Genesis 26: 1 – 34
More is caught than taught
26 There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar. 2 Then the LORD appeared to him and said: “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you. 3 Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. 4 And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; 5 because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.” 6 So Isaac dwelt in Gerar. 7 And the men of the place asked about his wife. And he said, “She is my sister”; for he was afraid to say, “She is my wife,” because he thought, “lest the men of the place kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to behold.” 8 Now it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked through a window, and saw, and there was Isaac, showing endearment to Rebekah his wife. 9 Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Quite obviously she is your wife; so how could you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I said, ‘Lest I die on account of her.’” 10 And Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might soon have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us.” 11 So Abimelech charged all his people, saying, “He who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.” 12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the LORD blessed him. 13 The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous; 14 for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. So the Philistines envied him. 15 Now the Philistines had stopped up all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and they had filled them with earth. 16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.” 17 Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the Valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. 18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them. 19 Also Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there. 20 But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him. 21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitnah. 22 And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.” 23 Then he went up from there to Beersheba. 24 And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham’s sake.” 25 So he built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD, and he pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well. 26 Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath, one of his friends, and Phichol the commander of his army. 27 And Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?” 28 But they said, “We have certainly seen that the LORD is with you. So we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a covenant with you, 29 that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the LORD.’” 30 So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. 31 Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath with one another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. 32 It came to pass the same day that Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.” 33 So he called it Shebah. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day. 34 When Esau was forty years old, he took as wives Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 And they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.
People have come up to me on various occasions and want me to comment as to pointers on parental care of their children. They want me to reveal to them the secret on how to properly raise their kids. I like to tell them this, ‘No matter how much I tried to teach my kids in proper table manners, they still eat like I do.’ The truth of this comment is that more is caught than taught.
If your words don’t match your actions, then your children can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions are drowning out your words. I know, I’ve done it, but this should give us pause to reflect on what we do can be more important than what we say, as experience has proven that more is caught than is taught. They might not do what you say but do what you do, so our examples are of supreme importance.
The old expression, “monkey see, monkey do” is perfectly appropriate for parents, foster parents, and grandparents. That expression means that they will repeat what you do and not what you say. If we aren’t working with our children when they’re young, we’ll be spending a lot more time with our children, like in court. They will see what you do and tend to believe that it must be okay to lie and say “Tell them I’m not home” when someone calls and asks for them. When they see you drive over the speed limit, they’ll think it’s okay for them to bend or break the rules. If they see you drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or pot then do not be surprised or shocked when you find out that they will also start using it.
We can’t invest in anything more important than the souls of our children and grandchildren but to do this, we must start early. If we neglect our duties as a parent to instill in them the laws of God when they’re young, then they’ll see God’s laws as irrelevant to their lives. Invest in their lives while they’re young or you’ll invest a lot more time, money and heartache than you want.
If your children see you are not going to compromise with sin or with God’s law, they’ll see that it must be important. They might not tell you that they’re watching, but believe me, they are! They see a lot more than we give them credit for. If we hedge on things in life, they’ll see the model or pattern of behavior for their lives. Scary, isn’t it?
We must remember that our children can’t hear our words if our actions don’t match our words and they can see if and when we compromise with sin and think it must be okay so they need our time and energy so that we can invest it in their future, and we should model godly behavior.
Abraham was a friend of God. An important verse for us to memorize is –‘Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Yet we also want to know that Abraham was just a man and he had his faults or sins. One major one which came back to bite him a couple of times was the little white lie that he deceived others in telling them that Sarai, his wife, was his sister. Oh, sure she in reality was his sister – that is half sister – but deceit is deceit.
I am sure Abraham might have thought what harm this little stretching of the truth could cause. It is interesting that Isaac wasn’t around or was just a child when Abraham used this line. Perhaps Sarai or someone in the family spoke of the times when Abraham was in Egypt or came to the area of Gerar where he ran into Abimelech. Most astonishing was the fact that Isaac is going to use the same lie. However, in this case his wife was not even his half sister. She was his cousin.
In our last chapter we have been informed that after the death of Abraham Isaac moved to Beer-lahai-roi. When therefore famine arose in the land of Canaan he must have experienced great temptation to slip, with his family, servants, and livestock across the nearby border into Egypt. But YHWH appears to him and tells him that he must not leave the Promised Land.
So he moves to Gerar, where Abraham had prospered, knowing that there were sources of water to be found there to which he had some entitlement (21.27-33).
26 There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar.
Moses, the writer of Genesis, knows of the extreme famine in the time of Abraham that drove him into Egypt (12.10-20). Now the rains fail once more and another extreme famine arrives and this drives Isaac from where he is to Gerar. As a young man he had been acquainted with Gerar, although the Abimelech he knew then may have been an ancestor of the present one. It is probable that Abimelech was a throne name taken by all the kings who ruled over the Philistine conclave at Gerar.
2 Then the LORD appeared to him and said: “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I shall tell you. 3 Dwell in this land, and I will be with you and bless you; for to you and your descendants I give all these lands, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father. 4 And I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; 5 because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”
This is Isaac’s first personal visitation by our Holy God. Our Holy Master tells him to not go to Egypt but to dwell where He directs him. Don’t you wish this would also happen to us? We make mistakes throughout our lives by going with our own inclinations and the outcomes in many cases do not turn out so well.
The patriarchs who were started by Abraham owned no land (except for Machpelah -the place for burying their dead [chapter 23). They were sojourners. They lived on land owned or controlled by others, seeking water, trading, offering services in return for the use of land for grazing and the sowing of grain, usually living near cities but not actually in them. Thus were they a self-contained community separated from the evils around them. YHWH asserts that they are to remain so, and thus they will experience His presence and His blessing, being ‘in the world but not of the world’.
The promises given to Abraham are then renewed. The land will one day be theirs. Their seed will be multiplied as the stars. The whole world will be blessed through them. The oath YHWH made to Abraham stands firm, because Abraham was worthy.
Although Abraham sinned in various ways ultimately he was righteous in our Holy God’s eyes because he kept His charge, His commandments, His statutes and His laws. This renewal of the covenant after so long a time must have been a great blessing to Isaac. He had been used to learning of his father’s experiences, but now he had experienced YHWH for himself.
6 So Isaac dwelt in Gerar. 7 And the men of the place asked about his wife. And he said, “She is my sister”; for he was afraid to say, “She is my wife,” because he thought, “lest the men of the place kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to behold.”
So as Isaac retraces the location where his father had moved his camp to, sadly Isaac is also going to imitate his father in other areas. He remembers how his father constantly used this subterfuge in dealing with the king and people of this land. Abraham had lied about his wife who was beautiful.
Isaac’s wife is also good looking so he says ‘She is my sister.’ There is a half truth in the statement for they are cousins, and she is therefore a close blood relation and relationships were not then so cut and dried. But it shows lack of faith in YHWH and is inexcusable. However, when men are afraid they will do strange things, and Rebekah was very beautiful with a beauty not common among these people.
8 Now it came to pass, when he had been there a long time that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked through a window, and saw, and there was Isaac, showing endearment to Rebekah his wife. 9 Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Quite obviously she is your wife; so how could you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I said, ‘Lest I die on account of her.’”
It may be that the king’s house looked out over an open space where the tents of Isaac were pitched. In that case the king may have seen the silhouette of what was happening in a lighted tent. Either way the king spots Isaac making love to his wife and immediately realizes the truth. Subsequently he calls for Isaac and rightly rebukes him.
10 And Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might soon have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us.”
Unconsciously Abimelech’s words support Isaac’s worst fears. Abimelech recognizes the possibility of his men to treat a visiting woman casually. And he also confirms the danger Isaac might have been in. To take a man’s wife is to incur guilt and cause a curse on this person’s family and possibly the land where the sin occurred. Yet his rebuke is justified for Isaac had unthinkingly put temptation in men’s way.
11 So Abimelech charged all his people, saying, “He who touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”
So Isaac’s fears are allayed, for now they enjoy the protection of the king’s command, a proof that YHWH is keeping His word and protecting them as He had said, “I will be with you”, and He was.
12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold; and the LORD blessed him. 13 The man began to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous; 14 for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. So the Philistines envied him.
Isaac was now settled in Gerar and the famine had long passed. Good relations had been established with the local king and he began to sow seed in expectation of a considerable stay. And the seed prospered. We know today that this was particularly fertile land and it produced ‘a hundredfold’. Moreover ‘YHWH blessed him’. Everything he touched seemed to flourish. His flocks expanded, his herds grew, and he added more and more servants to his ‘household’, in other words to his family tribe who were responsible for maintaining his wealth.
15 Now the Philistines had stopped up all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and they had filled them with earth.
But there is always one problem with wealth. It produces envy in the heart of others, and that is what happened here. And so he was asked to move on. His wealth, and the demands it made on local amenities, were causing a problem for the inhabitants.
The wells of Abraham had been filled in. And why? Because when Isaac moved to Beer-lahai-roi on the death of Abraham, the Philistines decided they did not want anyone else to move in and filled in the surplus wells, which would have attracted roving semi-nomads like flies. But this was now why Isaac, with his great expansion, was proving to be such a burden on the local economy. They did not have sufficient water for him and themselves.
16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
The water shortage was causing problems. So the Philistines no doubt held a council. The result was that they decided to ask Isaac to move on. They no doubt recognized that he was fairly amenable (would they have dared to ask the same of Abraham?) and it is possible that it was they who pointed out to him where the previous wells had been and suggested he reopened them. And fortunately Isaac recognized the truth of what they were saying.
17 Then Isaac departed from there and pitched his tent in the Valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. 18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. He called them by the names which his father had called them.
This passage demonstrates how closely Isaac and his household had been living with the Philistines until they had become too large for the place. But now they move to a local valley and camp there. And they reopen the wells first discovered by his father and call them by the previous names given by his father.
19 Also Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there. 20 But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him.
We see here that what was spoken about in verse 18 is now expanded on. He digs the first well that was Abraham’s. But the inhabitants claim it as theirs. And it says much for Isaac’s equable temperament that he allows them possession, for he could fairly have pointed out that he and his men had dug it and that it had once been ceded to his father. It is clear that Abraham had also called the well Esek (verse 18) so that it had been a bone of contention even then. But Abraham’s response was probably different. (There are some people you do not argue with).
21 Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name Sitnah.
The same thing is repeated, and Abraham had also clearly called this well Sitnah showing that he too had experienced enmity when he dug it. But what a different person Isaac is from Abraham. When they sought to wrest a well from Abraham he went straight to the king and demanded it back (21.25). But Isaac is more peaceable and cedes the wells to the inhabitants
22 And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.” 23 Then he went up from there to Beersheba.
Isaac continues retagging the wells that his father had dug and this time there was no contention. And he called it Reheboth (broad places), because there was room for both him and them.
24 And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham’s sake.”
Once again Isaac has an awe-inspiring experience of God in which the covenant is renewed. ‘Appeared to him the same night’ seems to suggest that Isaac’s coming to his father’s old sanctuary was approved by YHWH.
The ground for the renewing of the covenant is that he is the son of Abraham. He shares in the blessing of Abraham. Abraham was the one chosen by God as His vehicle of blessing to the world, and Isaac as his seed carries on that purpose. He will thus enjoy God’s blessing and will see his descendants multiplied. We too will enjoy blessing from the God of Abraham if we are Abraham’s children through faith in Christ.
25 So he built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD, and he pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.
‘He built an altar there and called on the name of YHWH.’ In other words he established Beersheba as the centre of worship for his people where they could regularly worship YHWH and offer sacrifices, with Isaac himself being the priest. As we know already, this was the very place where Abraham too had established the worship of God (21.33). In all things, both good and bad, Isaac follows in the steps of his father.
He established this place as his base camp, and naturally began to look for the well that his father had previously dug and called Beersheba. Without the well the camp could not be permanent.
26 Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath, one of his friends, and Phichol the commander of his army.
In a continuing matching of history we also know that it was at Beersheba that the previous Abimelech had made a covenant under oath with Abraham. This may be the same Abimelech, in which case he was very old, but far more likely it is his son or grandson.
Abraham had won their confidence as a result of the incident with Sarah and the revelation that he was a prophet, and by his fighting strength and willingness to stand up for himself. Isaac has won it by his amenable disposition and his continual willingness not to use his strength but to be neighborly and even beneficent. In the end his policy has worked.
Phicol was also the title of the man who had accompanied the first Abimelech to see Abraham. So this is probably the title by which they called their war leader at any time
27 And Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?”
Isaac may be amenable but it did not mean he could not be hurt. He clearly felt his friendship had been betrayed. Now he was puzzled as to why they were approaching him. Because of his friendly nature he did not consider the possibility that they were safeguarding their backs.
28 But they said, “We have certainly seen that the LORD is with you. So we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a covenant with you, 29 that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the LORD.’”
Their appreciation of Isaac’s fighting strength is clear from the fact that they approach him voluntarily and peacefully. They have watched him prosper and seen him establish the cultic centre for YHWH at Beersheba, clearly with a view to permanent settlement. They recognize he is a man of peace but they want to ensure that things remain peaceable. They recognized that his God YHWH was effective and powerful. This was seen as proved by his growing prosperity and by his ability to find springs. They were aware of the power of Isaac’s God. Indeed they were presumably aware of the previous history from Abraham’s time. Their connections go back a long way. They remembered YHWH the God of Abraham and they see He is now Isaac’s God and effective on his behalf, and they are a little apprehensive.
The result is that they want a treaty sealed by an oath, just as they had had with Abraham, a treaty of peace and mutual recognition. Isaac may not be Abraham but he is still to be feared because he is the chosen of YHWH, and like Abraham has a private army.
30 So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. 31 Then they arose early in the morning and swore an oath with one another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.
The show of hospitality was an indication of friendly reception and peaceful intention and they ate and drank and rested in the camp. Then the solemn oath was sworn and they returned to their city with the peaceful settlement agreed between the parties. No doubt this was to Isaac the peacemaker’s satisfaction. Isaac’s methods had proved fruitful.
32 It came to pass the same day that Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.” 33 So he called it ‘Shebah’. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.
The good news comes that they have rediscovered the Well of Sheba (seven) which had previously been so named Beer-sheba (the well of seven) by Abraham, and as his custom was Isaac renames it Shibah (the feminine of seven), thus ‘beer Shibah’ after Beersheba. This second giving of the same name followed Isaac’s stated policy (26.18).
34 When Esau was forty years old, he took as wives Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 And they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.
Sadly, Esau further demonstrates his contempt for his status when he marries two Hittite women. The tradition of marrying within the family meant little to him, and his acts brought great grief to Isaac and Rebekah. But as the eldest son he would have been expected to marry within the family yet in his rebellious wild lifestyle he does whatever he wants to do.
