If you grew up reading the Bible or hearing it taught you are no doubt familiar with the story of Jesus and the woman at the well in the fourth chapter of John. This woman meets Jesus alone at the well outside the town of Sychar in Samaria and He tells her about living water. Their discourse eventually leads to the woman sharing with the rest of the town.
But this is not the only “woman at the well” story in the Bible. In fact, it is not the first.
Here, in this article, I want to examine the story of Rebekah at the well found in Genesis 24 and see how it fits in the broader Biblical narrative.
This chapter is the longest in Genesis so we won’t be going verse-by-verse but we will pull out some highlights from the text. These elements by no means represent a final group of lessons we may take from the passage. I encourage you to read and study the chapter on your own and see what else the Holy Spirit reveals to you.
The Servant’s Commission
Chapter 24 opens with a note about Abraham becoming advanced in years and a note that YHWH had “blessed [him] in all things”. From there, Abraham calls his servant and commissions him to go back to the land of his kindred and take a wife for his son Isaac. Under no condition is the servant to lead Isaac himself back to the land of Abraham’s kindred and under no condition is Isaac to have a wife from the local Canaanites.
Upon this mission rests the fulfillment of promises made to Abraham as far back as Genesis 15. He will be made the father of many nations, numbering the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore. And while we read in chapter 25 that Ishmael was the father of twelve princes, these do not count towards the fulfillment of God’s promise since Gen. 21:12 clarifies that “through Isaac” shall the promises be fulfilled.
As such, it is not ultimately up to Abraham’s servant to fulfill this mission. It is up to God. And Abraham recognizes that.
The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land,’ he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.
Genesis 24:7
Here, Abraham acknowledges the eternal faithfulness of God to His covenant. He describes God as the One “who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kindred”. This happened in two stages. God called Abram from his father’s house in Genesis 12:1. But earlier, Abram’s father Terah had taken his family and left the land of Ur, the land of their kindred, in Gen. 11:31. And although the text makes no mention of God calling Terah out of Ur, God describes Himself to Abram in Gen. 15:7 as YHWH “who brought you out from Ur…” Even before being called out by God, Abram was being led by Him! The argument for viewing “my father’s house” and the “land of my kindred” separately is strengthened when we note two things:
- We read that the servant goes to Mesopotamia (v. 10). Haran, where God called Abram, was probably somewhere near modern-day Syria while Mesopotamia would be what is now modern-day Iraq. Ur was in Mesopotamia.
- The servant goes to the “city of Nahor” in Mesopotamia. This city bears the name of Abraham’s brother who is strikingly missing from the list of family members whom Terah takes with him when he leaves Ur in Gen. 11:31.
For these two reasons, I believe that when the servant went to take a wife for Isaac from among his kindred, he was going back to “Ur”, not “Haran”. In other words, he went all the way back to Abraham’s real, original roots.
Immediate Answer to Prayer
The narrative moves on and so should we.
Abraham’s servant takes camels and goods and makes the trek to the city of Nahor. And as he waits at the well outside the city he prays that God would bless his mission and that God would signify who he should approach through a test of watering.
The scripture says that “Before he had finished speaking, behold, Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, came out with her water jar on her shoulder.” (Gen. 24:15)
This immediate answer to prayer shows the sovereignty of God. Surely, Abraham was right when he declared back in v. 7 that God would send His angel before the servant to bless his mission.
Rebekah is the perfect fit. She passes the servant’s unspoken test and then the servant asks the all-important question: who is she?
Her reply is glorious.
She said to him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.”
Genesis 24:24
This revelation leads the servant to worship God.
The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord and said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master’s kinsmen.”
Genesis 24:26-27
God was the one who was divinely leading the servant’s mission. And He did so because of his steadfast love and faithfulness. It was God’s covenantal love that worked in each independent element of the story: Rebekah, the servant, the well, the journey, all of it.
Steadfast Love & Faithfulness
This theme of steadfast love (Hebrew: hesed) and faithfulness had already shown up in the preceding verses of chapter 24:
And he said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham.
v. 12
Let the young woman to whom I shall say, ‘Please let down your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”
v. 14
It was for the sake of His servant Abraham that God sovereignly orchestrated the servant’s meeting with Rebekah. Jumping ahead two chapters we see that God’s dealings with Isaac are predicated on His covenant promises to Abraham!
Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you, for to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father.
Genesis 26:3
And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.”
Genesis 26:24
We see this again later in Israel’s history. God makes a covenant promise to David that his son shall sit on his throne forever. And despite the great sin of David’s descendants, God “remembers” His covenant with David and expressly acts to fulfill it.
And he said to Jeroboam, “Take for yourself ten pieces, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am about to tear the kingdom from the hand of Solomon and will give you ten tribes (but he shall have one tribe, for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel)…Nevertheless, I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, but I will make him ruler all the days of his life, for the sake of David my servant whom I chose, who kept my commandments and my statutes. But I will take the kingdom out of his son’s hand and will give it to you, ten tribes. Yet to his son I will give one tribe, that David my servant may always have a lamp before me in Jerusalem, the city where I have chosen to put my name.
1 Kings 11:31-32, 34-36
As we read these stories in the Old Testament we must remember that God has not changed. He is still faithful to His covenant. He is still full of steadfast love and faithfulness. His promises are just as sure now as they were then.
A Bride at the Well
We could say so much more about the story of Rebekah at the well in Genesis 24 but we will end with this: Rebekah was the original woman at the well but she was not the last. We read about two more instances of men meeting women/brides at wells. Jacob meets Rachel at a well (Gen. 29:1-9). Moses meets Zipporah at a well in Midian (Exod. 2:16-21).
And of course, in John 4 we read about Jesus Christ meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. The pattern is clear and not accidental. Men (or their representatives in the case of Isaac) are portrayed as meeting their brides at wells.
Christ came for His bride as well. His bride is the church, a people of all nations, tongues, and tribes (Rev. 7:9) where the dividing walls of gender, ethnicity, and social status were dismantled (Gal. 3:27-28). The Samaritan woman represented this radically-united covenant community.
Christ pursued His bride (and continues to do so). The hymnodist Samuel John Stone expressed this with his line: “From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride;”. The apostle John was making a point by including the story of the woman at the well in Sychar. He quotes Christ later in the Gospel account: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11). He has come to lay down His life for us. He came to seek and save the lost. He came to unite Himself to His bride, no matter her history (John 4:17-18).
And this mission for a bride is no less carried on by the covenant faithfulness and hesed of God than the first one was.
Hallelujah!