Bible Strands
Genesis 25:20
and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan-aram and the sister of Laban the Aramean.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The narrator records Isaac’s age at marriage immediately after introducing him as Abraham’s son and before describing his prayer for a barren wife.
The words — בֶּן־ (ben-) literally means “son of,” and אַרְבָּעִים (‘ar-bā‘îm) means “forty,” together establishing Isaac’s exact age at the moment he took Rebekah as his wife.
The thread — The verse anchors the marriage event introduced in Genesis 24:67 and clarifies Rebekah’s lineage through Bethuel and Laban noted in Genesis 22:23 and 24:29.
Why it lands — It demands precise genealogical tracking to verify that the covenant promise continues through a documented, historically situated lineage rather than an unrecorded line.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah to wife, the daughter of Bethuel the Syrian of Padan–aram, the sister to Laban the Syrian.
Cross-references
- Genesis 24:29 Now Rebekah had a brother named Laban, and he rushed out to the man at the spring.
- Genesis 24:67 And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah and took Rebekah as his wife. And Isaac loved her and was comforted after his mother’s death.
- Genesis 22:23 And Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. Milcah bore these eight sons to Abraham’s brother Nahor.
- Genesis 31:24 But that night God came to Laban the Aramean in a dream and warned him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.”
- Deuteronomy 26:5 and you are to declare before the LORD your God, “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt few in number and lived there and became a great nation, mighty and numerous.
- Genesis 28:5 So Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau.
- Genesis 31:18 and he drove all his livestock before him, along with all the possessions he had acquired in Paddan-aram, to go to his father Isaac in the land in Canaan.
- Genesis 31:20 Moreover, Jacob deceived Laban the Aramean by not telling him that he was running away.
- Genesis 35:9 After Jacob had returned from Paddan-aram, God appeared to him again and blessed him.
- Luke 4:27 And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet. Yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”