Genesis 26:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Just as there was a famine during Abraham’s life, so there is one in Isaac’s life, and yet the guidance of the Lord is different this time. Aalders comments that these events are not necessarily presented in chronological order, since if Esau and Jacob had already been born, it would have been hard for Rebekah to claim she was not Isaac’s wife, but there may be another explanation for this, as, if so, Abraham would still have been alive and presumably would have travelled with them. The famine is so severe that Isaac cannot stay where he is, and his faith is to be tested: ‘Has God really led me to live here and is he not able to provide food for me? Can he do the greater thing and not the lesser thing? This is often the way that we too are tried. We believe the great promises that Christ will return, that he will raise us from the dead, and yet we have trouble because of the absence of some much smaller provision, which seems incompatible with the God of all power whom we serve. But God is calling us to exercise faith in smaller matters so that faith grows. God did provide for Isaac, and he would be able to look back and see that he was not abandoned, even though the way God led him was not the way he expected, and left questions in his mind unanswered about the working of the Lord.it clear that the path of obedience is not always straightforward. There is no doubt that Isaac was in the will of God, and yet God allowed contradictory indicators to occur so that Isaac would learn to be certain of God’s love for him based not on external circumstances, but by the word of God alone. Isaac knew of the promises given to Abraham, even before the Lord appeared to him in the next verse, and those promises could not be fulfilled unless God blessed Isaac and his family. They must survive this famine.He therefore goes to Abimelech, called here the king of the Philistines. The name Abimelech means ‘My father is king’, and may have been a title rather than a personal name. If so, this could have been a different individual, and certainly the covenant Abraham made with Abimelech was many years before, although the text reads as if it is the same person In Genesis 20:2 he had been called the king of Gerar, where he was living, but now he is called the king of the Philistines. Genesis 21:34 indicates however that after Abimelech gave Abraham permission to dwell where he wanted, Abraham had felt free to dwell anywhere in the land of the Philistines. Some protest that this reference to the Philistines is too early and that they did not settle in the area until the time of Saul and David. There is no reason why they might not have lived in the area at a very much earlier time. Abraham also had lived for a time in Gerar and was known to Abimelech, and Isaac had spent part of his youth there in the land of the Philistines. He knew that Abimelech had made his father welcome.