At the well

At a well once more

Sometimes while reading something strikes you that stays with you, without your doing anything with it straightaway. For me this time it was a well of water.

Last week we read about Abraham at the entrance of his tent, and along the way we also came to the well where Hagar was found and to the well where Yeshua addressed the Samaritan woman. That well stayed with me. And precisely for that reason it struck me that this week we arrive at a well once more.

For in this week's parashah a bride is found for Isaac, and that happens at a well of water. And the gospel reading that goes with it brings us to a well again, now Jacob's, where a woman comes to draw water and hears about another kind of water.

These are different stories, and I do not want simply to equate them. But something runs through them. At the well someone is found. At the well there is asking and giving. And each time it is not the human being who forces the encounter, but God who provides.

The parashah is called Chayei Sarah, the life of Sarah. That is remarkable, for the passage opens with her death.

The life of Sarah begins at her death

Sarah dies, a hundred and twenty-seven years old. It says that Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.

And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. (Genesis 23:2)

I find it telling that the parashah which is called the life of Sarah begins with grief. As if Scripture shows us that a life is not closed off by death, but that precisely there something becomes visible of what carried that life.

Abraham rises up from beside his dead. That is the expression that stands there. He rises, and he goes to arrange something that at first sight seems quite ordinary: a place to bury his wife.

But if you pay attention, it is not.

A grave as first possession

Abraham says to the Hittites:

I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. (Genesis 23:4)

A stranger and a sojourner. In Hebrew it is ger wetoshav. Abraham has lived for years in the land God promised him, and yet here he calls himself a stranger. He owns nothing of that land yet. He has heard the promise, but he does not hold the fulfilment in his hands.

And then follows a very detailed account of a negotiation. Ephron the Hittite offers Abraham the field and the cave of Machpelah, and he says it in the way such things were said there: I give it to you, just take it.

Abraham does not go along with that. He insists on paying the full price, four hundred shekels of silver. He wants no gift and no favour. He wants to own it lawfully.

So the field with the cave and all the trees that stand on it are deeded to Abraham before the eyes of the Hittites.

I like to pause here. For the first piece of ground that Abraham truly owns in the promised land is a grave.

Not a field to work. Not a city to live in. A grave.

That sounds almost contradictory. God has promised the whole land, and the only thing Abraham gets in hand is a place to lay his dead. And yet I think something essential happens here. Abraham buries Sarah in the land of the promise. He lays her there as if to say: here is where we belong, even though we do not yet see the fulfilment.

A grave is a place of loss. But in the land of the promise it is also a place of expectation. You lay someone down on ground that God has promised, and with that you hold on to what you do not yet see.

The servant is sent out

Then comes the second large part of the parashah. Abraham has grown old, and he is concerned about a wife for Isaac.

He calls his eldest servant, the one set over all that he has, and makes him swear that he will not take a wife for Isaac from the daughters of the Canaanites, but that he will go to the land of Abraham's family.

That is not merely a preference. The covenant asks that the line of the promise not be absorbed into the people around it. What is sought is faithfulness to the origin, not what lies closest at hand.

The servant asks: and if the woman will not follow me, must I then bring Isaac back there?

Abraham is very clear about that. No. Isaac may not go back. The LORD, who called him out of his father's land, will send His angel before the servant.

Here I hear something return of what we met earlier. Abraham does not force the outcome. He sends his servant, he gives him the charge, and then he entrusts it to God who provides.

There is something striking about this servant. Genesis 24 nowhere names him. He is called, throughout, simply the servant of Abraham, or the man. Tradition has identified him with Eliezer, the man of Damascus named in Genesis 15 as Abraham's possible heir. Whether that is really the same person the text does not say, and I would not make a certainty of it. But the name tradition gives him is telling. Eliezer means: my God is help. I will come back to that in a moment.

At the well of Nahor

The servant sets out with ten camels and all kinds of precious things, and he comes to the city of Nahor. He makes the camels kneel down outside the city, by the well of water, toward evening, at the time when the women come out to draw water.

And then he does something that touches me every time. He prays.

And he said, O LORD God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham. (Genesis 24:12)

Notice what he asks for. He does not ask for a sign in the heavens, not for something spectacular by which he could recognise the chosen one. He asks for a deed of kindness. The girl to whom he will say: let down your pitcher that I may drink, and who then answers: drink, and I will water your camels also, that she will be the one God has appointed for Isaac.

The sign he prays for is goodness in action. Not the fairest, not the richest, not the one of the best descent, but someone who gives. To him, a stranger, and to his animals.

And consider what that means. A camel that has made a long journey through the desert drinks an enormous amount. A very thirsty animal can drink a hundred litres or more at once after such a trek. To water ten camels with a hand-pitcher is then no small gesture of courtesy. That is labour. That is going down the steps to the well again and again, filling the pitcher, up again, and again, until all the animals have had enough.

And before he has finished speaking, Rebekah comes out, with her pitcher on her shoulder. She goes down to the well, fills her pitcher and comes up again. The servant runs to meet her and asks for a little water. And she says: drink, my lord. And when he has drunk, she says: I will draw for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.

Exactly what he had asked.

It says that the man gazed at her in silence, to know whether the LORD had made his journey prosperous. I find that an honest detail. He does not yet know for certain. He looks, he waits, he keeps it open a while longer. Only afterward does he bow down and worship the LORD.

I sometimes think we skip that moment. We would like to know at once whether something is from God. The servant shows that you may look and wait before you name it.

Receiving and giving at the same well

What strikes me about Rebekah is that she gives before she knows what is at stake.

She does not know that this man has come to seek a bride. She does not know that ten camels with gifts belong to it, and that within a day her life will take an entirely different turn. She sees a weary stranger at the well, and she gives him to drink, and his animals as well.

And precisely in that giving she is found.

That makes me think of Abraham, last week, at the entrance of his tent. He too saw people standing, came into motion and received them, before he knew who they were. In Rebekah I see something of the same posture. Not grasping at what is advantageous for oneself, but giving to the one standing before you.

About the name Rebekah, by the way, there is much discussion. Its origin is uncertain. Some connect it with a root having to do with binding or fastening, with the image of an animal tied at the stall. I would not build a doctrine on that, for a name proves no character. But it does strike me that what her name may touch on becomes visible in her deeds: she binds herself, she remains faithful, she does more than is asked.

And then she is given something she could not have devised.

Later she is asked whether she will go with this man, to a land she does not know, to a man she has never seen. And she answers with two words: I will go.

And they said, We will call the damsel, and enquire at her mouth. And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go. (Genesis 24:57-58)

That too is no grasping. She does not seize the life offered to her, nor is she forced into it. She is asked, and she says yes. She receives what is provided for her, and she goes. I think of Abraham himself, who was told: get thee out of thy land. And of what Israel would later answer at the mountain: all that the LORD has spoken we will do. It is each time the same: letting go of the familiar on the authority of a word.

From the well Lahairoi into the field

Then comes the meeting, and the text tells it very quietly.

It says that Isaac came from the way of the well Lahairoi, for he dwelt in the south country.

And Isaac came from the way of the well Lahairoi; for he dwelt in the south country. And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide. (Genesis 24:62-63)

There that well strikes me again. Lahairoi means the well of the Living One who sees me. That is the place where Hagar met God when in her distress she saw the end of it, the well we paused at only last week. And now we read that Isaac comes from precisely there. He moves out of the nearness of the God who sees.

Isaac goes out into the field toward evening to pray, or to meditate. The Hebrew word that stands here occurs only rarely, and its meaning is not entirely certain. The older translation chooses to pray; others read musing, meditating, or pondering. In any case it is a person who turns to God in the stillness, while unawares he is given what he is waiting for.

He lifts up his eyes and sees the camels coming. And Rebekah lifts up her eyes and sees Isaac, and she lights off her camel. She asks: who is that man that walks in the field to meet us? And when she hears that it is her lord, she takes a veil and covers herself. A gesture of reverence.

And then that sentence I can hardly read without falling still:

And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death. (Genesis 24:67)

There the circle closes. The parashah began with the death of Sarah and with an empty tent. And it ends with a new wife who is brought into that tent, and with a son who is comforted. The life of Sarah goes on, not because anyone has conquered death, but because God provides for what must go further.

An old reading: the servant as a figure of the Spirit

Now I want to take a step that I expressly offer as a reading, and not as proof. Down the centuries this chapter has been read as a figure. I find that figure too beautiful and too coherent to leave unmentioned, but I want to say honestly that it is a layer we lay over the text. The simple history stands; this comes on top of it.

In that reading Abraham stands for the Father. Isaac for the Son, who lay on the altar on Moriah and, as the letter to the Hebrews says, was received back from the dead in a figure. And the nameless servant for the Holy Spirit.

Look again then at that servant. He bears no name of his own in this chapter, and when tradition does give him a name, it is Eliezer: my God is help. That touches exactly the name Yeshua gives to the Spirit. He calls Him the Comforter, the Helper, who stands beside you.

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever. (John 14:16)

And notice how this servant behaves. He does not speak about himself. From beginning to end it is not his own position that concerns him, but his master and the son. He tells of the riches of his master, he distributes the gifts, he directs all attention to Isaac and to the inheritance that is for him. So too Yeshua speaks about the Spirit: He will not speak of Himself, but He will glorify the Son and take of what is His.

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. (John 16:14)

And then the way itself. The servant is sent to a far land to fetch a bride. He gives her gifts, silver and gold and raiment, and he leads her through the wilderness, until she arrives at her lord. You can see in that the work of the Spirit: who distributes gifts, who prepares a bride and leads her through the wilderness of this life, on the way to the meeting.

I do not say that Genesis means all this in so many words. I do say that the lines strikingly coincide, and that the figure shows something of how God works: the Father sends, the Spirit seeks and leads, and the bride is brought to the son.

And what it says about God's faithfulness to His people

If you draw that line a little further, you also see in it something of God's faithfulness to His people.

The oath Abraham has his servant swear rests not on chance but on the promise God Himself swore, in Genesis 15 and again on Moriah. That the bride may not come from Canaan says something about sanctification: the people of the promise is not absorbed into the peoples around it, but remains faithful to its origin. Rebekah's "I will go" is the answer God seeks again and again, the same yes that Abraham gave and that Israel spoke at Sinai. And as the servant brought the bride safely through the wilderness, so God goes with His people through history.

And the meeting in the evening, when the bride is brought home, can be read as an image of what will one day be completed. The prophet Hosea puts it like this:

And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. (Hosea 2)

The heart of this history, then, is not the romance of two people. The heart is the reliability of the God of Abraham. Abraham is old, Sarah lies buried in the cave of Machpelah, and yet the promise stands firm. God provides the way, He wakes the willing heart, and He carries out what He has said, right up to that meeting in the field.

The old king and two ways of becoming king

The haftara read with this parashah brings us to another old man. David has become old and advanced in years, and he gets no warmth.

And while the king lies weak upon his bed, something happens on the margin that has everything to do with our parashah.

Adonijah, one of David's sons, exalts himself.

Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, I will be king: and he prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him. (1 Kings 1:5)

I will be king. That is the posture Scripture shows us here. He does not wait, he does not ask, he does not receive. He takes. He arranges chariots and men, he holds a feast, he invites his allies and leaves out precisely those who would stand in his way.

Over against him stands Solomon, who does nothing. Solomon does not exalt himself. He calls no men together and holds no feast. He becomes king because it is given to him, by the word and the oath of his father, at the moment when Nathan and Bathsheba remind the old David of what was promised.

Here I see the same distinction that runs through the whole parashah. There is a way of becoming king by grasping, and there is a way of becoming king by receiving. Adonijah grasps. Solomon receives.

And Scripture leaves no doubt which of the two stands. The kingship that is seized collapses. The kingship that is received remains.

Living water

And then Jacob's well.

Yeshua is weary from the journey and sits down by the well. It is about the sixth hour, the hottest part of the day. A woman of Samaria comes to draw water, and He says to her: give me to drink.

There He sits, just like the servant long ago, by a well, and He asks a woman for water.

But then it turns around. For He speaks of a water that He Himself gives.

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)

At the well of Nahor a bride was found who gave water. At Jacob's well stands the One who is Himself the water. The woman comes with her pitcher, as Rebekah came with her pitcher, but she hears that there is a well she does not have to draw up from the depth. A well that is given, and that begins to spring up within the person himself.

John explains elsewhere that by this living water Yeshua meant the Spirit, who would be given. And with that the lines come together. The servant who sought a bride at the well, and the Spirit who becomes a well within the believer: it is the same water that comes from outside and yet begins to live within you.

I find it telling that this woman too does not understand at first. She thinks of the well, of the drawing, of the burden of going out every day again to fetch water. And Yeshua shows her that the water He gives is of another order. It is not water you grasp. It is water you receive.

And with that we come to the text that stands over this week's reading.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (Matthew 4:4)

The servant lived by a word. He prayed, and he waited until God answered. Rebekah lived by a word: wilt thou go with this man, and she said, I will go. Solomon became king by a word, his father's oath. And the woman at the well heard a word about living water.

Each time it is not about what the human being brings forth or secures, but about what comes out of the mouth of God and is received.

Receiving what you cannot grasp

When I survey this parashah, I see a line I recognise from my own life, and perhaps you recognise it too.

We would like to have grip. We want to secure the outcome, arrange the future, hold the promise in hand. And Scripture shows us in Abraham a man who was promised the whole land and who begins by buying a grave. Who does not force a wife for his son, but sends out his servant and entrusts it to God. Who dies old, full of days, and is buried by his two sons together, Isaac and Ishmael, at that same cave where he had laid Sarah.

Over against that posture stands Adonijah, who says: I will be king. And we know how that ends.

I think the question this parashah puts to us is simple and at the same time difficult. Do we dare to receive what we cannot grasp? Do we dare to give at the well, like Rebekah, without first knowing what it will yield us? Do we dare to wait and to look, like the servant, before we want to fix everything?

For the promise does not come by our grip. It comes by the One who provides. At the tent, at the grave, at the well. The Father sends, the Spirit seeks and leads, and the bride is brought home.

And the water that truly lives is the water that is given.

I wish you this week that you may find something of that rest. That you may open your hands for what God gives, and that you may drink from the well that does not run dry.