Genesis 26
Isaac and Abimelech
1There was a famine in the land, subsequent to the earlier famine that occurred in the days of Abraham. Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar.
Abimelech is a title that means “king.” This is not the same Abimelech of Abraham’s day. Gerar would become a future Philistine city.
2The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; settle down in the land that I will point out to you.
Isaac was thinking about going into the land of Egypt like his father did earlier in his life. Jehovah informed him not to do so. Isaac was to stay in the land of Canaan and trust God to take care of his needs.
3a Stay in this land.
Isaac was commanded to stay in the land of Canaan.
3b Then I will be with you and will bless you,
If Isaac stays in the land, then God will remain with Isaac and bless him.
3c for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants,
The land was plural because it was owned by over ten Canaanite chieftains. God will give all of the land between the Tigris and Nile Rivers to Isaac. For God to keep this promise, He must raise Isaac from the dead and give him the land.
God will also give the literal land of Canaan to the literal descendants of literal Isaac. The descendants of Isaac are not the church. Amillenialists and postmillenialists must spiritualize this passage to make it fit their human-viewpoint theology. The descendants of literal Isaac are the literal Jewish people. For God to keep this promise, He will have to raise the literal descendants of literal Isaac from the literal dead and give them this literal land.
Hermeneutics is the science of interpreting Scripture. The first law of hermeneutics is that "If the plain sense of Scripture makes perfect sense, then seek no other sense." Sometimes the Bible uses figures of speech to convey a literal concept. However, these figures of speech are usually explained in Scripture. Bible teachers do not possess the liberty to spiritualize the Scriptures to make them fit one’s own personal theology. If this was so, then everyone would come up with their own personal interpretation.
3d and I will fulfill the solemn promise I made to your father Abraham.
This promise was the Abrahamic Covenant. God is not a liar. He will keep this promise.
Abraham gave birth to eight sons. Isaac was the only son who was given confirmation of the Abrahamic Covenant. God confirmed the covenant visibly and audibly to Isaac. The Arabs teach that Ishmael received a covenant as well, but this is nowhere recorded in Scripture.
4a I will multiply your descendants so they will be as numerous as the stars in the sky,
During the Millennial Kingdom, there will be no disease, no fatalities, no wars, and no death for believers. There will be no antisemitic Gentile nations who will attempt to execute genocide on the Jewish population. There will be no Devil, no Antichrist, and no False Prophet to seduce the world into Jewish extermination. Therefore, the Jewish population will explode. There are approximately 1025 stars in the universe. The Jewish population will increase to this same number and proximity.
4b and I will give them all these lands.
The descendants of Isaac are the Jewish people. They will receive the land of Canaan that was promised to Abraham and Isaac. The borders were given to Abraham as the Tigris River, the Nile River, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Arab Peninsula border. Israel has never possessed all of this land in their history. This prophecy will be fulfilled in the Millennial Kingdom when Christ returns.
4c All the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants.
During the Millennial Kingdom, all of the Gentiles will pronounce blessings on the Jews rather than curses.
5All this will come to pass because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Abraham’s part was to go to Canaan. God’s part was to bless Abraham, his descendants, and all peoples of the earth.
6So Isaac settled in Gerar.
Gerar was within the borders of Canaan, so Isaac was obedient to the command of the Lord.
7When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he replied, “She is my sister.” He was afraid to say, “She is my wife,” for he thought to himself, “The men of this place will kill me to get Rebekah because she is very beautiful.”
Ancient kings wanted pretty girls for their harems. Like father, like son. Isaac was not trusting God to be his shield.
8After Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines happened to look out a window and observed Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah.
The King of Gerar most likely read the royal archives of what happened to his predecessors during the days of Abraham and Sarah. He did not want to make the same mistakes of past kings.
9So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac replied, “Because I thought someone might kill me to get her.”
Isaac threatened the messianic seed and the lives of the citizens of Gerar. If Rebekah was violated, then the curses of the Abrahamic Covenant would have fallen upon the city of Gerar.
10Then Abimelech exclaimed, “What in the world have you done to us? One of the men might easily have had sexual relations with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us!”
The King of Gerar most likely knew what happened sixty years earlier with Abraham, Sarah, and the King of Gerar. He was furious at Isaac for placing his family and kingdom in danger.
11So Abimelech commanded all the people, “Whoever touches this man or his wife will surely be put to death.”
The Canaanites recognized the power of Isaac’s God. They should have turned to Him.
12When Isaac planted in that land, he reaped in the same year a hundred times what he had sown, because the Lord blessed him.
Isaac became not only a herdsmen, but now he was a farmer. Moving from a nomadic to an agricultural lifestyle is called, in secular history, the Neolithic Revolution. This change of lifestyle was not an evolutionary process from stone-age cave men to iron-age city dwellers. After the Tower of Babel, families moved nomadically from the Tower of Babel, lived in caves and tents, and then eventually built permanent cities. It was the confusion of languages that caused the so-called Neolithic Revolution.
13The man became wealthy. His influence continued to grow until he became very prominent.
The surrounding nations recognized that the Hebrew God was blessing Isaac.
14He had so many sheep and cattle and such a great household of servants that the Philistines became jealous of him.
God was blessing Isaac so much that the Philistines grew jealous of his wealth.
15So the Philistines took dirt and filled up all the wells that his father’s servants had dug back in the days of his father Abraham.
The Philistines cut off the Jewish water supply during a famine. This was a violation of the Abrahamic Covenant.
16Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Leave us and go elsewhere, for you have become much more powerful than we are.”
The King of Gerar asked Isaac to leave. The Jews had become more powerful than the Philistines who were in the land.
17So Isaac left there and settled in the Gerar Valley.
Isaac was a man of peace. He possessed the power and protection of Jehovah behind him. He could have fought and won, but he decided to re-settle and avoid conflict. Isaac moved his family away from the city.
18Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug back in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after Abraham died. Isaac gave these wells the same names his father had given them.
Isaac had not forgotten the names of the wells that his father had dug during his lifetime. It was a lot of work to re-open these wells.
19When Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well with fresh flowing water there,
Isaac’s servants dug a new well.
20the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water belongs to us!” So Isaac named the well Esek because they argued with him about it.
Isaac’s servants dug the well, but the herdsmen of Gerar claimed exclusive rights to it. This was an act of war. The herdsman of Gerar had violated the Abrahamic Covenant. Esek means “contention.”
21His servants dug another well, but they quarreled over it too, so Isaac named it Sitnah.
The Philistines were becoming more aggressive. Sitnah means “enmity” or “adversary,” coming from the same root word as Satan.
22Then he moved away from there and dug another well. They did not quarrel over it, so Isaac named it Rehoboth, saying, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we will prosper in the land.”
Isaac found a location in Canaan that would not place his family tribe in jeopardy.
23From there Isaac went up to Beer Sheba.
God appeared at Beer Sheba in order to comfort Isaac.
24The Lord appeared to him that night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”
Isaac was having a tough time in Canaan. There was a famine. The Philistines were cutting off his water supply. Therefore, Jehovah appeared to Isaac a second time and confirmed the Abrahamic Covenant. God was with Isaac. God was going to bless Isaac and his descendants. The reason that Isaac was going to be blessed was because of the covenant made with his father, Abraham. Abraham was dead and had moved to Paradise, but God still kept His promises to Isaac.
25Then Isaac built an altar there and worshiped the Lord. He pitched his tent there, and his servants dug a well.
The altar was a place for public worship. When Isaac dug a well, he planned to make it his permanent residence.
26Now Abimelech had come to him from Gerar along with Ahuzzah his friend and Phicol the commander of his army.
Three leaders came to Isaac because they feared him.
27Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me? You hate me and sent me away from you.”
These three leaders traveled a long way to contact Isaac in person.
28They replied, “We could plainly see that the Lord is with you. So we decided there should be a pact between us – between us and you. Allow us to make a treaty with you
The three leaders recognized the power of the Hebrew God. They did not want to mess with Isaac. They wanted a peace treaty.
29so that you will not do us any harm, just as we have not harmed you, but have always treated you well before sending you away in peace. Now you are blessed by the Lord.”
The three leaders gave the conditions of the peace treaty. It was to be a non-aggression treaty. They recognized the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant upon Isaac,
30So Isaac held a feast for them and they celebrated.
The fellowship meal was a meal among friends and allies. This meal gave Isaac an opportunity to teach the three leaders about the one true God.
31Early in the morning the men made a treaty with each other. Isaac sent them off; they separated on good terms.
The next morning, the treaty was confirmed. The two nations were at peace.
32That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. “We’ve found water,” they reported.
Water was scarce for nomadic tribes. The cities and larger tribes took the best water sources. Isaac was traveling to new regions, so he had to find new water supplies.
33So he named it Shebah; that is why the name of the city has been Beer Sheba to this day.
Shebah means “to confirm an oath.”
34When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, as well as Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite.
Esau was the son of Isaac. When Esau was forty years old, Isaac was 100 years old. Esau did not marry within the Jewish family. He married two Hittite women, who possessed different cultures and different gods. At one time, many skeptics mocked the Bible, claiming that the Hittites never existed. Then, Hugo Winkler dug up forty Hittite cities and found the actual peace treaty between the Hittites and Egypt. The Hittites were referenced 47 times in the Scriptures.
The first wife was Judith, meaning “praise.” The second wife was Elon, meaning “perfume.” The Hittites were of Semitic origin from the line of Shem. They had been in the land of Canaan for a long time, so they took on Hebrew names.
35They caused Isaac and Rebekah great anxiety.
Esau was unfaithful to the Abrahamic Covenant. Just as he sold his birthright as a gesture of being unspiritual, now he married pagan wives to show that he had no inclination of becoming obedient to God.
It is interesting to note that Jacob was faithful to the Abrahamic Covenant, but Esau was not. According to Romans 9-11, their attitudes were formed by God in eternity past. God chose Jacob to become the seed son. God left Esau alone to make his own choices. When man is left alone to make his own choice, he will always choose the godless path.
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In conclusion, the human viewpoint of the satanic world system teaches that Israel evolved from natural processes.
The divine viewpoint of the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God teaches that Israel was planned, created, and protected supernaturally by God. Other surrounding nations feared Israel, because they observed the results of the Abrahamic Covenant.
Esau sold his birthright and married Hittite women because he did not desire to become the seed-son.
Jacob was still unmarried at this time. He had not yet officially received the seed-son blessing from his father, Isaac.
Secular historians once taught that the Hittites never existed. Archaeologists proved that the Bible was right once again.
Isaac repeated the sin of his father in lying about his relationship with Rebekah. He was not trusting in the Abrahamic Covenant. Because of the Abrahamic Covenant, Isaac and his seed son family was still protected. The sins of men cannot reverse the Abrahamic Covenant.
Modern amillennialists and postmillennialists spiritualize the Abrahamic Covenant away. This type of bad theology brings the curses of the Abrahamic Covenant upon themselves. It blinds them to the divine truths of the Bible. It causes them to take away from the Scriptures. The result is that they teach false theology to their congregation. The congregation is also placed underneath the curses of the Abrahamic Covenant, because they are supporting false doctrine. The congregation is cursed as well. They will believe the lie and not be able to understand the divine truths of Scripture.