Tricky Jake Strikes Again

Over the past few weeks, we've watched the son of the late Abraham step out into his own – get married, and twenty years later have twin boys whose conflict began before their birth. In the meantime, we backtracked to get a sense for who Isaac is as a man, navigating his complicated relationship with the late Abraham; we also saw Isaac's relentless perseverence, and how God blessed him with wealth enough to highlight the foolishness of Esau's sale of his birthright all the more. Now, in today's lengthy passage from the end of chapter 26 to the start of chapter 28, we have another big story about this chosen family, in all its escalating dysfunctions. These are the people God wanted to work with? They're not the sort many of us would've recommended.

The core story today is sandwiched between a pair of weddings, both of which share the same groom: Esau. In between those weddings, the story unfolds as a series of seven dialogue scenes, each of which involves exactly two members of the family.¹ And the central idea of the core story is blessing. The noun 'blessing' shows up exactly seven times throughout these seven scenes, while various forms of the verb 'to bless' show up precisely twenty-one times, which is thrice seven.² That's not coincidence; it's a master artist at work.

As the prologue begins to scroll, the twins Jacob and Esau are forty-year-old men (Genesis 26:34), the same age their dad Isaac had been when Abraham's chief steward introduced him to their mom Rebekah (Genesis 25:20). But we read nothing about Isaac arranging similar matches here for either of his boys.³ Jacob, not presuming to run ahead, stays a bachelor; Esau, on the other hand, weds a pair of local girls, Judith bat Beeri and Basemath bat Elon, “without consulting his father.”⁴ In doing so, he becomes the first voluntary polygamist we've seen since Lamech (Genesis 4:23-24). But the highlight here is on the fact that these gals are daughters of Hittites of the land of Canaan (Genesis 10:15), the sort Abraham staunchly refused to risk Isaac marrying (Genesis 24:3). Given their family's unique mission on the world stage, they couldn't risk religious or cultural disruption. But Esau does what was forbidden to his father, introducing a new source of discord to the chosen family when his Hittite wives “became bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah” (Genesis 26:35). Later Jewish readers took this to mean they were defiant toward Esau's parents,⁵ guilty of “impure deeds,”⁶ and devoted to idols.⁷ True or not, clearly evidence is stacking up that Esau just can't be trusted with the future of the Abraham project.⁸

Prologue done. The stage is set. We skip forward an undefined number of years, maybe several decades, until Isaac is extremely old.⁹ His vision has failed. Rabbis of old speculated that, when Isaac was tied on the altar in his youth, the angels wept over him and their teardrops fell into his eyes.¹⁰ Speaking of Isaac on the altar, just as many Isaac stories we've read lately were written to rehash scenes from the life of Abraham, this week's story subtly alludes back to that grand finale in chapter 22. On the way up Mount Moriah, Isaac had called out to Abraham, “My father!”, and was answered back with, “Behold me, my son!” (Genesis 22:7). Now, as Isaac calls up the bigger of his boys, he addresses him as “my son,” and Esau answers, “Behold me” (Genesis 27:1).¹¹

Isaac explains to Esau that he's unsure how much longer he's got (Genesis 27:2), much as Esau earlier thought himself fated unto death (Genesis 25:32).¹² But Isaac's rediscovery of his vulnerability leads him to ponder his legacy and cling to Esau's manly strength.¹³ Isaac, a man of appetites like his son's, craves at least one more good meal before he goes. Any tribal chief in Canaan would send out underlings to hunt game for him,¹⁴ so Isaac asks that of Esau, to take up bow and arrow and slay him some wild game, turning it into “a savory dish such as I love, and bring it to me” (Genesis 27:3-4). This is the Bible's fifth explicit example of 'love.' Third and fourth were Isaac loving Esau and Rebekah loving Jacob; second was Isaac loving Rebekah; and first was when God described Isaac to Abraham as the son “whom you love” (Genesis 22:2), using language nearly identical to how Isaac now describes, not his son, but his favorite food – if this is a new Moriah moment, then that meat is the offering which he, presenting himself in God's place, desires.¹⁵ Just like Esau's hunting and his love of food were key in his first story, so again: 'game' crops up seven times here, just like 'blessing.'¹⁶

Isaac's plan is that, once he's strengthened and delighted by this excellent meal, the point of eating it will be “in order that my soul may bless you before I die” (Genesis 27:5). That sounds quite fine. But everywhere else, the final blessing from parent to child, which was a cross between a last will and testament and a prophecy, appears as a family affair, with everybody gathering 'round to bear witness to the words once spoken.¹⁷ Here, Isaac calls Esau privately, laying plans to bless Esau in the absence of his brother or mother. The obvious implication is that, despite how embittered Isaac's spirit was by Esau's careless marriages, Isaac has determined not only to keep privileging Esau but in fact to will him everything, even to the exclusion of Jacob from the family's future. This plotting behind Jacob's back underscores that “Isaac wanted to do his own will rather than God's.”¹⁸

And what could stand in the patriarch's way? A meddling wife in the hands of the Most High. As Sarah once eavesdropped from inside her tent when Abraham hosted the messengers of heaven (Genesis 18:10), Rebekah eavesdrops from outside Isaac's tent as he schemes with Esau (Genesis 27:5). No sooner does Isaac dispatch “Esau his son” to the fields than Scene 2 opens with Rebekah addressing “Jacob her son” (Genesis 27:5-6). She explains the situation, quoting the gist of what she “heard your father speak to Esau your brother,” but with one addition: putting words in Isaac's mouth, she clarifies that the blessing will be “before the LORD” (Genesis 27:6-7).¹⁹ Obviously, Rebekah loves and dotes on Jacob her son (Genesis 25:28). But she also recalls the oracle once given her, in Isaac's absence, when the LORD declared that big brother would serve little brother (Genesis 25:23).²⁰ As Rebekah understands the plans of God, it must mean Jacob rising ahead of Esau, so she was “determined to invoke God's favor upon Jacob, even in defiance of Isaac's intent,”²¹ if that's what it would take to “implement the prediction from on high.”²²

Having filled Jacob in on the background, she lays out her plan, which is for Jacob to impersonate Esau and to thereby hoodwink Isaac into sealing him with the blessing under false pretenses. Rebekah offers this plan, not as a suggestion to her son, not as a request like Isaac had made to Esau, but as a commandment with authority (Genesis 27:8), laying down the law for him like a Moses or a Joshua would (Joshua 22:2).²³ Jacob's objection has nothing to do with the ethics of the plan, questionable though they are. After all, hadn't Isaac himself set the family precedent of lies and tricks when he aimed to deceive Abimelech at the expense of Jacob's dear mama (Genesis 26:7)?²⁴ No, Jacob frets over pulling it off successfully. “Look,” he points out to his mom, “Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man; perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be a scoffer, and bring a curse upon myself and not blessing” (Genesis 27:11-12). The words for 'hairy' and 'smooth' sound like the names of the mountains Seir and Halak, which stand on either side of Joshua's border between Edom and Israel (Joshua 11:17; 12:7).²⁵ Jacob describes himself as smooth, which on the surface means his surface as against Esau's body hair; but Jacob's also admitting he's a 'smooth operator,' a man whose “smooth mouth works ruin” (Proverbs 26:28).²⁶ If he's caught out as smooth, he'll be no better than an enemy of the prophets and may come to a worse end than if he just sits back and yields to Esau (cf. 2 Chronicles 36:16). After all, won't Moses warn that “cursed is anyone who misleads a blind man” like Isaac (Deuteronomy 27:18)?

Rebekah, though, urges him not to think of logistics or consequences; leave both to her, and just obey as if her words are law (Genesis 27:13). Jacob, in obedience, fetches a pair of the healthiest goat kids they have in their domestic flocks, the very flocks that proved the LORD's blessing of Isaac in the last chapter (Genesis 26:12-14).²⁷ After the slaying and skinning, Rebekah cooks a hearty goat stew and, with the fuzzy skins, she fits Jacob's smooth hands and neck with coverings, plus she dresses Jacob in Esau's laundry – his finest garments, which were left in Rebekah's care for some reason, despite Esau having his own home and wives by now (Genesis 27:14-16).²⁸ With her swift mind, Rebekah has turned Jacob into a makeshift Esau, from the outside at least.²⁹ Other than fetch the goats, Jacob is totally passive: he doesn't plan, doesn't dress himself, doesn't even pick up the bowl; she hands him the food and sends him, reluctant and nervous, on his way (Genesis 27:17).

Thus opens Scene 3 in a state of anxious tension, as Jacob passes into his father's tent. He speaks two syllables, no more, but it's exactly how Isaac once grabbed Abraham's attention on the mountain: “My father!” Isaac now answers in Abraham's exact words – “Behold me, my son” – but with a new three-word question interrupting it: “who are you?” (Genesis 22:7; 27:18).³⁰ Isaac, in his near-blindness, struggles to know the difference between his sons when it counts the most.³¹ But the question forces Jacob to make a decision. He opts to lie: “I am Esau your firstborn” – firstborn, legally yes; Esau, no you aren't. “I have done as you told me” – no, Jacob, Isaac told you nothing. “Arise, please, sit and eat of my game” – but you didn't hunt those little goats – “in order that your soul may bless me” (Genesis 27:19).

If Jacob hoped that an economical one-word introduction would disguise his voice, this verbose fifteen-word answer tilts the opposite way. Isaac confronts the visitor with the improbability of Esau accomplishing his task quite so quickly. Cornered, Jacob digs his hole deeper with a further lie. How'd I bag these goats so fast, dad? “Because the LORD your God caused it to be before my face” (Genesis 27:20). It's almost an exact quote from the steward Abraham sent to find Isaac a wife, when he prayed “the LORD, God of my master Abraham, please cause it to be before my face today” (Genesis 24:12). Jacob is invoking a profound picture of providence. But arguably, Jacob is taking the LORD's name in vain, verging on blasphemy (Exodus 20:7). On the other hand, Jacob speaks better than he realizes: God is writing straight with Jacob's crooked and unclean lines.³²

Isaac can't argue back, but he's also not sold. He can't go by what he sees; his eyes are too dim. His ears tell him that “the voice is the voice of Jacob,” not of Esau. His other senses will have to be the jury. First up is the sense of touch, but thanks to Rebekah's goatskins, “the hands are the hands of Esau” under Isaac's fingers, fuzzy enough to thwart Isaac's discernment of the truth by touch (Genesis 27:21-23). Isaac poses the question again with more directness: “Are you this son of mine, Esau?” Jacob retorts with the shortest answer of all: “I!” Isaac needs another test. Does the mystery man bring Esau's famed cooking? Jacob delivers the dish on demand, along with bread and wine, that Isaac might eat and drink as he pleases. To Jacob's great relief, the mislabeled dish passes muster; for all Isaac's pretensions as a gourmand, he can't tell the difference after all (Genesis 27:24-25). Only one sense is left. Isaac invites the mystery son to kiss him, a chance for Isaac to inhale his aroma. Jacob obliges, but the earthy smell of Esau's laundry masks Jacob's natural scent. Well, it's three senses against one. Arithmetic takes Isaac by the hand to the realm of untruth (Genesis 27:26-27).

With that, Isaac pronounces his blessing, fully believing he's speaking it over Esau his favorite. Isaac invokes the name of the LORD in describing how this smell reminds him of God's favor to the fields of earth (Genesis 27:27). Isaac prays now that “the God” would grant this son, from above and below, sources of prosperity and plenty – “from the dew of the heaven and from the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and new wine” (Genesis 27:28), which fits with Moses' description of the Promised Land as “a land of grain and new wine, whose heavens drop down dew” (Deuteronomy 33:28). Isaac escalates, bidding this son receive the servitude of peoples, the submission of nations, mastery over his own brother, the submission of his mother's sons. Had there been any doubt, it's now erased: Isaac meant to grant leadership of Abraham's heirs to Esau, husband of Hittites, and to make Jacob's people servants of Edom. But Isaac accidentally does the opposite, diverting that destiny away from Esau to Jacob. Isaac caps it off by adapting a line from God's original promise to Abraham: “Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you” (Genesis 27:29; cf. 12:3).

There. The blessing is finished. Once out in the world, it can't be pulled back.³³ Jacob, receiver of the blessing in a case of mistaken identity, exits the stage – and, if we doubted God's providence at work, he gets out just as Esau is about to enter. No sitcom could've scripted this better, for “the hand of God is active.”³⁴ The twins pass like ships in the night; in no scene here do they share the stage. And so Scene 4 brings Isaac face-to-face, not with the fake Esau, but with the real deal with the real meal (Genesis 27:30-31). Where Jacob crept in with one word, Esau barges in with eight, bidding his dad rise up, eat the game, and give the blessing. It sounds much like what Jacob said when cornered, but where Jacob said 'please,' Esau doesn't; where Jacob invited his father to sit, Esau doesn't; and where Jacob spoke in the first-person, Esau speaks in third-person.

Needless to say, Isaac's caught off his guard. “Who are you?” he asks Esau – the same question he asked Jacob, but now leaving off the word 'my son.' Esau's answer is pure poetry: “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau!” (Genesis 27:32) – the same structure as when God spoke to Abraham about “your son, your only one..., Isaac” (Genesis 22:2).³⁵ So when we read next that Isaac “trembled a great trembling even to abundance,” which is a sign of astounding anxiety, fear, and shock,³⁶ and that he rhetorically asked who'd been there getting his blessing in persona Esau just moments before (Genesis 27:33), understand what this moment means for Isaac. Isaac is realizing that he's unwittingly become his own mental image of his father. Isaac, in the grip of powers beyond his ken, has in a way 'sacrificed' his beloved son to the plans of the God.³⁷

Esau's reaction is no less volatile than his father's. Where Isaac once lay on the altar as a lamb led to slaughter, Esau's more of a cat led to the vet's office. Esau “cried out a great and bitter cry to abundance,” heard all through the encampment, including by Jacob and Rebekah. Esau begs for blessing, but Isaac puts his finger gingerly on the sticky wicket: “Your brother came in deceit, and he has taken your blessing” (Genesis 27:34-35). Not that it was properly Esau's. When Esau identified himself as “your firstborn” (Genesis 27:32), that's legally now a lie; he gave up his birthright. Esau assumes birthright and blessing are separable, despite being near-identical words in Hebrew;³⁸ but Rebekah and Jacob, and evidently God, beg to differ with him over that.³⁹ In Esau's bitterly punny complaint about Jacob being a dirty, double-crossing, twice-over backstabber like his name forecast, Isaac may be hearing for the first time about Esau having sold his birthright.⁴⁰

Esau whines and begs more for whatever back-up blessing is still in papa's bag, saved up for Esau now. But of course there's nothing. Wasn't that the whole point, when they conspired to give Esau a private blessing of total provision and dominion, leaving nothing for Jacob? Had Isaac not tried so hard to put all the eggs in Esau's basket, maybe he could fry one for pining Esau now. As it is, Isaac can but list the highlights of what Jacob now has: mastery over Esau, power over his descendants, the gifts of grain and new wine – so what else does Esau think Isaac's hiding up his sleeve (Genesis 27:37)? At this, Esau – husband of two wives and father of who-knows-how-many children by now – melts down, demanding his father invent a second blessing for him, and bursting into tears as he wails out (Genesis 27:38). Our hearts hurt for Esau, who seems in this moment to be a victim of a terrible injustice, a man broken and hurting and desperate.⁴¹ Esau hadn't foreseen there being consequences when he blindly bartered his birthright away, but now “afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears” (Hebrews 12:17).

Esau's tears provoke a response, but Genesis doesn't call it a blessing; it's more like the underside of Jacob's. If Jacob will live “from the dew of heaven and from the fatness of the earth” (Genesis 27:28), Esau can know that “away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be, and away from the dew of heaven on high” (Genesis 27:39), which sounds almost like God's curse on Cain (Genesis 4:21-22).⁴² In place of the peaceful harvesting of grain and wine grapes, “by your sword shall you live,” Esau, “and you shall serve your brother” (Genesis 27:40). After all, you've yoked yourself to the clans of Canaan, and in the words of Noah, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers” (Genesis 9:25). But Esau gets a silver lining. Every now and then, “when you grow restless, you shall break his yoke from your neck” (Genesis 27:40). This tracks with the later history of Israel, who lived in a land of dew and fatness, and Edom, whose land was rocky and harsh; the early Edomites had to fight for survival, they were subjected to Israel under King David (2 Samuel 8:14), but later, when Israel had less faithful kings, the Edomites broke free and independent once more (2 Kings 8:22).⁴³

This hardly seems like something Isaac wanted to say. The New Testament fills us in that it was “by faith” that “Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau” (Hebrews 11:20). Yes, on a human level, Jacob fooled and deceived his father. But Isaac's innermost soul, from whence the blessings were spoken, was moved by the spirit of prophecy, because despite all Isaac's flaws and despite all his misconceptions, Isaac was driven by his faith, ultimately “recognizing the divine purpose” in the words he had matched unknowingly to their targets.⁴⁴ In spite of his blindness, his faith saw better than his body or his mind, and it blessed in accordance with God's will,⁴⁵ so “his words had efficacy from God's power alone” working through him.⁴⁶

As Scene 4 winds down for intermission, Esau isn't taking this God-powered word so well. Since Jacob had manuevered for what Esau believed was rightly his own, Esau grows into a smoldering hostility that builds and builds with time.⁴⁷ Esau “burned with the firebrands of envy into a persecuting hatred.”⁴⁸ In the inner sanctum of his heart, he makes a secret resolution. Assuming (as Isaac did) that Isaac's days are numbered, Esau will bide his time so long as Isaac lives, but once Isaac is buried away, Jacob must swiftly follow at Esau's hand (Genesis 27:41). Esau has adopted a new role model: Cain, the original brother-butcher.⁴⁹

Somehow, the murmurings of Esau's darkening heart make their way to Rebekah. Mama Rebekah refuses to be another Eve, stepping in only after it's too late to save a life.⁵⁰ She cares deeply about both these boys⁵¹ – each is “her son” – and she doesn't want a single fateful day to tear them both away from her (Genesis 27:45). Calling Jacob to join her on stage for Scene 5, she again fills him in on what he hasn't noticed and again insists he listen and follow her plan (Genesis 27:42). Where Abel followed Cain to the field for fratricide, Rebekah insists he rise up and go on the lam, escaping to Harran to seek refuge with Uncle Laban; surely Rebekah's brother will be kinder to Jacob than Jacob's brother aims to be, right (Genesis 27:43)? Jacob can shelter there in Harran for “a few days,” Rebekah unrealistically suggests, until Esau's fury and outrage divert their course back to the hunt and he “forgets what you have done to him” (Genesis 27:44-45) – rather bold of Rebekah, inventor of this whole scheme, to now pin the responsibility on the son she used as her pawn!⁵² But, she assures Jacob, once Esau calms down, she'll send a messenger to let Jacob know the coast is clear and bring him back. That, of course, never happens, and Rebekah will never see Jacob again, which perhaps she knew from the start.⁵³

Having thus warned Jacob by a monologue in Scene 5, the briefer Scene 6 sees her monologuing, for the first and only time, to her husband. See, Rebekah can't very well just bid Jacob go AWOL; she needs to get Isaac to authorize his trip. But she dare not explain the situation with Esau, lest she hurt Isaac's feelings, incriminate herself, and worsen family relations further.⁵⁴ So Rebekah relies on her other secret superpower: drama. Just as when she lamented life amidst her pregnancy pangs (Genesis 25:22), now “I loathe my life in the face of the daughters of Heth,” she truthfully complains to Isaac (Genesis 27:46), drawing on the same vehement verbiage God uses in his reaction to Canaanite idolatry (Leviticus 20:23).⁵⁵ It's bad enough that Esau's married two of them. Her words hit a sensitive spot, calling Isaac's attention subtly back to Esau's unworthiness and indirectly rebuking him both for favoring him and for not doing for Esau what his own father Abraham did for him.⁵⁶ Now, if her precious Jacob is left similarly unprovided for and must wed “one of the daughters of Heth like these, like these daughters of the land,” then “what to me will be my life?” Rebekah laments (Genesis 27:46).

Her manipulation of her husband – which really is meant here for everybody's benefit, not her own self-seeking – pays off. He says nothing back, but in the final scene Isaac summons Jacob into his tent, the same way he'd summoned Esau in Scene 1; Jacob has now supplanted Esau as the summoned son.⁵⁷ But where Isaac lamely made requests of Esau, he now lays down a law for Jacob in faithful confidence, commanding Jacob to not marry a wife from among the daughters of Canaan, but instead rise up, travel to Rebekah's hometown and marry one of Jacob's maternal cousins, one of “the daughters of Laban, brother of your mother” (Genesis 28:1-2). It's a command perfectly compatible with what Rebekah wants for Jacob.

But we also read that Isaac “blessed him” – and this time, Isaac does it knowingly, acceptingly. It's now clear that Jacob is the appointed son, the one whom God means to be the next heir of Abraham. So, invoking the God who gave Abraham the covenant (Genesis 17:1), Isaac pronounces: “May El Shaddai bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become an assembly of peoples!” (Genesis 28:3). That's the first time the Bible uses this word for 'assembly,' which will be used again for the religious congregation of Israel and, in the Greek Bible, become the word we find in our New Testament as 'church.' Isaac goes on to declare over Jacob “the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed with you,” to inherit ownership of the land God had promised Abraham (Genesis 28:4). This is the first time we've heard Isaac speak his father's name aloud since that traumatic day on the mountain, and now the very last word we ever hear Isaac say is 'Abraham.'⁵⁸ With that name on his lips, Isaac sends Jacob away from the land of promise, and the scene ends with a reminder that Rebekah was “the mother of Jacob and Esau” alike (Genesis 28:5). But, having bade Jacob's curse fall on her instead of him, this is the last we see Rebekah alive; her death, unlike Sarah's, goes unmentioned.⁵⁹

Thus closes the seventh and final scene, as Jacob “fled from his brother's anger” (Wisdom 10:10). We go back now to Rebekah's other son, as Esau reacts to what happened as Isaac blessed and commanded Jacob (Genesis 28:6-7). Now, after all these years, Esau finally clues in to the fact that “the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father” (Genesis 28:8) – ironic phrasing, since Isaac's eyes don't see, but more interesting is that Esau focuses only on the opinion of his father, whereas the narrator stresses that Jacob acted in obedience to “his father and his mother” (Genesis 28:7), for “in everything he obeyed his elders in God.”⁶⁰ Poor Esau, who “tries hard but... does not really understand the main issues” at stake in his life,⁶¹ decides that if Jacob made his parents happy by going to marry a maternal cousin, he can do the same by marrying a paternal cousin. Esau approaches Uncle Ishmael and weds his elder daughter Mahalath, but Esau does so “in addition to the women who were wife to him” already (Genesis 28:9). What that's supposed to fix in the family is unclear.⁶² If anything, this only distances Esau further from the covenant by linking him with Ishmael the disinherited.⁶³

Whether Rebekah and Jacob did right or did wrong has been hotly debated for thousands of years, and still is to this day.⁶⁴ But for all that, despite the dire costs she took on, Rebekah pushed both Isaac and Jacob along the way toward the fulfillment of God's will for who they're meant to be.⁶⁵ For his part, Jacob has now “received the fullness of his father's blessing,”⁶⁶ “and through the gift of his father's blessing, he was made holy.”⁶⁷

The blessings of Jacob and Esau were – in St. Augustine's words – “real events with prophetic significance; events on earth, but prompted by heaven.”⁶⁸ Down through the ages, the people of Israel obviously identified themselves with their ancestor Jacob here, for good and for ill. Tensions worsened with Edom, especially after they cheered over the ashes of Solomon's Temple (Psalm 137:7), and the prophets threatened that “saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to rule Mount Esau, and the kingdom will be the LORD's” (Obadiah 21). When the Jews rose against Greek oppression, they also “made war on the sons of Esau” (1 Maccabees 5:65), and eventually forced the remaining Edomites to convert to Judaism.⁶⁹ But when Rome demolished the Second Temple, many Jews turned to these chapters for understanding, insisting the Romans must be secret sons of Esau,⁷⁰ that Rome's acts of violence were the deeds of “Esau's hands,”⁷¹ and only once Esau's city Rome would fall could Jacob's city Jerusalem rise again in the kingdom of God.⁷² Some learned to yearn to “eradicate the descendants of Esau” like burning the leaven of evil away for the Passover.⁷³ Of course, once Rome had bowed the knee to the name of Jesus, it became popular in rabbinic thought to identify Christians as the new sons of Esau.⁷⁴

But in that reasoning, they were reacting to the paradoxical Christian view that those born of Jacob's flesh could be the truer heirs of Esau. What's going on in this story, zoomed out? The younger brother receives the elder's unclaimed birthright, assumes the blessing under the elder's guise, and is persecuted for bearing God's favor. Is it any surprise that, to early Christians, that sounded like the relationship of the old and new covenant people?

Jacob had acquired the firstborn status in which Esau had placed too little stock, and similarly, they saw, “the younger people,” Christians, “received the Firstborn of All – Christ – when the older people rejected him.”⁷⁵ By this time, the former covenant had grown old indeed. The Old Testament is stuffed with countless blessings that seem to be directed, in their literal sense, at Israel after the flesh; these are “promises to the first people.”⁷⁶ For the sake of these promises, they were sent hunting “through spiritual contemplation” to attain “the profits of good works” under the Law, “moved to offer to God a pleasing manner of life.”⁷⁷ But “understand Christ at the heart of this mystery,”⁷⁸ for he “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24), displaying “the likeness of sinful flesh” as Jacob displayed the skins of the goats to bear the likeness of Esau (Romans 8:3).⁷⁹ After that, “in the guise of the elder” people living under the Law, “it is the younger who gets blessed,”⁸⁰ “the new people of God through faith.”⁸¹ Now, “under the symbols of the Old Testament and its promise to the people” of Israel, “a spiritual blessing has lighted upon the people of the Christians,”⁸² who “make off with the Father's blessing by the completely mysterious workings of faith,”⁸³ and who “fulfill the Law by performing a spiritual priestly ministry, offering themselves as a pleasing aroma to God the Father.”⁸⁴

For Christ brings the dew of heaven and the fatness of earth together in his incarnation, he waters the fields with the blessings of the words of life, and he supplies plenty of grain and wine in “the sacrament of his body and blood,”⁸⁵ “the sacred eucharist,”⁸⁶ for which “the patriarch Jacob hungered” in advance.⁸⁷ Christ is the Lord whom all peoples must serve, all nations bow down – and though Christ was “crucified and killed” (Acts 2:23) and his disciples likewise were hated and hounded by “ploys and persecutions” of brethren,⁸⁸ yet the risen Lord promises us to “make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you” (Revelation 3:9). Those who labor under the yoke of the Jewish Law have, since that day, rendered service to Christians, not in any demeaning way – God forbid it! – but by faithfully preserving and carrying the Law and the Prophets throughout the world,⁸⁹ because, whether the carriers see it or not, the Law and Prophets proclaim Christ (John 1:45; Luke 24:44). Nor is that the last word – we haven't seen the last of Esau in Genesis yet, and you might be surprised what's in store and what we hope it foreshadows in the days to come.

In the meantime, there remain Esaus in our own people's midst, born of the Church's womb but hairy through fleshly commitments. They have a certain share in the blessings of the people of God – they come to church, they participate in Christian things, they bear the Christian name – but with a different destiny, living by the sword that cuts at the bonds of love.⁹⁰ Our hope is instead to strive to be Jacob, the saints who hearken to “the encouragement of our Mother the Church,”⁹¹ who, by bearing the hairy sins of their brethren before their Father, will be “established by their Mother as princes over all the earth,”⁹² for “if we endure, we will also reign with” Christ (2 Timothy 2:12). If we hear and give “the obedience of faith... among all the nations” (Romans 1:5), then that sweet blessing of Father Abraham may be yours, rather than an Esau's bitter “weeping and gnashing of teeth” when the kingdom is the LORD's (Luke 13:28; cf. Obadiah 21; Hebrews 12:17). Amen.

Room for Fruit

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)!