Rebecca/Rebekah

Genesis 24-27; 28:5; 29:12; 35:8; 49:31; Rom 9:10-12

  • Genesis 24:58-67 And they called Rebekah and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will.” So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse along with Abraham’s servant and his men…Isaac went out in the evening to walk in the field, and, looking up, he saw camels coming. And Rebekah looked up, and when she saw Isaac, she slipped quickly from the camel and said to the servant, “Who is the man over there, walking in the field to meet us?” The servant said, “It is my master.”…Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her.

  • Genesis 25:21-26 Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac: even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.”

  • Romans 9:10-12 Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac:  even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.”

“Rebecca With Her Gifts from Isaac” by Juliana Howard, 1824, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.

Rebekah, the wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob and Esau, exhibits a remarkable amount of agency in her own story. She’s an even more active character than her husband, Isaac! As scholar Carol Meyers notes, “Because of the centrality of Rebekah…the ancestral sequence might more accurately be called Abraham, Rebekah, and Jacob” (“Rebekah: Bible” by Carol Meyers). 

Rebekah is first introduced when Abraham sends a servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. When the servant meets Rebekah and realizes she’s the woman God’s chosen to become Isaac’s wife, Rebekah runs to “her mother’s household” (Genesis 24:28). Women seem to run the show in Rebekah’s family, so much so that some scholars have theorized Genesis 24 originated in women’s storytelling. Rebekah chooses to marry Isaac, her mother negotiates the marriage, and her household blesses her with these words, “Our sister, may you become a thousand, ten-thousand-fold,” the first time in scripture a spoken blessing to a woman is preserved (Genesis 24:60, as translated by Wil Gafney in Womanist Midrash). 

After Rebekah marries Isaac and becomes pregnant, she talks to God and learns that the twins in her womb will become two great nations. When her boys are grown, Rebekah concocts a plan to trick Isaac into blessing her younger son Jacob instead of Esau. Jacob does exactly what his mother says, and Isaac blesses the wrong son. Jacob becomes the ancestor of all of Israel, in large part because of his mother's actions.

Because of her involvement in stealing Esau’s inheritance, Rebekah is a problematic figure for some readers.  However, the Hebrew Bible has a fondness for tricksters. “Israelites tend to portray their ancestors, and thereby imagine themselves, as underdogs, as people outside the establishment who achieve success in roundabout, irregular ways…[Rebekah] is the trickster who formulates the plan and succeeds, moving the men around her like chess pieces” (“Genesis” by Susan Niditch in The Women’s Bible Commentary).

  • Rebekah is the first woman in the Bible who is said to be loved by her husband (Genesis 24:67). Unlike other patriarchs, Isaac never takes another wife. 

  • Rebekah is the only matriarch who gets a direct message from God (Genesis 25:22-23). 

  • Jacob introduces himself as “Rebekah’s son” when he meets Rachel in Genesis 29:12.