In this week’s parsha, we read of Avraham Avinu sending his servant Eliezer to find a wife for his son Yitzchak. Avraham’s instructions were clear, that he must go to Aram Naharaim and find the proper wife and bring her back to Eretz Canaan.

Under no circumstance was Yitzchok able to leave and return with him. Eliezer goes to the well, where he meets Rivka. Eliezer realizes that Rivka is the true shidduch for Yitzchok, he then goes to her family’s home, where he repeats his entire ordeal to Lavan and Besuel.

As he repeats the story, Eliezer mentions that he had asked Avraham Avinu, ulai lo saileich ha’isha acharai, “Perhaps the young girl will not want to follow me.” Eliezer then explained that Avraham answered him by making him swear that his son would never leave Eretz Canaan.

Rashi explains that Eliezer had a self-interest in mind. Eliezer had a daughter of marriageable age. In the back of his mind, he wanted his own daughter to marry Yitzchak. He was hoping that the young girl that Avraham would prefer would not want to come, then his daughter would merit to marry Yitzchak instead.

Avraham realized Eliezer’s desire and told him, b’ni baruch v’ata arur v’ain arur medabek b’baruch, “My son Yitzchak is blessed, he is gebentched, and part of Klal Yisrael. You, Eliezer, are a slave from the children of Canaan, and therefore you are cursed. A cursed person cannot connect and become one with someone who is blessed.”

Rav Shimon Schwab asks why is that so? Why can’t someone who comes from a cursed nation work on himself, and be a proper shidduch for Yitzchak Avinu? In what way does being a child of Canaan and being an arur affect a marriage?

Rav Schwab explains that the answer lies in Eliezer’s own words. Why can’t Avraham’s son marry Eliezer’s daughter? Because Eliezer had his own interests in mind. A gebentched person, does not think about himself when doing a favor for someone else. He thinks only about the other person, without taking his own interests into account.

By bringing his self-interest into this mission, Eliezer showed that he was not deserving of being a baruch. Rather, he was from the cursed nation, and therefore his daughter could not be the shidduch for Yitzchak.