Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

“Abraham was old, and well advanced in age. Yahweh had blessed Abraham in all things. Abraham said to his servant, the elder of his house, who ruled over all that he had, “Please put your hand under my thigh. I will make you swear by Yahweh, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you shall not take a wife for my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live. But you shall go to my country, and to my relatives, and take a wife for my son Isaac.””
(Genesis 24:1-4)

Abraham was 140 years old at this point and Sarah had been dead for four years. Isaac was 40 years old. Although Abraham was getting older, he wasn’t decrepit. He lived another 35 years, living until Esau and Jacob were 15 years old.

Putting the hand of your servant under your fleshy bits in order to take oath was a sign of the trust you had in them and also the seriousness of the oath. This servant was a VERY trusted servant. Some scholars believe that this unnamed servant was in fact Eliezer, the chief steward of Abraham’s house (Genesis 15:2). It is certainly a likely possibility. There is a good chance that man was still alive, since he was the designated heir apparent when Abraham lacked children.

Abraham was unwilling to go back to where he came from because God told him to leave there. He was unwilling for Isaac to go. But he didn’t want his son to take a wife from among the idolaters around him either. We wanted a wife for his son from among those who knew the Lord – since Abraham knew the Lord before leaving his family, it can be assumed they knew SOMETHING of the Lord even if they were not followers of Him. Also, getting a wife from his own stock (or family, people, culture) seemed right in his eyes. One reason for this was that he had a promise from God that the people in this land would be driven out. If God was rejecting them, he didn’t want that blood mixed with the blood of the promise. There would have been problems down the road if they were related. This was wisdom.

The sage Da’at Zekenim writes: ‘ברך את אברהם בכל, “He blessed Avraham in all respects.” This was due to the merit he had acquired when tithing the loot of the war against the Kings with Kedorleomer and giving it to the “priest,” who was the King of Shalem. (Genesis 14,20)’

The sage Or HaChaim writes: ‘ואברהם זקן, And Abraham was old, etc. Inasmuch as Abraham felt that he had aged and also in view of the fact that G’d had greatly blessed him, he worried that the servant who was in charge of all this wealth while his master was visibly aging would develop notions of marrying his daughter to Isaac. Eliezer might want to secure Abraham’s wealth for himself through the marriage of his daughter to Abraham’s son. This is the reason Abraham made Eliezer swear an oath concerning the fact that his son was not to marry someone of Canaanite descent. Eliezer would thus get the message that his daughter was not suitable marriage material for a son of Abraham who was blessed whereas the Canaanites were cursed (compare Bereshit Rabbah 59,9). אשר אנכי יושב בקרבו, “among whom I dwell.” Abraham countered Eliezer’s assumption that inasmuch as the very proximity of Abraham causes one to be included in the blessing G’d promised to Abraham this did not mean that one’s basic status of being cursed (as a result of Noach’s curse) had been revoked. Abraham also wanted to dispel the notion that his presence and his status among such people as Aner, Eshkol and Mamre would become endangered if he did not take a wife for Isaac from their families. כי אל ארצי ואל מולדתי תלך, “rather you shall go to my country and to my birthplace, etc.” This was part of the oath also; Eliezer was to secure a wife for Isaac in Abraham’s birthplace. This is why Eliezer is described as immediately taking the camels, etc.’

The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 4. לבני ליצחק, two considerations are to guide Eliezer. In the first place לבני, that she is worthy to be the wife of my son, that one can feel justified in the hope that she will become my daughter even as he is my son. This would be the general consideration of her character. But two people can be of the most excellent character, and still not be suitable for each other. Hence, further, ליצחק, that she also fits in with Isaac’s personality. When Abraham rejected the daughters of Canaan, and wished for a girl from Aram for his son, we must remember that in Aram too, the people were idolators. So that his reason must have been, not the idolatory of Canaan but only the general moral degeneracy of the land. Idolatory is primarily an error of the mind, an intellectual error, which can be corrected and cured. But moral degeneration gets a grip on the whole nature of a person, on the whole depth of his feelings and thoughts, and there, even an Abraham could not hope to find a modest, morally pure, innocent girl for his son, who would bring with her the nobility of fine feelings and morals, as a pearl for his home. Perhaps the לבני ליצחק might correspond to ארצי .לארצי ולמולדתי gives, as already remarked above on Ch. 12,1, the general tendencies, and מולדתי, the birthplace, the narrower, more special stamp of the family.’