And it came to pass, before he had done speaking, that, behold, Rebekah came out, who was born to Bethuel, son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother, with her pitcher upon her shoulder.
Before he had done speaking - as he anticipated, a young woman, unveiled as in pastoral regions, appeared with her pitcher on her shoulder. Her comely appearance, her affable manners, her obliging courtesy in going down the steps to fetch water not only to him, but to pour it into the trough for his camels, afforded him the most agreeable surprise. She was the very person his imagination had pictured, and he proceeded to reward her civility.
Rebekah (cord with a noose) - a name not unaptly given to a maiden who ensnares by her beauty (Gesenius). She was the only daughter of a shepherd prince, and yet was in the habit, as appears, of going to a considerable distance to draw water; and from the readiness with which she let down the pitcher, and gave drink to the servant, and afterward drew for all his camels, it is evident that she had long been accustomed to this employment. Such duties, although simple and humble in their character, were not in ancient times, nor to this day in the pastoral districts of the East, regarded as degrading (cf. Genesis 29:9; Exodus 2:16-17). The pitcher, as may be seen from the Ninevite excavations, was exactly of the shape still in use. Rebekah was the granddaughter of Abraham's brother Nahor; and that fact has been ingeniously used as furnishing a strong, though minute, mark of truth in this history-the youth and relative position of the future wife of Isaac being a 'singular confirmation that he was the child of his parents' old age, the miraculous offspring of a sterile bed' (Blunt's 'Undesigned Coincidences').