Genesis 24:1–41 illustrates Abraham sending his servant to find a bride for Isaac, foreshadowing the Messiah. The servant’s reliance on divine guidance parallels the Holy Spirit’s leading believers to Yeshua. Rebekah’s willing response mirrors the believer’s acceptance of Messiah’s call. Her journey to Isaac reflects the future gathering of the Bride of Christ. This passage emphasizes God’s providence, faith in His promises, and the Messiah’s role in uniting His people with Him.
Starting after Sukkot 2024, Hallel Fellowship switched to a three-year cycle of Torah and parallel Bible readings (2024–2027), outlined by TorahResource. While there’s ancient evidence for a triennial cycle, a major benefit is to provide more time to mine more of Scripture for lessons.
Genesis 24:1–41, Judges 19:16–21 and Ephesians 5:15–33 all share themes of hospitality, marriage and divine covenant relationships.
Genesis 24:1–41: Abraham’s servant seeks a bride for Isaac, symbolizing divine guidance in marriage. Rebekah’s hospitality and willingness to go foreshadow the believer’s response to God’s call. This passage also prefigures Messiah’s relationship with His bride, the Church.
Judges 19:16–21: In contrast, this disturbing passage depicts a Levite and his concubine finding lodging in Gibeah. While hospitality is offered, the surrounding narrative highlights Israel’s moral decline, contrasting the righteous pursuit of a bride in Genesis 24. We’ve seen this passage before when we explored a similar incident in Genesis 19 with Lot and his daughters in Sodom.
Ephesians 5:15–33: Paul exhorts believers to walk wisely and describes marriage as a profound mystery reflecting Yeshua and the Body of Messiah (believers). This connects with Genesis 24 in portraying a divinely ordained union and contrasts with Judges 19, where a distorted view of marriage leads to tragedy.
Together, these passages highlight the contrast between godly and ungodly relationships, emphasizing God’s design for marriage as a reflection of His covenant love.
Ephesians 5:32 – “This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.”
Colossians 1:27 – “The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Lessons
These passages reveal a divine pattern: God calls, prepares, and unites His people to Himself in covenant love. Genesis 24 shows faithful obedience in marriage, Judges 19 warns of moral collapse without divine order, and Ephesians 5 presents marriage as a model of Messiah’s sacrificial love. Each passage ultimately points to Messiah as the Bridegroom calling His people into eternal union with Him.
God’s providential guidance (Genesis 24:1-41): The servant’s prayer shows God actively leads those who seek Him in faith.
The contrast of righteous and wicked hospitality (Judges 19:16-21): Biblical hospitality reflects godliness, while neglecting it signifies moral decay.
Marriage reflecting Messiah’s relationship to the body of believers (Ephesians 5:15-33): Marriage is not merely a human institution but a divine illustration of covenant love.
The bride of Christ (Genesis 24:1-41 → Revelation 19:7-9): Yitzkhak is a type of Messiah, and Rebekah represents the body of believers called out by divine selection. Just as Abraham’s servant sought a bride for Isaac, the Holy Spirit calls believers to Christ.
Rejection of true hospitality (Judges 19:16-21 → Luke 9:58): The Levite’s struggle for hospitality in Gibeah parallels how Messiah was rejected (Luke 9:58 – “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head”). Gibeah’s wickedness foreshadows the rejection of God’s covenant, leading to Israel’s exile and need for redemption.
Messiah and the assembly of believers in marriage (Ephesians 5:15-33 → Revelation 21:2): The husband-wife relationship models Christ’s love for the assembly, culminating in the ultimate wedding feast in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). Just as Rebekah willingly left her home to join Yitzkhak, believers must leave the world to follow Messiah.
This study on the Torah reading חַיֵּי שָׂרָה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18) explores biblical principles of respect, property ownership and the hope of resurrection. It centers around the stories of Abraham and David, emphasizing their sorrow and the significance of their real estate transactions in the history of the people of Israel, finding resting places for Sarah and the presence of Heaven.
Chayei Sarah also has important connections to prophecies to the events surrounding the birth of Yeshua Messiah (Jesus Christ), exploring messianic themes and emphasizing the continuity of these prophecies in early Jewish writings.
It’s all too easy in today’s crave-the-cutting-edge lifestyle to forget who got us to where we are today. Abraham is called “father of us all” because his trust in God is the model for saving faith in God’s Son, Yeshua haMashiakh (Jesus the Christ) (Rom. 4:16–5:2). In this week’s Torah portion, חַיֵּי שָׂרָה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18), we learn how important Abraham’s wife Sarah is in The Way from our old way of life to our new one in Mashiakh.
In the Torah reading חיי שרה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18), we see the lengths Abraham goes to buy this final resting place for his wife Sarah, including his refusal to bury her on a Gentile’s property and his insistence on paying full price (or more) for a solid guarantee of ownership. It’s a lesson not lost on Abraham’s descendant King David, who 1,000 or so years later needed to buy a resting place for God Himself. It’s because of the Son of God — Yeshua (Jesus) — that Abraham, David, and all those who love God will receive…
The legacy of Abraham’s wife Sarah, the focus of Torah reading חיי שרה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18), is not only her future daughter-in-law Rivkah (Rebecca) but also distant relatives Ruth and the Samaritan woman Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus) met at the well.
These women, just as Sarah before them, extended acts of kindness and mercy to a stranger who would change their lives forever and they were rewarded for their kindnesses to strangers with a permanent connection with the Messiah.
A section of the Torah reading חיי שרה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18) makes a big deal about a real estate transaction Abraham did for a burial plot for his wife Sarah. Rather than an arcane factoid from ancient times now long gone, this deal is a key lesson on the Golden Rule — how highly Heaven values humanity, and how people should similarly respect others and ourselves.
Rather than “he who has the gold makes the rules” or “do unto others before they do it unto you,” the Golden Rule and related instructions on property rights teach us to find…
Ancient views on the opening verses of Torah reading חיי שרה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18) about the funeral for the pivotal matriarch of Israel remind us that we all go through phases of our lives. Like Sarah, Abraham and other key leaders of the people of God, we get a new name — character, reputation and legacy — when we are delivered from our old life of bondage to things that keep us separated from the Kingdom of Heaven. In this study, we explore why embracing our “new name” as a “new creation” of Heaven is essential to…
“‘You have heard that it was said, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy” (Lev. 19:18; Deut. 23:3-6). But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.'” (Matthew 5:43–45 NASB)
We can learn from Abraham, the father of our faith in God, how to put these words of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) into action in the…
God put a degree of rebelliousness in all of us because sometimes we have to have a rebellious spirit. When the culture around us, whether it’s in our own family or our national culture, is wicked and evil, we have to have the fortitude to rebel against that and stand firm in living the way that is right.
The name of the Torah portion חיי שרה Chayei Sarah means “life of Sarah,” but it starts with the matriarch’s death. We see how Abraham works hard to find a final resting place for her, but her death had a huge impact on…
When we are pushed to our limits, God promises us that the ways of the Kingdom of God are far more profitable in the long term than trying to avoid pain. That’s what Abraham and Sarah learned over many years of their lives. It’s all the more relevant today for increasing social and physical pressure put on believers in the Holy One of Israel and the Anointed One of God. This lesson of faith is the backdrop of the Torah section Chayei Sarah (“life of Sarah,” Gen. 23:1–25:18).
Why did Abraham the nomadic “father of faith” pay so much for a tomb for his wife Sarah? What’s the connection between Abraham’s and King David’s picking a certain son as the successor over other, older sons? Are does the symbol of a well in the account of Yitzkhak marrying Rivkah and in Yeshua’s encounter with the Samaritan woman teach us about the Mashiakh’s work of bringing new life out of death? These are questions tackled in this discussion of the Torah portion Chayei Sarah (“life of Sarah”), covering Genesis 23-25.
What is the connection between this account of the death of Abraham and the prophecy of warring children in the womb of Rivkah (Rebecca) and the accounts of Creation and of the Flood?
God had a wife in mind for Yitzkhak. Although the servant Abraham sent to find her didn’t know who she was or whether she would respond to the call, God knew who He had chosen, and Abraham had faith that God would send His angel ahead of the servant.
The overall theme of Luke 16 is how we are to use material wealth. Is Luke 16:19–31, known as “the rich man and Lazarus,” a travelogue of hell or a parable related to wealth?
This chapter sounds like a drawn-out real estate transaction, but it shows two things: Abraham was so important that Hittites, people of a major international power at the time, had great respect for him. Abraham’s first title to land in Canaan was to bury Sarah, who was very significant as the mother of the promised son by way of God, Yitskhak.
After Sarah’s death Abraham had other children as well and we learn how his estate was divided up between his heirs. We also learn how Yiskhak (Isaac) deals with his status as a wealthy patriarch in a hostile land and how his two sons start fighting over Yiskhak’s estate before they are born and continue fighting over it when they are adults. The fight appears to end with Esau “despising” his birthright. But does this really end the dispute?
We learn about the Near Eastern customs of how to find a wife for a prominent family. From Abraham’s request to Rivka’s acceptance, Isaac is not a part of this story until the very end when Isaac greets Rivka as acknowledges her as the wife God has chosen for him.
The events around Sarah’s death are not mentioned simply as a marker of time. She was a prominent person in her own right. Her Biblical biography is the only one of a woman that mentions her age at the time of her death as well as the elaborate negotiations surrounding the location of her final repose. The negotiations for her burial place have implications into the present day.
A common perception of an “angel” is a cute winged chubby baby, something as innocuous as a fairy, or a passive messenger. “The angel of the LORD” — Malakh YHWH in Hebrew — is a quite different figure that shows up throughout the Bible with massive power and authority. Who is he?
