And Isaac dwelt in Gerar:
Isaac dwelt in Gerar; and the men of the place asked him of his wife. During his sojourn in the Philistine capital, Isaac, apprehensive of personal danger on account of Rebekah's beauty, followed the same deceptious course that his father had adopted (Genesis 12:13; Genesis 20:2) of passing his wife off for his sister; but through the seasonable interposition of Providence he was preserved (Psalms 105:14-15). Knobel pronounces this story to be a duplicate account of a similar incident in the life of Abraham. But a close examination will show that the circumstances here detailed are different from those of the earlier transaction. Although the name of the principal personage in both narratives is Abimelech, a royal title, it is highly probable, considering that an interval of about seventy years had elapsed, another king was reigning in Isaac's day: then Rebekah was not taken into the royal harem; and there was a difference also in the way in which her conjugal relation to Isaac was discovered.
Altogether the stories are plainly marked by distinctive peculiarities of their own; and though it is striking, it cannot appear improbable that, in the same country and at the same court, where Oriental notions as to the rights of royalty obtained, incidents of such a description should from time to time occur. Isaac's conduct, however, in this affair, has been made the subject of severe animadversion by the friends as well as the foes of Revelation, as a compound of selfishness and weakness, as well as of cold indifference to his wife's honour, for which the same apology cannot be made as in the earlier case of Abraham. But Waterland ('Scripture Vindicated'), after a full and dispassionate examination of the circumstances, gives his verdict, that the patriarch 'did right to evade the difficulty so long as it could be lawfully evaded, and to await and see whether Divine Providence might not, some way or other, interpose before the last extremity.' His hope was not disappointed.