What Does Genesis 24:29 Mean?

Then he and the men who were with him ate and drank and spent the night there. When they got up the next morning, he said, "Send me on my way to my master." The meal that was deferred until the mission was presented is now finally received. The servant eats only after the covenant business is complete: the oath has been fulfilled up to the point of family consent; now the practical hospitality is accepted. The sequence, mission before meal, is maintained right through to the end of the evening at the house. The character the servant displayed at the well and in the house is consistent throughout: the mission governs the schedule.

The request to be "sent on his way to his master" the morning after the agreement is the servant's refusal to extend the stay beyond what the mission requires. He has completed the objective; he has eaten; he has rested; now he wants to return. The urgency to return is not impatience with the hospitality but the mission-consciousness that has shaped every decision since the oath was taken. He left Canaan with a purpose; the purpose has been accomplished in Mesopotamia; the return is the next required action.

The discipline of the servant's timetable, arriving, praying, acting, worshiping, presenting the mission, accepting hospitality, returning, models what Jesus describes when he sends the seventy-two in Luke 10: "move from house to house... heal the sick who are there and tell them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'" The servant's movement has the same focused intentionality: arrive at the specific place, accomplish the specific mission, receive the specific hospitality appropriate to the mission's completion, and return. The kingdom mission has a schedule that self-awareness and self-interest do not set.