Kejadian 25:20-21

25:20 When Isaac was forty years old, he married Rebekah, ¹  the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. ² 

25:21 Isaac prayed to ³  the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.

[25:20]  ¹ tn Heb “And Isaac was the son of forty years when he took Rebekah.”

[25:20]  ² sn Some valuable information is provided here. We learn here that Isaac married thirty-five years before Abraham died, that Rebekah was barren for twenty years, and that Abraham would have lived to see Jacob and Esau begin to grow up. The death of Abraham was recorded in the first part of the chapter as a “tidying up” of one generation before beginning the account of the next.

[25:21]  ³ tn The Hebrew verb עָתַר (’atar), translated “prayed [to]” here, appears in the story of God’s judgment on Egypt in which Moses asked the Lord to remove the plagues. The cognate word in Arabic means “to slaughter for sacrifice,” and the word is used in Zeph 3:10 to describe worshipers who bring offerings. Perhaps some ritual accompanied Isaac’s prayer here.