Genesis 24:27

Gen 24:27 And he said, Blessed [be] the LORD God of my master Abraham, who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and his truth: I [being] in the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master’s brethren.

Ver. 27. Who hath not left destitute my master.] He ascribeth all to God’s good providence, nothing to his good luck or service. Men play the atheists in speaking of fortune, like those {Isa 65:11} "that prepared a table for fortune": and those Philistines, that said, "It is a chance". {1Sa 6:9} Augustine repented that ever he spoke such language of Ashdod.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen_24:27

I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my masters brethren

Home coming

Where did this man want to go?

To the house of his masters brethren. Then he had a master! We all have. No one is his own master. There are two great masters--Jesus and Satan. Can we serve both? No; for they work against one another. The one pulls up what the other plants, and plants what the other pulls up; and no one can serve two masters whose ways are so contrary. Which is your master? If it is not Jesus, it must be Satan. A master you must have; oh, let it be Jesus I This master has many brothers. I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my masters brethren. A rich little boy was boasting one day to a poor little boy about his, great relatives, and said at last, My uncle is a lord. So is my brother, said the poor boy. Your brother a lord! said the other, scornfully; pray, what is he called? He is called the Lord Jesus, was the answer. Yes; Jesus is the Brother of every one who has the same spirit, the same heart, that He has. You can be His brother, or His sister; and oh! is it not grand to think that our elder Brother is the King of earth and heaven! These brothers of Jesus have a house. The Lord led me to the house of my masters brethren. Where is that house? It is the church. Every church is a house of the Masters brethren; and if you are in the Lords way, you will most surely be led there very often. Yes, but they do not stay there always. There is another, a greater house and a finer one, into which they are led by and by. It is like this: When people are invited to go to the palace and be presented to the queen, they come up from all parts of the country and from beyond the seas; but they do not go straight to the palace. No; they first take up their abode in some house in the city, and there they wait till the day comes when they are to be presented to the queen, and then they leave the house they stayed in for the time, and go into the palace and see the queen. It is the same with the Masters brethren--with the Lords brothers; they wait first in the earthly house of God, andthen, when the time comes, one after another is called to go and see the King--and the King is Jesus! They find, as Josephs brothers found, that He is their very own Brother who has all the power! How did this man the text speaks of get to the house of his masters brethren? It was by putting himself in the way. I being in the way. That is the great thing, to get into the way. If I want to find out the road that leads to a distant place, I look up the map, and make inquiries as to whether there is a ferry at this river or a bridge at that, and so try to find out all I can about the road. But does that bring me any nearer to the place I want to go to? No; I am just as far from it as ever. There is but one way I ever can get there, and that is by putting myself on the road and going forward! It is the same with the way to the Masters house on high. The Bible is the map, and it shows us all we need to learn about the way. But we must do something more than study the map; we must go on the way ourselves. What is the way? It is doing what the Bible tells us; it is loving Jesus, and trusting Jesus, and doing things for His sake. It is trying to look on things as Jesus would look on them, and trying to do things as Jesus would do them. That is getting on the way. The way to Jesus is trying to be like Jesus. But how did this man keep the way? You know, many get on the right road at the first, but afterwards, when they come to cross-roads, and roads that lead out of roads, they often go astray. How did this man keep the right way? Because the Lord led him! I being in the way, the Lord feel me. Yes; and when we are on the way to the house of the Masters brethren, the Lord Himself goes with us, and leads us. We may not see Him, but He sees us. How does He lead us? Oh, in a thousand different fashions! When you do wrong, is not there something inside you that tells you you have done wrong? That is the Lord trying to lead you right. It is the Lord who whispers in your heart sometimes, saying, Do not do that! or, Do not go there, it is wrong! or, Do this! or, Go there, that is right! He is then leading you. And so this man got to the house of his masters brethren; and so will you, by putting yourself in the way--the way of love to Jesus, the way of trusting Him and praying to Him. Do this, and the Lord will lead you, step by step, till He brings you to the house of many mansions. (J. Reid Howatt.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 24:27. Blessed be the Lord God of my master — Here again this servant shows a noble example in returning thanks to God, as soon as he finds that his errand is likely to succeed. He had prayed for good speed, and, having sped well so far, he blesses God, although, as yet, he is not certain what the issue may be. Thus ought we to do: when God’s favours are coming toward us, we ought to meet them with our praises; giving thanks for all our successes in business, for all our prosperous and safe journeys, for our being comfortably situated in life, our being happily married, our having obedient children, our being placed among, and in favour with good men. For all these things we ought to give God the glory, and return him continual thanks and praise from grateful hearts, truly sensible that it is he that giveth us all good things. The Lord hath led me to the house of my master’s brethren — Those that were come out of Ur of the Chaldees, though they were not come to Canaan, but stayed in Haran. They were not idolaters, but worshippers of the true God, and inclinable to the religion of Abraham’s family.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Genesis

GUIDANCE IN THE WAY

Gen 24:27.

So said Abraham’s anonymous servant when telling how he had found Rebekah at the well, and known her to be the destined bride of his master’s servant. There is no more beautiful page, even amongst the many lovely ones in these ancient stories, than this domestic idyll of the mission of the faithful servant from far Canaan across the desert. The homely test by which he would determine that the maiden should be pointed out to him, the glimpse of old-world ways at the well, the gracious courtesy of the fair damsel, and the simple devoutness of the speaker, who recognises in what to others were trivial commonplaces God’s guidance to the end which He had appointed, his recognition of the divine hand moving beneath all the nothings and littlenesses of daily life-may teach us much.

1. The first thing that these words seem to me to suggest is the conditions under which we may be sure that God leads-’I being in the way.’

Now, of course, some of you may know that the words of our text are, by the Revised Version and others, rendered so as to obliterate the clause telling where the speaker was when the Lord led him, and to make the whole a continuous expression of the one fact-’As for me, the Lord hath led me in the way to the house of my master’s brethren.’ The literal rendering is, ‘I in the way, Jehovah led me.’ No doubt the Hebrew idiom admits of the ‘I’ being thus emphatically premised, and then repeated as ‘me’ after the verb, and possibly no more is to be made of the words than that. But the fuller and more impressive meaning is possible, and I venture to retain it, and to see in it the expression of the truth that it is when we are ‘in the way’ that God will certainly lead us.

So that suggests, first, how the people that have any right to expect any kind of guidance from God are those who have their feet upon a path which conscience approves. Many men run into all manner of perplexities by their own folly and self-will, and never ask whether their acts are right or wrong, wise or foolish, until they begin to taste the bitter consequences. Then they cry to God to help them, and think themselves very religious because they do. That is not the way to get God’s help. Such folk are like Italian brigands who had an image of the Virgin in their hats, and sometimes had the Pope’s commission in their pockets, and therefore went out to murder and ravish, in sure and certain hope of God’s favour and protection.

But when we are ‘in the way,’ and know that we are doing what we ought to do, and conscience says, ‘Go on; never mind what stands against you,’ it is then, and only then, that we have a right to be sure that the Lord will lead us. Otherwise, the best thing that can happen to us is that the Lord should thwart us when we are on the wrong road. Resistance, indeed, may be guidance; and it is often God’s manner of setting our feet in the way of His steps. We have no claim on Him for guidance, indeed, unless we have submitted ourselves to His commandments; yet His mercies go beyond our claims. Just as the obedient child gets guidance, so the petulant and disobedient child gets resistance, which is guidance too. The angel of the Lord stands in front of Balaam, amongst the vines, though the seer sometimes does not see, and blocks the path for him, and hedges up the way with his flaming sword. Only, if we would have the sweet, gracious, companionable guidance of our Lord, let us be sure, to begin with, that we are ‘in the way,’ and not in any of the bypaths into which arrogance and self-will and fleshly desires and the like are only too apt to divert our feet.

Another consideration suggested by these words, ‘I being in the way,’ is that if we expect guidance we must diligently do present duty. We are led, thank God, by one step at a time. He does with His child, whom He is teaching to read His will, as we sometimes do with our children, when we are occupied in teaching them their first book-learning: we cover the page up, all but the line that we want them to concentrate their eyes upon; and then, when they have got to the end of that, slip the hand down, low enough to allow the next line to come into view. So often God does with us. One thing at a time is enough for the little brains. And this is the condition of mortal life, for the most part-though there do come rare exceptions. Not that we have to look a long way ahead, and forecast what we shall do this time ten years off, or to make decisions that involve a distant future-except once or twice in a lifetime-but that we have to settle what is to be done in this flying minute, and in the one adjacent to it. ‘Do the duty that lies nearest thee,’ and the remoter duty will become clearer. There is nothing that has more power to make a man’s path plain before his feet than that he should concentrate his better self on the manful and complete discharge of the present moment’s service. And, on the other hand, there is nothing that will so fill our sky with mists, and blur the marks of the faint track through the moor, as present negligence, or still more, present sin. Iron in a ship’s hull makes the magnet tremble, and point away from its true source. He that has complied with evil to-day is the less capable of discerning duty to-morrow; and he that does all the duty that he knows will thereby increase the probability that he will know all that he needs. ‘If any man wills to do His will, he shall know of the teaching’-enough, at any rate, to direct his steps.

But there is another lesson still in the words; and that is that, if we are to be guided, we must see to it that we expect and obey the guidance.

This servant of Abraham’s, with a very imperfect knowledge of the divine will, had, when he set out on his road, prayed very earnestly that God would lead him. He had ventured to prescribe a certain token, naïve in its simplicity: ‘If the girl drops her pitcher, and gives us drink gladly, and does not grudge to fill the troughs for the cattle, that will show that she is of a good sort, and will make the right wife for Isaac.’ He had prayed thus, and he was ready to accept whomsoever God so designated. He had not made up his mind, ‘Bethuel’s daughter is a relation of my master’s, and so she will be a suitable wife for his son.’ He left it all with God, and then he went straight on his road, and was perfectly sure that he would get the guidance that he had sought. And when it came the good man bowed and obeyed.

Now there is a picture for us all. There are many people that say, ‘O Lord! guide me.’ when all the while they mean, ‘Let me guide Thee.’ They are perfectly willing to accept the faintest and moat questionable indications that may seem to point down the road where their inclination drives them, and like Lord Nelson at Copenhagen, will put the telescope to the blind eye when the flag is flying at the admiral’s peak, signalling ‘Come out of action,’ because they are determined to stay where they are.

Do not let us forget that the first condition of securing real guidance in our daily life is to ask it, and that the next is to look for it, and that a third is to be quite willing to accept it, whether the finger points down the broad road that we would like to go upon, or through some tangled path amongst the brushwood that we would fain avoid. And if you and I, dear brethren, in the littlenesses of our daily life, do fulfil these conditions, the heavens will crumble, and earth will melt, before God will leave His child untaught in the way in which he should go.

Only, let us be patient. Do you remember what Joshua said to the Israelites? ‘Let there be a good space of vacant ground between you and the guiding ark, that you may know by which way you ought to go.’ When men precipitately press on the heels of half-disclosed providences, they are uncommonly apt to mistake the road. We must wait till we are sure of God’s will before we try to do it. If we are not sure of what He would have us do, then, for the present, He would have us do nothing until He speaks. ‘I being in the way, the Lord led me.’

2. Now a word about the manner of the guidance.

There was no miracle, no supernatural voice, no pillar of cloud or fire, no hovering glory round the head of the village maiden. All the indications were perfectly natural and trivial. A thousand girls had gone to the wells that day all about Haran and done the very same things that Rebekah did. But the devout man who had prayed for guidance, and was sure that he was getting it, was guided by her most simple, commonplace act; and that is how we are usually to be guided. God leaves a great deal to our common sense. His way of speaking to common sense is by very common things. If any of us fancy that some glow at the heart, some sudden flash as of inspiration, is the test of a divine commandment, we have yet to learn the full meaning of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. For that Incarnation, amongst all its other mighty influences, hallowed the commonest things of life and turned them into ministers of God’s purposes. So remember, God’s guidance may come to you through so insignificant a girl as Rebekah. It may come to you through as commonplace an incident as tipping the water of a spring out of an earthen pot into a stone trough. None the less is it God’s guidance; and what we want is the eye to see it. He will guide us by very common indications of His providence.

3. And now, the last thing that I would say a word about is the realisation in daily life of this guidance as a plain actual fact.

This anonymous trusted servant of Abraham’s, whose name we should like to have known, had a mere segment of the full orb of the knowledge of God that shines upon our path. With true Oriental freedom to speak about the deepest matters, he was not afraid nor ashamed to stand before Bethuel and Laban, and all these other strangers that crowded round the doorway, and say, ‘The Lord led me.’ There is a pattern for some of us tongue-tied, shamefaced Christians. Whatever may be the truth about the degradations of which heathen religion is full, there is a great deal in heathen religion that ought to teach, and does teach, Christendom a lesson, as to willingness to recognise and to confess God’s working in daily life. It may be very superficial; it may be very little connected with high morality; but so far as it goes it is a thousand-fold better than the dumb religion that characterises such hosts of Christian people.

A realisation of the divine guidance is the talisman that makes crooked things straight and rough places plain; that brings peace and calmness into our hearts, amid all changes, losses, and sorrows. If we hold fast by that faith, it will interpret for us the mysterious in the providences concerning our own lives, and will help us to feel that, as I said, resistance to our progress may be true guidance, and thwarting our wills may be our highest good. For the road which we travel should, in all its turnings, lead us to God; and whatsoever guides us to Him is only and always blessed.

May I, for one moment, turn these words in another direction, and remind you, dear friends, of how the sublimest application of them is still to be realised? As a climber on a mountain-peak may look down the vale up which he had painfully toiled for many days and see the dusty path lying, like a sinuous snake, down all along it, so, when we get up yonder, ‘Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy God hath led thee these many years in the wilderness,’ and shalt see the green pastures and the still waters, valleys of the shadow of death, and burning roads with sharp flints, which have all brought thee hither at last. We shall know then what we believe now, that the Lord does indeed go before them who desire to follow Him, and that the God of Israel is their reward. Then we shall say with deepened thankfulness, deepened by complete understanding of life here, seen in the light of its attained end, ‘I being in the way, the Lord led me,’ and ‘I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

24:27 The Lord has shown unfailing love and faithfulness to my master: These words express this chapter’s message (cp. 24:48). Believers can trust the Lord’s leading because he is sovereign in all things. He never leaves his people to their own resources in carrying out his covenant work.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

He boasteth not his good fortune (as do the wicked) but acknowledgeth that God hath dealt mercifully with his master in keeping promise.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 27. The Lord led me] By desire of his master he went out on this journey; and as he acknowledged God in all his ways, the Lord directed all his steps.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

27. who hath not forsaken his mercy and his truth] For a very similar sentence, cf. Rth_2:20, “Blessed be he of the Lord who hath not left off his kindness.” The word used here for “mercy” is the same as that rendered “kindness,” Gen_24:12; Gen_24:14, and “kindly” in Gen_24:49. The combination of the Heb. words for “mercy” and “truth” was almost proverbial; cf. Gen_32:10, Gen_47:29, “kindly and truly” (J), Psa_98:3. “Mercy” denotes the goodness, “truth” the fidelity of God, in the fulfilment of His promises.

brethren] i.e. “kindred,” as in Gen_24:48. See note on Gen_13:8.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And he said, blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham,.... See Gill on Gen 24:12,

who hath not left destitute my master of his mercy and truth; or hath not withdrawn his mercy, grace and goodness, truth and faithfulness; for his loving kindness he does not take away from his people, nor suffer his faithfulness to fail; his mercy and grace in making kind and gracious promises continue, and his truth in performing them sooner or later appear, and both in this case; as Abraham believed in the grace and goodness of God, that he would send his angel and direct his servant, and make his way prosperous, here was now an appearance of his truth and faithfulness, in making good the promise or prophecy on which Abraham's faith was built, see Gen 24:7,

I being in the way; by the way of the well; in the right way, as Jarchi, in which he was directed; in the way of his duty, following the steps of divine Providence, and observing them. It is good to be in the way which God directs to and prescribes, especially in religious things, where the blessing and presence of God may be expected:

the Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren: Nahor, whose granddaughter Rebekah was, was Abraham's brother, and Bethuel her father might be called so, as Lot was, who stood in the same relation to Abraham as he did, Gen 14:16; and, though the servant was not as yet come to the house where they lived, he had met with one of the family, and had got an invitation to it, and was on his way thither and near it.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Mercy and truth: or a real kindness, so often mentioned in the Psalms. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

His mercy and his truth, i.e. who hath showed his mercy in promising all manner of blessings, and his truth in performing his promises at this day. Or, it is a figure called hendyadis, for true mercy: q. d. he hath not only been kind to him in show, and in words, but in real and considerable effects.

My master’s brethren, i.e. near kinsmen, as that word is commonly used, as Gen 24:48; 13:8; Mar 3:31,32.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

27. Blessed be the Lord — The aged servant is now convinced that Jehovah has heard his prayer, and directed his steps, and he breaks out in thanksgiving.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham - Observe here,

1. He had prayed for good speed, and now he had sped well, he gives thanks.

2. As yet, he was not certain what the issue might prove, yet he gives thanks. When God's favours are coming towards us; we must meet them with our praises. The Lord led me to the house of my master's brethren -- those of them that were come out of Ur of the Chaldees, though they were not come to Canaan, but staid in Haran. They were not idolaters, but worshippers of the true God, and inclinable to the religion of Abraham's family.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

בדרך [I BEING] IN THE WAY — The way i.e. the designated way — the right way — that way which I really required. In the same manner wherever ב or ל or ה are prefixed to a word and are punctuated with a Patach, they speak of some object that is quite definite in sense, having been already mentioned in another passage, or of some object where it is quite clear and evident about what one is speaking.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

חסדו ואמתו, if someone constantly endeavours to do what is good and pleasing in the eyes of the Lord, and he succeeds in his personal endeavours, this is no more than just, he deserves to do so. We describe this as G’d’s אמת, “truth.” חסד on the other hand, is the recognition that G’d has granted one loving kindness over and beyond what one could have expected based on one’s general conduct. In this instance G’d’s חסד was that not only did He make Eliezer meet a girl who was suitable for marriage to Yitzchok on the basis of her personal virtues, but beyond that she was also qualified through being a member of Avraham’s family. Eliezer attributed these favourable developments to the merits of his master, not to his own.

אנכי בדרך, and I had no idea where to spend the night and G’d guided me to בית אחי אדוני, for Nachor was Avraham’s brother and Milkah was his brother’s daughter. This is why he used the plural formulation saying: achey adoni instead of the singular mode as he did when he recounted these events in verse 48 when he said bat achi adoni. Both formulations were accurate with a slight shift of emphasis. The author quotes Genesis 46,21 echi varosh (names of Binyamin’s sons) as a tool to help one remember these two constructions of the words achi and achey. After Eliezer had thanked the Lord for making his mission successful, he produced the jewelry and gave them to Rivkah.

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.