9/28
Dion, as every Monday, is getting the Farmigo food out. Up
in McAlpin, the 3 day hangover
company is working on their production of Dracula.
And our Bible Study group is ready to get back into Genesis, beginning with
Chapter 24 and Abraham’s determination to find a wife for Isaac.
He’s pretty clear he doesn’t want one from the local Canaanites
currently surrounding him. (This issue of who can marry whom is always there in
these early stories…sometimes the other is needed, and the prohibition against incest is strong…He decides to send his
servant all the way back to the land he originally came from. (After having him swear an oath
after putting his hand under his thigh..well,
OK..) But he also tells the servant no matter what he does, not to take the son
back there. And Abraham assures his
servant that an angel will go with him.
He takes with him camels and all kinds of other gifts, heads
for a well looking for a woman who will not only bring water to him but to his
camels as well. Now we begin to see well
as places of courting, of encounters between men and women. Later Jacob will
meet Rachel at a well, Moses will meet Zipporah. All this will be in the minds
of people when Jesus meets a woman at a well.
The woman turns out to be Rebekah, grand niece of Abraham,
daughter of his brother Nahor, Isaac’s cousin. The servant seals the deal by placing a gold nose ring on Rebekah (I’m
trying to imagine that…) and two bracelets. He repeats the whole story, in complete detail, to her brother Laban
who accepts the engagement. Later, they want Rebekah to stay back another 10
days (just to make sure?) but agree to let her go, if she agrees to do, which
she does, and so they are off.
She sees, Isaac walking at night, goes to him, and he takes
her into his mother’s tent. And it says SO
Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death..implying that after that
terrifying incident with his father, he may always have needed comforting.
Our commentator Wes Howard-Brook makes much of the fact that
Abraham never actually consults God but goes on ahead on his own. And that
twice he has advanced God’s promise through the use of gold and silver. Seeing
how things usually work out for Abraham, who’s to blame him? Is his agency
really critiqued or is it complimented?
What follows describes Abraham taking a new wife, Keturah,
and new descendants including a Sheba and a variety of Midianites. And the
sons of his concubines, who he gifted and then sent away. Seems like he’s
determined to fulfill God’s promise of many descendants single handedly, as it
were.
The final scene we look at tonight is the death of Abraham. Touchingly, we are told that Isaac and Ishmael
buried Abraham at the cave he’d bought at Machpelah, Hebron. I am fascinated by
this. How did he know? Did Isaac send for him? What did Hagar say? What did the
brothers say to each other? Remembering their childhood friendship…there’s a
short story, a midrash waiting to be written on that theme. Even through the
ages we feel the emotions….
