Rebekah

Rebekah (also spelled Rebecca) was the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau, the third of the four matriarchs of Israel. The daughter of Bethuel and sister of Laban, she was discovered by Abraham's servant at the well outside the city of Nahor in Aram-naharaim when he was sent to find a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:15–67). Her willingness to water ten camels unprompted — the specific sign the servant had prayed for — and her immediate agreement to return with him identified her as God's choice. Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent and "he loved her" (Genesis 24:67), one of the Old Testament's rare notes of spousal affection.

After twenty years of barrenness, Isaac prayed and Rebekah conceived twins who "struggled together within her" (Genesis 25:22). The divine oracle — "The older shall serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23) — set up the central tension of her family's story. Rebekah's favoritism for Jacob and her decisive role in engineering Jacob's deception of the blind Isaac to secure Esau's blessing (Genesis 27) make her one of Scripture's most complex figures: acting as the human instrument of fulfilling the divine oracle while employing morally troubling means. Paul in Romans 9:10–13 cites the pre-birth oracle to the twins as a paradigmatic example of divine election — "though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad" — operating entirely independent of human merit or foresight, and thus illustrating the freedom and sovereignty of God's purpose.