Thread by @TheRebeccaMoore

Today’s Sunday thread is about prioritizing your own personal relationship with the Devine and the revelation you receive from Them above men who presume to know what you should be.

Today’s thread is about Rebekah.

Rebekah first shows up in Genesis after the whole “Abraham almost kills Isaac” ordeal and Abraham now wants Isaac to get married. So he sends his servant to find someone in the covenant.

This brings the servant to a well in Mesopotamia.

Side note- if you’re a person who subscribed to the JST, her introduction is slightly more interesting than the KJV.

While the KJV on its own is simply remarking upon her virginity, the JST version is speaking more to her as a person, not property.

The sentence “Neither had any man known the like into her,” implies that she as a person was unique, as opposed to a reinforcement about her lack of sexual experience.

Remember kids, virginity is not a virtue, and your virtue is not about your virginity.

Anyways back to her story.

Rebekah offers to draw water for the servant and his camels, after he had only requested a sip of her water for himself. This act of compassion acts as the sign that the servant was looking for in trying to find the right companion for Isaac.

I’m skipping some things now for he sake of brevity, but the servant then goes home with Rebekah and discusses the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah with her family.

Rebekah’s shitty brother, the one who would eventually be the one that screws over his daughters Rachel & Leah...

The one that would eventually earn this gem of line from Fiddler on the Roof.

“...to marry Rachel, Jacob was forced to work another seven years.

So, you see, children, the Bible clearly teaches us you can never trust an employer.”

Yeah. That dick. Seriously Laban ✨IS THE WORST✨

Anyways he wants Rebekah to stay for a while but the servant says, “hinder me not.”

So they look to Rebekah, and she says, “I will go.”

Custom dictated that she say. Her brother, likely the one who was “in charge” of her said she should stay.

But she believed she had been called & appears to be uninterested in listening to either one. It was time for her to go&do. So she did what she believed was right and left.

Fast forward several years, Rebekah and Isaac are now married, he’s the prophet, and she is pregnant with twins.

God then shows up to her and tells her that the younger of the two twins is supposed to receive the birthright.

God doesn’t tell Isaac, the prophet, their father, God tells Rebekah.

Because she was just as entitled to that revelation, and as we would later learn, more receptive.

Esau and Jacob are born, their rivalry begins, and eventually Esau trades his birthright for some porridge.

Isaac is now close to death and it’s time to leave the blessing with Esau, the eldest. It’s what tradition dictates. It’s what he wants, as he likes Esau more.

But Rebekah, as we’ve already learned, doesn’t believe in prioritizing men’s bad opinions or arbitrary customs when faced to choose between what she knows is true and what other people want.

So she helps Isaac trick his father so he can receive what had been revealed to her years before.

In that moment, she defied her husband, the prophet, and listened to God instead.

He was too engrained in what culture dictated and his own personal desires to know what she knew. In that moment she was the one who had eyes to see.

The point of Rebekah’s story is you are entitled to your own revelations and your own decisions. You don’t need to look to men for either of them.

You know what’s right. Trust your gut. Trust your internal compass. Men’s morality isn’t superior to yours.