Doug Van Pelt

You're not your dad? Oh yeah?

In Genesis 26 we get a few stories about Isaac's life. It starts off by refering to Abraham once having a bad year with crops. Isaac has one and God steps in and speaks to him saying, "Isaac, stay away from Egypt! I will show you where I want you to go. You will live there as a foreigner, but I will be with you and bless you. I will keep my promise to your father Abraham by giving this land to you and your descendants. I will give you as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, and I will give your descendants all of this land. They will be a blessing to every nation on earth, because Abraham did everything I told him to do."

Wow. God helped Isaac make a choice by telling him in no uncertain terms where He did NOT want him to go. Then He repeated the covenant He had made with Abraham. Isaac was just like his dad. He had a God in Heaven that was committed to making good on His promise, His covenant.

It's interesting and a little puzzling as to why the Arabs (the descendants of Ishmael) want to wipe modern day Israel off the map. If God gave Abraham all that land, and if the Old Testament Scriptures are indeed God's Word, then why dispute what land is Israel's? This is a narrow view of the problem, of course, but it's still puzzling.

Isaac moved to Gerar with his beautiful wife Rebekah. "He was afraid that someone might kill him to get her, and so he told everyone that Rebekah was his sister."

There he goes -- repeating the same lame mistake as his dad. Sigh. Why is that habit so ingrained in humans? Why are sons and daughters so prone to make the same mistakes as their parents? What does it take to not make those mistakes? (I think that one of the only answers to that is by the offspring recognizing the sin, having a focused desire not to repeat it, and asking for and receiving God's power to overcome this tendency).

Abimelech, a king of the Philistines in Gerar, saw Isaac and Rebekah smooching one day and he confronted Isaac, busting him on the lie. He made it clear he was not happy with that deception: "If someone had slept with her, you would have made our whole nation guilty!" Then he warned all his people not to touch them (or they'd be put to death). That's interesting that they thought that way. If someone slept with Rebekah, Isaac would be to blame! Like I've said before (and probably made a sort of enemy in heaven by calling Abraham an idiot for doing that), I'll say again, "What a foolish thing to do!" It's easy to sit in judgment over these guys, though. I'm sitting in an air conditioned house (with the heater on at the moment -- it is "Ice Storm 2007" here) and I'm not dealing with possibly the very real threat of death by marauders that would kill a husband to steal a wife. That thought keeps me in check a little bit, but come on! That's not a nice way to treat your wife.

Isaac planted grain and had some great harvests there. He was blessed by the Lord and his wealth grew. Abimelech told him to leave, because he was getting too wealthy there. Locals grew mad and jealous. They stopped up the wells that Abraham had dug out there. He left and settled in the Great Valley, where he dug up and cleaned out those wells that had been stopped up. While the text might be omiting some important details, it's possible to glean from this passage that Isaac didn't grumble (at least so much as to be recorded for all time in Scripture) about this problem. Perhaps he just shrugged his shoulders, swallowed his anger and set about the hard work to clean them up. That sort of attitude says a lot about someone willing to "let it go" and work hard to do what needs to be done (which in this case meant clearing out wells that had been sabotaged by jealous men). While digging they came upon some spring fed wells. The locals claimed that the water belonged to them.

"So this well was named 'Quarrel,' because they had quarreled with Isaac."

Maybe that is how Isaac got over this, by using humor and sarcasm. Judging by the text, he moved on and "let this one go." His servants dug another well and the locals quarreled about it. They named this one "Jealous." Finally, they dug one more well. There was no quarreling this time, so they named it "Lots Of Room." That's kind of funny.

It appears from this text that Isaac dealt with this conflict by giving in to the locals. This isn't the only way quarrels are dealt with in the Bible, but this seems to be a clear example of someone who was in the right not choosing to fight this battle, but instead intentionally "lose" it. Isaac went on to more success.

This is a good time to bring up a subject some people talk about: "proof texts" or "prooftexting." A good point is made that the Bible is not a book that's given to us so we can prooftext it in order to explain how we live, etc. This book, which is a collection of 66 smaller books, is made up of poetry, stories, historical narratives, prophecy, allegories, and simple facts (in a couple cases, physical addresses). The point made by some of these arguments (Don Miller brings this up, for example) is to broaden our perception of the Bible. It's more than just a "proof text."

However, it might be possible to read through an argument like that and conclude, "That's right! I'm going to stop proof texting and live an authentic Christian life." The problem with that, I believe, is that it's wrong. Jesus prooftexted. Remember when He was busted for He and His disciples not following the washing or eating laws? His disciples ate the heads of the grain as they walked through fields on the Sabbath. He said, "Haven't you read about David and his men eating the showbread in the temple, which only the Levite priests were allowed to do?" On the road to Emmaus Jesus used the Law, the Psalms and the Prophets to explain how the Messiah was supposed to come and die. He "prooftexted" His way through that explanation.

So, to conclude that prooftexting is narrow is perhaps right, but to conclude that it's wrong is likely a gross error. Sometimes figuring something out requires some hard work. A disciple is better to follow the "whole counsel" of Scripture than to base a doctrine around one or two verses. Cults have been started over that kind of mistake.

"When Esau was 40 years old, he married Judith the daughter of Beeri, the Hittite and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. But these two women brought a lot of grief to Esau's parents Isaac and Rebekah."

Uh oh. Sounds like trouble. As a parent, it almost sends shivers down my spine to imagine my kids causing me grief. The small or temporary feelings of anger or disappointment I experience with my young children is nothing compared to the parent of a young adult making wrong choices that are likely to harm them. So, it seems far away to me now, but woe to that parent who experiences that. I think I gave my parents grief when I was a young adult, using drugs and choosing a lifestyle that wasn't good for me.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at January 17, 2007 09:45 AM