This Sunday is our chance to finally get to know Isaac. We remember that Isaac was the boy, the son, the heir, whose conception was miraculous, requiring a suspension of the limits of nature itself, given the advanced age at which Abraham and Sarah became his parents. He was named, not by man, but by God – given a name that suggested their original laughter of disbelief and their eventual laughter of delight, as well as Ishmael's mockery at his weaning. Raised in the regions of Gerar and Beersheba, he was deeply attached to his father Abraham, who – after Ishmael's expulsion – had begun fully doting on him. Then came the day, in Isaac's teens or early adulthood, of their long, quiet trip to the mountain. Isaac held his questions until he and Dad were alone. When the truth became clear, Isaac passively submitted; if this were the hour he was born for, let God be praised all the same. He didn't struggle when bound and laid on the wood. The knife came out, up, down – but not all the way down. Abraham had stopped, looked up at the sky; Isaac likely saw nothing, heard nothing. The suspense was killer. Abraham untied Isaac, fetched the ram. Isaac's pounding heart slowly slowed.
But think for a moment about his relationship with Father Abraham. We've noticed that, from the day Isaac gets off the altar, the Bible never explicitly depicts Isaac and Abraham living in the same place. Maybe they did, but we can't know for sure. It looks more like a separation. The emotional, psychological impact of seeing his totally trusted father begin to plunge the knife down – that's just an image that won't leave. Isaac wakes up in a cold sweat after revisiting that moment in his nightmares. Isaac knows he's been restored, liberated, as though one risen from the dead – he goes back into the world as a suggestion of resurrection – but he's been changed, inwardly scarred. Isaac retreats toward the desert, seemingly alone, to work out his pains and his griefs. The Man of Laughter isn't laughing now. One modern rabbi remarks that Isaac appears here as “a traumatized man, comfortable in silence and solitude,” who in this desert is forged into “a dark, quiet, intense character.”1 It took the sight of Rebekah to bring him comfort and teach him to risk love again.
Now he's married. These are the years he's waiting for children. Isaac understands that it's his job in life to be the new patriarch now that Abraham is fading from the earthly scene. Isaac knows he'll be heir of all that Father Abraham has, soon enough. But how does Isaac feel about that? How does Isaac relate to the holy man whose image haunts his dreams? How does he see himself, the passive victim whose life has been limited to a modest range with one terrifying jaunt beyond his comfort zone, in relation to the dauntless adventurer and authority figure who looms so much larger than life? Are Isaac's shoulders able to bear this cross?
Hard times arrive, and it's just then that Isaac – for the first time in his life – encounters God in the way that his father Abraham used to. At the point of crisis, then “the LORD appeared to him” and spoke with him (Genesis 26:2). Until then, God seemed the Mute One, a figure from Dad's many stories. But now Isaac, like Abraham, beholds something, be it by day or by night; and now Isaac hears the voice that once demanded and then swore off his lifeblood. And in that message, God strikes Isaac in a sensitive spot. He says that “Abraham heard my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my instructions” (Genesis 26:5). This is the very language Moses will use later in urging the assembly of Israel to “love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his judgments, and his commandments all the days” (Deuteronomy 11:1). Where we read Genesis, with the Apostle Paul, with an emphasis on Abraham as the father of faith, the one who was justified by grace through faith before even the first hint of a law was given, God also endorses a picture of Abraham as one who, in advance of the Law of Moses being given at Sinai, was a faithful keeper of that Law.
Maybe Isaac feels that God is rubbing it in. His feelings toward Abraham might be somewhat a touchy topic. This, in fact, is one of the major themes of the chapter. Isaac, the main character here, has his name used twice-seven in today's passage, fourteen times; the late Abraham's name is used eight times. Abraham, even dead, rivals the living Isaac for prominence. Abraham was a larger-than-life figure in Isaac's eyes; God sees him that way, too. Can Isaac live up to this description of Abraham? Now that Isaac hears God's voice, can he heed it? Can he keep God's charge, God's commandments, God's statutes, and God's instructions? What does God want?
This message comes when Isaac is already under stress and strain. For “there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham” (Genesis 26:1). That first famine was, in fact, one of the first Abraham stories the Bible gave us: how, due to a heavy famine in Canaan, Abraham abandoned the land of promise and sought his salvation in Egypt (Genesis 12:10). Isaac has planned on the same thing, and, in fact, is on his way there. But first, Isaac has stopped with a familiar figure: “Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, to Gerar” (Genesis 26:1). Isaac means this as a temporary refueling opportunity, a stop-over. But God suggests otherwise: “Don't go down to Egypt,” he tells Isaac. “Dwell in the land of which I'll tell you.” Which land? “Sojourn in this land” (Genesis 26:3). That's what God wants from him right now.
Isaac isn't his father – a fact which Isaac perhaps feels all too well. When God wanted to call Abraham, God bade him leave behind everything familiar and move away into the unknown. God urged Abraham to be a bold pioneer forging something new, a pilgrim of faith betting it all on what he couldn't see. But when God speaks to Isaac, he calls him to not go to the unknown and unseen, but instead to stay put. God urges Isaac to stick to the familiar haunts he grew up in, to remain where he already is, to put down roots there.2
It seems like such a different commission, but think about what God is asking under the circumstances. There's a famine in Canaan, and that includes the territory around Gerar, even if they have some stockpiles to keep alive in the town. Isaac has been laying plans to get himself, his wife, and his household out of danger of starvation, to flee for safety to the bounties of the Nile, like his dad once did. But God asks Isaac to stay where the famine is. What reassurance does God give Isaac? Simply his great faithfulness. “I will be with you, and I will bless you, for to you and to your seed I give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father: I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and will give to your seed all these lands, and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 26:3-4). And then God bases it on Abraham's virtuous obedience. But look at these words through Isaac's eyes. God anchors these commitments on the oath he swore to Abraham. When was that? Right above Isaac bound on the altar. Now, God is telling him, Isaac will reap the benefits of the hour that most haunts him. Now, because of that cross, Isaac can depend on God to be near to him, can depend on God to bless him, can expect God to multiply him after all (despite Rebekah's barrenness, as we heard about last Sunday), and can believe that ultimately Isaac's seed will be heirs, not just of 'the land,' as God so often spoke to Abraham, but now 'all these lands,' including the dominion of Abimelech.
Isaac wants to run. Isaac wants to go to Egypt, where there's predictable safety. But Isaac, in an act of faith, has received the word of God and treasured it in his heart. Now he keeps it in his actions, simple as they might seem: “Isaac settled in Gerar” (Genesis 26:6). He did so because he believes these promises to be true. Isaac is now following in the footsteps of Abraham's faith, albeit in the different expression to which God calls him.
What follows through the rest of this chapter will be a series of incidents exploring how Isaac revisits, rehashes, and remixes some of Abraham's ordeals. Both in Egypt and at Gerar, Abraham had – quite notoriously – feared the crafty designs of foreign men lusting after his wife Sarah; he'd safeguarded his own person at her expense by passing her off as his sister – which, technically, she apparently was. Now, in Gerar after spurning Egypt, Isaac tries to imitate, not his father's glories, but his father's foibles. When the locals raise questions about his wife, Isaac stretches the truth past its breaking point, claiming his pretty cousin-bride Rebekah as his sister (Genesis 26:7). Now, when Abraham fudged about Sarah in Egypt, Pharaoh took her into his harem, and it took a mighty plague to redeem her from captivity (Genesis 12:15-17). When Abraham did it again in Gerar, King Abimelech likewise took Sarah, but God prevented him from acting and warned him by a revelatory dream to return her (Genesis 20:2-7). Now, Isaac claims beautiful Rebekah is available, and... nobody makes a move on her. Life just goes on. They settle in Gerar, and time begins to pass by months or even years.
Then, one day, King Abimelech – maybe the same one who took Sarah, or maybe this is an Abimelech Jr. now – glances out his palace window, which was high enough to get a view people wouldn't expect. And Isaac has let his guard down. The king “saw and, behold, Isaac fooling around with Rebekah – his wife!” (Genesis 26:8). The verb for what Isaac's doing is the same one, 'to laugh' or 'to play,' that Isaac's name is built on (and your imagination can fill in what kind of 'playing' makes clear to Abimelech that Rebekah's no sister). In pulling his dad's old tricks, Isaac didn't match ol' Abe for savvy; neither divine wrath nor divine revelation made the truth known, but rather Isaac's sheer carelessness.3 What follows is familiar from the earlier stories: the king calls, confronts, and scolds Isaac for his lack of concern for the objective liability risked by the whole city-state if any of its members had unknowingly been tainted with the stain of adultery because of Isaac's deception (Genesis 26:9-10). Hearing Isaac's excuse, Abimelech settles the matter by casting a veil of protection over the pair. Earlier, God warned Abimelech that, if he didn't return Isaac's mom, he'd “surely die” (Genesis 20:7), the same death-penalty words first spoken to Adam in the garden (Genesis 2:17). Now, Abimelech passes that message to his people: to touch Isaac in violence, or to touch Rebekah in lust, is to grasp forbidden fruit (Genesis 26:11).4
When Abraham was condemned by Pharaoh, he and Sarah were deported and escorted out of Egypt, but kept all the riches given as Sarah's dowry (Genesis 12:16, 20; 13:1-2). When Abraham was chastised by Abimelech, he and Sarah were allowed to stay in the land and were given gifts as compensation for the trouble (Genesis 20:14-16). Now, since nothing was actually done to Rebekah, Isaac is allowed to stay in the land but gets no riches at royal expense. Instead, he starts to farm, sowing his seed into the earth (Genesis 26:12). Seminomads like Isaac did occasionally resort to small-scale agriculture if they were in a stable enough place, but to start it in a time of famine, when mobility was paramount, might have seemed downright mad. But hadn't God promised to multiply Isaac's seed like the stars? Since his natural seed is growing no humans, maybe his plant seed will be multiplied. And so, “when everyone was in need because of the famine and the infertility of the land, Isaac sowed and gathered a plentiful harvest,”5 he “reaped in the same year a hundred measures” (Genesis 26:12).
Even in a good year (much less a famine year), a hundredfold return on investment would be agriculturally abnormal, to put it mildly. But that's the miracle Isaac gets to see. Maybe Isaac is the inspiration for the story his future descendant told, inviting us to picture a sower like Isaac who prodigally scatters his seed hither and yon, knowing that, however much is wasted, he'll see the seed sown in good soil “growing up and increasing and yielding thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold” (Mark 4:8). As for Isaac, we're next told that “the man became great, and he went on to continually greaten until he was great indeed: he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and servants aplenty” (Genesis 26:13-14). He enjoys “miraculously meteoric financial success.”6 Isaac has struck it rich, maybe as rich as his dad ever had been.
But here's the downside. As Isaac became greater and greater in the vicinity of Gerar, “the Philistines envied him,” they were fearfully jealous of his successes (Genesis 26:14). This is the first time this word, 'envy' or 'jealousy,' crops up in the Bible. And it's a powerful force. Now, remember that Abraham had made a covenant with the people of Gerar, that Abraham (and his heirs like Isaac) would deal in fairness, kindness, and truth with Abimelech and his heirs, while Abimelech and his heirs would honor Abraham and his heirs and the water rights they'd secured in the wells Abraham's servants had dug (Genesis 21:23-27). It might be that Isaac's trickery with Rebekah was heedless of that covenant; but certainly, the deeds of the Philistines of Gerar broke the covenant outright, when they revoked the water rights of Abraham's clan by plugging up the wells he'd dug, denying his claims now that he's dead and they're dealing with his son (Genesis 26:15).7 It was a common tactic in conflicts over land and water rights, a way of saying, “You aren't welcome here.” It could easily be a prelude to a war. As tensions flare, Abimelech steps in. These latest escalations make it unclear whether his royal decree could really assure Isaac's safety.8 Moreover, Isaac has become so formidable as to be an apparent threat. Like Abraham once said to Lot, so Abimelech now says to Isaac: separation is the only way to defuse this ticking time bomb (cf. Genesis 13:8-9). Isaac needs to move out of the town and its lands (Genesis 26:16).
For Isaac, this effective exile was a devastating blow. His rise to wealth had been rooted in his ability to farm those lands and trade his surplus for other goods. Having his residency permit revoked and being banned from his farm meant he risked losing the proximate source of his prosperity, like a start-up founder whose company goes bankrupt. And yet Isaac, gentle and quiet, didn't argue with Abimelech, any more than he'd argued with Abraham on the mountain. He left. “Isaac went from there, and he encamped in the Wadi of Gerar,” a dormant riverbed upstream from town, “and he settled there” (Genesis 26:17). This would have to do.
But before taking action there, Isaac snuck back to the wells the Philistines had plugged, the wells of Abraham. And Isaac took time, maybe by night, to excavate them, to haul the dust of the earth out of them and expose their depths to the daylight. Why'd he do that? Not to reside by them, not to use them, but simply to restore their goodness for all who might need – even for the Philistines, should they choose to welcome their waters and not spite them. Not only does Isaac go around and redig the wells of Abraham, but “he called to them their names as the names that had been called to them by his father” (Genesis 26:18). Physically, Isaac here is doing the same actions that Abraham once did. But he's not engaged in a blind repetition. He's making a deliberate choice. This is, for Isaac, “a conscious effort to restore his father's legacy,” no longer to hide from it or to let it fade.9 Isaac is making peace with what it means to be the son of Abraham the Obedient.
Once he's restored Abraham's legacy, now Isaac presses it further. Isaac had dug Abraham's wells; now Isaac's servants dig new wells in the Wadi of Gerar where Isaac has settled. Digging wells was a risky and expensive proposition. Wells weren't small, and it isn't as though Isaac has machinery. And yet, on their very first try, the servants get it right. The first new well they dig is one supplied by “living water” flowing from an underground spring – this made it the best and most valuable type of well (Genesis 26:19).
But now arrives another problem. Isaac isn't all that far from Gerar, and the herdsmen of Abimelech and the city are accustomed to graze in this area. Ordinarily, it was understood that ownership of a well was established by the effort taken to dig it; but ordinarily, a semi-nomad wouldn't go through that effort without first coming to an understanding with the locals. The herdsmen from Gerar start arguing with the servants of Isaac who tend his large herds and flocks; they stake a claim to the well which Isaac's people have dug, saying its water is for the use of lawful Gerar residents, not for the spawn of Abraham (Genesis 26:20).
This quarreling is the same quarreling that required a division of territory between Abraham and Lot (Genesis 13:5-9). Isaac is faced with a similar choice, not from kinsmen but from these foreigners. He could insist on his rights. He could overwhelm the shepherds of Gerar with his great might. He could lay his complaint before Abimelech, as Abraham had when the servants of Abimelech seized one of his wells (Genesis 21:25). But Isaac does something else. He yields. He names the well, implicitly reminding everyone of his rightful ownership; he names it Esek, 'Contention,' as a rebuke of their behavior; but he cedes its water to their use (Genesis 26:20). He would rather search for a peaceful resolution, even if that means handing over the fruit of his hard labors. So he starts again. He has his servants dig a second well in the riverbed, perhaps hoping to draw on the same flowing water beneath the earth. It stands to reason that, if there are two wells, then each party can use one without interfering with the other, and everyone can be happy and coexist (Genesis 26:21).
The shepherds of Gerar have other ideas, however. It's a familiar story these days. Now that they control Esek, they insist that this second well is theirs also – after all, it's in their traditional territory, and if it draws from the same water that feeds the first well, then Isaac's surrender of that has established precedent for their claim. The whole problem is thus repeating itself all over again. And this is where Isaac could easily draw the line. Isaac has tried to be accommodating. Isaac has been more than generous in ceding one well. Isaac has gone out of his way to be fair-minded, to engineer a win-win situation. And now it's apparent that the shepherds of Gerar don't want a win-win situation. They want one where they get everything. Shouldn't Isaac put his foot down? Well, he doesn't. Instead, Isaac once again surrenders the well that his servants spent long hours digging, lining, capping. He names this one, too. He calls it 'Hostility,' memorializing his complaint over the situation – Sitnah, he calls it, which is related to the Hebrew word for a hostile adversary: satan. He's bedeviled by the affair.
Each time – at Gerar, at Esek, at Sitnah – “Isaac agrees to what the Philistines want, rather than holding onto land at the cost of intensifying anger and bloodshed.”10 This model of meekness now leaves this area where the shepherds are, he retreats further into the desert to where the western and central Negev basins meet. And there we read, not that Isaac's servants dig a well, but that he digs a well. And when he does, no herdsmen march from Gerar to give him grief. Nobody surrounds him and bickers with him. He's past the territory they feel emboldened to claim. This well, at long last, is all Isaac's. Third time's the charm. He's persisted with dogged determination in the face of every loss and setback, picking up and starting again as often as needed, unafraid to try something and fail at it.11 He names this well, as he did the others, but it's a happier name: Rehoboth. There's a reason people go to a Rehoboth Beach and not to an Esek Beach or a Sitnah Beach. Rehoboth means 'roomy spaces.' And this is the first time where Isaac, not the narrator, offers a commentary. Isaac calls this well Rehoboth “because the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land” (Genesis 26:22).
And that's what Isaac has really wanted, what Isaac has really needed: room, enlargement, for the same of being fruitful. This is the first use of a verb that shows up repeatedly in God's promises to Israel. In renewing the covenant after the golden calf calamity, God identified himself to Moses as “the LORD..., a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14) and pledged to “cast out nations before you and enlarge your borders,” to make their territory roomy (Exodus 34:34). Moses looked back on that promise as one of joy and freedom for Israel, “when the LORD your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you” (Deuteronomy 12:20). Centuries later, when Israel (like Isaac) was tempted to “go down to Egypt... to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh” (Isaiah 30:2), the prophet Isaiah heard the message that “in quietness and trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15), because when they do, “in that day your livestock will graze in roomy pastures” (Isaiah 30:23). If Abraham's faith kept the Law before it was written, Isaac's hope meets the Prophets before they've spoken.
As the seasons shift, Isaac migrates north from his Rehoboth, “and he went up from there to Beersheba,” that deeply familiar haunt of his boyhood (Genesis 26:23). He sees Abraham's tamarisk tree, under which Isaac had grown up; maybe annual notches marking Isaac's growth are still visible on its trunk, for him to rub his thumb over and get a bit misty-eyed. Memories flood back. Isaac goes to bed, and “the LORD appeared to him in the same night” (Genesis 26:24). Later Jews imagined that this was the start of the new year.12 God doesn't have much that's new to say – he repeats a lot of things from the way the chapter started. God centers himself as the heart of Abraham's legacy. God repeats that Isaac's blessing is founded, not on his own merits, but on those of Abraham – which Isaac can now experience as a word of grace and joy, not of judgment and resentment. God commits himself to Isaac, and also encourages Isaac to set aside his fears. “Fear not,” says God now to Isaac, as he once spoke it to Abraham in the wake of a great war, after Abraham had ceded his rightful winnings to Canaanites who'd done nothing good (Genesis 15:1).
In response, Isaac does three things which show how he's grown into Abraham's sandals. He now builds his first altar, in the place where we'd expected Abraham to but where he'd planted a tree instead. Under the tree, Abraham had called on the name of the LORD; now Isaac does the same, calling on the name of the LORD, over the altar – thereby establishing formal public worship of the true God. And Isaac pitches his tent and bids his servants begin work on a new well in this place. This, Isaac seems to be saying, will be home – as it was once before when Abraham was the patriarch, and is again now that Isaac is patriarch (Genesis 26:25).
As they work, Isaac discovers why God urged him not to fear. Visitors come from the northwest (Genesis 26:26). Here comes King Abimelech, in all his stateliness. By his side is “Phicol, prince of his hosts,” the military commander whom we met when Abraham lived here, too (Genesis 21:22). Now we've added a third party: “Ahuzzath, the king's friend,” the highest civilian counselor in the royal court at Gerar. To see this trio of visitors approach – much as a diviner trio had approached Abraham's tents decades earlier (Genesis 18:2) – sets a challenge before Isaac. He's surprised and, unsurprisingly, a bit testy. Abimelech's jurisdiction here is debated at best. So Isaac asks why they're still bothering him here, given that “you hate me and have sent me away from you” into the desert (Genesis 26:27). Isaac isn't lashing out. But he is standing up for himself verbally.
What do the leaders of Gerar say? How do they explain themselves? When Abimelech and Phicol had come to Abraham, they'd admitted that “God is with you in all that you do” (Genesis 21:22); now, as they come to Isaac, they announce that “certainly we have seen that the LORD is with you!” (Genesis 26:28). In Abraham's day, Abimelech asked Abraham to swear an oath to him, unilaterally; now, in Isaac's day, Abimelech and his lackeys suggest a mutual oath and covenant. They spell out what they hope for from Isaac: “that you will do us no evil,” no harm, “just as we have not touched you and as we have done to you only good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the LORD!” (Genesis 26:29).
You could argue this is a bit of revisionist history from Gerar. True, they haven't 'touched' Isaac – at no point did the Philistines break the letter of the law which Abimelech had set down. Did Abimelech and his court send Isaac away in peace? That seems more Isaac's doing than theirs. And have they really done Isaac only good, when the Philistines over whom Abimelech rules have filled Abraham's wells with dirt and when the shepherds of Abimelech's state have kept harassing Isaac and stealing his laboriously built wells? Isaac could fairly argue with the version of events they're presenting. But he hears something remarkable in their words. They've borne testimony that God is with Isaac just as he was with Abraham – which is exactly what Isaac has needed to hear. But in the story of Abraham and Abimelech, Abimelech only heard from and spoke of “the God,” an abstract relation suitable for a pagan context. Now, Genesis puts on the Philistine king's lips the name of the LORD – and that's an astonishing development. Abimelech, Ahuzzath, and Phicol confess Abraham's God, the God who is now with Isaac, by name; they credit him as the Source of Isaac's blessing; they acknowledge the truth.
When Abimelech had approached Abraham to exact an oath, Abraham had confronted Abimelech with his past grievances over wrongs done, and insisted on weaving their settlement into the covenant that followed (Genesis 21:24-27). Isaac passes over past wrongs. In place of giving Abimelech a few sheep as a witness, he throws a grand ceremonial feast for these dignitaries, hosting them hospitably at his table. The next morning, as the dawn broke, “they swore, a man to his brother” – mutually and fraternally renewing the covenant by oath. And where Abimelech had before exiled Isaac in tension, now “Isaac sent them away, and they went away from him in peace,” true peace, because of Isaac's capacity for forgiveness and grace, because of his willingness to overcome his righteous anger and embrace personal sacrifice for the sake of life and peace (Genesis 26:30-31).13 Later Jews wanted to imagine that Isaac cursed the Philistines to annihilation as soon as they'd left, but that isn't the Isaac of Genesis at all, not by a long shot.14
As their backs wink on the horizon, Isaac feels a tug at his sleeve. A servant has news for him. That well they'd been digging here, unsure whether anything would come from it? There's news: “We have found water!” At the very moment when Isaac rose to a man of covenant peace and forgiveness, living water had gushed forth into the well. Promptly, Isaac named it Shibah, commemorating Abimelech's oath. Earlier, we'd read Abraham naming this place Beersheba, 'Well of Seven' or 'Well of the Oath' (Genesis 21:31); but now it's Isaac who gives that name a firm foundation, Isaac who cements it and makes it lasting (Genesis 26:32-33). Abraham might have brought a revolution of faith, but Isaac has the gift of solidifying and stabilizing it – he's more Timothy than Paul, he's more bishop than apostle, but that's exactly what his generation needs: not a clone of Abraham, but a true son and successor in Abraham's tradition, a maintainer and consolidater to follow a founder.15
This chapter, at first blush, seemed exasperatingly repetitive of what had come before. But now we can see that there's a purpose to this remix: to present in Isaac what it means to be a second-generation patriarch, someone who has different gifts and graces than his father, someone whose credit is riding his father's coattails, yet who fills that role faithfully and inherits the greatness promised to Abraham because God is with him to bless – and who, as he perseveres, sees breakthroughs that would've made Abraham again laugh, surprised by joy.
And Isaac does so as a model of peace-keeping. Isaac goes out of his way to be accommodating, to not raise his fist in protest against the injustices done to him. With the same spirit he showed at Moriah, “he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). St. Ambrose describes how Isaac here “did not return evil for evil,” how “he yielded to those who drove him out, but he received them again when they were sorry,” how he both “fled to avoid strife” and “readily forgave them, and he was exceptionally kind when he pardoned.”16 The mentality was in Isaac that would later be in Christ and in his Apostle who asked, “Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?” (1 Corinthians 6:7), if the cost of fighting back would be to stoke the flames of anger or to cause scandal. “Let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14:19), aiming “if possible, so far as it depends on you,” to “live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18). And we're freed to do that when we can trust in God, who “is able even to provide means where there are none,”17 to be with us in the seasons of financial hardship, mistreatment, and separation.
Isaac has such a great deal to teach us, because – as early Christians realized when they read his story spiritually – even here, he has his ways of pointing ahead to a Greater Isaac, Jesus Christ. In Isaac's playful delight in his Rebekah, we see an image of Christ's love for his Bride, the Church, whom he took on human flesh to seek and save.18 It was for the sake of this love that Christ was brought before and condemned by worldly authorities. Yet in the days of his ministry, Christ sowed the seed of the gospel word of God, just as Isaac sowed in the fields of Gerar; and Christ saw many sprout up, as the crowds gathered around.
He dug out the wells of his Father's servants of old which had been more recently filled with dust – that is, the wells of the Law and the Prophets, whose true beauty had been concealed beneath an earthly understanding.19 Christ had come to unplug them, to show how they testified of him. He bade his servants – his apostles – dig new wells, “fountains of faith and devotion,”20 of the life-giving message of the gospel, rich with the Spirit, “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). The apostles faced persecution and harassment for doing so, their opponents hijacking their labor to their own contentious and hostile ends, who “oppose the gospel wells” and “resist the apostolic wells.”21 But in time, Christ dug them a Rehoboth, making room for the gospel to spread into the world, unchained and free, that Christendom might be a fruitful expanse. Nothing can hinder the manifest greatness of Christ. And one day, the powers that sought to condemn, as Abimelech did of Isaac, will have to concede that Christ is the Blessed of his Father, and that we are blessed in him. Then “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow... and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11). Then will come perfect peace, the water of life, the oath eternal.
These strange stories of Isaac thus carry the gospel. And if they do so for the world, they do so for our hearts. For Jesus declared that “whoever believes in me, as Scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). The wells aren't just in Gerar, in the wadi, at Beersheba; they're in you, in your heart and in your soul. But too often, we don't maintain that inner wellspring. We allow those unseen Philistines of the dark to sneak in and, by their temptation, hoodwink us and cram our wells with the filth of sin, sin which obstructs our access to the life-giving waters of salvation. And when that happens, God teaches us, through the example of Isaac, to dig them back out. Don't allow the wells of Abraham stay clogged, don't let them be lost to time; don't let your soul cling to the dust (Psalm 119:25). Dig. Excavate. Purify. “In repentance and rest, you shall be saved” (Isaiah 30:2). Then we may say, with the psalmist: “I have chosen the way of faithfulness.... I will run in the way of your commandments, for you shall make my heart roomy” like Rehoboth (Psalm 119:30-32)!
1 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggic Books, 2017), 269-270.
2 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 272.
3 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 273.
4 Chris W. Lee, Death Warning in the Garden of Eden: The Early Reception History of Genesis 2:17 (Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 44-45.
5 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 78, in Library of Early Christianity 1:159.
6 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 274.
7 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 274 n.8.
8 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 185.
9 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 275.
10 Matthew R. Schlimm, From Fratricide to Forgiveness: The Language and Ethics of Anger in Genesis (Eisenbrauns, 2011), 147.
11 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 276.
12 Jubilees 24:21-22, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:103.
13 Matthew R. Schlimm, From Fratricide to Forgiveness: The Language and Ethics of Anger in Genesis (Eisenbrauns, 2011), 149.
14 Jubilees 24:27-33, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:104.
15 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 276.
16 Ambrose of Milan, On His Brother Satyrus 2.99, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 22:241-242.
17 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 52.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 87:66.
18 Augustine of Hippo, Answer to Faustus the Manichean 22.46, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/20:329.
19 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 13.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:187.
20 Ambrose of Milan, Isaac or the Soul 4.21, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 65:24.
21 Origen of Alexandria, Homilies on Genesis 13.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 71:188.
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