After Avraham buries Sarah he makes it his goal to marry off his son Yitzchak. So he sends Eliezer to be the Shadchan and the Torah relates this to us in great detail. And we can’t help but wonder why the Torah devotes so much space to the details of Eliezer’s quest; how many camels he took, what kind of gifts he brought… and then the Torah repeats the whole story about how he picked Rivkah to be for Yitzchak by her willingness to give the camels to drink.
And another question, why would finding a match for Yitzchak be such a challenge in the first place? We know from the Ramban that Avraham was considered a king and that he was rich and famous, so why would it be hard for him to find Yitzchak a wife? If anything the Girls should be lining up for the chance.
To answer these questions we can look at something famous the Arizal has written: The highest souls sent down to this world are displayed in the lowest of places.
The natural way of our Olam, our world, is to conceal Hashem. Because of this, the highest souls, those which are capable of revealing the greatest light into the world are placed where there is the most darkness. As the Kotzker says, the most beautiful diamonds are found buried the deepest underground.
And in this Parsha we see Evidence of the Arizals dictum, for Rivkah was entangled in the deep spiritual black hole that was her father’s house.
So Avraham understood the Arizals concept, he knew the spiritual ins and outs of our world and he knew that the holiest soul that would be fit for his son would be buried in a deep darkness completely devoid of holiness, therefore Avraham saw it would be difficult for him to find a soul mate for Yitzchak so he had to create a whole mission to accomplish this, in order to rescue this pure diamond from the filth that surrounds it.
And since the initiative to find Yitzchak a wife was from Avraham and not Yitzchak the whole journey was done with Chesed, for Avraham is the highest personification of Hashems Chesed in this world and therefore Eliezer was too, for we learn that a person’s messenger is like the person himself. And if Yitzchak, who is the opposite of Chesed, Gevurah – constriction and judgment, were to have initiated the mission for a wife the whole process would have been done with Gevurah and he never would have found a wife because in order to lift up a soul from darkness to light one needs to be coming forward with Chesed, not judgment. This is why Eliezer said “the first girl to whom I say…” The first girl?! The first one that would pour water for him and his camels would be Yitzchaks wife?! That could’ve been just about anyone! How could he have made such a condition?
For when a person connects to someone with Chesed, Chesed is returned, just as Eliezer acting in Chesed asked Rivkah to pour she returned the Chesed and this is how he knew she was ‘the one’. If this journey were conducted with Gevurah this whole thing would never have happened, Eliezer would be too picky, but since Avraham initiated this assignment it was carried out with utmost Chesed and because of that Eliezer was successful for he was coming as Avraham, and he was able find that diamond in the rough – to uplift it, and bring her to Yitzchak.
May we all find that diamond in the rough in every soul and be able to see the good of every Jew even if their soul is buried deep in a darkness, for as the Kotzker said, “The most beautiful diamonds are found buried the deepest underground.”