After the death of Sarah, Abraham had still to arrange for the marriage of Isaac. He was induced to provide for this in a mode in harmony with the promise of God, quite as much by his increasing age as by the blessing of God in everything, which necessarily instilled the wish to transmit that blessing to a distant posterity. He entrusted this commission to his servant, "the eldest of his house," - i.e., his upper servant, who had the management of all his house (according to general opinion, to Eliezer, whom he had previously thought of as the heir of his property, but who would now, like Abraham, be extremely old, as more than sixty years had passed since the occurrence related in Genesis 15:2), - and made him swear that he would not take a wife for his son from the daughters of the Canaanites, but would fetch one from his (Abraham's) native country, and his kindred. Abraham made the servant take an oath in order that his wishes might be inviolably fulfilled, even if he himself should die in the interim. In swearing, the servant put his hand under Abraham's hip. This custom, which is only mentioned here and in Genesis 47:29, the so-called bodily oath, was no doubt connected with the significance of the hip as the part from which the posterity issued (Genesis 46:26), and the seat of vital power; but the early Jewish commentators supposed it to be especially connected with the rite of circumcision. The oath was by "Jehovah, God of heaven and earth," as the God who rules in heaven and on earth, not by Elohim; for it had respect not to an ordinary oath, but to a question of great importance in relation to the kingdom of God. "Isaac was not regarded as a merely pious candidate for matrimony, but as the heir of the promise, who must therefore be kept from any alliance with the race whose possessions were to come to his descendants, and which was ripening for the judgment to be executed by those descendants" (Hengstenberg, Dissertations i. 350). For this reason the rest of the negotiation was all conducted in the name of Jehovah.

Genesis 24:10 Parallel Commentaries

for. or, and. all the.

Genesis 24:2 And Abraham said to his oldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray you, your hand under my thigh:

Genesis 39:4-6,8,9,22,23 And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house...

Mesopotamia.

Deuteronomy 23:4 Because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when you came forth out of Egypt...

Judges 3:8-10 Therefore the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Chushanrishathaim king of Mesopotamia...

1 Chronicles 19:6 And when the children of Ammon saw that they had made themselves odious to David...

Acts 2:9 Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,

city.

Genesis 11:31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife...

Genesis 27:43 Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; arise, flee you to Laban my brother to Haran;

Genesis 29:1,4,5 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east...