Isaac Was the Only Patriarch Who Loved One Woman His Whole Life

Among the three patriarchs, Isaac is the quietest. Abraham negotiates, battles, and argues with God. Jacob wrestles, schemes, and flees. Isaac plants a field, digs wells, and stays put. But the Torah describes his marriage to Rebecca with a verb it uses nowhere else in the patriarchal narratives: "And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebecca, and she became his wife, and he loved her" (Genesis 24:67). Not the other way around — first love, then marriage. First marriage, then love. The love is confirmed after the fact, and it is recorded as his primary consolation after his mother's death. The rabbis found this sequence charged with meaning.

The Mission of Eliezer — A Servant on a Sacred Errand

The marriage begins with one of the longest single narratives in Genesis. Abraham, old and nearing death, summons his chief servant (identified in rabbinic tradition as Eliezer of Damascus) and sends him on an unusual mission: travel to Haran, to Abraham's family, and find a wife for Isaac from among his own people. The servant is not to take a wife from the Canaanites. If the woman refuses to come, the servant is released from his oath — but Isaac must not go back to Haran himself.

The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (published 1909-1938) elaborates on Eliezer's journey extensively, drawing on the Midrash Rabbah on Genesis (Bereshit Rabbah 59:8-11, c. 400-500 CE). The midrash notes a miracle: the journey that should have taken days was compressed into hours. Eliezer arrived in Haran on the same day he set out. At the well outside the city, he prayed a very specific prayer — one that the rabbis described as so bold it bordered on presumptuous: he asked God to make whatever woman offered to water not only him but also his camels to be the intended wife. He essentially told God exactly what to do. The rabbis were divided on this. Some said Eliezer was trusting God's guidance; others said he was testing God in a way that wasn't entirely appropriate.

Rebecca's Character at the Well

Rebecca appears before Eliezer finishes praying. She is described as very beautiful, as a virgin, and as going down to the well with her jar. She fills it, comes up, and Eliezer runs to meet her and asks for a drink. She gives it — and then, without being asked, says: "I will draw water for your camels also, until they have done drinking." She goes back to the well again and again, for ten camels that can each drink forty liters of water. This was not a small gesture. The Midrash Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah 60:5) calculates the labor involved and praises Rebecca's action as an extraordinary display of kindness — chesed — that exceeded any reasonable social obligation.

When Eliezer asks whose daughter she is and whether there is room in her father's house for the night, Rebecca identifies herself and answers both questions generously before inviting him home. The Midrash Tanchuma (c. 9th century CE, Chayei Sarah 3) notes that Rebecca demonstrated all three qualities that define a suitable wife for the patriarchal line: modesty (she lowered her jar before a stranger), generosity (she watered ten camels), and clarity (she answered directly and hospitably). Eliezer saw all three in the space of minutes and bowed his head in gratitude to God.

Did Rebecca Choose This Marriage?

The question of Rebecca's consent is one the text handles with unusual specificity. After the extended negotiations with Laban and Bethuel, and after Eliezer has explained his mission and given gifts, Laban and Bethuel say: "The thing has come from the Lord — we cannot say to you good or bad. Here is Rebecca; take her and go." But then, the next morning, when Eliezer wants to leave immediately, Laban and the mother say: "Let the young woman stay with us ten days or so." Eliezer presses to leave.

And then the family does something unusual: they ask Rebecca directly. "Will you go with this man?" And Rebecca says: "I will go." The Midrash Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah 60:12) reads this exchange as evidence that even in a framework where marriages were arranged, Rebecca's consent was considered necessary and was explicitly sought. She was asked. She answered. The marriage was her choice.

Isaac at the Field at Evening

The moment of their first meeting is one of the most poetically rendered scenes in Genesis. Isaac is described as going out to meditate (lasuach) in the field at evening — a verb the rabbis read as the institution of the afternoon prayer (minchah). He lifts his eyes and sees camels coming. Rebecca lifts her eyes and sees Isaac. She asks Eliezer who the man is. When told it is her master, she covers herself with her veil.

The Zohar (first published c. 1290 CE in Castile, Spain, Zohar I:133b) reads this mutual seeing — each lifting eyes to see the other simultaneously — as a sign of their soul-connection, a recognition that preceded formal introduction. The veil Rebecca took is the same tradition that connects to the Sinai revelation: the veil is a sign of appropriate awe before something luminous and sacred. Isaac, going out to pray at the hour when Abraham's prayer had been answered and the covenant was sealed, meets his wife in the act of prayer. The rabbis found this symmetry exact and deliberate.

The Tent of Sarah and the Consolation of Love

Isaac brought Rebecca into his mother Sarah's tent, and the text says three things happened: the tent became Sarah's tent again (the clouds and light that had filled it during Sarah's lifetime, which had departed at her death, returned), the blessing returned to the Shabbat lights, and the dough was again blessed. All three are rabbinic expansions of the single verse, found in the Midrash Rabbah (Bereshit Rabbah 60:16), that read Rebecca's arrival as a restoration of what Sarah's presence had embodied.

Then the text says: "and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." The Legends of the Jews and the midrashic tradition read this as a description of how love functions in grief — not replacing what was lost, but re-inhabiting a space that had been emptied. Isaac was not simply a lonely man who found a wife. He was a man who had nearly been sacrificed on a mountain, who had lost his mother, who had been protected and shaped by forces beyond his control — and in Rebecca he found, for the first time, someone who had chosen him specifically, on a road in Canaan, in the last light of an afternoon.

Explore the full Isaac and Rebecca narrative and its rabbinic elaborations across our collection at jewishmythology.com.