Scottsdale-Bridport Presbyterian Church – G.S. Munro 11th March, 2007
Oh No Not Again! Déjà vu!
- strange sense of being here before. Twice in fact.
Did this passage seem vaguely familiar to you as it was read? I get a kind of double déjà vu feeling, because we’ve seen this very thing happen twice before already in Genesis. What’s going on here? First in Genesis 12 we read how not long after God gave his great promises to Abraham he leaves Canaan because there is famine in the land and goes to live in Egypt for a while. And because he is afraid of being killed for the sake of Sarah his wife, he passes her off as his sister. And then in chapter 22 remarkably Abraham does the same thing with the king of the Philistines at the very same place that Isaac goes to in this chapter, a place called Gerar.
- not a scrambled version or parallel legend – there are differences as well as similarities
Now to scholars who do not believe the bible is the Word of God, but just a bunch of human legends, the obvious answer to this puzzle is that what we have here are just three different versions of the same story. It was, they deduce, a popular myth about some ancient character that the Israelites appropriated and attached to their ancestral heroes. And perhaps different tribes had different versions – one in which Abraham is said to have gone to Egypt, another that puts him in the land of the Philistines, and another that casts his son Isaac in the leading role.
But scholars who DO believe the bible is the Word of God are no less intelligent than their unbelieving colleagues. And they come to completely different conclusions about these stories. There is no reason not to take the bible’s account at face value. Each of these stories is unique in its own way and is there for a reason. The writer of Genesis specifically says that this was a different famine to the one that happened in Abraham’s time. Moses, when he set this story down hundreds of years later, wasn’t stupid. He knew that the first thing that would come into our minds is, hey haven’t we heard this story before, isn’t this just the same story and the author has accidentally applied it to Isaac instead of Abraham? No, this really did happen to Isaac. It’s not another version of an Abraham myth applied to his son. That’s why Moses is at pains to say this is a different famine, a different time, a different generation and it really is a case of history repeating itself.
The Promise Again (1-6)
But first, notice how the chapter begins. It starts by re-iterating the great Promise of God in the Covenant he made with Isaac’s father Abraham. And this gives us a clue to why the following story is recorded. It shows the same pattern repeating itself in the life of Isaac. A pattern of the promise given and the promise in peril.
In verse 3 God says “I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 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…”
Now we naturally tend to think that hearing God speak was just an everyday natural occurrence for the patriarchs, these great ancient fathers of the faith. But as we saw with Abraham’s life, that was not so. It was a very rare thing indeed. God only spoke directly to Abraham a handful of times throughout his long life. And the same is true of Isaac. Why does God choose THIS time in Isaac’s life? The answer is in verse 1: “…there was a famine in the land…and Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar. The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, ‘‘Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you.”
Abraham made a big mistake in going to Egypt at the same point in his life, even though God turned that faithless act into a blessing in the end. And so God reminds Isaac, who is tempted to do the same, that his future and the future of his descendants, and the blessing of the whole world through them, is tied up with THIS land, the land of Canaan.
A Chip off the Old Block (7-11)
Now we read on, “So Isaac stayed in Gerar. When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘‘She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, ‘‘She is my wife.” He thought, ‘‘The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful.””
We may safely assume that this is a flashback from the previous chapter, since there is no mention of Jacob and Esau. No doubt this action takes place not long after their marriage, in that twenty year period that Rebekah was barren before the Lord opened her womb.
Now whatever else it does, this story shows how despite our best efforts and the best efforts of our children, they can’t but help be influenced by our examples, and to some extent they can’t avoid becoming very like us in their habits, both good and bad. Parenthood is an awesome responsibility. Here Isaac shows that he is very much a chip off the old block. It’s not just through Rebekah that Jacob inherited his sneaky character traits – his grandfather Abraham and father Isaac both try this same deceitful trick in exactly the same place, though at different times, about a century and a half apart. There are some striking similarities. But there are also enough differences to show that this really is a separate real life incident.
Now there’s no time to revisit in detail chapter 12 where Abraham first pulled this stunt on the Pharaoh of Egypt, or chapter 20 where he did it a second time in Gerar. This incident in the life of Isaac contains similarities and differences to both the stories about his father. Like Abraham when he went to Egypt, the action here with Isaac takes place during a famine when he is forced to leave the land for sustenance. Again, like when Abraham went to Egypt, and unlike when Abraham went to Gerar, the issue with Isaac in this chapter is the beauty of his wife and the fear that the men of the land will kill him for her. However, Isaac doesn’t seem to have been as premeditated about this as his father was with his first lie about Sarah in Egypt. Abraham decided even before he went to Egypt that he would pretend Sarah was his sister. But Isaac does this only after he gets there, when the men of the land ask about Rebekah. Perhaps he is a little less culpable than Abraham at that point, but both men acted out of fear and not faith.
But there is an even more striking similarity between what happens here to Isaac and Rebekah and what happened to Abraham and Sarah at Gerar in chapter 20. Not only is it the same place, but the name of the king and the name of the army commander is the same. Abimelech and Phicol. But there is nothing strange about this, and we don’t need to think that this is just a misplaced legend recording the same events over again.
“The differences between the sin of Abraham and that of Isaac cannot be overlooked. These differences verify the fact that two different deceptions took place in the land of the Philistines: one by Abraham and the other by his son. There seems to be little doubt that there are two different “Abimelechs” in these chapters of Genesis. Many years had passed since Abraham stood without adequate excuse before Abimelech. We would be on safe ground to assume that the term “Abimelech” is a title of office, like “Pharaoh,” rather than a given name. The same could be said for the term “Phicol.” Another consideration is that sons were often named after their grandfathers.” Even today in Denmark King Frederick is always followed by King Christian and then King Frederick again. “Either of these possibilities would readily explain the fact that the names “Abimelech” and “Phicol” (cf. verse 26) are found in chapter 26 as well as in chapter 20.” [Bob Deffinbaugh]
So probably this is the grandson of the Abimelech that Abraham dealt with. But just as we see Isaac bearing a resemblance to his father in the unconscionable way he acts towards Rebekah, so also we see that this Abimelech also seems to have inherited the positive character traits of his forebear. In fact, just as with Abraham, this heathen king seems to have much higher ethical standard than the chosen one of God. It says in verse 8: When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. 9 So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, ‘‘She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?”
Isaac answered him, ‘‘Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.”
10 Then Abimelech 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.”
11 So Abimelech gave orders to all the people: ‘‘Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”
Notice the further differences between this and the incident with Abraham at Gerar with the earlier king Abimelech in chapter 20. On that occasion, the Philistine king, believing Abraham’s lie that she was his sister, actually went to take Sarah as his wife, probably in order to make a treaty with Abraham. Here that doesn’t happen. In fact Isaac’s fears are totally groundless. He lives a long time amongst them and nothing happens, despite their earlier interest in Rebekah. No one has even come and asked to marry Rebekah. And by accident the king looks down on them and realizes that Isaac has been fibbing to him.
We see that just as with Pharaoh in chapter 12 and the other Abimelech in chapter 20, this Abimelech is more morally upright than Isaac. Why did God overlook such behaviour in the ones he had chosen to work through to bless the whole world? Well, I believe we find the answer to that in the New Testament. Romans 3:25 says that God “in his forbearance… had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished…” And Hebrews tells us how this can happen: “…Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” That is, the death of Christ is retrospective, covering Isaac just as much as it covers us.
So the fact is God did bless him, and also blessed the land of the Philistines for his sake.
It says: “Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy.”
Here once again history is repeating itself. Abraham is given the promise of the covenant, goes to Egypt and sins, endangering that promise by allowing Pharaoh to take Sarah as a wife. God intervenes and in the end Pharaoh is blessed and Abraham becomes wealthy. Same pattern here. Isaac goes to Gerar, sins, God rescues him and blesses him and the land of Philistia, and Isaac becomes wealthy.
What does all of this teach us? That God absolutely and always keeps his promises despite the best efforts of his people to wreck them. The New Testament says, in 2 Timothy 2:15, “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” God had promised a solemn oath to Abraham to bless him and his offspring no matter what. He did that despite Abraham’s lack of faith and Isaac’s similar lapse here.
Well, Well, Well (12-25)
But in verses 12 to 25 we see something else happening to disrupt Isaac’s quiet and now wealthy life in Gerar. “He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth.”
Tall poppy syndrome sets in. And the Philistines get their garden shears out. How does the king respond to this? Well at least he doesn’t come up with the genocidal solutions that the Pharaoh of Egypt did to the same problem in the time of Moses. Instead he employs the Idi Amin solution and expels them. Well not quite. He allows them to continue living in the land, but they have to move away from the capital into the wider valley area. And then we have the incidents with the three wells that Isaac appropriately names Dispute, Opposition and Room. Now what’s happening here is that these wells posed a problem for the Philistines, because the earlier king Abimelech had allowed Abraham to dig them. Digging a well was like staking a claim to that piece of land. If you dug and maintained a well, and could establish ownership of it, you could leave and come back later with even more people and livestock. That’s why the Philistines had filled Abraham’s wells in when he died: to make it harder for his heirs to move back in. But Isaac does the hard yards and reaps the benefits.
What all of this tells us about the Philistines is that they were afraid of Abraham and his family. They were also afraid of the Lord, and had heard and seen the great things He had done for Abraham. They were afraid to make outright war on Isaac, but they didn’t make life easy for him. Their greatest fear is the same as that of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, that the Descendants of Abraham will become so mighty that they will eventually dominate Philistia, and perhaps even join with their enemies to destroy her. So they try to marginalize him and his company as much as possible. Later, in verses 26 and following, all else having failed, Abimelech makes a solemn and binding treaty with Isaac. I’m not going to talk about those verses in detail today, but the bottom line of this treaty is that this is simply the outworking of the promise to Abraham and Isaac that “whoever blesses you I will bless, and whoever curses you I will curse.” Abimelech is aware of that promise and has seen its outworking in events such as Abraham’s defeat of the four kings back in chapter 14. He says in verse 28 “We saw clearly that the LORD was with you; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’—between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we did not molest you but always treated you well and sent you away in peace. And now you are blessed by the LORD.””
But that comes later. Back in verses 19 to 22, Isaac has to keep moving to avoid conflict, all the time getting nearer and nearer to the borders of Canaan where he had come from, until in verse 22 he is at last able to say, “now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”
You would expect him to settle down for many years now and enjoy life. But that’s not what happens. Verses 23 to 25 is a watershed in the life of Isaac and the key to understanding the meaning of this whole story. It’s as though he suddenly realizes what life is truly about. He’s made it at last as a Philistine resident. He’s finally got his greencard. But what does he do now? He goes to the airport and takes the first flight out! “From there he went up to Beersheba.” That is, he heads for home. He re-enters the Promised Land. He gives up his hard won well of room in Philistia and digs a fourth well, this time at home in Beersheba.
Now perhaps the drought ended, but I suspect that had happened already years before. I think something more spiritual is happening here. Isaac has found that what he thought he wanted was not really what satisfied. He has made it in worldly society but he is weary of the world. He has remembered that Philistia is not the place that God has for him. It is not where he is meant to be. It is just a brief excursion from which he must return. We can tell that this is a spiritual milestone because we read next “That night the LORD appeared to him and said, ‘‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.” Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.” Isaac has come home, and it is a spiritual homecoming and awakening. He built no altars in Philistia, even when he dug wells there. The New Testament book of Hebrews puts it this way: “By faith Abraham made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”
Are you worshipping God like Isaac was, in the place he knew he had to be? Or are you still pursuing the best that life can offer outside the Promised Land? Whatever it is you hope to find your rest and your place of room in, will in the end not satisfy, and you will not find peace until you are in the place that God has for you, resting in Christ and him alone.
We can learn a lot from Isaac’s experiences, both positively and negatively. But we don’t just learn little moralisms. We learn about God’s character and his tenacious faithfulness to the covenant He makes with his people. And we learn that Isaac, despite all his faults, followed in his father’s footsteps in more ways than one. Not only did he walk in his father’s sins, but he also walked in his father’s faith. And despite our failings as parents we can also pray that our children may do the same, and we can still set them that example of faith that Abraham set Isaac, even though we are far from perfect. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are all glowing examples of the truth that we are saved by faith in God’s promises and not by anything that we do.
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