Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts
Genesis 24
There are 22 footnotes for this reference.
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 344, footnote 1 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Irenæus (HTML)
Against Heresies: Book I (HTML)
Chapter XVIII.—Passages from Moses, which the heretics pervert to the support of their hypothesis. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2890 (In-Text, Margin)
... they declare to fulfil the mystery of the Ogdoad. With respect, again, to the Decad, they maintain that it is indicated by those ten nations which God promised to Abraham for a possession. The arrangement also made by Sarah when, after ten years, she gave her handmaid Hagar to him, that by her he might have a son, showed the same thing. Moreover, the servant of Abraham who was sent to Rebekah, and presented her at the well with ten bracelets of gold, and her brethren who detained her for ten days;[Genesis 24:22] Jeroboam also, who received the ten sceptres (tribes), and the ten courts of the tabernacle, and the columns of ten cubits [high], and the ten sons of Jacob who were at first sent into Egypt to buy corn, and the ten apostles to whom the Lord ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, page 344, footnote 1 (Image)
Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus
Irenæus (HTML)
Against Heresies: Book I (HTML)
Chapter XVIII.—Passages from Moses, which the heretics pervert to the support of their hypothesis. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2890 (In-Text, Margin)
... they declare to fulfil the mystery of the Ogdoad. With respect, again, to the Decad, they maintain that it is indicated by those ten nations which God promised to Abraham for a possession. The arrangement also made by Sarah when, after ten years, she gave her handmaid Hagar to him, that by her he might have a son, showed the same thing. Moreover, the servant of Abraham who was sent to Rebekah, and presented her at the well with ten bracelets of gold, and her brethren who detained her for ten days;[Genesis 24:25] Jeroboam also, who received the ten sceptres (tribes), and the ten courts of the tabernacle, and the columns of ten cubits [high], and the ten sons of Jacob who were at first sent into Egypt to buy corn, and the ten apostles to whom the Lord ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2, page 439, footnote 5 (Image)
Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria (HTML)
The Stromata, or Miscellanies (HTML)
Book IV. (HTML)
Chapter XXIII.—The Same Subject Continued. (HTML)
... abstinence from evil deeds; showing that He would have us to be such as also He generated us from our mother—the water. For the intent of one generation succeeding another is to immortalize by progress. “But the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.” That purity in body and soul which the Gnostic partakes of, the all-wise Moses indicated, by employing repetition in describing the incorruptibility of body and of soul in the person of Rebecca, thus: “Now the virgin was fair, and man had not known her.”[Genesis 24:16] And Rebecca, interpreted, means “glory of God;” and the glory of God is immortality. This is in reality righteousness, not to desire other things, but to be entirely the consecrated temple of the Lord. Righteousness is peace of life and a ...
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, page 689, footnote 8 (Image)
Tertullian (I, II, III)
Ethical. (HTML)
On Prayer. (HTML)
Answer to the Foregoing Arguments. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 8914 (In-Text, Margin)
... to be veiled from that day forth on which they shuddered at the first bodily touch of a man by kiss and hand. For in them everything has been forewedded: their age, through maturity; their flesh, through age; their spirit, through consciousness; their modesty, through the experience of the kiss their hope, through expectation; their mind through volition. And Rebecca is example enough for us, who, when her betrothed had been pointed out, veiled herself for marriage merely on recognition of him.[Genesis 24:64-65]
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 34, footnote 5 (Image)
Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen
Tertullian: Part Fourth. (HTML)
On the Veiling of Virgins. (HTML)
The Rule of Veiling Not Applicable to Children. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 314 (In-Text, Margin)
... just as she is to marriage. And the betrothed indeed have the example of Rebecca, who, when she was being conducted—herself still unknown—to an unknown betrothed, as soon as she learned that he whom she had sighted from afar was the man, awaited not the grasp of the hand, nor the meeting of the kiss, nor the interchange of salutation; but confessing what she had felt—namely, that she had been (already) wedded in spirit—denied herself to be a virgin by then and there veiling herself.[Genesis 24:64-65] Oh woman already belonging to Christ’s discipline! For she showed that marriage likewise, as fornication is, is transacted by gaze and mind; only that a Rebecca likewise some do still veil. With regard to the rest, however (that is, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2, page 319, footnote 2 (Image)
Augustine: The City of God, Christian Doctrine
City of God (HTML)
The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel. (HTML)
Why, in the Account of Terah’s Emigration, on His Forsaking the Chaldeans and Passing Over into Mesopotamia, No Mention is Made of His Son Nahor. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 891 (In-Text, Margin)
... and Sarah his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and led them forth out of the region of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan; and he came into Haran, and dwelt there.” Nahor and Milcah his wife are nowhere named here. But afterwards, when Abraham sent his servant to take a wife for his son Isaac, we find it thus written: “And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his lord, and of all the goods of his lord, with him; and arose, and went into Mesopotamia, into the city of Nahor.”[Genesis 24:10] This and other testimonies of this sacred history show that Nahor, Abraham’s brother, had also left the region of the Chaldeans, and fixed his abode in Mesopotamia, where Abraham dwelt with his father. Why, then, did the Scripture not mention him, ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2, page 330, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: The City of God, Christian Doctrine
City of God (HTML)
The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel. (HTML)
Of Rebecca, the Grand-Daughter of Nahor, Whom Isaac Took to Wife. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 948 (In-Text, Margin)
... Christ?[Genesis 24:2-3] what else was pointed out by this, but that the Lord, the God of heaven, and the Lord of the earth, was to come in the flesh which was to be derived from that thigh? Are these small tokens of the foretold truth which we see fulfilled in Christ?
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 3, page 409, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises
Moral Treatises of St. Augustin (HTML)
On the Good of Marriage. (HTML)
Section 22 (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1998 (In-Text, Margin)
... order, that this above the rest should avail to prophesy of Him, in that it was foretold of what race also, and of what nation, He should hereafter come in the flesh. Therefore it was a far greater good than the chaste marriages of believers among us, which father Abraham knew in his own thigh, under which he bade his servant to put his hand, that he might take an oath concerning the wife, whom his son was to marry. For putting his hand under the thigh of a man, and swearing by the God of Heaven,[Genesis 24:2-4] what else did he signify, than that in that Flesh, which derived its origin from that thigh, the God of Heaven would come? Therefore marriage is a good, wherein married persons are so much the better, in proportion as they fear God with greater ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 4, page 196, footnote 5 (Image)
Augustine: The Anti-Manichaean Writings, The Anti-Donatist Writings
Writings in Connection with the Manichæan Controversy. (HTML)
Reply to Faustus the Manichæan. (HTML)
Faustus denies that the prophets predicted Christ. Augustin proves such prediction from the New Testament, and expounds at length the principal types of Christ in the Old Testament. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 469 (In-Text, Margin)
... agreement between the types and the things typified, the adversary may be convinced by plain prophetic intimations, such as this: "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed." This was said to Abraham, and again to Isaac, and again to Jacob. Hence the significance of the words "I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob." God fulfills His promise to their seed in blessing all nations. With a like significance, Abraham himself, when he made his servant swear, told him to put his hand under his thigh;[Genesis 24:2] for he knew that thence would come the flesh of Christ, in whom we have now, not the promise of blessing to all nations, but the promise fulfilled.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 5, page 248, footnote 4 (Image)
Augustine: Anti-Pelagian Writings
A Treatise on the Grace of Christ, and on Original Sin. (HTML)
On Original Sin. (HTML)
He Shows by the Example of Abraham that the Ancient Saints Believed in the Incarnation of Christ. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1992 (In-Text, Margin)
... understand the Son Himself to be the life, when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life;” of whom also it was said, “He is the true God, and eternal life.” Supposing, then, that Abraham desired to see this equal divinity of the Son’s with the Father, without any precognition of His coming in the flesh—as certain philosophers sought Him, who knew nothing of His flesh—can that other act of Abraham, when he orders his servant to place his hand under his thigh, and to swear by the God of heaven,[Genesis 24:2-3] be rightly understood by any one otherwise than as showing that Abraham well knew that the flesh in which the God of heaven was to come was the offspring of that very thigh?
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 23, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. (HTML)
Explanation of the First Part of the Sermon Delivered by Our Lord on the Mount, as Contained in the Fifth Chapter of Matthew. (HTML)
Chapter XVII (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 163 (In-Text, Margin)
... Whatsoever is more than these is evil; for you are not doing what is evil when you make a good use of an oath, which, although not in itself good, is yet necessary in order to persuade another that you are trying to move him for some useful end; but it “cometh of evil” on his part by whose infirmity you are compelled to swear. But no one learns, unless he has had experience, how difficult it is both to get rid of a habit of swearing, and never to do rashly what necessity sometimes compels him to do.[Genesis 24:37]
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 6, page 252, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels
Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament. (HTML)
Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations of the Lord. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1742 (In-Text, Margin)
... other women to be proud! for Mary herself also is called a woman, not from the loss of virginity, but by a form of expression peculiar to her country; for of the Lord Jesus the Apostle also said, “made of a woman,” yet there is no interruption hence to the order and connection of our Creed wherein we confess “that He was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” For as a vir gin she conceived Him, as a virgin brought Him forth, and a virgin she continued; but all females they called “women,”[Genesis 24:5] by a peculiarity of the Hebrew tongue. Hear a most plain example of this. The first woman whom God made, having taken her out of the side of a man, was called a woman before she “knew” her husband, which we are told was not till after they went out ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 244, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies
Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John. (HTML)
Chapter VIII. 48–59. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 815 (In-Text, Margin)
... wife for his son Isaac, he bound him by this oath, to fulfill faithfully what he was commanded, and know also for himself what to do. For it was a great matter that was in hand when marriage was sought for Abraham’s seed. But that the servant might apprehend what Abraham knew, that it was not offspring after the flesh he desired, nor anything of a carnal kind concerning his race that was referred to, he said to the servant whom he sent, “Put thy hand under my thigh, and swear by the God of heaven.”[Genesis 24:2-4] What connection has the God of heaven with Abraham’s thigh? Already you understand the mystery: by thigh is meant race. And what was that swearing, but the signifying that of Abraham’s race would the God of heaven come in the flesh? Fools find fault ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 149, footnote 1 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm XLV (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1401 (In-Text, Margin)
... Did not Abraham himself (to whom was promised the seed in which “all the nations of the earth were to be blessed”), when he sent his servant to seek and to bring home a wife for his son, being by faith fully persuaded, that in that, so to speak, contemptible seed was contained the great Name; that is, that the Son of God was to come of the seed of Abraham, out of all the children of men; did not he, I say, cause his servant to swear unto him in this manner, saying, “Put thy hand under my thigh,”[Genesis 24:2] and so swear; as if he had said, “Put thy hand on the altar, or on the Gospel, or on the Prophet, or on any holy thing.” “Put” (he says) “thy hand under my thigh;” having full confidence, not ashamed of it as unseemly, but understanding therein a ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 334, footnote 3 (Image)
Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms
Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)
Psalm LXXIII (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3255 (In-Text, Margin)
... shoot from the root of Jesse:” so also the New Testament itself which is in Christ, in those former times was hidden, being known to the Prophets alone, and to the very few godly men, not by the manifestation of things present, but by the revelation of things future. For what meaneth it, brethren (to mention but one thing), that Abraham sending his faithful servant to espouse a wife for his only son, maketh him swear to him, and in the oath saith to him, “Put thy hand under my thigh, and swear”?[Genesis 24:2] What was there in the thigh of Abraham, where he put his hand in swearing? What was there there, except that which even then was promised to him, “In thy seed shall be blessed all nations”? Under the name of thigh, flesh is signified. From the flesh ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 145, footnote 20 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)
To Oceanus. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2069 (In-Text, Margin)
... scorpions haunt dry places and whenever they come near water behave as if rabid or insane. As wood sweetens Marah so that seventy palm-trees are watered by its streams, so the cross makes the waters of the law lifegiving to the seventy who are Christ’s apostles. It is Abraham and Isaac who dig wells, the Philistines who try to prevent them. Beersheba too, the city of the oath, and [Gihon], the scene of Solomon’s coronation, derive their names from springs. It is beside a well that Eliezer finds Rebekah.[Genesis 24:15-16] Rachel too is a drawer of water and wins a kiss thereby from the supplanter Jacob. When the daughters of the priests of Midian are in a strait to reach the well, Moses opens a way for them and delivers them from outrage. The Lord’s forerunner at ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 370, footnote 7 (Image)
Jerome: Letters and Select Works
Treatises. (HTML)
Against Jovinianus. (HTML)
Book I (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 4480 (In-Text, Margin)
... Naarah! What then is the meaning of Almah? A hidden virgin, that is, not merely virgin, but a virgin and something more, because not every virgin is hidden, shut off from the occasional sight of men. Then again, Rebecca, on account of her extreme purity, and because she was a type of the Church which she represented in her own virginity, is described in Genesis as Almah, not Bethulah, as may clearly be proved from the words of Abraham’s servant, spoken by him in Mesopotamia:[Genesis 24:42] “And he said, O Lord, the God of my master Abraham, if now thou do prosper my way which I go: behold I stand by the fountain of water; and let it come to pass, that the maiden which cometh forth to draw, to whom I shall say, Give me, I pray thee, a ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 78, footnote 3 (Image)
Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril. (HTML)
On the words Incarnate, and Made Man. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 1440 (In-Text, Margin)
But that you may learn more plainly that even a virgin is called in Holy Scripture a “damsel,” hear the Book of the Kings, speaking of Abishag the Shunamite, And the damsel was very fair[Genesis 24:43]: for that as a virgin she was chosen and brought to David is admitted.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 8, page 275, footnote 13 (Image)
Basil: Letters and Select Works
The Letters. (HTML)
To the same, in answer to another question. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 2973 (In-Text, Margin)
... knowledge into one single meaning, the contemplation of God’s essence. Thou shalt put them, it is said, before the testimony and I shall be known of thee thence. Is the term, “I shall be known of thee,” instead of, “I will reveal my essence”? “The Lord knoweth them that are his.” Does He know the essence of them that are His, but is ignorant of the essence of those who disobey Him? “Adam knew his wife.” Did he know her essence? It is said of Rebekah “She was a virgin, neither had any man known her,”[Genesis 24:16] and “How shall this be seeing I know not a man?” Did no man know Rebekah’s essence? Does Mary mean “I do not know the essence of any man”? Is it not the custom of Scripture to use the word “know” of nuptial embraces? The statement that God shall be ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 115, footnote 2 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
On the Holy Spirit. (HTML)
Book I. (HTML)
Chapter XVI. The Holy Spirit is that large river by which the mystical Jerusalem is watered. It is equal to its Fount, that is, the Father and the Son, as is signified in holy Scripture. St. Ambrose himself thirsts for that water, and warns us that in order to preserve it within us, we must avoid the devil, lust, and heresy, since our vessels are frail, and that broken cisterns must be forsaken, that after the example of the Samaritan woman and of the patriarchs we may find the water of the Lord. (HTML)
185. So Abraham gained God after he had dug the well. So Isaac, while walking by the well, received that wife[Genesis 24:62] who was coming to him as a type of the Church. Faithful he was at the well, unfaithful at the pool. Lastly, too, Rebecca, as we read, found him who sought her at the well, and the harlots washed themselves in the blood in the pool of Jezebel.
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 382, footnote 2 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
Concerning Virgins. (HTML)
Book III. (HTML)
Chapter III. Virgins are exhorted to avoid visits, to observe modesty, to be silent during the celebration of the Mysteries after the example of Mary. Then after narrating the story of a heathen youth, and saying of a poet, St. Ambrose relates a miracle wrought by a holy priest. (HTML)
10. Was it a small sign of modesty that when Rebecca came to wed Isaac, and saw her bridegroom, she took a veil,[Genesis 24:65] that she might not be seen before they were united? Certainly the fair virgin feared not for her beauty, but for her modesty. What of Rachel, how she, when Jacob’s kiss had been taken, wept and groaned, and would not have ceased weeping had she not known him to be a kinsman? So she both observed what was due to modesty, and omitted not kindly affection. But if it is said to a man: “Gaze not on a maid, lest she cause thee to fall,” what is ...
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 10, page 407, footnote 3 (Image)
Ambrose: Select Works and Letters
Dogmatic Treatises, Ethical Works, and Sermons. (HTML)
Concerning Widows. (HTML)
Chapter XV. St. Ambrose meets the objection of those who make the desire of having children an excuse for second marriage, and especially in the case of those who have children of their former marriage; and points out the consequent troubles of disagreements amongst the children, and even between the married persons, and gives a warning against a wrong use of Scripture instances in this matter. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3406 (In-Text, Margin)
... has bound together husband and wife by its authority, and yet mutual love remains a difficult matter. For God took a rib from the man, and formed the woman so as to join them one to the other, and said: “They shall be one flesh.” He said this not of a second marriage but of the first, for neither did Eve take a second husband, nor does holy Church recognize a second bridegroom. “For that is a great mystery in Christ and in the Church. Neither, again, did Isaac know another wife besides Rebecca,[Genesis 24:67] nor bury his father, Abraham, with any wife but Sarah.”