“When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into their house to get what is offered to you as a pledge. Stay outside and let the neighbor to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. If the neighbor is poor, do not go to sleep with their pledge in your possession. Return their cloak by sunset so that your neighbor may sleep in it. Then they will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the Lord your God.”-Deuteronomy 24:10-13
Today I’m going to show you how the God-principle of “the pledge” we’ve been studying in Deuteronomy 24 was practiced waaaaaaaaay before it was officially codified as a written law at Sinai.
Before we get started however, I need to stress it is much better to think of the Hebrew word ABOTE to mean “pledge” instead of “collateral”.
The reason is when we translate ABOTE as “collateral”, the application of this term becomes restricted to the activity of lending and borrowing money and in the Bible the idea of a “pledge” has much broader application than that.
Alright, let’s get started.
The first thing I want you to do is read ALL of Genesis 24.
You can read the easy-to-understand NIV version by clicking right here.
Did you read it?
Good.
Then let’s get going and prepare to have your mind blown as we examine some absolutely stunning parallels and connections between this story in Genesis and the law in Deuteronomy 24.
The first point is in this story Rebecca is the pledge (again, do NOT think in terms of a collateral for a loan) who is to be obtained by Abraham’s oldest servant in the house.
This nameless senior servant of Abraham journeys from the the land of Canaan all the way up north to Mesopotamia to get a wife for Isaac from among Abraham’s relatives.
After the servant arrives in Mesopotamia, he stops at a well and in short time spots a good potential for Isaac’s wife named Rebecca.
After carefully observing her for a while, he decides she could be the one and approaches her.
The result?
After a bit of friendly chit-chat, he is invited to stay with Rebecca’s family.
It is RIGHT HERE we encounter the first connection between this story and the law of pledges in Deuteronomy 24.
In Genesis 24:31, Laban, who is Rebecca’s brother, asks Abraham’s servant…
… “Come, you who are blessed by the Lord,” he said.
“Why are you standing out here?
I have prepared the house and a place for the camels.”
Now compare and contrast this with Deuteronomy 24:11 which says…
“Stay outside and let the neighbor
to whom you are making the loan
bring the pledge out to you.”
Do you see what’s going on here?
According to the law, the one who intends to collect a pledge has to “stay outside”.
He cannot go inside the house of the pledge’s owner to obtain it because the pledge must be brought to him willingly (if it is given at all).
In this story in Genesis, Abraham’s most senior servant is standing outside waiting for the pledge (Rebecca) to be brought out to him because it would be a great offense to just waltz right into the house and take the pledge from a domain over which he has no authority.
And, if we go deeper, Isaac, the future husband, is also in a sense standing outside and waiting for the pledge instead of going in and taking it.
He is standing and waiting outside the borders of Mesopotamia because his father Abraham told him to do so.
Or to put it another way, Isaac is prohibited from going inside of Mesopotamia to retrieve his pledge (even if has no idea who that pledge will be or where she lives etc.).
Instead, the pledge (Rebecca) must agree to leave her home and go to the land of Canaan.
Are you catching all of this?
Laban, the master of the house and owner of the pledge after confirming the pledge’s willingness to go brings Rebecca out to the senior servant who then escorts her outside her home country Mesopotamia to where Isaac lives in the land of Canaan.
Next, check out verses 62-63 of Genesis 24.
Now Isaac had come from Beer Lahai Roi, for he was living in the Negev. He went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching.”
The situation is Isaac is walking in a field in Canaan waiting for his pledge Rebecca to arrive.
Although our English Bibles don’t really make it clear, the original Hebrew in verse 63 literally says when Isaac spotted the returning caravan carrying Rebecca led by his father’s servant, the timing was literally “before the going down of the sun”.
Compare and contrast this with Deuteronomy 24:13…
“Return their cloak by sunset
so that your neighbor may sleep in it”
Finally, in the last verse, we’re told Isaac took Rebecca and they became one flesh as man and wife.
But wait, I’m not done yet.
Do you remember I told you before that in Hebrew thinking and culture a wife was considered to be a man’s garment who he wore as his covering?
In fact, this idiomatic symbolism was so commonly understood in those days the Bible doesn’t even bother to explain it.
That would be like pointing out to someone in our day that during a wedding the bridegroom gives his wife a wedding ring and there’s a wedding cake etcetera.
The person on the receiving end of such an obvious explanation would probably respond by telling you “Excuse me but do you think I’m from mars or something? Come on, man!”
My point is that’s just the way things were and was common knowledge to everyone in those days.
So to recap, according to the law in Deuteronomy 24, we’re told the “garment” given as the pledge must be returned to the owner BEFORE the sun goes down.
And that is exactly what we saw happened with Rebecca and Isaac.
Before the sun went down, Isaac was waiting inside his house for his pledge to arrive AND…
…when she did arrive he married her…meaning he put her on as a garment.
Now here’s one interesting question to ponder.
If we had not first studied the law of pledges in Deuteronomy 24, would we have been able to discern these particular God-patterns and principles embedded in the story of Isaac, Rebecca, and the senior servant?
I hazard to say probably not.
And to be frank, in order to catch all of these connections, we would also have to possess a deep understanding of certain key elements of ancient Hebrew culture and marriage customs.
So what’s the big takeaway here?
The big takeaway is this.
All of the beloved stories of the the Patriarchs we find in the first book of Moses (Genesis) were NOT just nice inspiring stories or the history of how Israel came to be a nation.
Nope, embedded in these stories are those very God-principles and patterns that were later codified at Sinai.
Wow. God taught me this principle by showing me that the soul/woman is the garment of the spirit/man. That’s one application. The next is when two souls are cleansed and joined together (of both a man and a woman), they become the garment for His Spirit (two gathered in His name/nature, part of the spiritual application of what He is doing to fulfill the feast of Tabernacles/InGATHERING).Blessings….