient Near East, table fellowship sealed agreements and signified trust and peace between parties. The servant has already accomplished his mission (vv. 10–53) and spent the previous evening in thanksgiving and wonder. Now, having rested, he is ready to return — and wastes no time. His first words at dawn are "Send me away to my master." The urgency is spiritually charged: the servant has been entrusted with a divine errand, and he subordinates every personal comfort to its completion.

Genesis 24:55 — The Family's Reluctance: Rebekah's brother (Laban, named in v. 29) and her mother ask for a delay of "a few days, at least ten." This is a natural, human response — the grief of imminent separation from a daughter and sister. Commentators note that the father Bethuel, mentioned in verse 50, is conspicuously absent here, which ancient tradition and some modern scholars interpret as indicating he had died or was incapacitated. The request for ten days was likely a customary mourning or farewell period. Their hesitation is understandable, but it runs counter to the movement of Providence.

Genesis 24:56 — The Servant's Theological Argument: The servant's refusal is grounded entirely in theology: "Yahweh has prospered my way." This phrase echoes the servant's prayer in verse 12 and God's evident answer throughout the narrative. To delay now would be to second-guess or impede what God has already set in motion. The servant implicitly teaches a principle that runs throughout the patriarchal narratives: once God's will has been made clear, prompt obedience is itself an act of reverence. Hesitation becomes a subtle form of faithlessness.

Verses 57–58 — Rebekah's Consent: The family's response is striking in its pastoral wisdom: "We will call the young lady, and ask her." Rather than overriding her will or simply acquiescing to the servant's haste, they turn to Rebekah herself. The direct question — "Will you go with this man?" — is one of the most pointed questions put to any woman in the Hebrew Bible. Rebekah's answer is a single Hebrew word: 'elēk — "I will go." It is unembellished, unqualified, and immediate. She echoes, in a feminine key, the obedient "go" (lech-lecha) that God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12:1. This parallelism is theologically profound: Rebekah's departure from her homeland mirrors Abraham's own departure, and she enters the story as a figure of faith in her own right, not merely as a passive object of matrimonial arrangements.

Genesis 24:59 — The Sending: The family "sent away" Rebekah, together with her nurse (identified in 35:8 as Deborah) and the servant's company. The nurse's inclusion is a tender human detail: Rebekah will carry with her into a new life the woman who had cared for her from childhood. Even in the economy of Providence, God does not strip away all human consolation.

Genesis 24:60 — The Blessing: The family's blessing is lavish and prophetic: "May you be the mother of thousands of ten thousands, and let your offspring possess the gate of those who hate them." The blessing echoes those pronounced over Abraham (22:17) and anticipates those that will be spoken over Jacob's twelve sons. "The gate of their enemies" is a Semitic idiom for total victory and dominion — the gate being the strategic and juridical center of an ancient city. This blessing thus positions Rebekah not just as a bride but as a matriarch, a bearer of covenant promise. The family pronounces over her what they perhaps only half understand: she is entering the stream of sacred history.

Genesis 24:61 — The Departure: Rebekah rises — a verb of initiative and readiness — with her "ladies" (young female attendants), mounts a camel, and follows the man. The final phrase, "the servant took Rebekah and went his way," is not possessive in the modern sense but ceremonial: he has received what he was sent for and now escorts the bride to the bridegroom. The journey back to Isaac will culminate in the famous meeting in the fields (vv. 62–67), where the bride and bridegroom see each other for the first time.

Typological sense: The Church Fathers read Rebekah consistently as a type (typos) of the Church. The servant — unnamed throughout the chapter and traditionally identified with Eliezer — is a figure of the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father (Abraham) to seek a Bride for the Son (Isaac). Rebekah's single word of consent, 'elēk, becomes a foreshadowing of Mary's fiat in Luke 1:38, and of every soul's response to the divine call. The departure from her father's house and journey to an unseen bridegroom prefigures the Church's pilgrim condition: already espoused, not yet fully united.

The Catholic interpretive tradition has long seen in this chapter one of Scripture's richest nuptial typologies. St. Augustine, in Contra Faustum, and St. Ambrose, in De Isaac vel Anima, both read the unnamed servant as the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father, drawing the soul (Rebekah/the Church) toward the Son. Ambrose writes with characteristic depth that the soul, like Rebekah, must leave the "house of the world" to find its true rest in union with Christ.

The moment of Rebekah's consent (v. 58) is of particular theological weight. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1625–1626) insists that for a valid marriage, the consent of the parties must be free and uncoerced. The family's decision to ask Rebekah — rather than simply dispose of her — anticipates this doctrinal principle with remarkable clarity and distinguishes the biblical tradition from the purely transactional marriage customs of surrounding cultures. Rebekah is not property; she is a person whose free assent constitutes the covenant.

Her single-word answer, 'elēk, also has deep Marian resonance. The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (§63) describes Mary as a type of the Church, and patristic tradition (e.g., St. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses III.22.4) draws a direct parallel between Eve's disobedience and Mary's obedience. Rebekah's 'elēk — departing from her father's house in trust, toward an unseen bridegroom, solely on the word of a messenger — stands in the same typological lineage.

The blessing in verse 60, echoing the Abrahamic promises of Genesis 22:17, confirms that Rebekah is formally incorporated into the covenant. She is not merely marrying Isaac; she is becoming a co-bearer of divine promise. This reflects the Catholic sacramental theology of marriage as a vocation ordered not merely to personal happiness but to the building up of God's people (CCC §1603).

Rebekah's single-word answer — "I will go" — confronts the modern Catholic reader with a disarming directness. In an age of endless deliberation, where spiritual decisions are deferred indefinitely pending more certainty or more comfort, she models what the tradition calls promptitudo obedientiae — the promptness of obedience. She does not ask to see Isaac's face first. She does not request a trial period. Providence has spoken through a messenger, and she trusts it.

This is a direct challenge to any Catholic navigating a vocation — whether to marriage, religious life, priesthood, or a particular mission. How often do we negotiate our own "ten days," asking God for just a little more time before we commit? The servant's response to the family (v. 56) is bracing: "Don't hinder me, since Yahweh has prospered my way." God's work does not pause for our comfort.

Practically: examine where in your own life you sense a clear prompting — in prayer, through Scripture, through the counsel of wise guides — that you have been delaying. Rebekah teaches that faith is not the absence of uncertainty about the destination; it is the willingness to mount the camel anyway. The blessing follows the departure, not the hesitation.