Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

At length this princess in Israel, tested and tried, and found true, died at Hebron at the good age of one hundred and twenty-seven years, and Abraham wept over her, and well he might, for she had shared his trials and was a good and faithful wife, and she was a mother, even more than a wife.

Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah of Ephron, the Hittite, and tenderly laid the remains of this lovely woman to rest in one of the chambers of the cave. It is the first burial mentioned in the Sacred records. And the tomb remains unto this day, hallowed in the eyes of Jews, Christians and Mohammedans alike, and was visited by the writer.

The lesson which God would teach us in the life of this woman in White Raiment is that testings are necessary to the development of faith, and that these testings come to us in the most ordinary events of our daily lives. All Christians surely know by experience that events which seemed all darkness at first have ultimately brought them nearer to the light. The much-dreaded cloud has proved to be only a veil under which God hides His mighty power. His gracious query, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” has comforted us, and has turned what we thought to be a curse into a blessing. O, can we not trust Him in the darkness as well as in the light, knowing that He can bring calm out of storm, and that he often chooses the darkness and the cloud as a special medium by which to reveal himself? Could we climb to heaven by some other way, and escape the shadows and the storms of life, how much should we miss of the blessed manifestations of God’s revelations of His power.

God speaks to listening ears and waiting hearts as truly to-day as He did before the tent door under the oaks in the plain of Mamre. He may speak to us through his providence, through the voice of a friend, through a book or a sermon; but perhaps He does so most frequently in the little details of everyday life, in which we can not fail to see His dealings with us if our hearts are turned expectantly toward him. Only let us be admonished by Sarah’s sad mistake. That she made it, proves that she was human. But let us be afraid of sin. The door once open, none of us can tell into what endless labyrinths of sorrow it will lead us. God wants a tried people, not only for their own sake but that they may be a blessing to others.

And now we come to a most beautiful scene in Sacred History. While, as a whole, the Bible gives the drama of human sin and divine redemption, yet it pauses in its wonderful revelations to let us look into the homes of the people who lived ages ago. It somehow touches human life on all its sides. Other books which are held sacred by eastern nations, give woman only contemptuous mention. This one recognizes the dignity and beauty of her life and work. It tells in seven verses the story of Enoch, who walked with God three hundred and sixty-five years and who was holy enough to escape death, while it gives sixty-six verses to the wooing and wedding of Rebekah and Isaac. In the pictures which the Sacred Record opens to us of the domestic life of the patriarchal age, perhaps this is the most perfectly characteristic and beautiful idyl of a marriage, and how it was brought about. In its sweetness and sacred simplicity, it is a marvelous contrast to the wedding of our modern fashionable life. And surely, since God’s Book gives so much time and space to the domestic life of women, the daughters of modern Christianity ought to regard themselves and their affairs of the utmost importance. For the sake of Him who gave them such prominence and recognition, they ought to love Him.

Abraham, the friend of God, understood fully that it would never do to have the heir of promise fall into the hands of a heathen wife. He could not bear the thought of taking one of the corrupt Canaanites into his family, with the chance of her leading Isaac into the abominable worship of her gods.

Parents often frustrate the grace of God and mar His plans irreparably by being careless of the worldly associations and affinities of their children.

Sarah, the beautiful and beloved, had been tenderly laid away in the cave of Machpelah, and Isaac is now forty years of age. Forty years, however, in those good old times, is yet young, when the thread of mortal life ran out to a hundred and seventy-five or eighty years. As Abraham has nearly reached that far period, his sun of life is dipping downwards toward the evening horizon. He has but one care remaining—to settle his son Isaac in life before he is gathered to his fathers.

The scene where Abraham discusses the subject with his head servant sheds a peculiar light on the domestic and family relations of those days.

Calling Eliezer, his most trusty servant, he discloses to him his purpose, and makes him take an oath that he will faithfully carry out his wishes. But Abraham’s steward saw the difficulties of such a proxy wooing, and expressed a fear that the young woman would object to so hazardous a journey to share the home of a man whom she had never seen and of whom she had possibly never before heard. So, to make matters sure, he asks if it would not be better to take Isaac with him? To this request the patriarch replied, “Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.” Abraham saw that there was too much risk in allowing Isaac to go back to the old home. He might have to be scourged out of it as was Jacob, the next in the line, a few years later. He must do right and trust God. So he told his steward, “The Lord, before whom I walk, will send his angel before thee and prosper thy way, and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred and of my father’s house.” Then, as he saw the ever-present contingency with which human free agency may frustrate even Divine Providence, he added, “And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this thine oath; only bring not my son thither again.”