Genesis 26:31

THE MAN OF PEACE

‘They departed from him in peace.’

Genesis 26:31

The lives of Abraham and Jacob are as attractive as the life of Isaac is apparently unattractive. Isaac’s character had few salient features. It had no great faults, no striking virtues; it is the quietest, smoothest, most silent character in the Old Testament. It is owing to this that there are so few remarkable events in the life of Isaac, for the remarkableness of events is created by the character that meets them. It seems to be a law that all national, social and personal life should advance by alternate contractions and expansions. There are few instances where a great father has had a son who equalled him in greatness. The old power more often reappears in Jacob than in Isaac. The spirit of Abraham’s energy passed over his son to his son’s son. The circumstances that moulded the character of Isaac were these. (1) He was an only son. (2) His parents were both very old. An atmosphere of antique quiet hung about his life. (3) These two old hearts lived for him alone.

I. Take the excellences of his character first. (1) His submissive self-surrender on Mount Gerizim, which shadowed forth the perfect sacrifice of Christ. (2) His tender constancy, seen in his mourning for his mother, and in the fact that he alone of the patriarchs represented to the Jewish nation the ideal of true marriage. (3) His piety. It was as natural to him as to a woman to trust and love: not strongly, but constantly, sincerely. His trust became the habit of his soul. His days were knit each to each by natural piety.

II. Look next at the faults of Isaac’s character. (1) He was slow, indifferent, inactive. We find this exemplified in the story of the wells (Genesis 26:18). (2) The same weakness, ending in selfishness, appears in the history of Isaac’s lie to Abimelech. (3) He showed his weakness in the division between Jacob and Esau. He took no pains to harmonise them. The curse of favouritism prevailed in his tent. (4) He dropped into a querulous old age, and became a lover of savoury meat. But our last glimpse of him is happy. He saw the sons of Jacob at Hebron, and felt that God’s promise was fulfilled.

Illustration

(1) ‘To yield in matters where property and prestige are concerned, though, of course, not the rights of conscience, is clearly the teaching of the New Testament. And when a strong man does this (or a strong nation), it is a remarkably glorious moral victory. But it must be clear, before you magnify the nobility of this surrender of just rights, that the surrender is not due to moral weakness, or cowardice, or a molluscous indifference. The mere suspicion of any of these is fatal. The glory of our Lord yielding His cheeks to the smiter lies in the fact that, at any moment, He might have asked the Father, who would have given Him twelve legions of angels. He went to the Cross of His own free will. He could lay down or resume His life as He chose. It is this suspicion that Isaac was not a morally strong man, but weak and yielding, inclined to sacrifice anything for peace, that casts a shadow over what else would have been after the highest type of Christianity. What is the true view of his action is open to very interesting discussion.

For ourselves, the lesson is obvious. Our religion and morality must be equivalent and reinforce each other; and when we yield, it must always clearly be “for conscience sake” alone.’

(2) ‘The materials for a judgment are fragmentary, but probably Wellhausen’s appreciation would be generally accepted. “Isaac was a peace-loving shepherd, desirous of living quietly beside his tents, anxious to avoid strife and the appeal to force.” His religious life was deep, and we must interpret his apparently unheroic surrenders by the command and promise of God in verses 2 and 3. May it not be said that Isaac is to be regarded as a type of the Peacemakers who “shall be called sons of God”? Isaac realises that he is where he is by the Divine Will, and that therefore he is under the Divine protection. Jehovah will fight for him. Hence, when the Philistines are moved with envy because of his prosperity and would quarrel with him, he yields the cause of the dispute, and moves elsewhere. His action is approved, and we read of the reward given it.

When what we think to be our rights are challenged, we are bound to consider before we yield to angry opposition whether we can lay them before God. Are we in the way of His command?

Though our claims to a thing in dispute may be perfectly just, and hence abide in God’s will, we are required by this very confidence to cultivate a peaceful spirit. God is on our side, and we can afford to reason, and even yield a point, knowing that justice must win in the end.’

(3) ‘On the suggestion of Genesis 24:63, Isaac has been called “the Wordsworth of the Old Testament,” but he hardly deserves the title, for he seems to have lacked motif and independence. We find him loving savoury meat (Genesis 27:9); his leanings to self-indulgence were evidently well understood by his wife and children, who knew that to pander to them was the best way of securing his favour; and if we may form conclusions from the notes of time given to us, he must have spent forty or fifty years as a blind and helpless invalid. He seems to have resigned the control of his family into the hands of Rebekah, and to have shrunk from exercising the authority which a father ought over his growing sons, with results that all the subsequent centuries have condemned.’