29. B.C. 1893 to 1796

B.C. 1893 to 1796

Chapter III

Timeline View:

1. Abraham still remained in the south country, near to Gerar, where his power and pastoral wealth had much increased; and, as he seemed to manifest no intention of removing; the king Abimelech thought it right to court a treaty of alliance with him, being the first which history records. To this he was probably the more induced, as some anxiety had been experienced on account of the wells which Abraham had digged-an act which, as we have already explained, gave to the party by whom such wells were made, a kind of appropriative right in lands not previously occupied. This matter being adjusted, and the rights of the patriarch being recognized by the king, the desired covenant was formed between them, and confirmed by an oath. It amounted to little more than that the contracting parties, and their heirs after them, should act with truth towards each other. In memory of this transaction, Abraham gave the name of Beersheba (well of the oath) to the well in question; and, the situation being agreeable and convenient, he remained there many years, and planted a grove of trees around the altar at which he worshipped God.

2. When Isaac had attained the age of twenty-five years, it pleased God to prove Abraham by one great trial of his faith and obedience. He was commanded to journey to a mountain in Canaan, and there to offer up his son Isaac in sacrifice to God. Firmly persuaded that since God had promised him a posterity through Isaac, be would even raise him again from the dead, rather than allow his promise to fail (Heb 11:17-19), the “father of the faithful” prepared to render full, however heart-rending, obedience to this extraordinary mandate. He travelled to the appointed place; he built an altar, and laid thereon the wood for the fire; be bound his beloved son with cords; and his hand was uplifted to give him the death-wound, when he was arrested by a voice from heaven with words of commendation and encouragement, and by a more than ever solemn confirmation to him and to his race of all the blessings that had before been promised. A ram, which was found entangled by the horns in a thicket, was substituted for Isaac upon the altar, and the father returned rejoicing to Beersheba with his son.

3. Twelve years after this Sarah died, in the 127th year of her age. Abraham had, before this, removed his camp from Beersheba to his old station at Mamre, near Hebron, or to some other spot in that neighborhood; and as it had now become necessary that he should have a family sepulcher in which to lay his dead, he purchased for 400 shekels of silver the field and cave of Machpelah, near Hebron. Here Sarah was buried; and thus a sepulcher became to the patriarchs the earnest of their reversionary heritage.

4. Three years after this, when Isaac had reached the age of forty years, Abraham bethought himself of seeking a wife for his son. The state of religion and morals in Canaan, and the special nature of the promises made to his race, concurred with the usual habits and notions of a pastoral chief, in leading his attention to his own family, which he had left in Mesopotamia, of whose welfare he had, a few years before, received intelligence. He therefore gave it in solemn charge to his old and confidential servant Eliezer to travel thither, and, if possible, to obtain thence a wife for Isaac. Eliezer sped well on his journey. On his first arrival at Haran, he fell in with Rebekah, the grand-daughter of Abraham’s brother Nahor, and received kind attentions from her and from the family, when he arrived at the house. When he made known the object of his journey, the proposed alliance was accepted without hesitation. Rebekah herself, on whom the choice fell, made no objections; and she therefore, accompanied by her nurse Deborah, was soon on the road to Canaan with Eliezer and his men. They arrived safely there; all parties were well pleased; and Rebekah became the wife of Isaac.

5. Not long after, Abraham took to himself a second wife, named Keturah, by whom he had six sons, named Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah, all of whom were provided for by their father during his lifetime, and sent to settle in Arabia Petraea, lest at his death they should interfere with his heir Isaac. They became the founders of Arabian tribes and nations—one of which, Midian, makes some figure in the early history of Isaac’s descendants. Nothing more is recorded of Abraham until his death, which occurred at what was even then considered the advanced age of 175 years just 100 years after his arrival in Canaan. His body was laid beside that of Sarah, in the sepulchral cave of Machpelah.

6. Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, presented her husband with two sons, twins, of whom the first-born was named Esau, and the other Jacob (b.c. 1836). They were fifteen years of age when their grandfather Abraham died. As they grew up, the brothers manifested very different dispositions; Esau was a rude and boisterous man, devoted to the sports of the field, while Jacob was of a sedate and quiet disposition, much employed in the cares and duties of pastoral life. Before their birth, it had been intimated to the mother, that the younger of the two was the destined heir of the promises; and this, together with his gentle disposition, rendered Jacob very clear to Rebekah; but the love of Isaac, although himself a quiet man, was more engaged by the first-born, Esau. Not knowing, or not rightly understanding, or not having much confidence in the intimation which had been given to his wife, Isaac was still disposed to consider Esau as the heir of the promises; and being aware of this, Rebekah was always contriving to bring about, by craft and management, the designs which the Lord would have accomplished without her aid. Jacob, in his early life, much resembled his mother in these respects; but time, trouble, and experience, made him a much better man in his later years.

7. The first object was to get from Esau a formal renunciation of his birthright, on which, in truth, Esau himself set to very little value, that he readily agreed to barter it for a mess of savoury pottage which, one day, when he came home faint and hungry from hard hunting, he found Jacob preparing. It does not appear to us that he renounced, or that Jacob sought, the ordinary secular right of the first-born to a double portion of the father’s goods, but rather the peculiar blessings and promises of the Abrahamic covenant, which all parties supposed must henceforth descend in the line of primogeniture, unless God otherwise specially determined, or unless the person most nearly interested abandoned his claim. All the parties appear to have labored under some mistake in this matter; and Esau’s light estimation of his supposed privilege was no less reprehensible than Jacob’s over-anxiety to secure what he believed to be intended for him.

8. After this there was a famine in the land of Canaan, and Isaac would probably have withdrawn into Egypt, had he not been commanded by the Lord to remain in the land which was the destined inheritance of his race. On this occasion, the promise of that heritage, and of all the other blessings of the covenant with Abraham, was repeated to Isaac, who then removed into the territories of the Philistines, where another Abimelech than he who had entered into covenant with Abraham, reigned. During his residence in Gerar, Isaac denied his wife, as his father Abraham had done in the same country, and for the same reason, for which he also incurred the just rebuke of the reigning king. While in this quarter, Isaac paid some attention to the culture of the ground, which repaid him a hundred-fold; and in this and other ways, his wealth and power so rapidly increased, as to excite the alarm and jealousy of the Philistines, who filled up the wells which gave him a right to the soil, and whose king at leng^th desired him to withdraw to a greater distance. The patriarch accordingly proceeded to the more open pastures which his father had occupied, and there digged again, without opposition, the wells of Abraham. But his attempts to dig new wells were vehemently resisted by the Philistine shepherds, until he did so at such a distance, that they no longer interfered. In this situation, his still growing prosperity suggested to Abimelech the propriety of renewing with the powerful nomad chief the convention which his own predecessor made with Abraham. The king, therefore, went from Gerar to the camp of Isaac, whom he treated in all respects as an equal. He and his attendants were properly feasted by the patriarch, who, after a becoming remonstrance as to the treatment he had received, consented to renew the covenant. of peace. At the age of forty, Esau married two women of Canaan, and thereby gave much pain to his parents, whose views in such matters were the same as those which Abraham had entertained.