Why did rebekah veil her face

He raised his eyes and saw, and, behold, camels were coming! Rebekah raised her eyes and saw Isaac, and she fell [ va-tipol ] from her camel. This first meeting between Isaac and Rebekah reads like a comedy of errors. Melancholy, the patriarch is cast in the long shadows of early evening, in a meditative stroll, lost in his desert-dwelling mind.

She is maudlin, the smell of camels in her nostrils and the grit of sand in her hair, fingers, and toes. There is no love-at-first-sight. Their eyes do not meet, for he, marked by early myopia, sees the camels in the distance while she sees him and falls from her camel. No, she falls. When she realizes he is the one she is destined to marry, she veils herself, sealing the asymmetry of their first sight with a piece of cloth.

What does she see in Isaac that so alarms her, sets her off balance? And why does she then veil herself? And from that moment onward, fear was imprinted in her heart…. The Netziv suggests that this moment is prescient of the gap between husband and wife that would hold from that first meeting onward. Rebekah is shrouded in her own modesty, a mere pawn in the divine game where the main players—Isaac, Jacob, and Esau—wrangle over blessing and birthright.

Yet the veiling of the bride was not a symbol of modesty in the Ancient Near East, as a woman did not remain veiled after marriage. Rather, it is a sign of betrothal. The Ancient Near Eastern sources suggest that it was the groom or his family who veiled the bride, as in the bedeken ceremony today.

Why is Rebekah not veiled in Haran by the servant? The scarf, perhaps made of a gauzy material, porous to light and air, allows her to continue seeing the other while her face is obscured to him. It anticipates the three acts in which Rebekah strikes out on her own, beyond the purview of her husband: in consulting God over the tumult in her belly, in disguising Jacob as Esau to be blessed by the blind patriarch, and in concocting a cover story as to why the blessed son must now leave for Padan-aram.

Call it subterfuge. Call it feminine wile. The veil gives her the gift of privacy, the ability to know an inner world wholly her own, free from the roving eye of the outside world and free of social norms. It opens the interior eye. And through the gauze, the blurring of lines, a crack of light breaks through. The Bridge between Rebekah and Tamar. Yet it is the veiling of women that presents the most evocative parallel between the stories. Judah and Tamar. The narratives of Judah and Tamar Gen.

It tells us how the nefarious Judah, who initiated the scheme to sell his brother into slavery, became the hero who offered himself instead of Benjamin, as surety for his brother Gen. Rebecca could have stood with Isaac then as a collaborator, not an opponent. Isaac had the power of prayer at the moment he and his wife met and later the power of blessing. Had Rebecca chosen to be open to both prayer and blessing rather than veiling herself off from the world and closing herself into a one dimensional worldview, they could have together created a home with appropriate blessings for both their sons, instead of driving them both away, Jacob back to Paddan Aram and Esau to the Canaanite women.

The Jewish Week is always here for you. We need your support now. Your contribution will help us bring you vital news and frequent updates about the impact of COVID By wrapping herself in this vail Rebekah notified that she was the bride. Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary Abraham's servant, as one that chose his work before his pleasure, was for hastening home.

Lingering and loitering no way become a wise and good man who is faithful to his duty. As children ought not to marry without their parents' consent, so parents ought not to marry them without their own. Rebekah consented, not only to go, but to go at once. The goodness of Rebekah's character shows there was nothing wrong in her answer, though it be not agreeable to modern customs among us.

We may hope that she had such an idea of the religion and godliness in the family she was to go to, as made her willing to forget her own people and her father's house. Her friends dismiss her with suitable attendants, and with hearty good wishes. They blessed Rebekah. When our relations are entering into a new condition, we ought by prayer to commend them to the blessing and grace of God.

Isaac was well employed when he met Rebekah. He went out to take the advantage of a silent evening, and a solitary place, for meditation and prayer; those divine exercises by which we converse with God and our own hearts.

Holy souls love retirement; it will do us good to be often alone, if rightly employed; and we are never less alone than when alone. Observe what an affectionate son Isaac was: it was about three years since his mother died, and yet he was not, till now, comforted. See also what an affectionate husband he was to his wife.

On the one hand, a loving marriage embraces the union, intimacy and selfless sharing of two lives. On the other hand, a successful marriage supports and fosters the personal growth and unique journeys of each partner throughout their lives.

At a Jewish wedding, the chuppah represents the holy union of a bride and groom as they create a shared home together. The gossamer veil suggests that in the midst of their deep connection, each spouse will retain a healthy independence. Covid Read the latest updates Here. Author Nancy Abramson David M. Boino Rachel Bovitz Yonatan Y. Diamond Ryan Dulkin Arnold M.