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Then Abraham the father sends his servant Eliezer into a far country to get a bride for this now invisible son. Eliezer meets the intended bride at a well from whence she is drawing water, goes with her into her brother's house, takes out a pack of precious things sent from the father in the name of the son, displays them to her and invites her to become the bride of the son. She consents.
An unconscious prophecy had come to Abraham, for he prophesied that he and Isaac would both return from the mountain. Eliezer and Ishmael remained in that place, as Abraham had commanded, while he and Isaac went further. And while they were walking along, Isaac spake unto his father, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where then is the lamb for a burnt offering before the Lord?"
But Eliezer, seeing the angel wait for him, would brook no delay, and he said, "The man who came with me and prospered my way, waits for me without," and as Rebekah professed herself ready to go at once with Eliezer, her mother and brother granted her wish and dismissed her with their blessings. But their blessings did not come from the bottom of their hearts.
He met a hideously ugly man, who greeted him with the words: "Peace be with thee, Rabbi." Eliezer, instead of courteously acknowledging the greeting, said: "O thou wight, how ugly thou art! Is it possible that all the residents of thy town are as ugly as thou?"
One of them is most remarkable, viz., the conversion of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcan by the apostle James. This rabbi, the Talmud narrates, was actually arrested by Roman officers, and, in obedience to the edict against Christianity, was accused of the crime of being a Christian, which he did not deny, although he repented it.
He met him at the moment when Eliezer seized two camels and bore them across the stream. Besides, on account of Eliezer's close resemblance to Abraham, Laban thought he saw Abraham before him, and he said: "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord! It is not becoming that thou shouldst stand without, I have cleansed my house of idols."
He gave her also two bracelets for her hands, of ten shekels weight in gold, in token of the two tables of stone and the Ten Commandments upon them. When Rebekah, bearing the jewels, came to her mother and to her brother Laban, this one hastened to Eliezer in order to slay him and take possession of his goods. Laban soon learnt that he would not be able to do much harm to a giant like Eliezer.
But the report of the good fortune of the Alexandrian branch of our family had reached Judea, and Ben Akiba thought that he would do like our father Abraham, and he sent me, his Eliezer, into a strange land to win the daughter of a kinsman to wife for his Isaac. Now, who and what the young man is, and the esteem in which he and his father are held by men "
Eliezer now said to his master: "Peradventure no woman will be willing to follow me unto this land. May I then marry my own daughter to Isaac?" "No," replied Abraham, "thou art of the accursed race, and my son is of the blessed race, and curse and blessing cannot be united.
One of those descriptions is preserved in Pirke Rabbi Eliezer, and others in various fragments of the Talmud. That passage gave rise to the story of Jesus appearing in person to Paul, just as the rabbinical mystics claimed to have had frequent intercourse with the prophet Elijah, who had been transported alive to heaven.
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