Isaac - written by Greg VonWald; Genesis 22, 26

Abraham has brought his son, Isaac, up to the top of a mountain to make an offering of him. Now I know that if my dad took me out on a camping trip and tied me up and was going to kill me I would probably never talk to him again and need therapy twice a day for the rest of my life to remain sane. So considering this traumatic event, Isaac turned out to be a pretty great guy, what with the “possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household” and all.

Now I know that I am supposed to write about Isaac, but I can’t help but admire Abraham’s enormous faith in God that he would go and kill his only son (which back in the day, was a pretty big deal cause it meant your family name would die out). Now I have always considered my faith to be pretty strong just because when people talk about the world ending in 2012, I just smile and say “God will take care of me.” But if I thought I heard a message from God telling me to kill my only son, I would discount it as a hallucination and hop on the next ship from Joppa to Tarshish.

In the story, Abraham was asked to give up Isaac, his only son. Now when I read the passage for the fifth time (desperately trying to find something to write about), this jumped out at me. Now where have I read something like this before? Oh right! God sacrificed Jesus, his only son. And as I read deeper and deeper I saw how much similar this actually is to the story of the crucifixion. In Genesis 22, Abraham was asked to show his great love (and fear) of God and give up his only son whom he loved dearly. In all of the Gospels, it is written that, in order to show God’s great love for us, he gave up his only son whom he loved dearly, as well. Additionally, the comparison continues into the second passage about Isaac’s life in Genesis 26. Everywhere he goes it appears that God is providing him with water much like everywhere Jesus went, he always had God looking out for him and providing for him. On the other hand, depending on how you look at it (and how literally you take the phrase “sacrifice your only son”) all of our lives are meant to parallel Jesus’s.

Finally, to tie this all together, I think that the underlying meaning here is that our relationship with God is reciprocal. Just as he was willing to sacrifice his only son for the sake of our lives, we should be willing to sacrifice our own offspring if it be God’s will. However at this point that would probably just get you locked up in jail so I’ll water it down a bit and just say that you should love God as he loves you. And when you remember that God is present in every single person we meet, you will find yourself doing a whole lot more loving :).

Genesis 26

Isaac and Abimelech

26Now there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech of the Philistines. ²The Lord appeared to Isaac^* and said, ‘Do not go down to Egypt; settle in the land that I shall show you. ³Reside in this land as an alien, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will fulfil the oath that I swore to your father Abraham. ⁴I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands; and all the nations of the earth shall gain blessing for themselves through your offspring, ⁵because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.’

6 So Isaac settled in Gerar. ⁷When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he said, ‘She is my sister’; for he was afraid to say, ‘My wife,’ thinking, ‘or else the men of the place might kill me for the sake of Rebekah, because she is attractive in appearance.’ ⁸When Isaac had been there a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw him fondling his wife Rebekah. ⁹So Abimelech called for Isaac, and said, ‘So she is your wife! Why then did you say, “She is my sister”?’ Isaac said to him, ‘Because I thought I might die because of her.’ ¹⁰Abimelech said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.’ ¹¹So Abimelech warned all the people, saying, ‘Whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death.’

12 Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in the same year reaped a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, ¹³and the man became rich; he prospered more and more until he became very wealthy. ¹⁴He had possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him. ¹⁵(Now the Philistines had stopped up and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham.) ¹⁶And Abimelech said to Isaac, ‘Go away from us; you have become too powerful for us.’

17 So Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar and settled there. ¹⁸Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham; for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the names that his father had given them. ¹⁹But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of spring water, ²⁰the herders of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac’s herders, saying, ‘The water is ours.’ So he called the well Esek,^* because they contended with him. ²¹Then they dug another well, and they quarrelled over that one also; so he called it Sitnah.^{* 22}He moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he called it Rehoboth,^* saying, ‘Now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.’

23 From there he went up to Beer-sheba. ²⁴And that very night the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.’ ²⁵So he built an altar there, called on the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

26 Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phicol the commander of his army. ²⁷Isaac said to them, ‘Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?’ ²⁸They said, ‘We see plainly that the Lord has been with you; so we say, let there be an oath between you and us, and let us make a covenant with you ²⁹so that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord.’ ³⁰So he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. ³¹In the morning they rose early and exchanged oaths; and Isaac set them on their way, and they departed from him in peace. ³²That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well that they had dug, and said to him, ‘We have found water!’ ³³He called it Shibah;^* therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba^* to this day.