Two Become One

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

TWO BECOME ONE

Gen 24:62-67

62 Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. 63 He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. 64 Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel 65 and asked the servant, "Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?" "He is my master," the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself. 66 Then the servant told Isaac all he had done. 67 Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death.

NIV

This last portion of Abraham's servant bringing a wife for Isaac includes two main events. First, we are told that Isaac went into a field to meditate. The word ponder may better capture the Hebrew word used. We wonder if Issac recalled that moment when his father took him up to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him in obedience to the LORD, and how the LORD provided the substitute, the ram in the thicket. It makes us ponder the fact of our guilt and how we should have been put to death, but how the LORD provided Jesus as our substitute, who took our punishment on the cross. Although that is the one or primary truth for our lives, there is this event when Isaac takes Rebekah into his mother's tent, and she becomes his wife. Although we are not told anything about any ceremony, or that Isaac presented his bride before his father, Abraham, in the original Hebrew text there is no word for "married,” as this translation uses. It just says that he took her into his mother's tent and she became his wife. We know that in Jesus' time, Jewish people had large wedding feasts that could last several days, such as the wedding at Cana. However, we do not know whether there was any type of feast or celebration. Isaac simply took Rebekah into the tent, and she became his wife. This takes us back to creation when God formed Adam and Eve, and they were one flesh: a man and his wife, the suitable helpmate. God chose Eve for Adam, and in this story we are told the LORD chose Rebekah for Isaac. It is not by chance that all the events happened, but by the hand of God. This is the divine will of God: that a man should leave his parents and be united with his wife, and that they should become one flesh, a union decided by the will of God. There have been times when parents arranged the marriage of their sons and daughters; however, in our current culture, we make our own choices, although that may be a misnomer, as our unions- the one whom we marry could still be by the will of God. He could have led us to the right one, and that is still the truest sense of rightness: a man takes his bride to become his wife; one man, one woman, and the two will become one. That is not to say we cannot make mistakes when we operate outside the will of God, which leads to such a high rate of divorce, even in the church. The world and all its alternative ways of union are certainly outside the will of God. Let us praise the Lord, as he has worked his plan for the two of us to become one. That is also, in some sense, a mystery: that the two of us, Jesus and us, have become one, as He and the Father are one.