When Eliezer goes to find a wife for Yitzchak, he devises a test by which, he asks HaShem, he will use to select the appropriate match. It will be the woman who gives both him and his camels to drink. Fine. The pasuk then reports that Eliezer saw Rivkah coming out towards the well and he ran (24;17) to greet her. Why did he run to her?
Rashi says that it was because he saw that the water miraculously rose up to Rivkah. However, Eliezer still continues on with his test, and only makes up his mind that Rivkah is the one for Yitzchak after she indeed does give his camels to drink too. The question is why did Eliezer not scrap the test after having seen this miracle; wasn’t that enough to show that Rivkah was spiritually worthy?
The answer is that miracles might happen to people who are not necessarily spiritually worthy (Rav Chaim Volozhin), and it certainly would not have told us if Rivkah and Yitzchak matched each other. Rather than relying on this miracle, Eliezer made sure to do his research and make sure that Rivkah was indeed a woman of chesed. This is a lesson to all people dating that hashgachah pratis is nice and there are many great stories about how people found their bashert, but one cannot rely on a miraculous meeting to assume that you match each other – you need to make sure your characters and spirtual levels match. Just like Eliezer did not rely on the miracle he witnessed.
[Adapted mostly from Rav Bernstein zt’l]
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