When I had finished writing my previous reflections, I wanted to take leave of our beautiful Rebecca, now betrothed to Isaac, to move on to another of the many female personages of the Bible. But, reading through the remaining text of that same Chapter 24 of Genesis, I noticed a detail that caught my eye and seemed too inviting to allow it to be omitted. Let me tarry a moment longer with Rebecca; I invite you to follow me in this second reading, comprising a few lines, but which leads us into very rich explorations.

By now Rebecca, together with Abraham’s servant, has left her father’s house and undertaken a long journey, from Mesopotamia to the Negeb desert, to reach the region where her betrothed spouse lives as a nomad. We can see her, raised onto one of the camels of the caravan, facing the travails of the journey, carried out under the fierce sun of those lands, where areas of vegetation alternate with semi-desert ones and where set roads alternate with barely beaten tracks marked by the passage of nomads, on the scorched earth, scattered with rocks and stones, with sparse bushes, stunted and dusty. The meeting between the two young people is described in the Scriptures with exceptional gravity, yet with such efficacy to make us feel, yet again, that we are witnessing that moment. “Meanwhile Isaac was returning home from the well of Lahai Roi; in fact he was living in the territory of Negeb. Isaac came out at eventide to meditate in the field, and when he raised his eyes, he saw camels approaching. Rebecca also raised her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, immediately alighted from her camel.” The writer is too skilful to lose the narrative in pointless details; in that exchange of glances there is the instantaneous kindling of true love, the manifestation of a promise given that now finds fulfilment. Rebecca feels it, and that is why she climbs down off her camel, ready to meet the man of her destiny, the one the Lord has prepared for her and toward whom, in complete freedom, she had chosen to go.

What follows is finer still, and is of surprising delicacy: “(Rebecca) said to the servant: ‘Who is that man coming towards us along the field?’ And the servant answered: ‘That man is my master.’ So she quickly took her veil and covered herself.” In asking her question, the young woman already knew that that man was Isaac, and with great discretion asks about him, referring to him simply as ‘that man.’ So, what is the meaning of her gesture of veiling her face, when she is on the verge of meeting the man who is to be her husband? Rebecca, “the damsel fair and virgin” knows that, in God’s design, matrimony unites the lives of two people forever, who give themselves one to the other in body and spirit. The gesture of covering her face, precisely in front of the man to whom she will give herself, symbolises with great delicacy yet with efficacy the whole meaning of the nuptial encounter. I am veiled for you, and only for you and before you will I take off my veil, that you might look at me. I am still a stranger to you, but you will know me and from this knowing will spring forth the pure beauty of our love. This part of the story of Rebecca and Isaac concludes in this way: “The servant told Isaac all that had been done. Isaac brought her into the tent of Sara his mother, and took her to wife, and he loved her so much, that it moderated the sorrow which was occasioned by his mother’s death.”

Isaac appears to us as a sad, and maybe also a weak, man. He has suffered on account of his mother’s death, and is in need of a major change in his life to find consolation. The rest of the Biblical narrative, that soon moves on to recount the ventures of his two sons, gives greater highlight to Rebecca’s shrewd sagacity than to Isaac’s strength of determination. Yet he is a man of peace, gentle and desirous to avoid conflicts with his neighbours, and it is to him that God reiterates his promise to bless his descendants.

Unlike other patriarchs, Isaac is married with only one woman, and thus we see in him an exemplary figure, that some have wanted to liken to Joseph, husband to Mary. And certainly Rebecca, in her virginal modesty that is also a serene promise of intimacy, makes us think of Mary, perturbed by the angel’s annunciation yet ready to accept in full faith the promise of the Lord.