An immigrant without family and married to a perfect stranger, Rebecca needed time to adjust to her new surroundings. The absence of children only compounded the tension. The midrash imagines both Isaac and Rebecca, each in a separate corner of the house, praying fervently and frequently. Their common recourse to prayer deepened their union and increased the likelihood of conception. Similarly, once Rebecca is pregnant, she returns to God for relief in a state of great discomfort.
Prayer yields the insight that makes the ephemeral endurable.
This is the wisdom that Isaac and Rebecca had learned from Hagar, Abraham's Egyptian concubine, the mother of Ishmael. For they lived by the spring where God had once lightened Hagar's suffering. Suddenly by a spring on the road back to Egypt, God appeared to assure her that her travail was rife with larger meaning. In sum, God responds to human tears with meaning, not miracles. The laws imbedded in nature are not overturned for our benefit.