V. ISAAC’S MEDITATION

On the return of this servant of Abraham, his embassy fulfilled, and Rebekah in his company, he discovers Isaac at a distance, who was gone out (as our translation has it) “to meditate,” or (as the margin has it) “to pray in the field at eventide.” [Gen. 24:63.]

Now in this subordinate incident in the narrative there are marks of truth, (very slight indeed it may be,) but still, I think, if not obvious, not difficult to be perceived, and not unworthy to be mentioned. Isaac went out to meditate or to pray—but the Hebrew word does not relate to religious meditation exclusively, still less exclusively to direct prayer. Neither does the corresponding expression in the Septuagint (adoleschsai) convey either of these senses exclusively, the latter of the two perhaps not at all. The leading idea suggested seems to be an anxious, a reverential, a painful, a depressed state of mind—“out of the abundance of my complaint” (or meditation, for the word is the same here, only in the form of a substantive), “out of the abundance of my meditation and grief have I spoken,” are the words of Hannah to Eli [1 Sam. 1:16.] . “Who hath woe, who hath sorrow, who hath contentions, who hath babbling, (the word is here still the same, and evidently might be rendered with more propriety melancholy,) who hath wounds without cause, who hath redness of eyes?” [Prov. 23:29.] Isaac therefore went out into the field, not directly to pray, but to give ease to a wounded spirit in solitude. Now the occasion of this his trouble of mind is not pointed out, and the passage indeed has been usually explained without any reference to such a feeling, and merely as an instance of religious contemplation in Isaac worthy of imitation by all. But one of the last things that is recorded to have happened before the servant went to Haran, whence he was now returning, is the death and burial of Sarah, no doubt a tender mother (as she proved herself a jealous one) to the child of her old age and her only child. What more likely than that her loss was the subject of Isaac’s mournful meditation on this occasion? But this conjecture is reduced almost to certainty by a few words incidentally dropped at the end of the chapter; for having lifted up his eyes and beheld the camels coming, and the servant, and the maiden, Isaac “brought her into his mother Sarab’s tent, and took Rebekah and she became his wife; and he loved her, and was comforted after his mother’s death.” [Gen. 24:67.]

The agreement of this latter incident with what had gone before is not set forth in our version, and a scene of very touching and picturesque beauty impaired, if not destroyed.