The Bridegroom - The One Year Book of Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament

The Bridegroom

If Isaac, the son of promise, was going to be the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, he needed a wife. And not just any wife. She needed to be from a family that followed after God and not a Canaanite, who might lead Isaac away from God. She also had to be willing to leave her family and relocate to Isaac’s home. Abraham’s servant knew that God had selected a bride for Isaac, so he waited by a well to discover God’s choice. “Before he had finished praying, he saw a young woman named Rebekah coming out with her water jug on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel, who was the son of Abraham’s brother Nahor and his wife, Milcah. Rebekah was very beautiful and old enough to be married, but she was still a virgin” (Genesis 24:15-16).

In her beauty, her purity, and her chosenness, Rebekah was a picture of the bride of Christ. And yet when we look at ourselves, we know that we are not from the right family—we were born children of the world. We are not pure virgins—we have given ourselves to many other lovers, spiritually speaking. And we are not even hospitable like Rebekah was to Abraham’s servant, but wrapped up in our own needs and desires. So how can Rebekah picture the bride of Christ, his church?

To discover the answer, we must look ahead to another meeting at another well. Jesus came to a well in Samaria where there was a woman who was not from the right family but was of mixed heritage. She was exactly what Abraham had feared when he told his servant not to take a bride for Isaac from the people near where they had settled—people who had no regard for sexual purity. In fact, this woman had had five husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband (John 4:1-29).

Jesus asked her for a drink, just as Abraham’s servant had asked Rebekah for a drink. But unlike Rebekah, this woman at the well was slow to respond—not because she was inhospitable, but because she assumed she was disqualified from being the bride Jesus sought for himself.

Yet he came to her—an unchaste, disliked, mixed-race woman—and made her his own. He came to her though she had no water to give him, and he offered her the water of eternal life that only he can give.

Bridegroom seeking a perfect bride, I know I do not qualify to be the beautiful and pure bride that you seek. Yet you have offered yourself to me and bound yourself to me so that I can be your bride forever.