Today I read in Genesis 24 which is the story of Abraham sending off one of his servants to his homeland in order to find a wife for Isaac. Abraham did not want his son marrying one of the “local” women, the Canaanites.
The servant, who is not named, takes the job very seriously and prays that God will answer Abraham’s prayer for a wife for his son.
There is one thing in this passage that is interesting to me.
In verse 2 Abraham has the servant swear an oath by having him place his (the servant’s) hand under his (Abraham’s) thigh. This, of course, seems very odd today. A quick look at a commentary tells us that it was common to include some kind of gesture or object when swearing an oath (like swearing on the Bible). And in this case, the thigh likely refers to the inner thigh, thus symbolically swearing to find a wife for Isaac in order to carry on the family line…still pretty strange by today’s standards, but common in that culture.
Jason Cooper
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