Episode 199: Genesis 26 Explained: Isaac, Conflict, and God’s Blessing

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Today Count Show Episode 199

Preview

Jim: No matter what I do, everything I touch is turning to gold, as we say. Then that becomes too much. And so even in my prosperity, I find more conflict. I get pushed out farther. And even in that place, I continue to be blessed. And then the trouble finds me, travels to me. To really be a follower of Jesus, it is radical. I don’t know how I can continue to read on without going back and rereading what I read this morning because it’s an absolute slap in the face. I can tell you right now, I can’t do it.

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Genesis 26: The Famine, God’s Promise, and Isaac’s Lie

Jim: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Today Count Show. Specifically, this is the Genesis Project, where we are walking through the book of origin, the book of beginnings, the first book in the Bible, the book of Genesis. Today we have the whole crew here. We have Pastor Matt, Pastor Winston, Gary Harpst, and myself, Jim Piper. We are in Genesis chapter 26, where the march toward the promised land continues, but now through Isaac.

In this section, we’re going to kind of notice that family patterns seem to happen like a waterfall. We’re going to see this patriarch named Isaac lie again out of fear. We’re going to then look at the ancient battle for land that we often call the Holy Land in its origins. And then we’re going to be looking at an obscure couple of verses at the end that will talk about what kind of happens when we don’t follow in God’s parameters for us.

So without further ado, Genesis 26:1 begins like this:
“A severe famine now struck the land, as had happened before in Abraham’s time. So Isaac moved to Gerar, where Abimelech, king of the Philistines, lived.”

Just a side note, Abimelech, we learn, is not the name of anybody, but it’s more of a royal title used just so that we don’t get confused with the Abimelech that Abraham dealt with. So anyway, they moved here where Abimelech, king of the Philistines, lived.

God’s Instruction to Isaac and the Covenant Reaffirmed

The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt, but do as I tell you. Live here as a foreigner in this land, and I will be with you and bless you. I hereby confirm that I will give all these lands to you and your descendants, just as I solemnly promised Abraham, your father. I will cause your descendants to become as numerous as the stars of the sky, and I will give them all these lands, and through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed. I’ll do this because Abraham listened to me and obeyed all my requirements, commands, decrees, and instructions.”

So Isaac stayed in Gerar, which, by the way, is about a day’s journey from the Gaza Strip.

Isaac’s Fear, the Lie About Rebecca, and Abimelech’s Response

Verse 7 says, “When the men who lived there asked Isaac about his wife Rebecca, he said, ‘She is my sister.’ He was afraid to say, ‘She is my wife.’ He thought they will kill me to get her because she is so beautiful.”

But sometime later, the king of the Philistines looked out his window and saw Isaac caressing Rebecca. He immediately called for Isaac and exclaimed, “She is obviously your wife. Why did you say she is my sister?”

“Because I was afraid someone would kill me to get her from me,” Isaac replied.

“How could you do this to us?” Abimelech explained. “One of my people might easily have taken your wife and slept with her, and you would have made us guilty of great sin.”

Then Abimelech issued a public proclamation. “Anyone who touches this man or his wife will be put to death.”

Family Patterns and Learned Responses to Crisis

Matt: Yeah, it’s interesting. It obviously just goes to show you how much of a family culture is caught even more than taught. Either the story had lived on. How many times can we trace things back to our own family origin of mistakes or victories, either one? But yeah, it’s so interesting reading.

I’m doing the one-year chronological Bible this year, and I’ve already read through this again, obviously, and then in our study. But it’s like I had to read it twice, like, “Oh, I picked up on the wrong chapter today. I went backwards.” And everybody’s like, “No, no, this happened. This happened twice. This is not a ‘like father, like son’ moment here.” And I did find that interesting.

Jim: Pastor Matt is in his mobile office, and he’s kind of breaking up on us a little bit. So we’ll kind of override him for a second. But yeah, if you heard it all or if you didn’t hear it at all, it does seem like, to put it in my words, what Pastor Matt was saying is that we kind of learn from our parents how they deal with crisis, how they deal with difficulties. That’s what we learn. And sometimes that’s one thing we could probably pull out, right?

Seeing Ourselves in Our Children

Gary: Yeah, you see in your own children things and say, “Where did they get that?” Then I know. Winston, you’re too young to see that yet, but it will show up.

Jim: What’s really scary is they’re not limited just to that either. They can be creative in their own ways.

Gary: They add to what we do.

I know this isn’t the main theme of this passage, but one of the things I notice is how often God uses adversity to direct people. This whole thing starts with a famine. And you think how many times in the history of the Old Testament something like a famine caused Jacob to go to Egypt, a famine caused Abraham to go to Egypt. Here, a famine. I don’t know. At my age, I ask, “How is God working in everything?” He’s working in everything, even famines.

Jim: Kind of like a domino effect, right?

Gary: Yeah.

Isaac and the Covenant Encounter

Winston: Is this the first time Isaac essentially has an interaction with God about the covenant promise?

Jim: I don’t know that I would conclude that, only because in the past we see God repeating himself to Abraham in multiple ways. And hopefully Abraham communicated that downstream. But to your question, is it an interaction? It may be. And of course, whenever Scripture says, “The Lord appeared to Isaac,” that always makes us wonder what, because most of us don’t talk that way today. I don’t say, “Hey, Pastor Matt, the Lord appeared to me today, and we had a conversation about this or that.”

So if we take it at face value, the Lord appeared to Isaac. We know enough in our theology to know that He did not literally appear, because Scripture tells us that that can’t happen and us survive. But was it another theophany? Was it an angel? Was it the pre-incarnate Christ in another form? I don’t know.

I always do find that interesting, that Moses, if he is the author, I guess he just supposes the readers aren’t curious like we would be in the 21st century. And I would like to know how exactly He appeared. I’m kind of drifting away from the question that you threw out there, Winston, but it’s the first recorded one we have, right?

Winston: Yeah. I think at a minimum it’s interesting that God could have just kept it at His interaction with Abraham and said, “All right, Abraham will tell Isaac.” But He showed up to Isaac personally, and He made it a personal interaction.

Fear, Faith, and Repeated Failures

Jim: Yeah. Another thing that popped out to me is why Abraham tried to hide his relationship with Sarah. The same reason he gave there is the same reason Isaac gives here, that their wives must have been not just beautiful as in how a male looks at a female, but strikingly beautiful, for whatever the lenses were in that day. Was it a Hebrew complexion that made them this way, or were they just simply striking? You go back to the well, it says that the servant caught her eye because she was beautiful. So apparently she was just striking, right?

And so this tribe obviously has very selective choices on who their wives are going to be. Apparently that can also be a liability.

Gary: I see something in this story, too, that I catch myself doing. He believed God. Obviously, God came to him and said, “Hey, you should go here and not here,” and he did it. And yet when he gets there, he becomes afraid of something relatively minor. I guess it wouldn’t have been minor in that day. I don’t understand the culture there. But I don’t know. I just see the inconsistency in me. I’ll believe God with some things, but I won’t believe Him with others.

Jim: I think that’s probably true for all of us, isn’t it?

Gary: Yeah. I’m inconsistent, and I get upset over the littlest things without catching myself. This is not little, but anyway, he believed Him and went down there where he was told to go.

Jim: Yeah. Go ahead.

Longing for God’s Guidance and Moral Awareness

Winston: I was just going to say, I do wish for this kind of clarity, that God would show up and say to me, “Hey, go here, not here.”

Jim: Yeah. What I’ve been working harder on in my life is really trying to discern when God the Spirit, when the Spirit of Christ, when the Holy Spirit is guiding me, nudging me, speaking to me. And I seem to have a longing for that more and more in my life as I get older.

And I mentioned that to you only because I look at verse 10, and this is Abimelech speaking: “One of my people might easily have taken your wife and slept with her, and you would have made us guilty of great sin.” I find it fascinating that a pagan king, a pagan royalty, would recognize adultery as a great sin.

I don’t see anywhere in here where it required the Spirit of God to tell him such a thing. It seems to me that we know this. There are certain things that we simply know. And does that require a leading or guiding of the Holy Spirit? And then when we fall or fail, what is the Holy Spirit’s role in that?

But it’s not just a sin. Guilty of a great sin, he says, in the New Living Translation.

Moral Authority and Trouble in a Foreign Land

Gary: A question for you guys, is your view of this: Is it that Abimelech, the king, is treating Isaac’s wife differently than other women? It sounds like there’s something worse about this situation. Is it because he’s a visitor, a foreigner, powerful?

Jim: That’s a great question, Gary. I didn’t have the insight to think about that. I do believe that when we live right, there is a moral authority that people sense. I’ve learned that in my own profession, that people put you on a pedestal and you don’t even know that. You don’t even realize that. And when you find that out, it’s a bit convicting because you go, “Well, I’m no better than anybody else.” But that’s not how folks who are on the outside looking in see it. However that psychology works.

So anyway, in this chapter, this first section, we see that Isaac’s trouble begins in the context of being in a foreign land and then not handling something appropriately. And now his trouble will continue because now, of course, he’s trying to settle down. God told him to settle down in this area, but he finds trouble.

Isaac’s Prosperity and the Battle Over Wells

So I’ll pick up here in verse 12.

“When Isaac planted his crops that year, he harvested a hundred times more grain than he planted. For the Lord blessed him.”

That’s crazy. A hundred times. Not tenfold. A hundredfold. I don’t even know if that’s organically possible. Is that a miracle? What is it? I don’t know.

Anyway, he became a very rich man, and his wealth continued to grow. He acquired so many flocks of sheep and goats, herds of cattle, and servants that the Philistines became jealous of him.

Okay, so they kind of revered him, but now they’re getting jealous of him. That’s kind of how I’m reading this.

So the Philistines filled up all of Isaac’s wells with dirt. These were the wells that had been dug by the servants of his father Abraham. Okay, so now they’ve come back, reclaimed the wells, and filled them with dirt.

Finally, Abimelech ordered Isaac to leave the country. “Go somewhere else,” he said, “for you have become too powerful for us.”

Conflict Over Wells and Finding Space to Prosper

So Isaac moved away to the Gerar Valley, where he set up their tents and settled down. He reopened the wells his father had dug, which the Philistines had filled in after Abraham’s death. Isaac also restored the names Abraham had given them.

Isaac’s servants also dug in Gerar Valley and discovered a well of fresh water. But then the shepherds from Gerar came and claimed the spring. “This is our water,” they said, and they argued over it with Isaac’s herdsmen. So Isaac named the well Esek, which means argument.

Isaac’s men then dug another well, but again there was a dispute over it. So Isaac named it Sitnah, which means hostility.

Abandoning that one, Isaac moved on and dug another well. This time there was no dispute over it. So Isaac named the place Rehoboth, which means open space. For he said, “At last the Lord has created enough space for us to prosper in this land.”

God’s Presence, Promise, and Continued Provision

From there Isaac moved to Beersheba, where the Lord appeared to him on the night of his arrival. “I am the God of your father Abraham,” He said. “Do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you. I will multiply your descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will do this because of my promise to Abraham, my servant.”

Then Isaac built an altar there and worshiped the Lord. He set up his camp at that place, and his servants dug another well.

The Treaty with Abimelech at Beersheba

All right, we’re going to go a little bit further.

“One day Abimelech came from Gerar, with his adviser Ahuzzath and also Phicol, his army commander.”

“Why have you come here?” Isaac asked. “You obviously hate me, since you kicked me off your land.”

They replied, “We can plainly see that the Lord is with you.” Man, I could have sworn that is what was said to Abraham.

“So we want to enter into a sworn treaty with you. Let’s make a covenant. Swear that you will not harm us, just as we have never troubled you.”

Bit of an exaggeration there.

“We have always treated you well, and we sent you away from us in peace. And now look how the Lord has blessed you.”

So Isaac prepared a covenant feast to celebrate the treaty, and they ate and drank together. Early the next morning, they took a solemn oath not to interfere with each other. Then Isaac sent them home again, and they left him in peace.

That very day, Isaac’s servants came and told him about a new well they had dug. “We found water,” they exclaimed.

So Isaac named the well Sheba, which means oath. And to this day, the town that grew up there is called Beersheba, which means well of the oath.

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Theological Reflections: Adversity, Separation, and Higher Perspective

Gary: It’s interesting that God says in Genesis 1 that we really can’t fulfill our purpose unless we multiply and increase, and yet we’re not very good at getting along with each other. He says, “At last the Lord has made room for us,” and one of the quote strategies, if you will, that we use to get along is separation.

My wife and I will go stay with our kids for a while, or they will stay with us, and then after a while we think, “Okay, that’s enough.” All I’m getting at is that in these old lessons, fundamental human nature is exposed about separation.

Daniel predicts in his prophecies about the future that travel and communication will increase. And so the internet has literally brought us to the point where we’re in the face of each other all the time. Whether we’re physically in the face of each other doesn’t matter anymore. We’re in the face of each other electronically all the time.

I’m always struck by the wisdom that is hidden in Scripture about the physics of this world—how things work, how people work. God scattered the nations of Babylon not as a curse but as a blessing, to spread out and separate yourself. So we see here that He viewed it as a blessing that the Lord made room for us. That could be physical, but it could be spiritual as well.

Viewing the Story from a Higher Perspective

Jim: What’s kind of going through my mind is that I was thinking wide-angle lens, zoom lens, but then I thought, no, I want to elevate myself above the story and look down upon it, because there’s a different perspective from that vantage point than there is when you’re actually Isaac, when you’re the one in the story.

We are all trying to get somewhere. We’re all trying to do something. We’re all trying to understand the practicalities of our purpose on this planet. From a higher elevation, I’m looking down, and a famine causes me to move to another area. In that area, I rub up against other people, and I feel a sense of threat in that by itself. Then a specific threat is the recognition that my wife might become an object that someone wants to get.

So my way of dealing with it adds to the problem in the relationship. It hurts the problem. Or it exacerbates the problem. That’s a better word. It exacerbates the problem. Then we kind of work through that. But the point is that no matter what I do, everything I touch is turning to gold, as we say. And then that becomes too much. And so even in my prosperity, I find more conflict. I get pushed out farther. Even in that place, I continue to be blessed, and then the trouble finds me, travels to me. Yet there’s a little bit of a standoff there that turns out to be better.

So I say all that to say it’s really nice to look at the story from this elevation. It must have been very frustrating to– Sometimes I think we forget I’ve been using this analogy a lot in the last couple of weeks. I don’t know why, but I was staring out the window from my home office during this cold front, and I saw this group of deer walk through my property. I just had this funny thought. A deer is a deer. A deer doesn’t stop and say, “God, how can I be a better deer tomorrow?”

God’s creation of the human being is higher than that of a deer. We can take these stories and say, “God, what is it that You want me to learn from this story?” Maybe for me, as I’m trying to do good things in life, it would be good for me to remember that this is common to man, and to ask where I can find God’s hand in this in spite of the troubles I’m going through.

I’m pretty sure Isaac didn’t always feel the hand of God on him, though the hand of God was obviously on him in this process.

The Grief of Esau’s Wives and the Struggle for Radical Truth

Let me read the last two verses and get your input on this, because it seems like that would be a great way to end the chapter, wouldn’t it? “And to this day, the town that grew up there is called Beersheba, which means well of the oath.” That would have been a great way to end the chapter.

But Moses, or the editors, for whatever reason, decide to throw in two more verses, which are really bizarre. Here they are. At the age of forty, Esau, Isaac’s son, married two Hittite wives. Being very specific here, because he wasn’t supposed to do that. He wasn’t supposed to do that. And he names them: Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite. Then this is how he ends the chapter: “But Esau’s wives made life miserable for Isaac and Rebecca.”

And he turns the page. Where is your sense of humor? That is hilarious. Now, we all have families, and we don’t need to mention names, but sometimes family members can make life miserable. And sometimes we might be that family member that makes somebody miserable, and we don’t even know it. I’m assuming what made them miserable is because they did not adopt the way of this family in general. I’m assuming.

Compromise, Conviction, and the Radical Call of Faith

Winston: Yeah, I feel like what’s interesting, you see a lot in the Old Testament is whenever God’s people would kind of stray away or intermingle with other people groups, women were usually at the center of that. These dummy men were just, “Oh yeah, well, maybe that God over there isn’t so bad after all. Since she’s worshiping that God, this might not be too bad.”

And so it’s almost this kind of foreshadowing of the narrative that God’s people keep turning away from God, keep trying to do both, and keep trying to play both sides of the fence or totally abandoning their tradition of faith. So yeah, I just think that you think of Samson. There’s a few other stories in there where the men’s decision based off of a woman leads them away from God.

Jim: Yeah, I’m supposing these choices for wives were what we would call convenient, though that it’s difficult to break new ground. It’s difficult to continue to move in the direction that you believe that God is taking you. We don’t help ourselves when we lie to authorities. We don’t help ourselves when we– I don’t know if you’re connecting the dots of what I’m talking about.

On one hand, King Abimelech sees the potential of taking Isaac’s wife as a great sin. And yet the men who are supposed to be the most sensitive to this thing called sin tend to be very active in it through lying and carelessly selecting women, certain women to come under their tent, come into their tent, so to speak.

And I just wonder how many times I’ve done that in my life, where if anyone should know better, I should know better, but in spite of knowing better, I chose a secular way. I chose something that might be practical knowledge, but I know there’s a higher knowledge.

Confronted by the Radical Teaching of Jesus

For example, today in my quiet time, I was reading in the book of Luke and his version of the Sermon on the Mount. I got to that section, and everything that I was reading from Luke 1 to that point, which I think is in chapter 6-ish, was really interesting stuff. I underlined a lot of really great stuff. But when I got to that Sermon on the Mount, the teaching of Jesus is so far away, different than anything that is taught formally or informally in our world today. It is radical. It is absolutely radical.

What I’m doing right now in my quiet time is I’m reading through the book of Luke, and though it’s all inspired by the Holy Spirit, I’m paying attention exactly to the things that Jesus said. I’m doing this as an experiment in my creative person, and I’m writing down everything that he said. And this just struck me today, that to really be a follower of Jesus, it is radical.

And I don’t know how I can continue to read on without going back and rereading what I read this morning, because it’s an absolute slap in the face. I can’t do it. I can tell you right now, I can’t do it. And I don’t get it. I don’t have that kind of power that Jesus says that we are to live from. Talk about convicted to the heart this morning. It was like, “What the—” How many times have I read it? Countless times. But today it was like, “Wait a second. Following Jesus.”

Professional Faith and the Risk of Missing the Point

I’ve been a minister, a licensed minister, since I was 24 years old. I’ve been an ordained minister since I was 27 or 28, something like that. And I think what I was convicted on is that it can become a profession, and I can become a professional Christian and miss it.

Winston: That’s the way, right? The Pharisees.

Conclusion: Fear, Indifference, and the Family System

Jim: I can know so much but yet know nothing. When I read this, when I read basically the Beatitudes in the NLT version, it was just, oh. Then when it got to enemies and how to deal with enemies, I’m going, “What? No, I’m not going to do that.”

God calls us to radical truth, which Isaac did not practice. And I guess where I’m going to conclude my little section here, see how you guys would conclude this, is it seems clear to me that Isaac struggled with fear. What would you call that? Self-preservation. And Esau was simply indifferent. He might have seen it more as a custom than it was.

Esau’s Wounds, Choices, and Family Grief

Matt: I thought about going back to chapter 20, just back one chapter, chapter 25. And the very last phrase of chapter 25 is, “Esau despised his birthright.” How many times do we make decisions from our wounds? This is a way to cause hurt to the family because the family hurt him. And so now I have a way to cause hurt to the family, whether consciously or subconsciously he does this.

Now Hebrews 12 would say consciously, because it says something about Esau being a fornicator and a terrible person who sold his birthright for one morsel. But how much pain can I cause my parents by marrying outside of the lineage here, not necessarily by out of the faith, out of the traditions of what our family has carried?

And I think it’s no small thing that the end of 25 is Esau despised his birthright, and the end of 26 is the wives he married were a source of grief. I think those are intertwined, interconnected. So many times we make decisions from our wounds—our family wounds, our father wounds, our mother wounds, our brother wounds in this situation.

But knowing how clannish a family was, a decision that hurts my brother will hurt my mother and will hurt my father, and all the variables of that. So I do find that an interesting correlation there.

Family Systems, Identity, and Self-Fulfilling Cycles

Jim: The little bit of education I have in family counseling, there’s a thing called systems, family systems. In those family systems, a person can kind of become labeled in the family, consciously or unconsciously, as the scapegoat or the black sheep. And then that black sheep embraces that identity, consciously or unconsciously, and even acts out of that identity. Maybe that’s kind of what’s happening here.

Gary: It becomes self-fulfilling.

Jim: Yeah. It’s kind of scary. I guess for us as believers, if that’s us or if that’s somebody we know, we would have compassion on them and want to see them break out of that cycle. If it’s even meaningful. In this case, it’s very meaningful. What’s going on here? It’s doing whatever is opposite.

And yet also, back to what you were saying, Matt, he was also favored by his father because he was an outdoorsman and brought him good stuff to eat.

Expectation, Promise, and Conflicted Faith

Matt: Yeah. Well, think about Isaac. In the middle of chapter 26, God says, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid. I’m with you. I will bless you. I will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”

He’s thinking Esau, even though I know we have the whole chapter 25 and the heel and the grabbing and coming out first and all that, but that’s a natural thought. And so he’s really conflicted. Isaac is so conflicted because there has to be that idea.

And then it says they were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebecca. Part of that grief is because he had an expectation, most likely, of what Esau would be, and Esau was not that. Esau was running the opposite direction of that.

Yet he knows that God appeared to him and there’s going to be a promise that is fulfilled. That’s above my pay grade in education level.

Jim: I think what we can agree is it’s a fascinating chapter. And it’s a helpful chapter. It probably injected a certain level of humility in each of us today, and to pay attention to our steps and our ways. You guys, you have a wonderful day. I look forward to Genesis 27.

Gary: Thank you.

Outro

Jim: Thanks for spending part of your day with us on the Today Count Show. If today’s conversation encouraged you, challenged you, or helped you grow, share it with someone in your circle, because we’re better when we grow together. And be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected with us on Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

And remember, real change doesn’t happen someday, it happens today. Until next time, keep showing up, keep building, keep making today count.
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