Someone stopped me this morning after one of the masses to tell me how surprised she was to hear in today’s first reading that Rebekah wore a nose ring. “I have never heard this story before!” she said, mostly joking but, I think, a little startled to hear that a matriarch of Rebekah’s stature would … wear a nose ring.
When I heard the story, I confess I noticed the nose ring, too. It’s an unsettling image for me as well, but not because I don’t approve of nose rings. They’re fine, of course! I do not wear one, for the ordinary reasons that I do not want to, and I do not think I could really get away with doing it. Earrings are about as far as I think I can go. (And I further understood this morning that our fellow member of St. Paul’s was being funny, and I’m sure she knows that her own joke was on her.)
In any case, I found the nose ring unsettling, too, because a thought flashed through my mind: Does the nose ring imply that Rebekah is now her husband’s property, to be led around like livestock? Maybe not, but in this story, the nose ring definitely is part of a betrothal rite, an item among the exchange of goods and gifts between two families when a marriage is formalized. It was probably a harmless symbol of Rebekah’s new family’s wealth.