Preaching and Reading the Old Testament Lessons
It may seem rather startling to read in verse 20 of this passage that Isaac is forty years old when he marries Rebekah. In the text of Genesis 24 that we looked at last Sunday, Isaac was just a young man of marriageable age, for whom his father Abraham was obliged to find a wife. The disparity in the accounts is due to the fact that we have two sources woven together here. Verses 19-20 of our text today come from the priestly source. Chapter 24 and 25:21-34 come from the Yahwist source, and the two sources differ in their chronologies.