Isaac #32

Isaac is the son of Abraham and Sarah, the second of the three great patriarchs of Israel, and the father of Jacob and Esau. His name, which recalls laughter, reflects how Sarah and Abraham reacted when God promised a child in their old age (Genesis 17:17-19; 18:12).

Biblical Significance

God tells Abraham that the covenant will be established with Isaac and not with Ishmael (Genesis 17:19-21). Isaac is born to Sarah when Abraham is a hundred years old, and he is circumcised on the eighth day (Genesis 21:1-7). His most famous moment comes when God tests Abraham by asking him to offer Isaac as a burnt offering on a mountain in the land of Moriah. Isaac carries the wood, asks where the lamb is, and is bound on the altar before the angel of the LORD stops Abraham and a ram is provided instead (Genesis 22:1-14). Genesis does not state Isaac’s age, and it depicts him as neither resisting nor protesting, a point that later Jewish tradition developed at length.

After Sarah’s death, Abraham’s servant travels to Mesopotamia and returns with Rebekah, whom Isaac brings into his mother’s tent and loves, so that “Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death” (Genesis 24:62-67). Isaac and Rebekah are childless for twenty years until Isaac prays, and she bears the twins Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25:19-26).

Later Life

During a famine, Isaac stays in Gerar and God repeats to him the promise given to Abraham, with the added assurance, “I will be with thee, and will bless thee” (Genesis 26:1-5). Like his father, he tells the local people that his wife is his sister, and he is rebuked by Abimelech, the king (Genesis 26:6-11). He digs wells, meets disputes over water, and makes peace with Abimelech at Beersheba (Genesis 26:12-33). As an old man, he is blind, and he is deceived into giving the blessing to Jacob in place of Esau (Genesis 27:1-29). Isaac dies at 180, and both sons bury him (Genesis 35:28-29).

Legacy

Throughout Scripture, God is often called “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,” a phrase that presents Isaac as one of the three founding ancestors (Exodus 3:6). The New Testament looks back on the offering of Isaac as an act of faith on Abraham’s part, and adds that Abraham considered that God could raise the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19). Paul calls believers “as Isaac was, are the children of promise” (Galatians 4:28). Many Christians have seen in the story of Isaac an anticipation of the sacrifice of Jesus, while Jewish tradition remembers it as the Akedah, or binding, a model of obedience and merit.

Isaac’s life is quieter than those of his father and his son, yet he stands as the link that carries the promise from one generation to the next.