Catholic Commentary
Rebekah's Pretext to Isaac for Sending Jacob Away
46Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what good will my life do me?”
Genesis 27:46 records Rebekah's complaint to Isaac that she is distressed by the prospect of Jacob marrying Hittite women, using her genuine grief over Esau's earlier marriages to these outsiders as a persuasive reason for sending Jacob away. Though her concern about covenantal purity is authentic, this appeal conceals the primary reason for Jacob's departure: his need to escape Esau's murderous anger.
Rebekah's lament conceals a truth: genuine grief and hidden purpose can coexist, and mothers often protect the covenant through means the world calls manipulation.
There is also a moral-sense dimension: Rebekah's use of a partial truth — her grief over the Hittite wives is real, even if concealing the full reason for Jacob's departure — raises enduring questions about prudential speech, the ends and means in God's service. This is not presented approvingly in the text; the narrative as a whole, with its layered deceits, shows the dysfunction that results when the household of faith operates through manipulation rather than trust in God's direct provision. Yet Providence does not abandon the story — God works through and around human weakness.
Catholic tradition reads this verse within the broader theology of covenant and election. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God's election is not arbitrary favoritism but an act of love ordered toward universal blessing (CCC §§ 218–221, 762). Rebekah's fierce protection of the covenantal lineage — however imperfectly expressed — reflects an instinct for the sacred trust entrusted to her family.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on Genesis, acknowledges the complexity of Rebekah's character throughout Genesis 27: she acts out of genuine faith in the oracle she received (25:23, "the elder shall serve the younger"), yet with means that are humanly troubling. Chrysostom urges the reader not to imitate the method but to admire the faith that drove it. St. Ambrose, in De Jacob et Vita Beata, similarly interprets Rebekah as a figure of the Church, who guides and forms her children — even through difficult, hidden ways — toward their divine calling.
The verse also touches on the Catholic theology of marriage and its sacred ends. The concern that Jacob not marry outside the covenant anticipates the Church's teaching that marriage is ordered not merely to human happiness but to the good of the family of faith and the transmission of the faith to children (CCC §§ 1601, 1652–1653). The integrity of the home as a domestic church (ecclesia domestica) depends, in part, on shared faith between spouses — a principle with deep roots in this very passage. Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia (§§ 200–201) echoes this concern in speaking of the challenges when spouses do not share the same faith.
Rebekah's anguish in this verse speaks directly to Catholic parents and grandparents today who carry a deep, sometimes exhausting concern for the faith lives and marriages of their children. Her cry — "What good will my life do me?" — resonates with any parent who has watched a child drift toward a spiritually incompatible relationship or away from sacramental life entirely.
The passage challenges contemporary Catholics to reflect honestly on two things. First, the importance of intentionality in raising children toward covenant faithfulness — not mere cultural Catholicism, but a living encounter with God that makes them capable of forming genuinely Catholic homes. Second, it invites honest examination of how we advocate for what is right: Rebekah's half-truth strategy ultimately generated decades of family fracture. When we manipulate even for good ends, we sow distrust.
Practically: Catholic parents might consider how they speak — openly and prayerfully, not covertly — with their children about the spiritual dimensions of choosing a spouse. Marriage preparation ministries, engaged encounter programs, and honest family conversation rooted in prayer are the legitimate "Rebekah moments" available to us today.
Commentary
Genesis 27:46 — Literal and Narrative Analysis
Genesis 27:46 functions as a narrative hinge between the dramatic deception scene of 27:1–45 and the formal dispatch of Jacob in chapter 28. Having just urged Jacob to flee Esau's murderous anger (v. 43–45), Rebekah now approaches Isaac not with the real reason for Jacob's departure — namely, to escape Esau's wrath — but with a secondary, though sincerely felt, grievance: her anguish over Jacob potentially marrying Hittite women.
"I am weary of my life" — The Hebrew phrase qāṣtî be-ḥayyay conveys existential revulsion, a weariness unto death. This is not rhetorical hyperbole in the ancient Near Eastern context; it echoes the lament of figures like Elijah (1 Kgs 19:4) and Jonah (4:3) who used similar language in moments of extreme spiritual and emotional distress. Rebekah's declaration is genuine: the text has already noted, back in Genesis 26:34–35, that Esau's Hittite wives "made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah" (mōrat rûaḥ—literally "a bitterness of spirit"). Rebekah now weaponizes this authentic grief.
"The daughters of Heth" — The Hittites (Bnei-Ḥet) were Canaanite peoples settled in the region. Esau had already taken two such wives (26:34), and this had been a source of domestic sorrow. The covenantal stakes here are high: the patriarchal family was to remain distinct, a holy seed set apart from the idolatrous nations of Canaan. Intermarriage with the Hittites was not merely a social or ethnic concern; it was a theological crisis, a threat to the continuity of the covenant God made with Abraham (Gen 12; 15; 17).
"What good will my life do me?" — This rhetorical question is the pivot of the verse. Rebekah does not threaten or command; she persuades through lamentation. This emotional appeal to Isaac — a man who himself had navigated the weight of Abrahamic election — is shrewdly designed to prompt him to act. Isaac, who has already been shown to be passive and easily moved (his near-blessing of Esau in 27:1–4), is far more likely to respond to a mother's heartbreak than to a geopolitical calculation.
The Typological and Spiritual Senses
At the typological level, Rebekah's preoccupation with covenantal purity prefigures the Church's ongoing vigilance over the integrity of the faith. Just as she feared the corruption of the holy lineage through union with those outside the covenant, the Church guards the deposit of faith against theological contamination. The Fathers frequently read the patriarchal marriages as figures of the soul's union with Wisdom or of the Church's spousal union with Christ — a union that must be pure and undivided.