First, Eliezer prays for help in finding Rivka, but the Torah never says that Hashem responds. Eliezer simply picks a test of middot (personal moral characteristics) that will indicate an appropriate spouse for a daughter of Avraham.
First, as with Avraham, the ideal spouse will care for travelers. Those who follow in the footsteps of Avraham seek to protect others from the risks of life’s road. Rivka goes beyond this simple ideal. She is hard-working; we see her personally drawing the water even though she has servants. And she does her work with eagerness, running from place to place.
But Eliezer’s test does not simply seek a clone of Avraham. Eliezer does not ask for a woman who provides food. He asks for one who draws water. In this story, the daughters of the men of the city come freely to draw water. When Yaacov comes to the same well, it is covered by a rock, and the water is drawn by men. At that time, Rachel is the only woman who comes to draw water. In Moshe’s time, it is Yitro’s daughters who come to draw water, but are driven away by men. Finally, Miriam is credited with providing a source of water in the desert.
Righteous women seem to be drawers of water – and a society that has them doing so seems to be spiritually healthier. By bringing new life into our world, women enable physical potential to be maintained. And in various places in the Torah, we can see that water annuls the spiritual impurity of lost potential.
When these two elements are brought together, we see women who are protectors of both physical and spiritual potential.
This is what Eliezer is seeking.
Eliezer is not the inheritor of Avraham. When he prays, it is not out of fear of, or service to, Hashem. His prayer is a challenge to Hashem; it is a demand that Hashem demonstrate to Eliezer himself that the trials of Avraham were nothing more than tests. The Torah does not say that his prayer was answered. Although Eliezer declares His answer, Hashem’s role remains unstated in the text itself.
But Eliezer is a true servant of Avraham. He dedicates himself to his mission, using the character of those around him to carry it off. He blinds Laban with his own greed. He tells him, again and again about the wealth G-d has blessed Avraham (and now Yitzchak) with. And then he offers to leave. Lavan and Betuel are drawn in so deeply, they deny their own ability to even pass judgment on Eliezer’s request. The stakes are too high. And when Eliezer pays them off, he imitates Avraham in spending money for spiritual ends. When they attempt to renegotiate, he suggests that they might impede the Lord and perhaps lose out on the blessings that have made Avraham so rich.
And he draws out Rivka, by giving her a way through which she can live out the full potential of her life. She leaves immediately with the foreign man. Like Avraham himself, she leaves the land of her birth for a relationship with the unknown.
Eliezer succeeds in his mission, and Hashem’s name is reinforced.
Finally, we come to Yitzchak. Yitzchak has gone to Be’er Lachai Ro’I, the place where Hashem heard Hagar’s affliction and promised her that her son would be greatly multiplied. She named it Be’er Lachai Ro’i because it was there that she saw G-d. It was there that her unspoken prayer was answered.
Yitzchak has travelled to the same place, possibly for his own divine intervention. But he has left, his prayer unanswered. As he is travelling, we read in English that “Yitzchak went out to meditate in the field at twilight…” A more literal translation might suggest that he went out to meditate in the field “in the face of twilight.”
