Parashat Hayyei Sarah
Genesis 23:1 – 25:18
After Sarah’s death, which opens our reading, Abraham, sensing his own mortality, seeks to insure his succession through his son Isaac. He sends his faithful servant to find a wife for Isaac by going back to his family in Mesopotamia. The story of the servant’s mission is told and then allowed to be retold in the servant’s own words. I have always been struck by this expansive repetitiveness. (See my Torah Sparks from 2015, which cite my discussion from 2012, as well.)
Another aspect of the Torah’s desire to celebrate Her own retelling might be found in a detail of the narration. The Torah tells us that, as he embarks on his long trip, “the servant took along 10 of his master’s camels.” (Gen. 24:10) The camels play an important role in the unfolding of the story. They pose a real challenge to Rebecca when she offers to give the thirsty servant and his animals water to drink. Camels drink a lot of water! Thus, Rebecca’s offer to water them exhibits generosity and care, but also great strength and determination.
But there is one problem with this detail. Alert readers who have learned from modern researches into the history of the ancient Near East, point out that camels were not commonly domesticated at the time this story was supposed to have happened. The servant could not reasonably be believed to have taken camels on his caravan – maybe donkeys, but not camels. So modern Bible scholars view this text as anachronistic, composed not at the time of its occurrence, but much later.
Viewed in this way, we should appreciate that what we have before us, in our text, is a dizzying example of an ancient updated retelling of a tale that is meant to be told and retold. We have the narrator’s first version and then the servant’s own personal version of the tale, with its changes and variations from the original telling. But we can now understand that the narrator’s “original” version is actually his own original version of an older “original” version of the tale, in which the earlier version surely did not include camels!
The narrator’s version is an updated version, told with details that made the story more vivid for later generations. It turns out that the camels were not only meant to impress Rebecca and her family. They were also meant to impress us, the audience for the story. It would be as if, telling the story today, we said that the servant left with a caravan of tractor trailers, all laden with goods to impress the bride’s family. None of us would be fooled by the anachronistic substitution. But we would enjoy the image of the servant’s extravagant retinue. In this way the story would continue to stay alive for us. Just as Abraham wanted to make sure that his line would have a future, so does the Torah, Herself, worry about Her own posterity. We, Her faithful servants, are tasked with finding the most vivid and, yet, truthful ways of telling and retelling Her stories from generation to generation.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein
Subscribe to Rabbi Greenstein’s weekly d’var Torah
Image: commercial stock image by Kenny Tong is licensed via depositphotos.com
- Toby Stein: In Memoriam - Thu, Feb 8, 2024
- Faithfulness and Hope: Parashat Sh’lach - Thu, Jun 23, 2022
- Past Their Prime: Parashat B’ha`a lot’kha - Thu, Jun 16, 2022