The servant of Abraham requests from God to give him a sign: if the woman whom he asks for water, offers to give also the camels to drink, then it is she whom God set aside for Isaac to marry (Gen. 24:12 ff.). The Talmud (תענית ד) says that there are three who asked incorrectly שלשה שאלו שלא כהוגן two of whom were answered correctly. These two are Eliezer the servant of Abraham and Jonathan the son of King Saul. In the Laws of Idol worship Maimonides writes that it is forbidden to rely on a sign by declaring that if a certain event happens, that it is a bad sign or a good sign. But it is permitted to look back at events and say this event was a good sign for what happened after or this event was a bad sign for what happened after. According to this Eliezer was testing God in a way that’s forbidden. Eliezer was trying to discover if his future actions are being blessed by God and are the right actions or are they not blessed by God and are not the right actions. In other words, to discover if this woman should be brought back to Isaac because God has selected her for Isaac or not.

The underlying reason for this prohibition is that you are supposed to use your own rational faculties to decide what to do and not request a sign from God. I would add that there’s an especially big problem when you pray to God, ‘Please give me a sign’. You are forcing Gods hand, so to speak.  God cannot opt out of your test. For example, if you say, ‘If I am meant to do this thing, then let this coin be heads and if I’m not meant to do it let it be tails. When you flip the coin it must be either heads or tails, which you will then interpret as a sign from God.  But perhaps God doesn’t want to play your game and wants you to decide based on your intelligence.  You will have no way to know if the heads you threw is a message from god or just the laws of physics working.  

At every football game they flip a coin to see who starts with the ball. But what makes that permitted is that you’re not involving God in it. You know that this the 50% chance of either alternative and you are not investing this event with any Divine meaning, although of course God may decide to get involved. But you are flipping the coin because there’s no fairer way to decide between the two teams. The problem arises when you presume God’s involvement in your coin flip. For example, if you say, ‘God if we’re meant to go to war with this nation then let the coin be heads and if not then let it be tails.’ Now the coin will definitely be either heads or tails. So whether God decided to give you a message or didn’t decide to give you a message you have decided that this is a message. That is the biggest problem with predicting the future in this way. You will think God condones certain behavior, certain actions and if they go wrong, if they don’t go well you’ll say God misled me; you’ll blame God when God had nothing to do with it. He was not maneuvering that coin one way or the other. You cannot make an event that may be a random event into a non-random event simply by asking God to be involved. And that is exactly what Eliezer did. He prayed to God that God would send him a sign through the behaviour of Rivka at the well and whether she offered water for the camels.

Those commentators who wish to defend Eliezer’s actions say that he was not simply making a random sign for the future and deciding his behavior based on that but he was looking for a certain compassionate quality in Rivka. She should be not only generous but self-sacrificing. To draw enough water to give to several camels of a guest is not merely generosity, it is also a lot of work and a high degree of self-sacrifice. These are good qualities for the wife of Isaac. Recall that God describes Abraham’s mission as being to practice “charity and justice” (Gen. 18:19) לַעֲשׂוֹת צְדָקָה וּמִשְׁפָּט. To partner with Isaac in this mission Rivka should demonstrate charity. Therefore Eliezer was not asking for a sign but looking for an indication of her good qualities. Even if God was not involved in the events that transpired, this was still an intelligent way to discover the girl’s character.

If we look at the blessing that Rivka’s family gives to her before she leaves: (24:60) “Our sister, be thousands of myriads. May your seed inherit the gates of those who hate him.” (An echo of 22:17) On the surface this sounds like an aggressive militaristic blessing, that her children should conquer their enemies. This seems a very strange blessing to give a young girl who from the story seems to be a very generous and caring person. Why have they given her a blessing to be a conqueror? I think this can be understood when we realize that conquering the enemy is not for the sake of revenge or destroying those who are nearby but is to create a better society for them. If we look at the people around the Middle East in those times we’ll see that they place a very low value on life. There’s a certain cruelty in their hearts much as people in the Middle East today believe in unavoidable destiny and martyrdom. Perhaps possessing the gates will save the enemies from themselves.

The literal meaning of the blessing is that her offspring should inherit the gates of its enemy. We know that in the Bible the gates are the place where the elders sit and judge the people. So the blessing is not simply that Rivka’s offspring should destroy their enemies but that they should sit in their enemy’s gates and judge their enemy and in so doing elevate the culture and ethical norms of the society by bringing “charity and justice” into the gates and towns of those enemies. The Jew’s mission in the world is not to destroy the enemy but to enlighten the enemies. We see this in a straightforward way in the Torah that conquering is a mitzvah, first and foremost to remove idolatry which is to remove unethical and unrighteous cultural norms from those enemies. This is the mission God describes in Gen. 18:19, to do charity and justice.

Eliezer looked for a partner for Isaac who would possess the quality of charity and Rivka’s family blessed her that she should join with the Abrahamic mission of bringing ethics to the Canaanites, that she should be  the gatekeeper for the cultures that surround her family in the land of Israel. We should view our actions in Gaza not as revenge and as conquering for conquering’s sake but as a way to achieve a normal to achieve cultural normalization for our neighbors, that their culture should reflect the good values that Judaism has been teaching to the world for 3,000 years. And towards that end it is of utmost importance that Israel be in charge of the education administration of any lands that are under our administration so that the children who will be the next generation will be taught harmony and loving kindness.