Genesis 24:1-4 KJV
1 And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.
2 And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh:
3 And I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell:
4 But thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.
Amen, glory to God. Welcome to program. Welcome to cafe pastor Clark Covington here the another episode of KJV cafe So glad you're here with us if you haven't already check out Our podcast I was trying to think on a podcast app if you have it KJV cafe truckers hour truckers Yeah truck driver's hour there we go and the weekend edition amen, so that's on your favorite podcast app So we see here we're in Genesis 24, which is looking at the first four verses and Abraham was old and well-stricken in age And the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things and Abraham said under his eldest servant of his house That ruled over all that he had put I pray the thy hand under my thigh and I will make these swear by the Lord The God of heaven the God of the earth that thou shall not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell But thou shall go unto my country and to my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac And so we're gonna go through some things here And what I'll do is I'll put the part about being blessed by God in old age Towards the end here because that way I can get to the other stuff and be sure I get to it If we look at these four verses Abraham is having his eldest servant Swear, okay, and it's Elvis servant as we understand it is Eliazer So who is Eliazer? Well, we believe he's Eliazer of Damascus. He was Abraham's trusted servant. You'll remember in Genesis 15 that Abraham is asking God because God's promising him a chosen child and Abraham's getting up in age Sarah's getting up in age He says God who's it gonna be Abraham Eliazer of Damascus? It's gonna be my my my servant because in Bible times if you had if you were childless you would essentially adopt that servant as the heir to what you had because that was what you could do, right and Servants I believe in this time were very common. I was reading in my morning study About Gideon, right? And he was saying we're poor How could I lead anyone out of out of bondage and so forth and then a little later on he's finding one of his servants or some of his servants To help in offering to making an offering to God And so even if his family was poor and blah blah blah he still had servants So whether it's Gideon whether it's Abraham very common if you didn't have kids your servant would like be your kid to inherit things and Eliazer this says here was you know as we understand it. It says Let me read it here to make sure I get it right Verse two and Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house. So it doesn't say Eliazer We're just making that assumption that is kind of generally what's believed who's believed to be referred to here this senior servant, right? Who's in charge of Abraham's possessions, okay? And again Even today is something I didn't know my brother went into finance many years ago and he would tell me about family practices and I don't still don't know much about him But apparently if you're rich, which again don't know much about being rich I mean, hopefully Lord willing and rich in heaven, but here on earth just a poor preacher amen, but in rich family you like really rich you would have a family office and these people would like buy stocks and Things on your behalf and you would just like you don't even need like a broker You don't need you don't need to go to you know, whatever it is TD Ameritrade or Merrill Lynch or whatever You just have your family office family practice and that's a thing for very rich people They have like people to manage stuff Abraham was very rich He was so rich the king of the Philistines the king of Grar a bimelek went to him and said, please Please don't mess with us. God's hands upon you. God's made you mighty And that's just one of many examples in the previous chapter Abraham's asking to buy land and they're falling over each other to give him the land, right? You know, so he's rich God's blessed him By the way, generally speaking. I learned this I believe it was from Lesfeldic a beautiful truth in the Old Testament God's blessings were often Material, right? He would bless the Israelites his people with these material things and in the New Testament The blessings are spiritual we're blessed with everlasting life in Christ Salvation that piece of God this surpasses all understanding and all of the riches that are in heaven, right? So Old Testament earthly riches new testament heavenly riches doesn't mean that those in the Old Testament don't experience heavily riches It just means that that's typically how it shakes out, right? So this is the leazer That's asked to give a pro to make make a covenant if you will or or an oath With Abraham and we're gonna get to why he's got to put his hand under the thigh when get back from this break. So stay tuned Hey, it's break time around here Thank you for listening to kjv cafe. If you haven't already visit kjv cafe.com for more information So this is gonna strike people that read this as odd Abraham said under his eldest servant of his house that ruled over all he had put I pray the thy hand under my thigh That's verse two of Genesis 24 Why is Abraham asking him to put his hand under his thigh? This is an oath in Bible times that was more common, right? So in modern times if we swear like when do we have to take an oath? I think of people that would be coming a citizen or in court Unfortunately been in court a few times never that fun of an experience But if you go up to testify like I had to testify as a witness right at least at least twice I've testified as a witness Okay, when you do that, what do you do? You put your hand on the Bible and you swear right in old Bible times You would put your hand on the thigh Typically of like the patriarch right? So the man, okay, you're this is the same kind of vernacular or words as like loins right gird up your loins, right? Your seed right all of this connotation of like this area is where your children are coming from and this is what God is blessed Right, and I'll let you kind of fill in the blanks there, right? This is the same ritual that Joseph He had to put his hand under Jacob's thigh So Joseph had to put his hand under his dad's thigh to promise that he would bring his dad back to Canaan land and not bury him in Egypt right and so we see that that's what's happening here and if you There's a got questions Dot org hand under thigh page that gets into a lot of details about the loins etc etc. Why this is done all for time's sake and just to keep it child friendly It is again whether they're sitting on your hand or it's near the area It is a promise that you will not break because God is going to bless And there is this idea of like father and son father and servant Who's representing the son and this idea of God's will be done, right? Finally it says in this article here on God questions. I'll also I've researched this before but I thought this is a good summary That Jewish tradition says it literally means like just putting your hand under someone's thighs It's like a submission of authority. You can think you know if you had to like sometimes my father-in-law is Trouble with his sight. Sometimes I've got to like hold his hand or kind of help him You know if we're going to the doctor and stuff and the idea is kind of like it could be a little awkward because it's like a man You know and again, he's an elder individual So the idea like if you were to not that I had to put my hand under his thigh But if you were to put your hand under someone's thigh, it's like you're submitting to their authority Oh, how times have changed where kids? They don't even want to listen to their parents anymore when they when you tell them to whatever, but this is a sign of submission obedience and Abraham is making this this this Request because he's dead serious. He's so serious. He gets very detailed in verse three I will make these swear by the Lord capital L O R D the God of heaven and the God of earth that thou shall not take A wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell. He's making it very clear He does not want his children His child Isaac the chosen child to marry a Canaanite and this gets very detailed if you kind of researched this more, you know You see Problems, you know ishmael marrying was it someone from Egypt this picture of the world If you look at Jacob and Esau, you know Esau marrying people that were enemies of the Lord and stuff it really made the parents mad And so this is something that was like very much a possibility And so Abraham is saying don't let it happen verse four But that shall go in under my country into my kindred and take a wife unto my son Isaac And so he said this very authoritatively in verse four of Genesis 24 because in Genesis 22 He's given this knowledge and we reviewed this a few episodes ago if you remember I don't know if you do amen, but Genesis 22 verse 20 And it came to pass after these things. Okay, so these things would have been the going to sacrifice Isaac, right? Oh Mount Mariah after these things That it was told Abraham saying behold Milka. She has also born children unto thy brother Nihor So verse 20 gives us this indication that Abraham was made aware that there was a line there in His homeland right with his family of People and in this line verse 23 and Bethiel beget Rebecca and so we understand that eight eight children Milka Boar bear to Nihor Abraham's brother Abraham gets this information whether Abraham knew it was Rebecca or not Whether God had given him that clarity or not. I don't know but he was given an indication in Genesis 22 That's why it's so important that when you're reading like say Genesis 22 And you just see all of this about the sacrifice of Isaac and the ram being the thicket and you see all these things You could almost be like fatigued you know Intellectually by the time you get over to this idea that there's a little genealogy popping in at the end But if you sit here and study it and say why is that there? You know and you really think on it chew the cut a little bit you say oh Abraham is now being made aware That there is there's there's people there for this chosen child which again Depending on who you ask Isaac was getting up in age because Genesis 22 gives us this account of the sacrifice and then Genesis 23 gives us Sarah's death And we know how old Isaac was when Sarah died right? 37 I believe it was just off top my head and then Genesis 24 now we have immediately Abraham making his servant Eliezer promise that he will go To his land to find a wife to go to my country and my kindred to take a wife Under my son Isaac, so Abraham could say this was such authority Because number one God had given him the promise I'm sure God had put this on his heart as he prayed to God and saw the Lord's will in his life The Lord said here's what I want you to do and then on top of that we see Again him having the knowledge which is no accident like that didn't accidentally occur for Abraham He was given that information because God wanted him to have it as he would use it just a few chapters later here And that doesn't actually accidentally end up in God's word God's word is Holy Spirit inspired It's it's perfect and it gives us the idea it helps us to understand It's like these little breadcrumbs that we can see that oh there's relatives in the homeland For Isaac so Abraham's gonna send Isaac back which you may be wondering. Why is all this so important? Gotta remember this is the line of the Jews and they are to not intermingle and if you get into Judges and if you get into the book of Joshua before that. What do you read? You read about God's warning, right? Really in Exodus and Judges Joshua all of it was so Exodus then Joshua then judges You read about God's warning like hey Don't you go and co-mingle with these people because as you co-mingle with these people You will then start serving their gods, right? Which by the way, I brought up Gideon earlier He had to tear down this altar that his dad had of Bail, you know of this false God and so he was doing that with his servants he was so literally the Israelites had fallen into this idol worship and Worshipping these pagan gods because they had co-mingled with these groups and so it was an issue then it was also an issue prior to then as Abraham was considering Isaac and his wife and That consideration was probably pretty serious I mean, I don't know how old people were when they married in Bible times Specifically, but you would think Isaac was kind of getting up there, you know in his mid to late 30s You know, I got married at 33 and I felt like it was kind of getting old to get married Of course people in New York they get my wait till 50 to get married and have kids But out here in the South in a lot of people are getting married or talking about marriage Right after high school. So you see, you know, and I'm just saying in it. Totally. I don't you know I'm not generalizing the South like that, but just saying it's not that uncommon You know, we had a young lady in our church and I was very proud of her. She went to school She got her a degree and then so she got her degree and then she married her high school sweetheart You know, and it was like she was waiting to do that right like she was going through that It was like she could they could you know culturally unacceptable if they had just gotten married earlier, so Yeah, Isaac's getting up there Abraham makes Eliezer promise makes a very firm promise with Eliezer and we see all of this Happening here right before because again Genesis 24 of 67 verses right before we read the whole account of What Eliezer is called to do And then his own doubts of how he could do that You know if like what if it didn't happen which really reflects on a lot of our own doubts And of course we still need to touch on the idea of being blessed in old age because God is a lot to say about that in this word So there's there's a lot to tackle here, but I don't want to get to too many verses for time's sake You know as we wrap up and we'll just better off taking our time with it So make sure you tune in next time as we go deeper here in the Genesis 24 Thank you so much for listening. Take care. God bless and amen Thanks for listening to KJV cafe, and we'll see you at the cafe tomorrow
