023. Isaac--A Man of Worship
Isaac--A Man of Worship
Gen 26:23-25. And he went up from thence to Beer-sheba. And the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father; fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed, for my servant Abraham s sake. And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac’s servants digged a well.
It is a pleasing and an instructive view of the Divine Providence, to consider one and the same great design as carried on to maturity, in periods and by persons the most remote from each other, without communication of intelligence, without concurrence or exertion among themselves; to behold the great God molding, guiding, subduing the various passions, purposes, and private interests of men to his own sovereign will; to behold the building of God rising in beauty, advancing towards perfection, by the hands of feeble workmen, who comprehend not the thousandth part of the plan which they assist in executing, and who, instead of cooperating, frequently seem to counteract one another. One digs his hour in the quarry; another lifts up his axe, and strikes a stroke or two in the forest; a third applies the square and the compass to the stone which his neighbor had polished. But their labors, their views, their abilities, however different, all promote the same end; and though they and their endeavors be frail and perishing, the work in which the Almighty employs them is progressive, is permanent, is immortal.--Here a shepherd, there a king; here a little child, there a sage; here a legislator, there a conqueror; here a deluge, there a conflagration, fulfills the design of high Heaven; and the glorious fabric of redemption rises and rises, though patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles sink, one after another, into the dust. Man often begins to build, but is unable to finish, because he had not counted the cost; but God “seeth the end from the beginning.” He can never want an instrument, who has heaven, earth, and hell at his disposal. “Surely, O Lord, the wrath of man shall praise thee,” Satan is thy chained slave, and “ten thousand times ten thousand mighty angels minister unto thee.” How then can thy aim be defeated? How can thy counsels fail? The personal characters of the three leading patriarchs of the house of Israel, differ exceedingly in many respects, and their manner of life differs as much, while their ruling principle is the same. The faith of Abraham, ardent and intrepid, was ever ready to encounter the most threatening dangers, to undertake the most difficult employments, and to render the most painful and costly sacrifices at God’s command. The faith of Isaac, placid and contemplative, sought the happiness of communion with God in calmness and solitude, and satisfied itself with the secret, untumultuous delight of beholding his family built up, and the promises of God advancing to their accomplishment. The faith of Jacob, active and persevering, wrought upon and excited by the peculiarities of his ever-varying condition, supported a life of much bustle and industry, and surmounted disappointments and afflictions the most mortifying and oppressive. For it is the office of this divine principle, not to alter, to suppress, or eradicate the natural tempers and dispositions of men, but to guide, impel, or control them, in conformity to their proper destination.
Abraham, sensible of the ungovernable, encroaching spirit of Ishmael, of the numerous and pressing claims of his younger children, and of the gentle, yielding, unresisting nature of Isaac, had, with the prudent foresight of a good parent, made such a disposition of his temporal affairs in his life time, as was most likely to prevent contention and mischief after his death. Ishmael had been dismissed many years before, had already become the head of many numerous and powerful tribes, “twelve princes according to their nations,”[*]Gen 24:13-16 and from habit, inclination, and necessity, had contracted a fondness for a roving, erratic course of life. He had been brought into a transient connection with his brother Isaac, by an event which softens the most rugged and obdurate dispositions, the death of their common father; and their resentments, for a time at least, perhaps forever, are buried in the tomb of him to whom they owed their birth. But difference of interest, affection, and pursuit speedily separates them again. Ishmael betakes himself to his favorite occupations in the desert, and Isaac abides quietly in his tent, and tending his flocks, by the well Lahai-roi. The sons of Abraham by Keturah had been more recently removed, with a suitable provision, into a distant part of the country.[*]Gen 25:6 So that upon his father’s demise, Isaac found himself in the quiet possession of by far the greatest part of his immense wealth, but excluded from the society of those whom his own sweetness of temper and sense of duty, and the proximity of blood, would have led him to cultivate and cherish. And thus riches, the object of universal desire and pursuit, create more and greater wants than those which they are able to remove. By exciting envy, jealousy, and suspicion, they separate those whom nature has joined; friendship is sacrificed to convenience; and, to enjoy in security what Providence has given him, the unhappy possessor is constrained to become an alien to his own brother. We cannot refrain from bestowing, in this place, a posthumous praise upon Abraham, who, uninfected by the tenacity of old age and selfishness, cheerfully surrendered, while he yet lived, a considerable part of his property, in order to insure the future peace of his family, and wisely left his principal heir a poorer man, that he might leave him happier and more secure. How unlike those sordid wretches, who will scatter nothing till death breaks into the hoard; and who care not what strife and wretchedness overtake those who come after them, in the very distribution of their property, provided they can keep it all to themselves, were it but for one day longer!
Isaac had hitherto trusted every thing to the wisdom and affection of his kind father, and to the care of an indulgent Providence, even so far as to the choice of his partner for life. But his father being now removed by death, and his own children growing up fast upon him, he is under the necessity of arising and exerting himself. For the blessing of Providence is to be asked and expected, only when men are found in the way of their duty, and wisely employing lawful and appointed means of prospering. We accordingly find him, with the prudent sagacity of a good husband, father, and master, directing the removal of his family from place to place, as occasion frequently required; forming alliances with his powerful neighbors, for their mutual security; and presiding in the offices of religion, his favorite employment. And though Providence has deprived him of the counsel and protection of an earthly parent, he finds, in his happy experience, that the man whom God continues to protect and bless, has lost nothing. “Father and mother have forsaken him, but the Lord has graciously taken him up,” “hedged him round on every side,” and put the fear and dread of him into all the neighboring nations, who, though they envied, durst not hurt him. The distresses which embittered the remainder of Isaac’s life, were chiefly internal and domestic; and, alas! had their source in his own infirmity, namely, a fond partiality in favor of his elder son; the mischief of which was increased and kept alive, by a partiality, equally decided, which Rebekah had conceived in favor of Jacob. “Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison; but Rebekah loved Jacob.”[*]Gen 25:28 Most of the evils of a man’s lot may be easily traced up to some weakness in which he has indulged himself, some error into which he has fallen, some opportunity he has let slip, or some crime which he has committed. Of all the infirmities to which our nature is subject, none is more common, none is more unreasonable, unwise, and unjust, none more easily guarded against, none more fatal in its consequences to ourselves and others, than that of making a difference between one child and another. It destroys the favorite, and discourages those who are postponed and slighted; it sows the seeds of jealousy and malice, which frequently produce strife, and end in violence and blood. It sets the father against the mother, and the mother against the father; the sister against the brother, and the brother against the sister. It disturbed the repose of Isaac’s family, and had well nigh brought down Jacob’s hoary head with sorrow to the grave. Parents ought to examine, and to watch over themselves carefully on this head. If they are unable to suppress the feeling, the expression of it, at least, is in their power; and policy, if not justice, demands of them an equitable distribution of their affection, their countenance, and their goods. For, if there be a folly which, more certainly than another, punishes itself, it is this ill-judged and wicked distinction between equals. One is ashamed to think of the reason which is assigned for Isaac’s preference of his elder to his younger son, “Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison.” The original language expresses it still more forcibly, “because his venison was in his mouth.” By what groveling and unworthy motives are wise and good men often actuated! And what a mortifying view of human nature is it, to see the laws of prudence, and justice, and piety, vilely controlled and counteracted by the lowest and grossest of our appetites! It was not long before the effect of parental partialities appeared. A competition for precedency, and the rights of primogeniture, engaged the attention of the two brothers, and whetted their spirits against each other, from their earliest years. The pretensions of each were supported respectively by the parents according to favor, to the disregard of every maxim of good sense, and of the destination and direction of the Divine Providence.--Who it was that prevailed in this contention, and by what means, will be seen in the sequel.
While the family of the patriarch was thus torn with internal dissension, Providence was pleased to visit him with a grievous external calamity. “There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham.”[*]Gen 26:1 This, for a while represses animosity. Distress, common to all, teaches them to love one another; and instead of a struggle for presidency, the weightier concern, “Where shall we find bread?” now occupies their thoughts. This dispensation was probably intended as a reproof and correction to all parties. The parents were admonished of the folly of aiding and increasing the unavoidable ills of life, by willfully sowing discord among brethren. Esau, ready again to perish with want, is stung with remorse to think, that in one hasty impatient moment of hunger, he had sold, for the transient gratification of low appetite, what no penitence could undo, no money repurchase. And Jacob, feeling himself the cravings of hunger, was Chastised for taking an unkind advantage of his brother’s necessity; and, ready in his turn to perish, might be constrained to adopt the words of starving Esau, “behold, I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birth right do to me.”[*]Gen 25:32 For, although God serves himself of the weaknesses and vices of men, he approves them not, nor will suffer them to pass unpunished.
Isaac, warned of God, removes not into Egypt, the land which had afforded his father shelter and subsistence in a similar storm, and which has often proved an asylum to the church; but retires to Gerar, one of the cities of Palestine, situated between Kadesh and Shur.[*]Gen 20:1 Abimelech was the prince who at that time reigned over the Philistines. The same person, according to Josephus, with whom Abraham had formed a connection so friendly,[*]Gen 20:14-15 and with whom, for that reason, Heaven now directed Isaac to sojourn, till the famine should be relieved. This conjecture of the Jewish historian, though not insupportable, from a physical impediment seems highly improbable; if we consider that seventy-five years have elapsed since Abraham resided at Gerar: and history furnishes few, if any examples, of reigns of so long continuance. It is more probable that Abimelech was then the general appellative name of the princes of that part of Palestine, as Pharaoh was that of the kings of Egypt. When we behold the patriarchs thus removing from place to place, a feeble, unwarlike, encumbered band, through nations fierce, envious, and violent, their safety is to be accounted for only from the restraining power of God over the hearts of men. The dreadful judgment of Sodom, where Lot dwelt; the blindness which punished the attempt to violate his guests, and the more tremendous destruction which avenged just heaven of their ungodly deeds, might operate powerfully, so far as these events were known and their memory was preserved, to overawe the neighboring nations, and to procure for Lot’s family and kindred, the attention and respect which fear, if not love, inspires. And, as a proof of his supremacy, that God, “in whose hand the heart of the king is, and who can turn it which way soever he will,” has frequently constrained the enemies of his church and people to be their friends and protectors. This repeated visitation of Canaan by famine, was a repeated trial of the patriarch’s faith. The promise of a land, so frequently unable to sustain its inhabitants, could have little value in the eye of a worldly mind. But faith in God discerns the principal worth and importance of temporal blessings, in their being connected with, and representing spiritual objects; and examines events, not by their agreement with preconceived opinions, and extravagant expectations, but by their moral effects and consequences. A region uniformly and unfailingly plenteous, might betray its possessor into the belief that its fertility flowed solely from natural causes, and God might be forgotten and neglected. A year of scarcity is calculated to teach man his dependence, and to force him to implore “the blessing which maketh rich, and causeth the earth to yield its increase.”
While he sojourned among the Philistines, Isaac falls into the same infirmity which dishonored his father in Egypt. Misled, by suspicion unworthy of an honest man, and tear unworthy of the friend of God, he violates sacred truth, and sins against his own conscience: for when interrogated concerning Rebekah, “he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She is my wife, lest, said he, the men of this place should kill me for Rebekah: because she was fair to look upon.”[*]Gen 26:7 The criminality of this mistrust is greatly aggravated by the clearness and fullness of the heavenly vision, whereby he had been admonished to bend his course to the court of Abimelech. “And the Lord appeared unto him and said, Go not down into Egypt. Dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee: for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father. And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries: and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”[*]Gen 26:2-5 Slight temptations frequently prevail, after trials more formidable have been successfully resisted and overcome. The wise, therefore, will reckon no danger small, no foe contemptible, no condition perfectly secure. The faithful will learn to speak truth, to do good, to trust in the Lord, and fear nothing.
Virtue is not hereditary in families, it descends but in rarer instances; whereas frailty, alas! descends from every father to every son. Virtue is the water in the particular pool; vice the torrent in the river, which sweeps every thing before it. The moderation, honor, and good sense of Abimelech, are the severest imaginable reproof of the disingenuousness of the prophet,[*]Gen 26:9-11 and happily prevented the mischief, which Isaac, seeking by improper means to shun, had well nigh occasioned.
Under the protection and friendship of this prince, he has now obtained a settlement in the land; and by the blessing of Heaven upon his honest industry, he prospers and increases in the midst of difficulties. “Isaac sowed in the land, and received in the same year an hundred fold: and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew, until he became very great. For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants.”[*]Gen 26:12-14 But we are by no means to imagine, that worldly success is ever proportioned to promising means and favorable opportunities. “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” Some men’s sails seem to gather every breath of the wind: they get forward in spite of every obstacle. Others feel the tempest continually blowing in their faces. All things are against them, and though they set out with the fairest, most flattering prospects, unaccountably thwarted and disappointed, they “wax poor, and fall into decay.” Let not prosperity, then, be deemed an infallible proof of wisdom, or worth, or of divine favor. Neither let want of success be always derived from folly, or vice, or the curse of Heaven; for in this mixed, imperfect, probationary state, “time and chance happen to all men,” neither can a man tell “what is good for him all the days of his vain life, which he spendeth as a shadow.”
Every temporal advantage has a corresponding infelicity. Isaac grew rich and great, but “the Philistines envied him.” And, “who can stand before envy!” That dark, malignant passion, prompted his surly, jealous foes to cut off one source of his wealth, “for all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.”[*]Gen 26:15 This was, in effect, to destroy the flocks and the herds. For without water, the cattle upon a thousand hills” are a poor, perishing commodity. Envy considers that as gained to itself which is lost to another: and not only delights in destruction, from which it hopes to draw advantage, but enjoys the mischief which it works merely for mischief’s sake. Envy will even submit to hurt itself a little, to have the malicious satisfaction of hurting another much. Abimelech himself; more liberal-minded than meaner men, grows at length weary of his guest, feels hurt at his growing prosperity, envies his greatness, and dismisses him with cold civility. “And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us: for thou art much mightier than we.”[*]Gen 26:16 Grandeur admits not of friendship; and friendship disdains to dwell with profligacy. Of all the men in a nation, the king is most certainly excluded from this blessing; and surely, his lot contains nothing to be once compared with it, or which can supply its want.
Isaac prudently gives way. He withdraws the hated object from before the eyes of envy, and leaving the city, pitches his tent in the valley of Gerar. Apprehending, he had a hereditary right to the wells of water which were his father’s, and which the Philistines had maliciously obstructed, he digs again for them in the valley. And from respect to the memory of Abraham, as well as to keep alive the remembrance of the gracious interpositions of the Divine Providence in his behalf, he revives the ancient names by which the wells were distinguished. Particularly the name Beersheba, or, the well of the oath, is preserved, the memorial of the covenant ratified upwards of seventy years before, between the king of the Philistines and Abraham; and which was known by that name for many ages afterwards, as one of the extreme boundaries of the holy land. But the unrelenting jealousy of the Philistines pursues him from the city into the field. No sooner has he by industry procured for his family that important necessary of life, water, than the herdmen of Gerar, endeavored by violence to possess themselves of it. Isaac, fond of peace, chooses rather to recede from his just right, than to support it by force; and still retires, seeking relief in patience and industry. He finds himself still pursued by the pride and selfishness of his neighbors; but at length conquers by yielding. A victory the most certain, the most honorable, sand the most satisfactory. And the tranquility and ease of Rehoboth,[*]Room amply compensate the troubles and vexation of Esek[*]Contention and Sitnah.[*]Hatred Finally, to prevent as far as in him lay, every ground of quarrel, he fixes his residence at a still greater distance from Abimelech. “He went up from thence to Beer-sheba;” where feeling himself at home, after so many removals, he at once pitches his tent for repose, and builds an altar for religion; and the hatred and violence of man is lost and forgotten in communion with God. The expression, “he called upon the name of the Lord,” seems to import, that when his altar was built, it was consecrated to the service of God, with certain extraordinary solemnities; such as sacrifice, and public thanksgiving, at which the whole family assisted, and in which the holy man himself, the priest as well as the prince of his family, joyfully presided. His piety was speedily acknowledged and crowned with the approbation and smiles of his Heavenly Father. For, “the Lord appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father, fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and will multiply thy seed, for my servant Abraham’s sake.”[*]Gen 26:24 His meek and placid deportment, to, either with his increasing power and wealth, and the favor of Heaven so unequivocally declared, have rendered the patriarch so dignified and respectable in the eyes of the world, that the prince, who from an unworthy motive had been induced to treat him with unkindness, and to dismiss him from his capital, now feels himself impelled to court his friendship, and to secure it by a solemn compact. Abimelech considers it as no diminution of his dignity, to leave home, attended with the most honorable of his council, and the supreme in command over his armies, in order to visit the shepherd in his tent. The expostulation[*]Gen 26:27 of Isaac is simple and natural, and his conduct[*]Gen 26:30 exhibits a mind free from gall, free from resentment. The reply of Abimelech discloses the true motive of this visit. And we are not surprised to find, that fear has at least as large a share in it as love.[*]Gen 26:28-29 The worst of men find it to be their interest to live on good terms with the wise and pious: and good men cleave to each other from affection. The covenant being amicably renewed, and the oath of God interposed, and, “an oath for confirmation is an end of all strife,” the king of Gerar and his retinue return in peace, and leave Isaac to the retirement which he loved, and to that intercourse with Heaven, which he prized infinitely above the friendship of earthly potentates. And now, a delightful calm of eighteen years ensued, of which no traces remain to inform or instruct men, but which from the well known character of this patriarch, we may well suppose were spent in such a manner, as to be had in everlasting remembrance before God. At this period, his domestic tranquility was again cruelly disturbed, and, by his favorite son; who, in the fortieth year of his own life, that is, the hundredth of his father’s, introduced two idolatrous wives at once, into the holy family. This was two great evils in one. It was being unequally yoked with infidelity; and carrying on a practice which has ever been and ever will be fatal to domestic peace. The daughter of a Hittite would naturally be disposed to interrupt the religious harmony which prevailed in Isaac’s habitation, and two wives at once would, as certainly, be disposed to annoy each other, and to embroil the whole family in their quarrels. Isaac was well acquainted with the solicitude of his pious father on his own account, in the important article, marriage; and was conscious of a similar anxiety respecting the settlement of his sons. We may easily conceive, then, how he felt at this accumulated irregularity and imprudence of Esau. He was wounded there, where as a man, a father, and a servant of the true God, he was most vulnerable. To be neglected, unacknowledged in a matter of the highest moment to his comfort, by that son whom he had cherished with the fondest affection, and on whom he rested his fondest hopes; how mortifying to a father! But besides the holy descent was in danger of being marred by an impure heathenish mixture; and the minds of his grandchildren likely to be perverted from the knowledge and worship of the God of their fathers. Such is the ungracious return which parents often meet with, for all that profusion of tenderness and affection which they lavish upon their offspring; such their reward, for all their wearisome days, and sleepless nights. The ingrates dispose of their affections, their persons, their prospects, their all, in a hasty fit of passion; as if the father who brought them up with so much toil and trouble, as if the mother who bore them had no concern in the matter. The ungrateful, disorderly conduct of their elder son, and no wonder, was “a grief of mind to Isaac and to Rebekah.”
Whether it was from the vexation occasioned by this event, from disease, from accident, or some natural weakness in the organs of sight, we are not informed, but we find Isaac, in the one hundred and thirty-fifth year of his life,--in a state of total blindness; and he was probably visited with the loss of that precious sense at a much earlier period. But forty-five years, at least, of his earthly pilgrimage were passed in this dark and comfortless state. All men wish to live to old age; but when they have attained their wish, they are apt to repine at the infirmities and the discomforts which are necessarily incident to it. They would be old; but they would not be blind, and palsied, and feeble. They would be old; but they would not be neglected, wearied of, and forsaken. They would be old; but they would not be practiced upon and deceived. But, old age certainly brings on all these, and many more inconveniences; and vain it is to dream of the benefit, without the care. We read but of one, that is Moses himself, whose “eye at the age of one hundred and twenty, was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” This dark period of Isaac’s life, containing many interesting and instructive particulars, will furnish matter for a separate discourse. In reviewing the past, we are under the necessity of again admonishing parents on that momentous article.--Impartiality in the distribution of their attention, their tenderness, and their property, among their children. The trifling circumstances of name, of personal likeness, of beauty and deformity, and the like, over which parents had little power, and the children none at all; and which in themselves have neither merit nor demerit, and are the objects of neither just praise nor blame, have been known to establish distinctions in families, which destroyed their peace and accelerated their ruin. Children unborn have often felt the dire effects of a silly nickname, imposed on a progenitor whom they knew not, and whose relation to them was thereby rendered a curse. Men are often deemed unfortunate, both by themselves and others, where they deserve to be reckoned unwise. They themselves do the mischief, and then wonder how it came about. They spoil their children, and then complain that they are so perverse. I know how difficult it is to bring up youth; how difficult to bear an even hand between child and child, to counteract the bias of favor and affection, to conceal and disguise the strong emotions of the heart. But it is only the more necessary to be prudent, to be vigilant, to walk circumspectly,” and, to ask “wisdom of God.”