Here is what happened. Like her mother-in-law Sarah, Rebekah his wife could not bear children. Isaac did not use this as an excuse to find a handmaiden or some other potential “surrogate mother” to bear him a son, as happens in so many different contexts today. He had obviously learned from his father’s error and instead took the matter to God. Notice: “And Isaac entreated the Eternal for his wife, because she was barren: and the Eternal was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived”