27 ISAAC AND ABIMELEK

God tried Isaac who had been trained up in a believing dependence on the supernatural and divine grant of the land of Canaan to him and his heirs; yet “Now there was a famine in the land” (1). What will he think of the promise when the promised land will not give him bread? Is such a land-grant worth accepting, upon covenant terms of obedience, and after so long a time? Yes, Isaac will still value the covenant. Perhaps the less valuable Canaan is itself, the better he is taught to value it and the covenant connected with it that makes it his. It is a token of God’s everlasting kindness to him and a symbol of heaven’s everlasting blessedness. The worth of God’s promises to an individual cannot be reduced in a true believer’s eye by any of God’s tests. Put yourself in Isaac’s shoes. What has God promised you? Do you value it enough to fight for it using weapons of faith and prayer?

God directed Isaac under this trial by his Word. Isaac finds himself in a practical problem by the scarcity of provisions. Somewhere he must go for supply and evidently he set out for Egypt, where his father went in the same situation, but takes a road through Gerar. It is easy to imagine that he is praying as he travels about how to find the place God has for him when God graciously appeared to him, and showed him where to go and where to not go. “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while” (2 & 3). In the next generation, in Jacob’s day, God said to Jacob to go to Egypt, but not to Isaac now.  Here is an interesting comparison of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There was a famine in Jacob’s days, and told God him “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt.” (Genesis 46:3), when a  famine happened in Isaac’s days, God told him not to go down, and when a famine occurred in Abraham’s days, God left him to make his own choice directing him neither way. This variety in God’s involvement with the patriarchs reveals the wisdom and fairness of God in dealing with persons of different temperaments, strengths and weaknesses as He dealt with the different characters of these three patriarchs. Abraham was a man of very high attainments and intimate communion with God. To him all places and conditions were alike, he would faithfully serve and obey God wherever he was. He was not influenced by the peer pressure or social influences of the surrounding society and their religions. Isaac was a very good man, but not cut out for hardship. He might be influenced by those around him so, therefore, he is forbidden to go to Egypt. Jacob was accustomed to difficulties, he was strong and patient and, therefore, he must go down into Egypt so that the further trial of his faith might be to the praise, honor, and glory of God. God knows each person’s temperament and the strength of their faith and He is able to perfectly proportion His people’s trials to their strength.

God promised Isaac to be with him, and bless him. Verse 3 says, “Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you.” As we may go anywhere with comfort when God’s blessing goes with us, so we may stay anywhere contentedly if that blessing rests upon us there. God renewed the covenant with Isaac, which had been made and then so often repeated with Abraham, renewing and ratifying the promises of the land of Canaan, many descendants, and eventually the Messiah. “I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (4). It was to be the Messiah (coming through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) that would be a blessing to all the earth.

Those that must live by faith need to often rehearse and repeat the promises they are to live on to themselves, especially if they are to experience any suffering or self-denial. God recommended to Isaac the good example of his father’s obedience, an example with which Isaac was familiar. “. . . . because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him” (5). Your father obeyed me, now you too, should obey me and the promise shall be sure to you too. Abraham’s obedience is here celebrated, to his honor for by it he obtained a good report both with God and men. A great variety of words, five, are here used to express the divine will, to which Abraham was obedient “I swore” (3) “required” “commands,” “decrees,” “instructions" (5) which may suggest that Abraham’s obedience was universal; he obeyed the original laws of nature, the revealed laws of divine worship, particularly that of circumcision, and all the extraordinary precepts God gave him, as that of leaving his country, and quite possibly being willing to offer up his son which Isaac which Isaac himself had reason enough to remember. If someone has godly parents, that is an advantage as being a son of Abraham was an advantage to Isaac, but the advantages are not automatic, you yourself must also walk in obedience as they did.

Isaac probably willingly enough abandons the idea of going to Egypt, and, in obedience to the heavenly vision, sets up his tent in Gerar, the country in which he was born as the text says simply in verse 6 ,"So Isaac stayed in Gerar.” Paul told Timothy to stay in Ephesus and there will be times the Holy Spirit will tell you to stay where you are. Will you? The Christian leader’s rule of thumb on this subject is to stay where you have been assigned until God moves you.

In Gerar he is faced with the same temptation that his good father had faced twice. Because of his beautiful wife he was tempted to deny his wife and say that she was his sister. Some habits of our parents are better abandoned than repeated.

Because his wife was beautiful, Isaac felt the Philistines, or at least one of them, might find some way or other to get rid of Isaac and marry her. So he repeated his father’s sin and said his wife was his sister. It is beyond explanation that both these great and good men should be guilty of the same strange lie. Father and son both exposed their own and their wives’ reputations. One obvious lesson is that very good men have sometimes been guilty of very great faults. Let those therefore that stand take heed lest they fall, and also let those that have fallen not give up the hope of being helped up again. Isaac undoubtedly knew about his father’s mistakes and that they were mistakes in calling Sarah his sister, yet their son, Isaac, is now guilty in his generation of the same sin. How do we learn to follow the good and stay clear of the error of the individuals we respect or parents we love? Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister, but Rebekah was not the sister of Isaac. Isaac’s lie was worse.

The fact that Rebekah was Isaac’s wife was discovered by Abimelek himself. Can you imagine Abimelek’s surprise? This story took place about 100 years after Abraham made this same mistake. This was not the same Abimelek. That name may have been more like a title such as Pharaoh of Egypt or Caesar of Rome. Abimelek saw him caressing and/or laughing with Rebekah and knew she was more to him than just a sister. He may have been rejoicing with the wife of his youth as Proverbs 5:18 says husbands are to do, “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth” (Proverbs 5:18). This story hints of a lesson on being happy with wife and family. It is good for Christian leaders, husbands and wives, to be pleasant, happy and pleased with one another. Nowhere ought a man more allow himself to be more innocently at ease and free than with his own wife and children. If we delight in the friendship we have with our spouses let us hope that others notice, as Abimelek did, duplicate our behaviors and enjoy the benefits of affirming, happy, mutually beneficial marriages.

Abimelech charged Isaac with his deceit and pointed out what could have been the bad consequences of his lie. “Then Abimelek said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.’ So Abimelek gave orders to all the people: ‘Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.’” ( Genesis 26:10 & 11). The death penalty would be an effective deterrent. To convince Isaac how groundless and unjust his jealousy of them was, he took him and his family under his particular protection, forbidding any injury to be done to him or his wife upon pain of death. A lying tongue is but for a moment. Truth is the daughter of time; and, in time, it will be discovered. Abimelek found out Isaac’s lie. One sin, including  a seemingly harmless lie, is often the opening to many others, and therefore the beginnings of sins, lies, ought to be avoided.

At the same time we see God correcting Isaac through an unbeliever, we may also learn that God did protect Isaac and Rebekah. She did not lose her chastity and Isaac was not killed by anyone who wanted to remove him to have his beautiful wife.

God likes to bless. We see that in this story. The historian draws a direct relationship between the 100 fold return on invested seed to the blessing of God. Verse 12 says that Isaac, “reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him.” His corn multiplied strangely. He had no land of his own, but used the land of the Philistines, and sowed it. Remember, it was a time of famine. The famine brought Isaac and Rebekah to Gerar and “the same year” (12). Isaac reaped 100 fold in his borrowed field. While others scarcely reaped at all, he reaped plentifully. As is recorded in Isaiah 65:13, there is a blessing for the servants of the Lord that whoever this passage was addressed to would not receive. “Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “My servants will eat, but you will go hungry; my servants will drink,

but you will go thirsty; my servants will rejoice, but you will be put to shame.’ “ And Psalm 37:19 also says something wonderful for the People of God, “In times of disaster they will not wither; in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.” In addition to the crop successes, Isaac also enjoyed an increase in his livestock, “He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him” (14).

I cannot understand human nature on this point. Why does the plenty that another enjoys cause some to be sad. Does it not make better sense, isn’t it more rational, would it not be more understandable that if someone has something good happen to them the others would be happy? How is it that jealousy and envy even exit since it is so unreasonable. And yet we all feel it at times. Our story says the Philistines “. . . envied him.” It is an illustration of our broken, fallen nature and the vanity of the world that the more some men have of it the more they are envied by others and exposed to criticism and injury.“Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” (Proverbs 27:4). Oh, the corruption of nature; for that is a bad principle indeed which makes men grieve at the good of others, as if it must be bad for me because it is good for my neighbor. How do Christian leaders respond? What does a pastor need to do, what character change must occur in order for a pastor to be genuinely happy for another pastor if that other pastor has an easier church, better house or larger congregation?

They had already shown their ill-will to Isaac’s family, by stopping up the wells which Abraham dug in the previous generation. This was spitefully done. The Philistines did not have flocks of their own to water at these wells, yet they would not leave them for others to use. So unreasonable a thing is hatred and jealousy! Genesis 21:31&32 tells of the treaty Abraham earlier had made with the local people regarding the well Abraham had dug. “So that place was called Beersheba, because the two men swore an oath there. After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelek and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines.” It was evidently the local people of Isaac’s day who broke the treaty Abraham had made.

The king of Gerar had begun to look at Isaac with a jealous eye. Perhaps we can imagine that Isaac’s house or tent was the very finest, and his riches and household were more impressive than Abimelek’s; and therefore Isaac must go further off. They were weary of his being in their neighborhood, because they saw that the Lord blessed him. Would it not be more reasonable that they should rather have invited him to stay? Maybe they could learn from Isaac how to irrigate, fertilize or plow the fields better. They might have benefited from Isaac’s success and prosperity.

Isaac does not insist on the agreement he had made with them for the lands he held, nor on his occupying and improving them, nor does he offer to compete with them by force, though he had become very great. Instead, he peaceably departs further from the royal city, and perhaps even to a part of the country less fruitful. We don’t know. We might learn to deny ourselves both in our rights and in our conveniences, rather than quarrel. A wise and a good man will prefer to retire into obscurity, like Isaac here into a valley, than to be elevated and become the cause of envy, jealousy and ill-will.

Isaac was a peaceful neighbor. He did not fight back.