Who Is the Bride of Messiah?

Why does the Torah spend 67 verses on one wedding?

Genesis 24 is the longest chapter in the book of Genesis. It has 67 verses. The six days of creation take 31 verses, and then it spends 67 on how one young woman came to marry Yitzḥak (Isaac).

The servant even tells the story twice: once as it happens, and again when he repeats it to Rivkah’s family. Our sages noticed this. Rashi quotes Rabbi Aḥa: “The everyday talk of the servants of the fathers is more beautiful than the Torah of their children” (Rashi on 24:42, from Bereshit Rabbah 60:8). Some laws of the Torah are given in a single hint, but this wedding is told in full, twice.

Why does the Torah care so much? Because this is not just a love story. It is a picture of something much bigger. The Bible begins with a wedding in Eden and ends with a wedding in the New Jerusalem: “the marriage of the Lamb is come” (Revelation 19:7).

On Shabbat Ḥayei Sarah, the Torah gives us both halves of Rivkah’s story. In Ḥayei Sarah, she is the bride. The Minḥah reading on the same Shabbat opens Parashat Toldot, and there the same bride is about to become a mother, carrying twins who fight inside her. The bride and the twins. Let’s see what they teach us about the end of days.

Why doesn’t the servant ever say his name?

Avraham (Abraham) sends “his eldest servant” (24:2) to find a wife for Yitzḥak. Earlier the Torah tells us his name, Eliezer (15:2). But in this whole chapter, 67 verses long, his name never appears. He is only “the servant.”

Listen to how he talks. He never speaks about himself. He speaks about his master and his master’s son: “Hashem hath blessed my master greatly… and unto him hath he given all that he hath” (24:35–36).

Rashi notices something hidden in one word. The servant says, “Peradventure the woman will not follow me” (24:39). In the Torah scroll, the word “peradventure” (ulai) is written in a way that can also be read elai, “to me.” Rashi explains that Eliezer had a daughter of his own. He was hoping Avraham would say, “Then let Yitzḥak marry your daughter” (Rashi on 24:39). But he set his own hope aside and did his master’s will completely.

There is also a musical hint. When the Torah is chanted, the word “and he said” at the start of the servant’s prayer (24:12) has a very rare note called a shalshelet, “chain.” Its tune rises and falls three times, like someone who cannot make up his mind. The shalshelet appears only four times in the whole Torah:

• Lot lingered before leaving Sodom (19:16).
• The servant said his prayer at the well (24:12).
• Yosef (Joseph) refused Potiphar’s wife (39:8).
• Moshe slaughtered the ram for the ordination of the priests (Leviticus 8:23).

Each time, someone stands at a turning point, torn inside. Many teachers say the servant’s shalshelet shows his struggle. He was asking Hashem for the right bride for Yitzḥak, while part of him still hoped it would be his own daughter. He prayed anyway, and he prayed for his master’s son.

There are no trope marks in the Gospels, but imagine if there were. On the night before he died, Yeshua went into the garden of Gethsemane and prayed: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). If any verse in the Brit Hadashah deserves a shalshelet, it is this one. Like the servant at the well, Yeshua was setting his own will aside for his Father’s. Matthew even tells us he prayed the same words three times (26:44), just as the shalshelet’s tune rises and falls three times. It is also like the story of the bride in Genesis 24, which the Torah tells twice. What matters most is said more than once. The servant prayed to find a bride for Yitzḥak. Yeshua prayed on the night before he gave his life for his bride.

Where would the note go? If Matthew 26:39 were written in Hebrew, it might fall on akh, “nevertheless”: the moment he chose his Father’s will over his own, like Yosef’s refusal.

This is our own picture, not an old tradition. But it shows what the shalshelet is about: a real struggle, and a choice to obey.

Many readers have seen a picture here. A father sends his trusted servant to a far country to find a bride for the son he once offered up on the mountain. The servant brings gifts, speaks only about the son, and brings the bride home. Yeshua described the Spirit in a similar way: “he shall not speak of himself… He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you” (John 16:13–14).

This is a picture, a remez (a hint). It is not the plain meaning of the verses. But it teaches us something real. Those who bring others to Messiah do not make themselves the center. Like Eliezer, they talk about the Son.

How did the servant know she was the one?

The servant does not know where to begin, so he prays. It is one of the first prayers for guidance in the Torah: “O Hashem God of my master Abraham, I pray thee, send me good speed this day” (24:12).

Then he asks for a sign. He will ask a girl at the well for a drink. The right one will say, “Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also” (24:14).

Think about that. He had ten camels (24:10). A thirsty camel can drink a lot of water, and Rivkah had to pull every drop up from the well by hand. She said, “I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. And she hasted… and ran again unto the well” (24:19–20).

The servant was not looking for the richest girl or the prettiest girl. He was looking for ḥesed, kindness that does more than it is asked. That is what Avraham’s house was known for. We saw it in Parashat Vayera, when Avraham ran to serve three strangers in the heat of the day.

Revelation describes the bride of Messiah the same way. She is not known by her beauty but by her deeds: “And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints” (Revelation 19:8). The Greek word means righteous acts. The bride is dressed in what she does.

What do the nose ring and two bracelets mean?

After Rivkah waters the camels, the servant gives her “a golden earring of half a shekel weight, and two bracelets for her hands of ten shekels weight of gold” (24:22).

Rashi sees the whole Torah in these gifts. The half shekel (beka) is the half-shekel every Israelite later gave for the Mishkan. The two bracelets are the two tablets of the covenant. And ten shekels of gold are the Ten Commandments written on them (Rashi on 24:22).

So the bride’s first gifts are a hint of Sinai. That fits the way the sages read Sinai: as Israel’s wedding day. The Song of Songs speaks of “the day of his espousals” (Song of Songs 3:11), and the Mishnah says, “This is the giving of the Torah” (Mishnah Taanit 4:8).

Jewish men remember this every weekday. When they wrap the strap of the tefillin around the finger, like a wedding ring, many say Hashem’s words from Hosea: “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. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know Hashem” (Hosea 2:19–20). The bride wears the Torah on her hands.

“Wilt thou go with this man?”

Rivkah’s family wants her to stay a while longer. So they say, “We will call the damsel, and enquire at her mouth” (24:57). Rashi says we learn from here that a woman may not be married without her own consent (Rashi on 24:57).

“And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go with this man? And she said, I will go” (24:58).

In Hebrew it is one word: Elech, “I will go.” It sounds like the first call to Avraham, lech lecha, “Get thee out” (12:1). Like Avraham, Rivkah leaves her land and her father’s house for a place she has never seen, to marry a man she has never met.

Hashem remembers when Israel did the same: “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2).

Nobody is dragged into this marriage. The bride is asked, and she says yes. The Bible ends with the same invitation: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come” (Revelation 22:17).

Who is the bride of Messiah?

Many Christians are taught that “the Church” is the bride of Christ, and that Israel was set aside. That teaching is called replacement theology, and we believe the Bible teaches something different.

In the Tanakh, Israel is Hashem’s bride. “For thy Maker is thine husband; Hashem of hosts is his name” (Isaiah 54:5). “As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isaiah 62:5). There were hard years and exile, but Hashem never gave Israel up for good: “For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isaiah 54:7).

Yeshua called himself the bridegroom (Matthew 9:15; 25:1–13), and so did Yoḥanan (John) the Immerser: “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom” (John 3:29). All of them were Jews speaking to Jews, using Israel’s own wedding language.

Then, at the end of the Bible, an angel says to John, “Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife” (Revelation 21:9). And what does he show him? A city. “The holy city, new Jerusalem… prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (21:2). On its twelve gates are “the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel,” and on its twelve foundations “the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (21:12, 14), twelve Jewish men.

So the bride has Israel’s name on every gate. People from the nations are welcome, and they come in through those gates. Paul told the gentile believers that they had been “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,” but now they are “fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:12, 19). And he warned them, “thou bearest not the root, but the root thee” (Romans 11:18).

We believe the bride of Messiah is Israel, together with all from the nations who join themselves to Hashem and His people. Rivkah left her father’s house to join Avraham’s family. Ruth said, “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). That is the road into the bride.

Why did Rivkah meet Yitzḥak at Minḥah?

The servant and Rivkah arrive toward evening. “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide” (24:63). The Talmud says the word “meditate” (lasuaḥ) means prayer, and that this is where Yitzḥak started the afternoon prayer, Minḥah (Berakhot 26b). Avraham started the morning prayer and Yaakov (Jacob) the evening prayer.

So the first time Rivkah ever sees her husband, he is praying Minḥah in a field. She covers herself with a veil (24:65), as brides still do today at the bedeken, when the groom lowers the veil over the bride’s face before the chuppah.

Then comes one of the most tender verses in the Torah: “And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent… and she became his wife; and he loved her: and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death” (24:67). Rashi says that while Sarah was alive, her Shabbat candle burned from one Friday to the next, there was a blessing in her bread dough, and a cloud rested over her tent. All three stopped when Sarah died, and all three came back when Rivkah came (Rashi on 24:67).

The bride brought light, blessing and the Presence of Hashem back into the home. And there is a lesson here for us. Minḥah comes in the middle of a busy day, when it is easy to skip. Yitzḥak stopped and went out to the field to pray, and that is where his answer found him.

Why were the twins fighting before they were born?

The Minḥah reading on Shabbat Ḥayei Sarah opens Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25:19–26:5). Yitzḥak was forty when he married Rivkah (25:20), and sixty when their sons were born (25:26). For twenty years they had no children. “And Isaac intreated Hashem for his wife, because she was barren” (25:21). Why were our mothers barren so long? The Talmud answers, “Because the Holy One desires the prayers of the righteous” (Yevamot 64a).

Then the answer comes, and with it, pain. “And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of Hashem” (25:22).

Rashi tells us what the struggle was. When Rivkah walked past a house of Torah study, Yaakov pushed to get out. When she walked past a temple of idols, Esav (Esau) pushed to get out (Rashi on 25:22).

Hashem tells her what is happening: “Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger” (25:23). Rashi explains that the two nations will never be great at the same time: “When one rises, the other falls” (Rashi on 25:23).

But Rashi also notices something about the word for “nations.” It is usually spelled goyim (גּוֹיִם), but here the Torah writes it גיים, without the letter vav. Spelled that way, it can be read gei’im, “proud ones” or “great ones.” He says this hints at two great men who would come from these two nations long after: Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and the Roman ruler Antoninus, who were close friends. So even between Yaakov and Esav, the Torah leaves room for friendship.

The reading ends with a hungry Esav selling his birthright for a bowl of red lentil stew (25:29–34). The Talmud says that this happened on the very day Avraham died. Yaakov was cooking lentils for the mourners’ meal (Bava Batra 16b). Rashi adds that Hashem took Avraham five years early so that he would not see his grandson go bad (Rashi on 25:30). On the day the family buried its father, Esav traded the future for one bowl of food. “Thus Esau despised his birthright” (25:34).

What do the three women of Revelation have to do with Rivkah?

The book of Revelation shows us three women.

The first is a woman in labor. “There appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered” (Revelation 12:1–2). The twelve stars come from Yosef’s (Joseph’s) dream about his family, the twelve tribes (Genesis 37:9). This woman is Israel.

The second is a harlot. She sits on “seven mountains” and is called “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS” (Revelation 17:5, 9). She is a city that lives off the kings and merchants of the earth.

The third is the bride, the New Jerusalem, dressed in fine linen.

Now look at Rivkah. In Ḥayei Sarah she is the bride. In Toldot she is a woman in labor, with two nations struggling inside her. Our sages saw Esav’s family, Edom, in the empire of Rome. Many believe that the early believers also used “Babylon” as a code name for Rome (1 Peter 5:13). So some see a hint here: the two children who fought in one womb point toward the two cities at the end, the bride and the harlot. That is a remez, not the plain meaning, and Parashat Toldot looks at Esav much more closely.

But the main point is clear. Before the wedding of the Lamb comes the labor. Yeshua called the troubles of the last days “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8). The word means birth pains. Our sages called them ḥevlei Mashiaḥ, the birth pangs of the Messiah (Sanhedrin 98b).

And like Rivkah, many feel the struggle inside, and ask, “If it is so, why am I like this?” Yeshua answered that question: “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world” (John 16:21). Isaiah says it too: “as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children” (Isaiah 66:8). The pain is real, but it is the pain of something being born.

How does the bride get ready while she waits?

The Talmud asks a practical question: what should a person do to be spared the birth pangs of the Messiah? The answer: “Let him busy himself with Torah and with acts of kindness” (Sanhedrin 98b).

Our parashiyot show us three people, and each one models one of the three things the world stands on: Torah, worship and acts of kindness (Pirkei Avot 1:2).

1. Torah, like Yaakov. He was “a plain man, dwelling in tents” (25:27), and he pushed toward the house of Torah even before he was born. Set a time to learn, even if it’s only a few verses a day. Wear the Torah on your hands, like the bride.
2. Prayer, like Yitzḥak. He went out to the field at Minḥah. When the day is busiest, stop and pray. And pray for the people you love, the way he prayed for his wife.
3. Kindness, like Rivkah. She did more than she was asked. Water someone else’s camels. The bride’s dress is made of righteous acts.

And one warning, from Esav: don’t sell the birthright for a bowl of stew. The letter to the Hebrews says, “Lest there be any… profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright” (Hebrews 12:16). In hard days, it is easy to trade what lasts forever for what fills us right now.

The servant asked Rivkah, “Wilt thou go?” And she said, “I will go.” Yeshua told of a wedding where the cry came at midnight: “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him” (Matthew 25:6). The bride is still being asked. Let’s answer the way Rivkah did.

“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come” (Revelation 22:17).

Shabbat shalom.