Ge. 26: Isaac and Abimelech

Kicking off the second half of Genesis, we find out there is a famine in the land. So Isaac goes and pays a visit to his dad's old friend, Abimelech in Gerar.

Meanwhile, God tells Isaac not to go down to Egypt. Not sure if it has something to do with his stepbrother Ishmael's wife, or that Egypt just sucked. Anyway, God tells him to avoid Egypt. In verse 4, God almost word-for-word reiterates the promise he made to Abraham back in Gen 22:17. But he adds a caveat, saying that Abraham obeyed God, and did everything required of him. This was a challenge to Isaac to follow the same path.

Follow the same path, he did...right down to letting Abimelech think Rebekah was Isaac's sister. When his dad pulled the stunt, it was before he was born, so maybe Isaac thought of it on his own, or maybe Abraham told him about it....I'unno. The point is, we have a husband with a hot wife, fearing for his life in spite of God's promise of preservation, Abimelech (or his cohorts) under the impression hot wife was a sister, Abimelech getting upset because they don't mess with married women, and then a decree going out not to harm the prophet. Maybe this was how Isaac figured it worked. Bring your wife in, let them think she's your sister, and then they protect you and lavish gifts upon you. Not a bad racket, I guess.

Isaac planted crops in that land, and God gave him a hundredfold increase. I'm no farmer, but if I plant one seed of corn or wheat or something, and I get 100 plants, I'd say that's pretty amazing, and a miracle.

So he gets rich. Big time. So much so that the Philistines living in the land got jealous. All they had were their cave paintings and sloping, ape-like foreheads presumably. So what do you do when you're jealous of the new rich guy in town? Go fill in all his wells. Grr...now they've got him.

Abimelech gets word of this, and tells Isaac to move away. He's become too big a fish for the small pond. So he moves away to the Valley of Gerar, which is apparently distinct from Gerar.

Isaac reopened all the wells, but was apparently not far enough away from Gerar, as the Gerarian herdsman argued with him over land and wells. He finally moved far enough away to be able to call a well Rehoboth, or "Room." Then he went to Beersheba. God again reconuts his promise, and Isaac builds an altar.

I'm pretty amazed by how often God recounts his promise to Abraham and Isaac. So far it's been 5 or 6 times. He must mean it.

Abimelech tracks him down, and goes to meet Isaac. Isaac is like, "What do you want? We moved away from your hostility." Abimelech goes, "No, we see that you and the LORD are like...tight. We want to make a deal with you."

Just like Abimelech, trying to get on God's good side without making any effort on his own.

So they have a feast and everyone's happy. They're cool.

Then they find out Ishmael went and married some Hittite chicks. And this really bugged Isaac and Rebekah.