And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the LORD was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
Entreated the Lord for his wife. Though tried in a similar way to his father, he did not follow the same crooked policy; and if his faith in the divine promise was less strong than that of Abraham, his conduct under the protracted trial was more praiseworthy. For twenty years he continued unblessed with offspring, whose seed was to be "as the stars." But in answer to their mutual prayers (1 Peter 3:7), Rebekah was divinely informed that she was to be the mother of twins, who should be the progenitors of two independent nations; that the descendants of the younger should be the more powerful, and subdue those of the other (Romans 9:12; 2 Chronicles 21:8). The protracted sterility of the mothers of the patriarchs, and other leading men amoungst the Hebrew people, was a providential arrangement, designed to exercise faith and patience, to stimulate prayer, to inspire a conviction that the children born under extraordinary circumstances were gifts of God's grace, and specially to foreshadow the miraculous birth of the Saviour.