What Does Genesis 24:51 Mean?

So they sent away their sister Rebekah and her nurse, with Abraham's servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her, "Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands; may your offspring possess the gates of their enemies." Then Rebekah and her female servants got ready and mounted the camels and went back with the man. The departing blessing, "increase to thousands upon thousands; possess the gates of your enemies", is the Mesopotamian family's farewell in the language of the Abrahamic covenant. They are not aware of the theological precision of what they say, but the language they choose echoes Abraham's blessing at the end of the Akedah in chapter 22:17. The covenantal vocabulary reaches Nahor's household and returns to Canaan in the mouths of those who sent the covenant bride on her way.

The departure with the female servants and the nurse on camels is the correct social form of the bride's legitimate release: she leaves with her own attendants, with the family's blessing, and with all parties' formal consent. The elaborateness of chapter 24's process, oath, journey, prayer, test, worship, negotiation, gifts, consent, blessing, is the chapter's insistence that the covenant heir's marriage was formed correctly at every stage. Nothing was shortcuts; nothing was informal. The covenant heir's household was established with the same care that Abraham brought to the covenant itself.

The nurse who accompanies Rebekah is named Deborah in Genesis 35:8, where her death under the oak at Bethel is recorded. She stayed with Rebekah throughout her life, from the departure in Paddan Aram to the death recorded decades later at Bethel. The small mention of the nurse in this verse plants a detail that will be retrieved only once more, at her death, marking the full arc of Rebekah's household. The covenant's long history is written in these brief mentions of people who lasted.