(א) בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּ֒שָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסֹק בְּדִבְרֵי תוֹרָה:
(1) Blessed are You, Hashem our God, Ruler of the Universe, Who sanctified us with commandments and commanded us to be engrossed in the words of Torah.
15 And she had barely finished speaking, and Marbek came out, who was born to Betuelah the daughter of Milach, the husband of Nechvar, Emrahama’s sister, with his pitcher on his shoulder. 16 And the young man was very handsome, a virgin, no woman had known him; and he went down to the fountain and filled his pitcher and came up. 17 And the maid ran to meet him, and said, “Please, let me sip a bit of water from your pitcher.” 18 And he said, “Drink, my noblewoman,” and he quickly lowered his pitcher upon his hand, and let her drink. 19 As she was done drinking, he said, “I will also draw for your camels, until they finish drinking.” 20 Quickly emptying his pitcher into the trough, he ran back to the well to draw, and he drew for all her camels. 21 And the woman looked at him amazed; silently, to know if Tehovah had made her journey prosperous or not. 22 So, as the camels were done drinking, the woman took a golden ring of half a shekel weight and two bracelets for his hands of ten shekels weight of gold. 23 and said, “Whose son are you? Tell me, please. Is there room in your mother’s house to accommodate us?” 24 And he said to her, “I am the son of Betuelah, the daughter of Milach, whom he seeded to Nechvar.” 25 He said more to her, “We have both straw and fodder enough, and room to accommodate you.”
Abraham was now old, advanced in years, and Hashem had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said to the senior servant of his household, who had charge of all that he owned, “Put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by Hashem, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to the land of my birth and get a wife for my son Isaac.” And the servant said to him, “What if the woman does not consent to follow me to this land, shall I then take your son back to the land from which you came?” Abraham answered him, “On no account must you take my son back there! Hashem, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from my native land, who promised me on oath, saying, ‘I will assign this land to your offspring’—They will send Their angel before you, and you will get a wife for my son from there. And if the woman does not consent to follow you, you shall then be clear of this oath to me; but do not take my son back there.” So the servant put his hand under the thigh of his master Abraham and swore to him as bidden. Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and set out, taking with him all the bounty of his master; and he made his way to Aram-naharaim, to the city of Nahor. He made the camels kneel down by the well outside the city, at evening time, the time when women come out to draw water. And he said, “O Hashem, God of my master Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham: Here I stand by the spring as the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water; let the maiden to whom I say, ‘Please, lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels’—let her be the one whom You have decreed for Your servant Isaac. Thereby shall I know that You have dealt graciously with my master.” He had scarcely finished speaking, when Rebekah, who was born to Bethuel, the son of Milcah the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, came out with her jar on her shoulder. The maiden was very beautiful, a virgin whom no man had known. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up. The servant ran toward her and said, “Please, let me sip a little water from your jar.” “Drink, my lord,” she said, and she quickly lowered her jar upon her hand and let him drink. When she had let him drink his fill, she said, “I will also draw for your camels, until they finish drinking.” Quickly emptying her jar into the trough, she ran back to the well to draw, and she drew for all his camels. The man, meanwhile, stood gazing at her, silently wondering whether the LORD had made his errand successful or not. When the camels had finished drinking, the man took a gold nose-ring weighing a half-shekel, and two gold bands for her arms, ten shekels in weight. “Pray tell me,” he said, “whose daughter are you? Is there room in your father’s house for us to spend the night?” She replied, “I am the daughter of Bethuel the son of Milcah, whom she bore to Nahor.”
Avraham is the one who charges Eliezer with the mission. It follows that Avraham’s will would have been Eliezer’s only consideration. He could have merely completed his assignment and taken satisfaction in that. Eliezer’s greatness is in his realization that though Yitzhak isn’t there to command him, Yitzhak is the one to whom he is morally responsible. It is Yitzhak who is going to be most affected by the decisions that Eliezer will make, the woman that he will select. Eliezer chooses to act in Yitzhak’s best interest, even though it would have been easier and more expedient for him to obey the minimum requirement set forth by Avraham.
This is what it means to be lovingly responsible. Eliezer looks beyond the minimal scope of his obligation—a bride for the son of his master—to the real responsibility that he has—a woman of good character to be wed to Yitzhak. Eliezer is not concerned with doing what he has to, he is concerned about doing what he should. Responsibility is making sure that you do what you need to. But loving responsibility is making sure that you look at the people who are affected by your actions and try to behave in the way that most benefits them, not in the way that most efficiently exempts you.
To be sure, the test the servant constructs works to establish “nobility of character. The ideal wife must be hospitable to strangers, kind to animals, and willing to give of herself to others.”4 But it is also checks for energy, industriousness, and raw physical strength.5 As Sternberg notes, “It is a stiff test… since it would require far more than common civility to volunteer to water ‘ten’ thirsty camels.”6
All of this is obviously important, but I suspect something deeper may underlie the servant’s test. He plans to ask the young woman for water, but the real measure of her appropriateness for Isaac is whether she offers to water the camels without his prompting. On one level, of course, this is simply a test of her generosity: She is so kind that she does more than she is asked, and beyond her concern for people, she cares also for the needs of animals. But at another level, the servant may understand something critical about traumatized, taciturn Isaac: He is not capable of asking for everything he needs. A suitable wife for Isaac will need not only to listen to what he says, but also to try and intuit what he cannot say. The servant’s test is about compassion, but it is also about sensitivity and discernment, about responding to unspoken needs and yearnings.