Note: With Chanukah just around the corner, I am once again setting aside the social/political “hevel” to contemplate Judaic topics.
Having recently reread Parshas Chayei Sarah, I was drawn to revisit the question of Rivkah’s age when she married Yitzhak. The common traditional answer is that she was three years old, based on the following considerations (as analyzed by Rashi):
- Sarah Imeinu died at the age of 127.
- Her death was a direct result of the Akeidah, the binding of Yitzchak, and his narrow escape from being sacrificed, as shown to her in a vision by the Satan (or perhaps by Yitzchak himself).
- Since Sarah gave birth to Yitzchak at the age of 90, Yitzchak was 37 at the time of the Akeidah.
- There is a tradition that before a righteous person departs this world, another is born to take his or her place. (See, for example, a footnote in the Stone Edition Chumash: “… as implied by the verse (Ecclesiastes 1:5), ‘The sun rises and the sun sets’ (Sforno, Baal HaTurim).”
- Since Rivkah’s birth is reported at the end of Parshas Vayeira, Rivkah was the replacement for Sarah (as she was in Yitzchak’s life); hence, she was born when Yitzchak was 37.
- In Parshas Toldos, we learn that Yitzchak was 40 when he married Rivkah, and therefore Rivkah was only three.
We also deduce that Rivkah was infertile for 20 years, since Yaakov and Eisav were born to her when Yitzchak was 60.
No doubt along with many others, I find it highly problematic – for any number of reasons – to believe that Rivkah married Yitzchak at the tender age of three. With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, let me count the ways:
- When Rivkah first encounters Avraham’s faithful servant Eliezer, he tests her by asking for a drink of water, to which she responds by not only drawing water for him from the local well but by watering his ten camels as well. An Internet search produces varying numbers as to how much water a camel can drink at one time, but the most commonly mentioned amount is 20 gallons in 10 minutes or, for a thirsty camel, 30 gallons in 15 minutes. Multiply by ten camels and we find that Rivkah would have had to carry 200 to 300 gallons of water. What three-year-old can do that?
- Numerous scholars note that the Torah describes Rivkah as a na’arah when she meets Yitzchak, a term which usually denotes a girl of at least 12 or 12.5 years old, whereas a three-year-old would be referred to as a ketanah (“little one”).
- The assumption that Sarah died at the time of the Akeidah conflicts with the text that afterwards Avraham returned to Beersheva, while Sarah died in Kiryas Arba (Chevron).
- Tosafos comments that while one version of the midrash refers to Yitzchak as 37 years old at the Akeidah, an alternate version says he was 26. This variant is based on the following calculation as recounted by Devir Kahan in Daf Aleph (Nov 5, 2015):
Yaakov was 63 when he received his blessing from Yitzchak (as calculated by Rashi). He then studied for 14 years at the yeshiva of Shem and Ever before traveling to Haran. He worked for Lavan for 20 years and then traveled home for two years, after which he received word that his mother Rivkah had died, according to another midrash. If Rivkah had been married at the age of three, and the text says she was barren for 20 years, she would have been 23 when she gave birth to Yaakov. Adding that to the 99 years we have for Yitzchak’s age when he learned of her death, she would have died at the age of 122. The problem is that another midrash says she died at 133, and we can’t definitively resolve the conflict because the Torah makes no mention of Rivkah’s age at her death.
Consequently, Tosafos determines that Rivkah was 13 or 14 years old when she married Yitzchak, which is much more palatable than three. To add to the discrepancy, while Rashi relies on Seder Olam Rabbah for his calculation, Tosafos relies on the text of Seder Olam Rabbah as emended by the Vilna Gaon. By this logic, the discrepancy regarding Rivkah’s age at marriage comes down to differing versions of the same text.
- If Rivkah was indeed three, and Yitzchak waited until she was 13 to have intimate relations, then the first 10 years of the 20 years of infertility don’t even count, and if she were then 23, why would Yitzchak and Rivkah have been so desperate to conceive?
- The announcement of Rivkah’s birth at the end of the previous parsha, preceding the Akeidah, doesn’t necessarily mean that the two events were simultaneous.
- Perhaps worst of all, the assertion that 40-year-old Yitzchak married three-year-old Rivkah makes him look like a pedophile, which would be a horribly slanderous insinuation.
How do we reconcile these two views of Rivkah’s age? We can’t. The disputes between Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai were resolved after three years when a Heavenly Voice proclaimed, “Both are the words of the Living G-d; the halacha follows Beis Hillel.” We aren’t worthy of such a resolution, so we must rely on our own thinking. Attempts at reconciliation have been made. For the most part, the key sticking point is the premise that Rivkah was born and Sarah died at the time of the Akeidah.
For me, the most reasonable reconciliation was advanced by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, among others, who differentiated between Rivkah’s chronological age and her spiritual age. Physically she was 14 when she married, but spiritually she was three; that is, when Sarah died, her neshama became conjoined with Rivkah’s.
As Mi Yodeya states: “The Rebbe (and other scholars) are bothered by the fact that the Torah calls Rivkah a ‘naarah’ when Eliezer meets her. A naarah in Torah language can only be an older girl above 12 years of age. Otherwise, the Torah would use the word ‘katanah’ if she were really physically three. Based on this apparent contradiction, we know that Sarah passed away exactly at the time of the Akeidah. The Tanya explains that according to Kabbalah, a righteous person who dies may sometimes be granted a mission to help a struggling living person in this world. The tzaddik/tzadekes who passed has their soul reborn into the soul of their ‘student’ on Earth, in order to help them overcome spiritual obstacles. This is called the secret of ‘Ibur Neshama.’
“The Rebbe resolves it by saying the Seder Olam age of 14 is her physical age. The midrash brought by Rashi is not speaking physically, but spiritually. Sarah was reborn into the soul of Rivkah at the Akeidah (right after Sarah’s passing). Therefore, the midrash calls her a ‘three-year-old’ at her wedding. That is, three years since she was born with Sarah’s soul (which happened when she was physically 11).
“Further proof that we are dealing with a living shared incarnation is that Rivkah’s arrival causes the return of Sarah’s blessings (cloud, lights, dough). Issac is consoled ‘after his mother’ and ‘brings her to his mother’s tent’ specifically. (Gen. 24:67).
“In addition, I say that the ‘news’ Abraham receives could not possibly have happened all at once. It is a long family tree with the report of many births over a long time. There is no reason to say Rivkah, who is on the list, was born exactly then (at the Akeidah when the news was sent) unless we are speaking of a spiritual birth.
“So, Rivkah was 14 when she married Issac. She was three years old as a combined soul with Sarah.”
An equivalent way of looking at the situation was expressed by a fellow congregant who gives the weekly drasha at Young Israel of Phoenix (I’ll withhold his name to avoid getting him embroiled in controversy): If something contradicts logic, the text must be wrong – not the Torah itself, which is immutable and true, as an extant thousand-year-old Torah scroll is identical to the ones inrichard kron use today, but the midrashim, which were never meant to be taken literally. Some of them actually are true. Just don’t ask which ones.