(Bereishis 24:67)
He took Rivkah and she became his wife and he loved her. (Bereishis 24:67)
Let’s start with the Ibn Ezra’s well-known question regarding לא תחמוד, the prohibition on coveting that which belongs to someone else. This is one of the Aseres Hadibros. The Ibn Ezra wants to know how the Torah can command a person not to want an object. A person’s envy and desire for things that catch his fancy is a feeling that comes by itself, even against his will. So how can the Torah tell a person not to feel what he feels?
The Beis Halevi writes as follows about this:
Many people ask how it is possible to forbid such a thing? And what is a person supposed to do if his heart covets...?
Every person can picture the following to himself and know it clearly. Let’s say someone has a lust for a certain thing. It is the thing he has the greatest desire for, each person according to his nature. He is about to attain the object of his desire, he is rushing toward it, and the yetzer hara is burning within him like fire.
His path leads him over a frozen river. He is running, and he slips on a frosty spot. He is falling and about to slam down on the ice. The moment he slips and feels himself falling, his desire leaves him completely. The fear of falling removes all his desire.
This is the nature of all living beings, as set by the Creator. A little fear removes a lot of desire and lust.
Now that the Torah has warned us not to covet, and placed a prohibition on it, if a person will have fear of the prohibition, even just a little fear, like the fear of falling on ice, he will not covet that forbidden object anymore.
1 Beis Halevi Al Hatorah, Shemos 20:14.
Yitzchak Avinu was full of yiras Shamayim every moment of his life. And he was not just a yerei Shamayim in the ordinary sense; he was the very embodiment of yirah. He was the quintessence of fear of Heaven in its purest form.
Fear and love are opposites. Accordingly, to say that Yitzchak “loved” someone or something sounds self-contradictory. If he was the essence of fear, how could he love?
This is why the Torah needs to state that Yitzchak loved Rivkah: ויאהבה. It tells us that it was no contradiction for Yitzchak to love. This is because Yitzchak’s fear was not a natural fear, such as fear of something scary or terrible. It was a different type of fear. Yitzchak’s fear stemmed from his making himself as nothing before Hashem. Anything that was against Hashem’s Will, or was distanced from Hashem, was like a threatening fire to Yitzchak. And anything that was Hashem’s Will, Yitzchak loved and sought.
Since it was Hashem’s Will for Yitzchak to love Rivkah, his very trait of fear brought him to love her. This is a deep concept if you think about it.
