Series: Biblical Lives to Live By
Genesis-II Samuel

Noah Abraham & Sarah Rebekah Jacob Joseph Moses Joshua Deborah & Jael Gideon Samson Hannah Samuel Naomi & Ruth David

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As we read our passages in Genesis about Rebekah, we see that they are passages that people could say are really about other people like Isaac or Jacob. For that reason, we seldom stop to read this section of the Bible focusing on the life of Rebekah. When we do, however, we find that her life was made up of a series of separations.

When we first meet her (Genesis 24), she is being asked to leave her family and travel with a servant to marry Isaac, a person she had never met. Abraham's servant had been sent to her region to find a wife for Isaac, and the servant had asked the Lord to lead him to the right woman. Whoever draws water for me when I ask for it and volunteers to draw water for my camels--make that woman the one, he had prayed. Rebekah, when asked for water, was eager to help, and she was willing to serve a stranger by drawing water for his camels as well. Then within a couple days, she found herself riding a camel with a few of her possessions and a maidservant, traveling to a foriegn land to marry a stranger. This is the first separation in Rebekah's life as recorded in the Bible.

In the last part of chapter 25, we read about Rebekah giving birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Now giving birth is a kind of separation--obviously. The child is separated from the mother, and this separation sometimes causes the mother to be depressed. We even have a name for it--post partem depression. Although we all have to go through separations--for vacations, when we move out, when someone moves away--there is one separation we all fear the most--the separation of our spirits from our bodies, death. Not only do we fear the separation from our bodies, we also fear the separation from our loved ones. Giving birth in some ways is a picture of death. I know that sounds strange, but as Christians, we believe that death is not oblivion; rahter, it is an entrance into a new world. We have already been born again by believing in Jesus, and we have fellowship with Him and taste the glories of the new world. But when we die, it will be like being born into heaven out of this world.

Later, in chapter 26, Rebekah goes through another separation. This time she is asked to separate herself from her true identity. Because Isaac was afraid that men in the region where he was staying would look on Rebekah's beauty and desire her for themselves and kill Isaac to have her, he asks her to lie about her identity and to pretend to be his sister. In the same way, we worry about what people think of us and often feel pressured to be someone other than we really are--to pretend to be like the world. In Romans 12, Paul tells us not to be conformed (pressed into a mold) to the world, but to be transformed by the power of God's Spirit. Sometimes we have to stand out in the crowd, and that isn't comfortable, but we can pray that God's beauty will rest upon us when we do.

In chapter 27, Rebekah takes up the cause of her younger son, Jacob, her favorite. She conspires with him to get the blessing that Isaac intended to give to Esau. Look at the separations that occur in this story. Rebekah is separated from her husband because she is conspiring with Jacob to decieve Isaac. Jacob is separated from his true identity because he pretends to be Esau. Isaac is separated from his intention because he ends up giving the blessing to Jacob instead of Esau, and Esau is separated from his blessing, because Jacob stole it from him.

But finally (chapters 27 and 28), there is an even greater separation in this story. Because Esau threatens to kill Jacob (the brothers are separated from each other), Rebekah arranges for Jacob to flee. She sends him back to her family and never sees him again.

In Rebekah's life, we see a series of separations, all of which are kinds of death. In fact, the word "death" literally means separation. It is important to remember that we will all experience separations that will cause us to grieve, but in Hebrews 2:14, we are told that Jesus came to deliver us from the bondage of the fear of death because He now holds the keys of life.