CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 21:33. And Abraham planted a grove.] Properly, the Oriental tamarisk tree or grove. They grow to a remarkable height, and furnish a wide shade. It seems as if this were a religious act, as designed to secure some retired place for worship. Such groves were afterwards forbidden on account of their connection with idolatrous practices. (Deuteronomy 16:21.) The everlasting God. As the peculiar explanation of the name Jehovah. This title is found only in one other place. (Isaiah 40:28.) St. Paul uses the equivalent Greek epithet. (Romans 16:26.)
Genesis 21:34. Many days.] To be understood as representing a considerable period, during which Isaac had time to grow up from a child to such an age as would render him fit to carry the wood for the offering. (Genesis 22:6.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 21:33-34
ABRAHAM, THE GODLY MAN
Abraham was not merely a religious man—a man of outward forms and observances; he was eminently a godly man. He believed not only certain truths concerning God, but he believed in God—in a living, personal Being upon whom he had centered his faith and hope. His character in this regard comes out clearly in this short historical notice.
I. He makes provision for Divine worship. “Abraham planted a grove in Beer-Sheba,” whose grateful shade and seclusion he would use for prayer and worship. And what we are told about the way of his worship shows that it rose above outward forms and ordinances.
1. It was intelligent. “He called there on the name of the Lord.” The “name,” as employed by the sacred writers, is not an indifferent symbol, but stands for the reality. Abraham knew the object of his worship—the faithful, unchangeable God, true to His promises for ever. He was not serving one who inspired only slavish dread, and with whom a breach of ceremony was the highest offence, but a righteous Being who required truth in the heart and the service of love. His piety has no trace of superstition, but is altogether in accordance with the highest reason.
2. It was grateful. The planting of this grove was a kind of special act, in which Abraham was led to review the past with thankfulness. It was an outward monument of the gratitude which he felt in his heart for all God’s mercies. He was like Samuel, when he set up a stone between Mizpeh and Shen, and called it Ebenezer, saying, “Hitherto the Lord hath helped us.” Thankfulness which finds its voice in praise is an essential part of worship. God is always giving to us, and there are times when our grateful sense of His bounty should rise to the surface and occupy our whole soul.
3. It was hopeful. He invoked the name of “the Everlasting God.” He looked towards the future with confidence, for he knew that God was sufficient in power, and throughout all time. His expectation was from One who could not die, and who could secure for him a portion beyond this passing world. This is not like the hope of the worldly man, which encloses little, and that passing away. Bounded by this world, nothing lies beyond it but a dreary blank. This was the hope of that eternal life in which God would be always blessing him. Union with such a Being implies immortality, as our Lord teaches us in His application of the truth that God was “the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” The hope of the righteous man has its substantial ground in his faith in God.
II. He is content to be a stranger and pilgrim on the earth. He “sojourned in the Philistines’ land many days.” He was but a stranger there, and only for a short time. He had no permanent possession in the land. It afforded him but a resting place for a while—his true home elsewhere. In one sense, every man is a pilgrim, for by an inevitable law he is passing on through the world to eternity. But every man does not recognise the fact that this world is not the true home of his soul, and that his mind and heart ought not to rest here. Abraham felt that he was both a pilgrim and a stranger. His strong faith in God was leading him each day to things above and beyond this world.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 21:33. The planting of this longlived tree, with its hard wood and its long, narrow, thickly-clustered evergreen leaves, was to be a type of the ever-enduring grace of the faithful covenant God.—(Keil and Delitzsch.)
Abraham was seeking rest and peace, and it was therefore appropriate that he should invoke that name of God which implied His all-sufficiency and unchangeableness.
The consistency of the patriarch’s godliness is seen in his making provision for the worship of God at every stage of his pilgrimage.
Genesis 21:34. Moses reports three sacred works of Abraham—
1. He laboured.
2. He preached.
3. He bore patiently his long sojourn in a strange land.
Abraham sojourning in the Philistines’ land—an image of the Church in the midst of the world.