Rebekah (Rebecca)

Rebekah is the wife of Isaac, mother of Jacob and Esau, and one of the four matriarchs of Israel. Scripture introduces her in Genesis 24, where Abraham's servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac among his master's relatives, is met at a well by a woman who waters him and his camels; she agrees to leave her household and go with him, and her family sends her off with the blessing, "Our sister, may you be the mother of thousands of ten thousands, and let your offspring possess the gate of those who hate them" (Genesis 24:60). The text then says plainly that Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, "and she became his wife. He loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death" (Genesis 24:67). Linguistically, the etymology of the Hebrew name Rivqah is uncertain; several derivations have been proposed and none is established.

The narrative continues with barrenness and answered prayer: Isaac entreats Yahweh on her behalf, and she conceives (Genesis 25:21). When the children struggle within her, the text records an oracle given to her personally — "Two nations are in your womb. Two peoples will be separated from your body. The one people will be stronger than the other people. The elder will serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23) — so that the twins' destinies are announced to Rebekah before their birth. Genesis 26:7 notes that she was "beautiful to look at," and that Isaac, fearing the men of Gerar, passed her off as his sister during their stay there. In Genesis 27 Rebekah takes the initiative in securing Isaac's blessing for Jacob rather than Esau, and she later gives her reason for sending Jacob away as weariness with the Hittite women of the land: "what good will my life do me?" (Genesis 27:46).

Her only appearance in the New Testament is in Paul's argument in Romans 9:10, where her conception by Isaac serves as the example that God's purpose in election stands "not of works, but of him who calls" — the point being that the twins' differing destinies were announced before either had acted.

Christian traditions read Rebekah differently at several points, and the text itself does not adjudicate between them. In the Reformed reading of Romans 9, Rebekah's story is a prime witness to unconditional divine election; other interpreters, noting that the oracle concerns "two nations" (Genesis 25:23), read Paul as speaking of God's freedom to call Gentiles alongside Israel rather than about the eternal destiny of individuals. On Genesis 27, some read Rebekah as a woman of faith acting on a revelation she had received, others as a manipulative parent whose methods deepened the fracture between her sons, and still others as a figure of considerable agency in a household where the wife's initiative carries the plot. Her barrenness, prayer, and motherhood also make her a model of petition and of the promised line in Jewish and Christian commemoration alike.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.