Before Abraham died, Isaac had fallen under the power of another masterful personality. Till he was forty years of age Isaac was under his father, from forty till Rebekah died he was under his wife; he was first Abraham's son, then he was Rebekah's husband; he was never Isaac, master of his life or of his household. He was ordered, cared for, managed, cheated all his days, because, although he had a delightful quality of his own which neither his father nor his wife had, he happened to be the son of a famous father, and the husband of a clever woman.
1. There is hardly any Bible story as full of sweetness and beauty as the idyll of the heart which is connected with the marriage of Rebekah and Isaac, and but few which illustrate more clearly the reality of the guiding hand of a gracious God. Abraham had had experience of the domestic trouble and dissension which arise out of unequal marriages; but he felt, as having received the promises of God, that he was under obligation to honour Him, and that the marriage of his son with an idolater would be likely to turn the blessing into a curse and to thwart the Divine intentions concerning his race. So he made the faithful Eliezer swear that his son Isaac should not marry a Canaanitish woman, but should rather be united with one of his own kindred and one who shared his faith in Jehovah as the one living and true God. Worldly prudence might have whispered to him that a union with a family of some Canaanitish sheikh would be likely to ensure the possession of the territory by his grandchildren. But the religious considerations outweighed this, and Eliezer went forth to find the house of his master's brother, and among his daughters or granddaughters to find a fitting bride for Isaac. The camp of Abraham had been left three years without a lawful mistress. The tent of the mother had for that time been left without an occupant. Isaac, the heir of promise, was already forty years old. Most men, under such circumstances, would themselves have selected whom they would marry; but in this case Isaac was true to his reputation; his father picked out his wife for him. Abraham is not stated to have even consulted Isaac when he dispatched “his servant, the elder of his house” (Gen_24:2), to take a wife for his son from his country and kindred in Mesopotamia. Rebekah, the daughter of “Bethuel the son of Milcah, the wife of Nahor, Abraham's brother” (Gen_24:15), is brought from Mesopotamia by Abraham's servant. Isaac, we are told (Gen_24:62), dwelt at that time “in the land of the South,” near Beer-lahai-roi.
Abraham's servant has performed his errand to perfection, and he is now nearing his young master's tent with Isaac's bride under his charge. “And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide; and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, there were camels coming.” All that day Isaac had spent in prayer and meditation. He was greatly given to solitude and to solitary thoughts, and he had much that day to think upon. When we see him in the fields at eventide he is a sad man, because he has lost his mother, and although he was forty years and more, his heart was in Sarah's grave. He had that tenacity of affection which is often wanting in the character of grander natures, and was not very conspicuous in that of Abraham, but which is the dower of quiet people. When Rebekah came as a gift from God, he took her into his mother's tent and gave her his mother's place in his heart.
In the lone field he walks at eventide,
To meditate beneath the open sky,
Where borne on lighter wings prayers upward fly,
And down from Heaven sweet answers swiftly glide.
But as he glanced around that landscape wide,
Far off a train of camels meets his eye,
And as they nearer come he can descry
A maiden veiled-his unseen, God-sent bride.
Thus while to Heaven thought after thought was rising,
The fair Rebekah step by step drew nigh,
With life's chief joy the prayerful saint surprising:
For those who think of Him God still is thinking,
With tender condescension from on high,
Some comfort ever to some duty linking.1 [Note: Richard Wilton.]
2. Isaac's marriage, though so promising in the outset, brought new trial into his life. Rebekah had to repeat the experience of Sarah. For twenty years Isaac and Rebekah were childless, though all their hopes depended on the birth of a son. This second barrenness in the prospective mother of the promised seed was as needful to all concerned as the first was; for the people of God cannot, any more than others, learn in one lesson. They must again be brought to a real dependence on God as the Giver of the heir. The prayer with which Isaac “intreated” the Lord for his wife “because she was barren” was a prayer of deeper intensity than he could have uttered had he merely remembered the story that had been told him of his own birth. God must be recognized again and again as the Giver of life to the promised line.
But in answer to prayer, God sent the barren Rebekah twin sons, who even in the womb foreshadowed the long fierce struggle of the peoples that would spring from them, and the victory of the later born: Esau the hunter, slave of instinct and appetite; Jacob the shepherd, cunning indeed, but with his eye upon the unseen and the future, who won from Esau his birthright.
3. The placid life of Isaac glided peacefully away. Happy in his unalterable love for Rebekah, which never wavered, never wearied, never strayed from its first object, and happy in a warm affection for his sons, content to live a life without adventures and seldom enlivened by any change, Isaac passed a term of years, the length of which cannot be exactly measured, in the vicinity of Lahai-roi, while his sons grew to full manhood, but still remained inmates of his tent. In the district where he dwelt there was a famine, and Isaac, seeking food for his cattle, travelled into the land of the Philistines, to Gerar the capital, but was warned by God not to go down into Egypt. On the occasion of this theophany, Isaac is told of the blessing upon himself and his seed because of the obedience of his father Abraham.
4. In Gerar, Isaac imitated the timid ruse which his father is said to have practised on two similar occasions, once in Egypt (Gen_12:1-20) and again in Gerar (Gen_20:1-18.), and evasively declared that Rebekah was his “sister.” He was found out by Abimelech, the king of Gerar, who rebuked him for the deceit, and then charged his people not to molest him. Isaac had not a word to say in his defence. The man of God, the representative of the chosen race, stood rebuked by an uncircumcised Philistine, one outside the covenant, a mere heathen, probably an idolater. In his second trial Isaac had failed, had fallen; instead of maintaining the high standard of his youth, he had sunk to a lower level, and had given the enemies of Jehovah occasion to blaspheme.
It is needless to attempt to palliate Isaac's conduct, which does not seem to have greatly shocked the old narrators of Genesis. It is enough to observe that it would be a moral and theological anachronism to assume in the case of Isaac or of Abraham that strict sense of the obligation of veracity which belongs to a far more advanced stage of religious culture.
Some moralists have tried to defend the falsehood that is prompted by love. But such a classical instance as that of Jeanie Deans refusing to speak an untruth even to save her sister's life, will always commend itself to the moral sense. In any case, nothing can be said for the lie of base and selfish fear. Isaac could not even plead, as Abraham had feebly done, that his wife was his sister. He lied outright, and Abimelech reproved him with the stern accents of indignation. It must be admitted that there is a great deal of lying and prevarication in Genesis. But there is always some touch in the narrative which commends the true and condemns the false. The God of the Hebrews is “the God of things as they are.” “Veracity and the kindred virtues are essentially and immutably good, and it is impossible and inconceivable that they should ever be vices and their opposites virtues.” “They who tamper with veracity tamper with the vital forces of human progress.”1 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 24.]
Golightly delighted in teaching in the village school; and certainly he had the art of making his ministrations popular in the Parish Church. The children were required to commit to memory certain pithy proverbial sayings which had the merit of wrapping up Divine wisdom in small and attractive parcels. “Is that one of your boys?” (asked a lady with whom he was taking a drive near Oxford,-pointing to a lad who passed them). “I'll tell you in a moment. Come here, my boy.” The boy approached the carriage. Golightly (leaning earnestly forward)-“Rather die?” … “Than tell a lie,” was the instantaneous rejoinder. “Yes” (turning to his companion): “it is one of my boys.”2 [Note: J. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, i. xxvi.]
Many the guileless years the Patriarch spent,
Bless'd in the wife a father's foresight chose;
Many the prayers and gracious deeds, which rose
Daily thank-offerings from his pilgrim tent.
Yet these, though written in the heavens, are rent
From out truth's lower roll, which sternly shows
But one sad trespass at his history's close,
Father's, son's, mother's, and its punishment.
Not in their brightness, but their earthly stains
Are the true seed vouchsafed to earthly eyes.
Sin can read sin, but dimly scans high grace,
So we move heavenward with averted face,
Scared into faith by warning of sin's pains;
And Saints are lower'd, that the world may rise.3 [Note: J. H. Newman.]
5. From the time he first settled in Gerar Isaac prospered greatly. In this valley he found a number of wells, which had been digged in the days of Abraham, but which, since Abraham's death, had been stopped by the Philistines, who had filled them up with earth and rubbish. Isaac at once set himself to re-dig these old wells, and called them by the very names by which his father had called them. He thus not only honoured his father's memory, but also claimed his own rights as his father's heir.
The ill-feeling of the Philistines culminated in Abimelech's request that Isaac would depart; and Isaac removed his camp to a distance. His camping-grounds were marked by the successive digging of the wells Esek (Strife), Sitnah (Enmity), and Rehoboth (Room), which he so named because the men of Gerar quarrelled for possession of the former two, but not for the third. The patriarch finally removed to Beersheba. Jehovah appeared to him “in that night” (the night of his arrival), and promised him numerous offspring for Abraham's sake. He built an altar, pitched his tent, and dug a well there. And while encamped in this spot, he received overtures for an alliance with the Philistines. Abimelech the king, Ahuzzath “his friend,” and Phicol the captain of the host, came over from Gerar; and Isaac made a covenant with them, and gave them a banquet. They plighted their faith to him by an oath; and on the day of their departure Isaac heard that his servants had come upon water in the well they were digging. Accordingly he gave the well the name of Shibah, as if equivalent to Shebuah; and thus the name Beersheba, according to one tradition, took its rise.
This scene in Isaac's history closes with his altar at Beersheba, and with the acknowledgment, even by the Philistines themselves, that Jehovah is with the man of faith. This was one of the first victories of gentleness and non-resistance ever won in this world. Isaac was not an Empire-builder like Abraham, not a great, pathetic, heroic figure like Jacob, he was a plain man of affairs. He stuck to his work as a sinker of wells, and for three thousand years men to whom Abraham was a legend and Jacob a hazy tradition have drunk of the sweet waters of Beersheba, and blessed the memory of the man who digged that well.
Whenever a nation is in its right mind, it always has a deep sense of divinity in the gift of rain from heaven, filling its heart with food and gladness; and all the more when that gift becomes gentle and perennial in the flowing of springs. It literally is not possible that any fruitful power of the Muses should be put forth upon a people which disdains their Helicon; still less is it possible that any Christian nation should grow up “tanquam lignum quod plantatum est secus decursus aquarum,” which cannot recognize the lesson meant in their being told of the places where Rebekah was met;-where Rachel,-where Zipporah,-and she who was asked for water under Mount Gerizim by a Stranger, weary, who had nothing to draw with.1 [Note: Ruskin, Lectures on Art, iv. 118 (Works, xx. 109).]
The noblest kind of sacrifice is the self-denial of those who have the clearest rights. Isaac was again and again placed in circumstances in which others would have quickly drawn the sword. The question arises whether he surrendered too much for the sake of peace. If a man cannot waive his rights without neglecting his duty, violating his conscience, surrendering his religion, losing his self-respect, betraying the rights of others, he is bound to resist. Otherwise he may yield, and scarcely any price is too high to pay for peace. Isaac was right. He is the first example in the Old Testament of the Christian or New Testament type of excellence. After him, as the Talmud says, “we find in the Bible many instances of the pleasure which meekness and humility in the creature afford the Creator. The noblest of our ancestors were those who were free from self-pride.” Nothing can be saner or sweeter than this ancient tale, with its apparent moral for those who think that the strongest thing is to retaliate, to assert every claim, to cede no possible advantage. “The grandest thing in having rights is that, being our rights, we can give them up.” “Why do ye not rather take wrong?”2 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 26.]
