A Letter to Abraham's Chief Servant (Gen 24)

Dear Servant,

 

We don’t even know your name, just that you were Abraham’s chief servant. What were you called? You are known by your job and position in the household rather than as a person. How did that make you feel?

It is clear you were trusted and close to Abraham but at the end of the day you were an employee – however powerful you were. What was your nationality? Where did you come from? Had you started off as one of the pay offs Abraham received one of those times he tried to pass Sarah off as his sister?

What was this business of putting your hand under a person’s thigh to make an oath. It seems very, very odd or was it to show that if you did not do as you had promised you might be emasculated as a result?

You seem a practical type of person who thought ahead about potential problems. I guess in your job you had to be a strategist to ensure survival.

You obviously had a knowledge of God and from this I wonder if you had been a child of one of Abraham’s original servants or if you had been a youngster when they first left the land they came from. Yet later on in verse 12 you pray God of my master Abraham which suggests it may not have been your original God.

Abraham appears to want to maintain some kind of racial purity whilst also not wanting Isaac to go back to where he had come from. It seems as if when Abraham said an angel would be sent before you that it was a natural statement and one which was not designed to freak you.

It reinforces my own view that angels do exist but often they may take the form of people, ordinary people rather than some kind of other form. It’s what the Genesis texts seem to suggest.

Did you take the standard dowry or a little bit more incase? I ask because I know that you would have had to weigh this all up carefully to ensure you got it just right.

I guess this was an important job getting the right girl and I guess your prayers were very real. English history tells what can happen to those who didn’t get choosing a wife right.

How did you know Rebekah was a virgin, was it her dress, hair or what? I am guessing that there is some cultural sign which was so common it didn’t need making explicit in this text.

What was it like going up to this beautiful woman? Was beauty something much treasured in your society? Today we put too much focus on it as a society, failing often to recognise what is beneath and putting lots of pressure on women to conform. The church tends to take an implicit line of wanting women to look after themselves but not be too alluring so as not to act as a temptation.

I guess that when Rebekah said she would give your camels some water too she knew why you had them there, and that it would not have been unusual.

She must have known you were watching her. How did that make you feel? Did you have any feelings of arousal yourself whilst you were watching her or were you able to keep it strictly professional? I ask because it must have been a bit of a strange situation studying this woman.

It seems during all this she would have been presenting herself in some way going through a series of rituals that she may have been taught ready for such an eventuality.

I guess relief went through you when you were allowed to stay the night and it seemed that this was going to be ok.

There seems to be a point at verse 28 in our bible where the tension breaks after you had given her the nose ring and bracelets. Were these the indications that you had been approached. It seems that there may have been quite a lot of ritual tied up with what you were doing.

I guess that things took another delicate turn when Laban came out. I wonder why their father was not the first to talk to you, was it that the brother was home and the father wasn’t or was it that the brother had been given the job of setting up the place for you to stay.

Why didn’t you eat first was it that you felt a bit sick with nerves or you wanted to get the business out of the way before pleasure?

Did Laban remember Abraham or had he just heard stories about him? It sounds as if you were well prepared with introducing yourself and your role and were quite articulate.

I am interested that Rebekah was the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother. Does that mean her mum had been Lot’s sister or had there been more than one brother? It raises and interesting question for me, which I have alluded to before, about the risks of genetic disability amongst the patriarchs. This inter-breeding could not have been good, but then I have recently started reading a book on Queen Victoria and have realised how closely related most of the royal family have been for many years. What was going on there seems no different to this and Nahor seems to have been like the small part of Germany that was responsible for so much of the European royalty in the 19^th century.

When did Bethuel turn up? It seems there you are talking to Laban and suddenly you are talking to the father too.

They seem to have a resigned fatalism about losing their daughter feeling that they had to go along with whatever if it was ordained by God.

It’s clear that they were all going to miss Rebekah, why wouldn’t you stay with them that extra few days. Was it you were worried about them all changing their minds or was it that you wanted to get home because you weren’t sure how much longer Abraham had and you wanted to get back whilst he was still alive. Perhaps it was all to do with missing your own family? I don’t know, but it was clear you didn’t want to stay there longer than you had to.

I find it interesting that after it is all sorted then Rebekah is asked for her opinion. Were you surprised when they asked her if she was willing to go with you.

Was the nurse sent as a chaperone or was this older woman expected to go along too. For me all I can think about when I hear this is Shakespeare in Love and the nurse in that film. How many maids were there? It seems that the household she was coming from was wealthy too. It’s interesting as I read this I cannot imagine it in the times and culture it was written but it all seems to make sense if I think about it in terms of what I know about the Tudors.

The last bit of this chapter when you take Rebekah to meet Isaac all seems a bit cheesy to be honest. I guess it wasn’t but it is written a bit like a soppy movie. I wonder how you felt about it all? Were you glad and probably relieved your job had been done well and Isaac seemed happier than he had since his mothers death or were you too busy worrying about the detail which I guess you were in charge of. Was there much more ritual to be organised which is again not made explicit in these verses?

As you can tell I am curious about you and your job, not just this episode. We know of the powerful but don’t know so much about the “ordinary” people of the time and that is what fascinates me, knowing more about people like you who were important to the wider story.