ISAAC
669
ISAAC
(Smith's Select Discourses, vi, 245). The reader -who bears in mind the pecuUarities of Isaac's character will . scarcely infer from those passages any fresh accession of mental or moral feebleness. Such a longing in an old man was innocent enough, and indicated nothing of a spirit of self-indulgence. It was an extraordinary case, too, and Kalisch sets it in its true light : " The venison is evidently like a sacrifice offered by the recipient of the blessing, and ratifying the proceedings ; and hence Jacob killed and prepared two kids of the goats (verse 9), whereas, for an ordinary meal, one would have been more than sufficient ; it imparted to the ceremony, in certain respects, tlic cliaracter of a covenant (comp.xxi, 27-30; xxvi, :W : Ivx.hI. xii. 2; xxiv, 5-11, etc.); the one party showed rrady i.liediencc and sincere affection, while the other accepted the gift, and granted in return the whole store of happiness he was able to bequeath. Thus the meal which Isaac required has a double mean- ing, both connected with the internal organism of the book" (Comm. on Gen. xxvii, 1-4).
7. The stealing, on the part of Jacob, of his father's blessing having angered Esau, who seems to have look- ed forward to Isaac's death as affording an opportunity for taking vengeance on his unjust brother, the aged patriarch is induced, at his wife's entreaty, to send Ja- cob into Mesopotamia, that, after his own example, his son might take a wife from among his kindred and peo- ple, " of the daughters of Laban, thy mother's brother" (Gen. xxvii, 41-46). B.C. 1927. See Jacob.
This is the last important act recorded of Isaac. Ja- cob having, agreeably to his father's command, married into Laban's family, returned after some time, and found the old man at JNIamre, in the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned (Gen. XXXV, 27). B.C. cir. 1898. Here, " being old and full of days" (180), Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him" (Gen. xxxv, 28). B.C. 1883.
In the N. T. reference is made to the offering of Isaac (Heb. xi, 17, and James ii, 21) and to his blessing his sons (Heb. xi, 20). As the child of the promise, and as the progenitor of the children of the promise, he is contrast- ed with Ishmael (Rom. ix, 7, 10; Gal. iv, 28; Heb. xi, 18). In our Lord's remarkable argument with the Sad- ducees, his history is carried beyond the point at -which it is left in the O. T., into and beyond the grave. Isaac, of whom it was said (Gen. xxxv, 29) that he was gath- ered to his people, is represented as still living to (iod (Luke XX, 38, etc.) ; and by the same di\'ine authority he is proclaimed as an acknowledged heir of future glory (Matt, viii, 11, etc.).
II. His Character. — Isaac, the gentle and dutiful son, the faithful and constant husband (see Becker, I)e Isa- aco, etc., Greifsw. 1750), became the father of a house in which order did not reign. If there were any very prominent points in his character, they were not brought out by the circumstances in which he was placed. He appears less as a man of action than as a man of suffer- ing, from which he is generally delivered without any direct effort of his own. Thus he suffers as the object of Ishmacl's mocking, of the intended sacrifice on JIo- riah, of the rapacity of the Philistines, and of Jacob's stratagem. But the thought of his sufferings is effaced by the ever-present tokens of God's favor ; and he suf- fers with the calmness and dignity of a conscious heir of heavenly promises, without uttering any complaint, and generally without committing any action by whicli he would forfeit respect. Free from violent passions, he was a man of constant, deep, and tender affections. Thus he mourned for his mother till her place was filled by his wife. His sons were nurtured at home till a late period of their lives ; and neither his grief for Esau's marriage, nor the anxiety in which he was involved in consequence of Jacob's deceit, estranged either of them from his affectionate care. His life of solitary blame- lessness must have been sustained by strong habitual Viety, such as showed itself at the time of Kebekah's
barrenness (Gen. xxv, 21), in his special intercourse with God at Gerar and Beersheba (xxvi, 2, 23), in the solemnity with which he bestows his blessing and re- fuses to change it. His life, judged by a worldly stand- ard, might seem inactive, ignoble, and unfruitfiU ; but the "guileless years, prayers, gracious acts, and daily thank-offerings of pastoral life" are not to be so esteem- ed, although they make no show in history. Isaac's character may not have exercised any commanding in- fluence upon either his own or succeeding generations, but it was sufficiently marked and consistent to win re- spect and envy from his contemporaries. By his pos- terity his name is always joined in eijual honor with those of Abraham and Jacob, and so it was even used as part of the formula which Egyptian magicians in the time of Origen (Contra Celsum, i, 22) employed as effi- cacious to bind the daemons whom they adjured (com p. Gen. xxxi, 42, 53).