Sermon for November 8th, 2020

Genesis 24:1-21

Today's scripture reading is a rather long one, so it will be interspersed throughout the sermon. I invite you to follow along in your Bibles, or do a Google search to follow along on your smart-phone.

Counting Camels I

Our story begins with the Father of the Jewish faith, Abraham, and his desire to fulfill God's promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years; and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. 2 Abraham said to his servant, the oldest of his house, who had charge of all that he had, “Put your hand under my thigh 3 and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I live, 4 but will go to my country and to my kindred and get a wife for my son Isaac.” 5 The servant said to him, “Perhaps the woman may not be willing to follow me to this land; must I then take your son back to the land from which you came?” 6 Abraham said to him, “See to it that you do not take my son back there. 7 The Lord, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my birth, and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land,’ he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. 8 But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine; only you must not take my son back there.” 9 So the servant put his hand under the thigh of Abraham his master and swore to him concerning this matter.

Now, it may seem to you, from the opening lines of this story, that the star of the show is Abraham. Or possibly his son, Isaac, upon whom all of his hopes rested. Or maybe even the faithful servant who must now seek a wife for Isaac back in the old country among Abraham's people. But I don't think so. The real star (or stars) are about to be introduced in the very next verse:

10 Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and departed, taking all kinds of choice gifts from his master; and he set out and went to Aram-naharaim, to the city of Nahor.

And now we meet the real heroes, the real driving force behind our story: The ten camels. Yes, camels. Why? I'm so glad you asked. Let me take a moment to talk about camels in the ancient middle east.

We'll start with the word camel itself. It's a rare word, in English, that comes to us directly from the ancient Hebrew language. The word for camel in Hebrew was גָּמָל. Sounds like "camel," right? When the Ancient Greeks conquered all of the Middle East, they took the name for this strange animal into their language and גָּמָל became κάμηλον. Later, the Romans conquered the Middle East, and κάμηλον became camelus in Latin, which then found its way into English as camel. So today, we still call the this ancient animal the very same thing that Abraham called it.

There's more. In ancient Hebrew, and the Middle Eastern languages that preceded it, letters were originally pictograms (like Egyptian hieroglyphics) where each picture represented a sound, but also an important thing in the culture. The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is א (aleph) which is a pictogram that resembles an ox (or cattle), the primary form of currency in the ancient world. The next letter is ב (bet), a pictogram representing a house (and the Hebrew word for house is בֵּית (beth). These first two letters are where we get our modern word "alphabet." But the THIRD letter in the Hebrew alphabet is ג (gimel) or... camel. The pictogram even looks like the profile of a camel. Eventually, this letter morphs in to the Roman (and therefore English) letters C, G, and K. We use a lot of camels in our language.

The first three letters in this ancient alphabet also represent the three most important things in the ancient world: Money, Shelter, and Transportation. This is true even today: Money, houses, and cars are among the most important signs of status, security, and prosperity in our own culture.

All of this is to say that camels were a pretty big deal in Biblical times. The word "camel" shows up 65 times in the Bible, and in most of those places where the word occurs, it's a show of power or wealth.

11 He made the camels kneel down outside the city by the well of water; it was toward evening, the time when women go out to draw water. 12 And he said, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today and show steadfast love to my master Abraham. 13 I am standing here by the spring of water, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. 14 Let the girl to whom I shall say, ‘Please offer your jar that I may drink,’ and who shall say, ‘Drink, and I will water your camels’—let her be the one whom you have appointed for your servant Isaac. By this I shall know that you have shown steadfast love to my master.”

15 Before he had finished speaking, there was Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, coming out with her water jar on her shoulder. 16 The girl was very fair to look upon, a virgin, whom no man had known. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up. 17 Then the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me sip a little water from your jar.” 18 “Drink, my lord,” she said, and quickly lowered her jar upon her hand and gave him a drink. 19 When she had finished giving him a drink, she said, “I will draw for your camels also, until they have finished drinking.” 20 So she quickly emptied her jar into the trough and ran again to the well to draw, and she drew for all his camels. 21 The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful.