A famine hits the land, and Isaac faces the decision his father once faced in the same circumstance. Abraham, in his own famine, went down to Egypt, and that trip nearly cost him his wife and his integrity. This time, before Isaac can consider it, God speaks first. 2"Do not go down to Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you." God renews the whole promise on the spot, land, offspring like the stars, and blessing for all nations, 5"because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws."
Isaac has done nothing yet in this chapter to deserve it. He is told to stay put, and God attaches the whole covenant to him on the strength of someone else's obedience. Isaac inherits a blessing he did nothing to earn.
He does not take long to show how little he has earned it. In Gerar, when the men ask about Rebekah, he says 7"She is my sister." It is his father's own lie, told for the same fear in front of the same royal house. Abimelech catches him laughing with Rebekah through a window and calls him out. Isaac has just watched God renew an unconditional covenant over him, and he still does not trust God enough to tell the truth about his wife.
Yet the blessing keeps moving. Isaac sows in that land and reaps 12"a hundredfold" in the same year. He grows very rich, until the Philistines envy him and stop up the wells his father had dug. Isaac does not fight. He digs a new well, and they quarrel over it, and he names it Esek, for contention. He digs another, and they quarrel again. Twice he gives ground instead of arguing his claim. Then he digs a third well, and this time they do not quarrel. He names it Rehoboth. 22"now the LORD has made room for us."
Isaac never once raises a hand. He moves, digs, and moves again, until there is room. It is a quieter faith than his father's journey out of Ur, the willingness to keep yielding ground to men who have no claim on it, trusting that God can make room where contention could not. Proverbs puts a name to it. "When a man's ways please the LORD, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him" (Proverbs 16:7).
The peace arrives sooner than Isaac expected. Abimelech comes with his advisers, and Isaac asks a pointed question. 27"Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me and have sent me away from you?" Their answer is the turning point. 28"We see plainly that the LORD has been with you." The men who drove him off now want a covenant with him, at Beersheba, where Abraham once made an identical treaty with an identical king.
God multiplied him regardless. The blessing was running on Abraham's obedience all along, applied to a son who had done nothing to deserve it. The word God gave him that night was to fear not, because God was with him, and the blessing came for Abraham's sake.
Paul later describes the shape of the gospel this way, that by one man's obedience the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:19). Most days we look more like Isaac, timid where we should be bold and quick to protect ourselves with a half-truth, still needing to hear "fear not." And still the blessing holds, for the sake of the one whose obedience it rests on.
Prayer
Father, we are more often Isaac than Abraham, quick to repeat old fears and slow to trust what you have promised. Thank you that the blessing over our lives rests on another's obedience, and no obedience of ours. Make us patient like Isaac at the wells, trusting you to make room. In Jesus' name, amen.