CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 26:1. The first famine that was in the days of Abraham.] This happened nearly an hundred years before the present one. Abimelech. Means, “My father, the king.” This was probably a standing official name. Even in David’s time a king of this country is called Abimelech. (1 Samuel 21:10. Comp. with Psalms 34)—
Genesis 26:5. Kept my charge.] Heb. “Kept my keeping,” i.e., My special commission.—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 26:1-5
THE COVENANT RENEWED TO ISAAC
I. It was renewed to him in a time of trial. The life of Isaac had run an even course, for many years, undisturbed by great troubles and exciting events. At length, a famine arose in the land (Genesis 26:1), so that he is threatened by privation and want. His father, Abraham, had endured great trials before him, and he must not expect to escape. This famine would be a great trial to Isaac, not only as a physical calamity, but also as a trial to his faith in God’s word. He would be tempted to think lightly of the land of promise. Unbelief would suggest to him the thought that it was not worth waiting for. Exposed to such calamities it would prove but a sad heritage. The prospect was dark, but in the time of his deepest trial God appears to Isaac. Times of great trouble are times of great consolation. Divine help comes when all human efforts are exhausted.
II. It was renewed to him in the old terms, but resting on new grounds. The promises are essentially the same—though a little varied in their terms—as God had made to Abraham. The inheritance of the land—an innumerable posterity—the Divine presence and blessing—the assurance that the promise shall not fail—the same wide charity for the whole human race—these are virtually the same promises as those which had been long ago made to Abraham. But these rest now upon new grounds. Abraham was the beginning of the Church, and therefore God, in speaking to His servant whom He had called, rested upon His own Almightiness (Genesis 17:1). But the Church had already commenced a history in the time of Jacob. There was a past to fall back upon. There was an example to stimulate and encourage. There was someone in whom the power of God was manifested, and who had proved the truth of His word. Therefore to Jacob God rests His promises on the ground of his father’s obedience. Thus the Lord would teach Jacob that His attributes are on the side of the saints—that they possess Him only so far as they are obedient;—that he must not regard the promised blessings as a matter of course, to be given irrespective of conduct, but rather as, by their very terms, demanding obedience;—and that the greatness of his people could only arise from that piety and practical trust in God of which Abraham was such an illustrious example (Genesis 26:5). But while obedience, as a general principle, was commended to Isaac, yet regard is had to duty as it is special and peculiar to the individual. The Lord said to him, “Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of” (Genesis 26:2). To Abraham just the opposite command had been given. He was to leave his own country, but Jacob was to remain there. The particular duty was suited to the individual. God knows the strength of our temptations, and those weak points of our character when we are most likely to be overpowered. It was likely that the gentleness of Jacob’s character could not resist the perils and temptations of Egypt. He did not possess that strong energy and hardy virtue which distinguished his father. He who will not suffer those who trust in Him to be tempted above that they are able, spared Jacob what must have proved a disastrous trial. There is a special place of duty for each one. Different men require to be tried in different ways of obedience. The history of Isaac was, for the most part, a repetition of that of his father. He had the same general duties to perform, but yet with a special difference suited to his character. God knows where to place His servants.
THE FAMINE
Here the first thing that suggests itself is the apparent contradiction of the promise given to Abraham, for instead of the land of abundance and rest Isaac found famine and unrest. Let us endeavour to understand that, and then we shall better understand this life of ours; for our life is to us a Canaan, a land of abundant promises, and especially so in youth. But we have not been long in this land of promise before we begin to discover that it falsifies itself, and then there arises in our mind the question that must have presented itself to Isaac, Has God broken His promise? We say God’s promise, because the promises of life are all permitted by Him. The expectation of happiness is God’s creation; the things which minister to happiness are scatterd through the world by God. But if we look deeper into it we shall perceive that God does not deceive us. True it is, that Isaac was disappointed; he got no bread, but he did get perseverance. He did want comforts, but with this want came content—the habit of soul-communion with God. Which was best, bread or faith? Which was best, to have abundance or to have God. Tell us, then, had God broken His promise? Was He not giving a double blessing, far more than He promised? And so it is with us. Every famine of the soul has its corresponding blessing; for, in truth, our blessed hours are not those which seem so at first; and the hours of disappointment, which we are tempted to look upon as dark, are the ones in which we learn to possess our souls. If, in the worst trial earth has, there does not grow out of it an honour which could not else have been, a strength, a sanctity, an elevation; if we do not get new strength, or old strength restored, the fault is ours, not God’s. In truth the blessed spots of earth are not those which at first sight seem so. The land of olive and vine is often the land of sensuality and indolence. Wealth accumulates and engenders sloth and the evils which follow in the train of luxury. The land of clouds and fogs and unkindly soil, which will not yield its fruit unless to hard toil, is the laud of perseverance, manhood, domestic virtue, and stately and pure manners. Want of food and of the necessaries of life, I had well nigh said that these things are not an ill, when I see what they teach; I had well nigh said I do not pity the poor man. There are evils worse than famine. What is the real misfortune of life? Sin, or want of food? Sickness, or selfishness? And when I see Isaac gaining from his want of food the heart to bear up and bear right onward, I can understand that the land of famine may be the land of promise, and just because it is the land of famine. And, secondly, we observe, respecting this famine, that the command given to Isaac differed from that given to Abraham and Jacob. Isaac evidently wished to go down to Egypt; but God forbade him (Genesis 26:2), although He permitted Abraham and commanded Jacob to go thither. The reason for this variety is to be found in the different character and circumstances of these men. In the New Testament we find the same adaptation of command to character. The man of warm feelings who came to Jesus was told “that the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” When the man from whom the legion of devils was cast out besought Jesus that he might be with Him, he received a similar rebuff; but the man of lukewarmness, who wanted to return to bury his father and mother, was not permitted for an instant to go back. The reason of the difference is this—that the man of impetuosity and forwardness needed to be restrained, while the lingering and slow man needed some active measure to stir him forward. It is almost certain that Abraham, being a wise man and a man of faith, was permitted by God to judge for himself, and that Isaac was required to turn back that he might learn the duty of trust; and that Jacob was commanded to go forth in order to cure his love of the world, and to teach him that life is but a pilgrimage. Hence we arrive at a doctrine: duties vary according to differences of character. The young, rich man had a call to give up all; that is not every man’s duty. One man may safely remain in a place of idleness and luxury, having a martyr’s spirit; whereas to another his own temperament, soft and yielding, says as with God’s voice, Arise for thy life; look not behind thee, escape to the mountains. Hence, too, we learn another lesson: the place in which we are is generally God’s appointed place for us to work in. Isaac was prohibited from going forth. He was commanded not to wait for another set of circumstances but to use those he had, not in some distant moment, but here, now, in the place of difficulty. And you: do not wait then for a more favourable set of circumstances; take them as they are, and make the best of them. Those who have done great things were not men who have repined that they were not born in another place or age, but those who did their work from day to day. It is not in moving from place to place that we find rest—in going down into Egypt because present circumstances seem unfavourable. No! Here where we are placed, even in the land of famine, in the dearth and darkness, we are to toil.—(Robertson.)
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
The trials of the righteous are essentially the same from age to age.
Famines were of frequent occurence in those partriarchal times, and for ages afterwards were among the chief national calamities. Hence the many promises to the righteous in such seasons of trial.
Since Jesus multiplied the bread, famine has become a rarer thing in all Christian lands. This is but the beginning of His power to heal the earth.
Genesis 26:2. Jehovah, for the first time, appears to Isaac and repeats to him the covenant promise.
Abraham in like circumstances had been permitted to go to the same country, and sojourn there during the extremity of the famine, yet this permission was denied to Isaac; perhaps because God forsaw that, from the native gentleness of his character, he would be less able than his father to encounter the perils and temptations with which he would meet among a people, from whose vices the more hardy virtue of Abraham himself had scarcely escaped unharmed. It would, indeed, have been easy for God to have armed him with a sufficient degree of inward fortitude to withstand the assaults to which his religious principles would be exposed; but this would have been a departure from the ordinary course of His moral government; and he consults his well-being at once more wisely and more kindly by sparing him the necessity of the conflict. When the heart and the general course of conduct is right, we may take it for granted that God will order His Providence with a special reference to our infirmities, so as graciously to anticipate and avert the evils into which we should otherwise have plunged ourselves.—(Bush).
The word “dwell” means strictly to “tabernacle, or dwell tent-wise.” Thus while Isaac is commanded to dwell in the land, yet he must be reminded that he is merely a sojourner. The time had not yet come for him fully to possess the land of promise. Thus the founders of the Jewish nation were men who were compelled to live by faith (Hebrews 11:9).
Genesis 26:3. To satisfy Isaac that he should never want a guide or a provider, the Lord renews to him the promises that had been made to his father Abraham. Times of affliction, though disagreeable to the flesh have often proved our best times. It is in this way that God is wont to arouse His sluggish servants to action by assuring them that their labour shall not be in vain. He does, indeed, claim at our hands, as a father from a son, a ready and unrecompensed service; but He is pleased by the exhibition of rich rewards to stimulate and quicken the diligence which is so prone to grow slack. This solemn renewal of the Covenant is distinguished by two remarkable features—
(1) The good things promised. “I will be with thee, and bless thee.” The sum and substance of the blessing is, the grant of the land of Canaan, a numerous progeny, and chief of all, the Messiah, in whom the nations should be blessed. On these promises Isaac was to live. God provided him bread in the day of famine, but he lived not on bread only, but on every word which proceeded out of the mouth of God.
(2) Their being given for Abraham’s sake. While all the essential good of the promise is assured to Isaac, and thus made a source of encouragement and comfort to him, any incipient rising of self-complacency is kept down by the intimation that it is rather to Abraham’s merit than to his own that he is to look as the procuring cause of such signal favour.—(Bush.)
I will be with thee,—the first draft and outline of the picture, afterwards filled up, of Immanuel, “God with us.”
Genesis 26:4-5. All the nations. In constancy of purpose the Lord contemplates, even in the special covenant with Abraham, the gathering in of the nations under the covenant with Noah and with Adam. (Genesis 9:9; Hosea 6:7.) Because Abraham hearkened to My voice in all the great moments of his life, especially in the last act of proceeding on the Divine command to offer Isaac himself. Abraham, by the faith which flows from the new birth, was united with the Lord, his shield, and exceeding great reward (Genesis 15:1); with God Almighty, who quickened and strengthened him to walk before Him, and be perfect (Genesis 17:1). The Lord his Righteousness worketh in him, and His merit is reflected and reproduced in him (Genesis 22:16; Genesis 22:18). Hence the Lord reminds Isaac of the oath which he had heard at least fifty years before confirming the promise, and of the declaration then made that this oath of confirmation was sworn because Abraham had obeyed the voice of God. How deeply these words would penetrate into the soul of Isaac, the intended victim of that solemn day. But Abraham’s obedience was displayed in all the acts of his new life. He kept the charge of God, the special commission He had given him; His commandments, His express or occasional orders, His statutes, His stated prescriptions, graven on stone, His laws, the great doctrines of moral obligation. This is that unreserved obedience which flows from a living faith, and withstands the temptations of the flesh.—(Murphy.)