Genesis 26:24 Commentary and Bible Study

The move to Beersheba was very significant. Beersheba was back in Palestine, well away from Gerar and the territory of the Philistines. On his return to the land of his calling, the Lord appeared to him that very night. Isaac received encouragement from the Lord to assure him that he was still in the will of God in spite of the twists and turns that his life had taken. He had remained at Gerar as long as providence had allowed in obedience to the Lord’s previous instruction, but now he was led to return to Canaan. The movements in the life of this man were not incidental. He was right to see himself and all aspects of his life bound up with the covenant of God and so he had to be very sure that he was not just following his own inclination. How good it is when the Lord visits us again with an assurance that he is still with us and that we are not out of his will. We have continued to try to live for him, but maybe have had to face various troubles. We hoped we were in the right way, but simply had to keep walking by faith. Then the Spirit of God gives us strong assurance that he has never left us.As God had been with Abraham, so he was with Isaac. ‘Fear not’, he is told. There were many possible causes of fear. Isaac might fear man and what man would do to him. He might fear famine and hardship which he had known before. He might fear what the Philistines would do to him. ‘Fear not’ means that none of these things are worthy to make us doubt the Lord’s love and care and guidance of us. The Lord was with him. If God was with him, who was he to fear man? What power does man have to do anything to a believer that God has not already foreseen and taken into account, and yet his promise stands firm, that we have eternal life. We are safe in his hands even when we seem to be wholly handed over to the power of our enemies. God’s protection is outside and beyond all created power. It was the Lord who had sent the famine which caused him to leave Palestine in the first place, and it was the Lord who brought him back. Just as we seldom know the reason for such things in our own lives, so Scripture does not explain the reason why God appointed this for Isaac. The Lord has manifold purposes which he is accomplishing, which we would not be capable of following even if they were all explained to us. So we trust him, and wait till the day when he explains all.The promise was renewed to Isaac that his descendants would be blessed. God’s promise to Abraham implied this since he was the only son, but now he receives a promise of his own. Isaac would be blessed for the sake of Abraham, nevertheless this was a separate promise to Isaac.Isaac worshipped the Lord and built there an altar, for the purpose of offering up sacrifices. These had never ceased to be part of true worship from the earliest times. Isaac ‘called on the name of the Lord’ a wonderful expression for praise to God. With the promise in mind he gave himself with all the greater conviction to prayer and praise to the invisible God. Beersheba became a new home for Isaac. In going here Isaac was retracing the steps of his father. Abraham had also come to this place in very similar circumstances. He too had left Gerar after a difficulty with Abimelech. It was Abraham that first gave the name Beersheba, meaning ‘well of the oath’, a name given because of the covenant between him and Abimelech. So now there is an oath between Isaac and Abimelech.