Times and Seasons

Part 3.

Abraham and Isaac

The period from Terah's death and Abraham's departure from Haran to Jacob's entry into Egypt is simple to calculate and there is a mass of supplementary detail which throws considerable light on the lives' events of these three patriarchs. Abraham left Haran at 75 years of age (Gen.11:26&12:4, Acts 7:4) and was 100 at the birth of Isaac (Gen.21:5). Isaac was 60 at Jacob's birth (Gen.25:26) and Jacob was 130 at his entry into Egypt (Gen.47:9). This makes the period between Haran and Egypt 215 years. During this time these three men, with their respective establishments, moved about from place to place in Canaan according to the exigencies (need) of available pasturage, the friendship or hostility of their neighbours, and the incidence of famine.

The first dated event in the life of Abraham in Canaan is the birth of Ishmael, when he was 86. During the intervening eleven years since leaving Haran he had entered Canaan, settled for a while in Sichem (Shechem) in the north, moved on to Bethel, then to the south (the Negeb). A period of famine sent him onward into Egypt from whence he emerged considerably richer in flocks, herds and servants than when he went in. From Egypt he went back to Bethel where he must have stayed at least two years for it was here that the rapid increase of both his sheep and cattle and those of his brother‑in‑law Lot led to an enforced separation, since the land could not sustain them both (Gen.13:5‑12). So Lot moved his establishment to the vicinity of Sodom and Abraham remained at Bethel. All of this must have taken at least seven years and by now Abraham was 82. At this point the Lord appeared to him and made the first declaration of his intention to give the whole land, eventually, to Abraham and his seed for ever (Gen.13:14‑17). Almost at once Abraham moved his headquarters to Hebron, in the south, and within two years there came the invasion of the Elamite armies against Sodom and Gomorrah which resulted in Lot and his family being taken captive and Abraham's successful foray against the enemy to rescue them (Gen.14). Immediately after this (Gen.15:1) the Lord again appeared to Abraham to make the covenant which thereafter bore his name, and within a year after the covenant Ishmael was born to his second wife Hagar and Abraham was 86. This succession of stirring events can only just be fitted into the eleven years and it meant that Abraham must have been on the move most of the time, never staying more than a year or so in any one place.

The next thirteen years in the patriarch's life are blank so far as the narrative goes. Gen:17 takes up the story from the 16th chapter, when Abraham was 99. He was still at Hebron. For the third time the word of the Lord came to him, reiterating the covenant and telling him that Sarai his wife would certainly have a son, the destined heir of promise. Abraham still thought fondly of Ishmael, now in his thirteenth year, but God told him that there was a destiny for Ishmael also and that he also would become the father of a great nation; nevertheless Isaac was to be the heir of the covenant and progenitor of the Seed through whom all the families of the earth are to be blessed. Within a few weeks the three celestial visitants appeared at his tent door (Gen.18) bearing the prediction of the birth of Isaac within the ensuing year and also that of the imminent destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which must have happened almost at once for it was accomplished before the birth of Isaac.

It was probably the fiery end of the doomed cities, only forty miles away, which induced Abraham at this time to leave Hebron and migrate to the territory of Abimelech, ruler of Gerar, a hundred miles farther away. Here he remained, on amicable terms with Abimelech, despite the unfortunate contretemps regarding Sarai. Here Isaac was born, and from here Hagar and Ishmael were banished from the family home (Gen.21).

Isaac could only have been a few years old when the family was on the move again, this time to Beer‑sheba. It would appear from Gen.21:23‑34 that Abraham's widely spread interests were infringing upon those of Abimelech's people so that in the interests of their friendship a separation became necessary. Abraham stayed at Beer‑sheba for something like thirty years during which time the only incident recorded is that of his journey with Isaac to Mount Moriah in obedience to the Divine command, and Isaac's deliverance at the last moment by the substitution of a Divinely provided ram (Gen.22). It would seem, however, that Abraham still maintained. his old establishment at Hebron, for it was at Hebron that Sarah died at the age of 127, and to Hebron that Abraham came from Beer‑sheba to mourn and bury his wife. From then to the end of his life, a matter of thirty‑eight years, Abraham remained at Hebron. Isaac, now nearly forty years of age, had already set up his own home and establishment at Lahai‑roi, seventy miles away, with his own flocks and herds. But the old man was solicitous for his son's unmarried state, remembering the Divine promise that through Isaac the promised seed should come; desirous that Isaac's bride should be of his own race and not of the women of the land around him, he sent Eliezer his steward to Haran, where his own elder brother Nahor had settled, to find a bride for Isaac from Nahor's family. The story of how Eliezer returned with Nahor's grand‑daughter Rebekah is one of the epics of Old Testament history (Gen.24). Three years after his mother's death, and at the age of forty (Gen.25:20) Isaac was united with Rebekah. At about the same time Abraham married his third wife, Keturah (Gen.25:1), at the age of about 140. By her he had six more sons—and probably a few daughters; womenfolk are not mentioned in the Old Testament unless they figure in some definite event or situation. He must have been at least 160 when his last child was born.

So, at the age of 175, Abraham died, an old man and full of days. He died in the faith by which he had lived, supremely confident that the promise of God to him and his would surely be fulfilled. "And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him" says the chronicler. Despite the circumstances of Ishmael's banishment at the instance of Sarah seventy‑five years before, there was apparently no animosity between the two half‑brothers, and Isaac evidently knew where to find Ishmael. Their respective territories were only something like a hundred miles apart and they had probably been in touch many times before. Ishmael was now ninety years of age and had a rapidly growing family of his own. Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac, were fifteen years old so that Abraham closed his eyes in death knowing that the Divine promise was being fulfilled.

The recorded life of Isaac is by no means so colourful as that of his father, nor yet as that of his son Jacob. In fact Isaac seems to have done little more than provide a link between Abraham and Jacob, with both of whom God had much more to say about the Covenant than He did with Isaac. Married to Rebekah at the age of 40, the father of Jacob and Esau at 60 (Gen.25:20:26), he succeeded to his father's estates and possessions at 75. It was probably very soon after this, say five years or so, that another famine descended on the land and he trekked southwards, as his father had done before him, in search of sustenance (26:1). Forbidden by the Lord to go into Egypt, he finished up with his father's old friend Abimelech, ruler of Philistine Gerar, now an old man of at least 120 years. After "a long time" here (26:8), there occurred the incident of Abimelech seeing Isaac "sporting" with Rebekah which made the other man realise that she was not his sister, as Isaac had told him, but his wife. Isaac must have been at least 82 and Rebekah 58 at this time. The story of his subsequent prosperity (26:12‑15) requires that his stay in Abimelech's domains must have totalled a minimum of six or seven years after which he spent several years gradually drifting back into the highlands of Canaan, finally coming to rest at Beer‑sheba (26:17‑24).

A point not generally realised is that Isaac and Rebekah had several other sons—perhaps daughters also—after Jacob and Esau (27:29,37). These were probably born during this period so that upon finally settling at Beer‑sheba at about 91 years of age Isaac was surrounded by a sizable young family. At this point the Lord appeared to him and reiterated the Abrahamic promise (26:24), but it is significant that the full terms as outlined to Abraham and Jacob were never propounded to Isaac. Child of promise he may have been, but without much doubt the real custodian of the covenant was his son Jacob.

Here at Beer‑sheba there probably occurred the incident of the birthright, which Esau traded to Jacob for a "mess of pottage" (25:29‑34). The two men would by now be in their early thirties, and Esau's roaming disposition already evident in his adoption of the life of a hunter. A few more years, and Esau at 40 married two of the Hittite women of the land, thus openly avowing his disregard for the Abrahamic promise, "which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah" (26:34‑35).

There was not much left in life for Isaac. He seems to have prematurely aged and was going blind, so that at 117 years of age he decided to confer his patriarchal blessing in Esau, so confirming him as the heir of the promise. He evidently did not take into consideration Esau's admitted unfitness for the honour, and of course was not likely to have known that Esau had traded his rights to Jacob years before. The story of how Rebekah and Jacob plotted to impersonate Esau and deceive Isaac into conferring the blessing on the younger son, related in chapter 27, is well known, and its sequel in the flight of Jacob to Rebekah's brother Laban at Padanaram four hundred miles away to escape Esau's justifiable wrath. Immediately following Jacob's flight, Esau, in a belated attempt to reinstate himself in his parents' favour, took as an additional wife Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, of Abrahamic stock (Gen.28:8‑9). There is no evidence that this action achieved his purpose; he remained apart from the family, the head of his own tribe which eventually became the nation of Edom (ch.36). It is of interest to notice that, on the assumption that Mahalath was not more than 25 at her marriage, her father Ishmael was about 110 years old at her birth. Similar deductions from the Genesis narratives make it plain that not only Abraham himself, but his contemporaries, and his sons and grandsons, were all fathers of children at ages up to 120 and more, and this fact has a direct bearing upon the authenticity of the chronological framework of Genesis.

There is no more said about Isaac. At some time during Jacob's forty year absence in Padanaram he must have moved his headquarters from Beer‑sheba to Hebron for it was there that Jacob found him on his return. By then Rebekah was dead; Jacob never saw her again. The oversight of the community was probably in the hands of Isaac's other sons. He survived Jacob's homecoming by only some twenty years and died ten years before Jacob and his family entered Egypt. His eldest sons, Jacob and Esau, the old feud forgotten, buried him beside his father Abraham, but by then the Bible story had long since shifted its emphasis to the deeds of Jacob, the acknowledged father of the nation of Israel.

AOH

to be continued