A well in the story of God

Rebekah at the Well

Evening gathers over Aram Naharaim, the land of two rivers far to the northeast, and the women of the city come out to draw water as they do at every dusk. A stranger waits by the well with ten kneeling camels, weary from a journey of hundreds of miles. He is Abraham's servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac among his master's kindred, and he carries a burden no map can lighten: how does a man know God's choice among faces he has never seen. The well is the town's meeting place, its heart, the one spot where everyone eventually comes. So he stops there, at the hour when the jars come down to the water, and does the only thing left to a servant out of his depth. He prays.

“And let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.”Genesis 24:14

“And when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking.”Genesis 24:19

The well, in its place

Wells outside an ancient town were social centers as much as water sources, the place where flocks were watered, news was traded, and marriages were often first imagined. Drawing water was heavy labor, usually the work of young women who came at cooler hours with jars balanced on the shoulder. This well belongs to the city of Nahor in Mesopotamia, and its geography is doing quiet theology: Abraham refused a wife for Isaac from the Canaanites among whom he lived, sending back to his own people instead. The well is a threshold between two worlds, the promised land and the old country, the covenant future and the family past. Its exact site is unrecorded, but its role is clear, a public place made, in a single evening, into the hinge of a covenant.

What happened here

The servant asks God for a precise sign: let the young woman who offers to draw for his camels too be the one appointed for Isaac. It is a shrewd request, for watering ten thirsty camels is exhausting labor freely given to a stranger, a test of character and not merely coincidence. Before he finishes praying, Rebekah arrives, fills her jar, and when he asks for a drink she gives it and then offers, unbidden, to water every camel until they finish. She runs, she works, she serves generously. The sign lands exactly as prayed. The servant bows and worships, astonished at how quietly and completely God has answered, and Rebekah's kindness becomes the doorway through which the covenant line continues.