Sunday Sermonette: A fairy tale

Genesis 24 is another long, and very weird chapter. Here beginneth the weird longness:

Abraham was now very old, and the Lord had blessed him in every way. ² He said to the senior servant in his household, the one in charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh. ³ I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living, ⁴ but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac.”

In case you were wondering, "Put your hand other my thigh" is a euphemism for "grab my nuts." Apparently this was the equivalent of pinky swearing. Why doesn't Abraham want Isaac to marry a Canaanite? Who knows?

⁵ The servant asked him, “What if the woman is unwilling to come back with me to this land? Shall I then take your son back to the country you came from?”
⁶ “Make sure that you do not take my son back there,” Abraham said. ⁷ “The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give this land’—he will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there. ⁸ If the woman is unwilling to come back with you, then you will be released from this oath of mine. Only do not take my son back there.” ⁹ So the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and swore an oath to him concerning this matter.

Note the logic of this: it is somehow pre-determined that there is one specific woman in question here. 

¹⁰ Then the servant left, taking with him ten of his master’s camels loaded with all kinds of good things from his master. He set out for Aram Naharaim and made his way to the town of Nahor. ¹¹ He had the camels kneel down near the well outside the town; it was toward evening, the time the women go out to draw water.

Ha ha! Camels were not domesticated in the Levant until a milennium after these events supposedly happened. "Camels are mentioned as pack animals in the biblical stories of Abraham, Joseph, and Jacob. But archaeologists have shown that camels were not domesticated in the Land of Israel until centuries after the Age of the Patriarchs (2000-1500 BCE). In addition to challenging the Bible's historicity, this anachronism is direct proof that the text was compiled well after the events it describes." Note that Nahor is Abraham's brother, after whom the town is presumably named.

¹² Then he prayed, “Lord, God of my master Abraham, make me successful today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. ¹³ See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. ¹⁴ May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”
¹⁵ Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor. ¹⁶ The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.

So Abraham's (nameless) head slave tells God to set up a ritual from a bad spy novel, and God goes along with the gag. Why all this rigamarole? In order for it to work, the slave has to pick her out in the first place, BTW. Note that she is Isaac's cousin, so the incest continues. How does the slave know that she is a virgin?

¹⁷ The servant hurried to meet her and said, “Please give me a little water from your jar.”
¹⁸ “Drink, my lord,” she said, and quickly lowered the jar to her hands and gave him a drink.
¹⁹ After she had given him a drink, she said, “I’ll draw water for your camels too, until they have had enough to drink.” ²⁰ So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough, ran back to the well to draw more water, and drew enough for all his camels. ²¹ Without saying a word, the man watched her closely to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful.
²² When the camels had finished drinking, the man took out a gold nose ring weighing a beka and two gold bracelets weighing ten shekels.²³ Then he asked, “Whose daughter are you? Please tell me, is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?”
²⁴ She answered him, “I am the daughter of Bethuel, the son that Milkah bore to Nahor.” ²⁵ And she added, “We have plenty of straw and fodder, as well as room for you to spend the night.”

No big surprise that she's hospitable -- the man has just given her more than 4 ounces of gold. We'll finish this up next time.