What Does Genesis 24:12 Mean?

The servant hurried to meet her and said, "Please give me a little water from your jar." The servant's movement, "hurried to meet her", is the correct human response to the prayer that was answered before it was finished. He has not been passive; he has positioned himself at the well, prayed specifically, and now moves immediately toward the woman who has appeared. The speed of his movement reflects the attentiveness of his waiting. He was watching; he saw her come; he moved. The integration of prayer, attention, and responsive action is the servant's model of covenant faithfulness in the practical execution of a mission.

The simplicity of the request, "please give me a little water from your jar", is deliberate. The servant asks for precisely the minimum that would make his proposed test operational: a little water, enough to drink. He does not ask for more than the test requires. The test's value depends on what she does with her own initiative after the minimal request. If he asked for more, her response to the excess would be compliance with a request, not freely offered generosity. The servant's restraint in the request is the intelligence of his test design: he creates the conditions in which her character can express itself unprompted.

The approach of the servant to a woman at a well with a request for water is the structurally identical opening of Jesus's conversation with the Samaritan woman in John 4. In both cases a male traveler makes the request; in both cases the response of the woman moves the conversation from the practical to the covenantal. The servant's "give me a little water" opens the conversation that will result in Rebekah's becoming Isaac's wife; Jesus's "give me a drink" opens the conversation that results in the woman becoming a witness to her whole town. The water-drawing conversation at the well is the form that covenant-initiation takes in both the patriarchal and the Messianic narrative.