“And [Lavan] said: ‘Come, blessed of Hashem! Why do you stand outside, when I have cleared the house and the place for the camels?’” (Bereshit 24:31)
The Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 60:7) teaches that this verse hints that Eliezer was transformed from being “accursed” to being “blessed.” But what led Lavan to conclude this?
The answer is that as soon as Lavan saw the rings and bracelets on Rivkah’s hands, he thought that Eliezer had given them to her as betrothal gifts. If so, it necessarily followed that Eliezer was no longer a slave, for a servant cannot act as an agent (shaliach) to betroth a woman, as the Talmud (Kiddushin 41b) rules: “Just as you [Israel] are members of the covenant [of Abraham], so must your agent be a member of the covenant.” If Eliezer were still a slave, he could not serve as an emissary in an act of kiddushin.
From this it follows that Abraham must have freed him, as ruled in the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 267:70): if a master commands his slave to perform a mitzvah or any act in which the slave himself is not obligated, the slave is automatically emancipated, for such a command implies that the master considers him bound by mitzvot as a free man, which as a slave he is not.
Therefore, when Lavan saw that Eliezer was acting as an emissary for a betrothal, he understood that Abraham had emancipated him, and he exclaimed: “Come, blessed of Hashem!”—meaning: you no longer belong to the category of the accursed, but to that of the blessed.
(Zera Shimshon, Parashat Chayei Sarah, art. 9)
