Like Father, Like Son

I’m kind of regretting a decision I made about what stories to include and what to leave out. I had decided that I had plenty of Abraham stories and, while the details of the story of Abraham calling Sarah his sister might not be commonly known, I figured my imaginary target audience did at least know that Abraham had done it. So I didn’t tell about it.

But now that I’m leaving Abraham stories and going to Isaac stories, I’m not so sure that was a good idea, for one very good reason: Isaac did the same thing to Rebekah.

When Abraham did it, Isaac had not yet been born. But he must have heard stories about it. And he must have thought it was a good idea. I am absolutely certain I disagree with him about that.
What happened was this: a famine came about in Canaan, just as one had come about in Abraham’s time. I guess the crops must have failed that year, and so there was little to no food. Isaac had a large retinue of animals and servants, not to mention his wife and twin sons. He had to find a way to feed them all, so he thought he would do as his father had done in time of famine and go to Egypt. God appeared to him and told him not to do that. One of the commentaries said that this was because Isaac wasn’t wired for trouble and he just couldn’t have taken Egypt. Maybe.

So instead Isaac went to live among the Philistines who lived in Canaan. He came to live at a place called Gerar, where the king of the Philistines, called Abimelech, lived. Now, in Abraham’s time, there was a king of the Philistines called Abimelech. The commentaries were united in saying this was a different Abimelech. Nearly a century had passed. But they were divided as to the nature of the name. Some thought this was the name the Philistines called their kings, like Pharaoh of Egypt, and some thought this was a common name for kings, like Louis of France. Which is it? I have no idea. But whether he was Abimelech or the Abimelech, he was no dummy.

Isaac went to live with the Philistines, but he was afraid of them. He looked at his beautiful wife and figured all the Philistine males would just go wild over her and would kill him to get to her. After all, she was a Semite, a descendent of Shem, so of course she was more beautiful than any of the Canaanite or Philistine women. That’s my own thought, not from the commentaries. It just occurred to me to wonder: could a bit of racism have had something to do with it? So he said “she’s my sister.” This was a half-truth when Abraham said it. When Isaac said it, it was a whole lie. Rebekah was his cousin, not his sister.

And there Isaac lived for some time, and nobody bothered them. That, I think, was a miracle of grace in and of itself. I was surprised when one of the commentaries pointed out that what happened next may have been years later, but it’s right there in Genesis 26:6: “When Isaac had been there a long time….” I believe that Isaac and Rebekah were protected by God, just as Sarah was when Abraham did this to her. When Abraham went to Egypt and started saying to people, “Meet my sister Sarah,” Pharaoh actually took her to be part of his harem, but God wouldn’t let him touch her. Can you imagine what would have happened if God hadn’t provided this protection for Sarah, and for Rebekah? It was as though Abraham and Isaac had said to their wives, “I don’t want to die, so I’m not going to protect you from the evil men I know are here. I’m going to say you’re my sister. That way, they’ll leave me alone. I’m not going to worry about what they’re going to do to you while I’m lying to protect myself.” It kind of makes me mad.

Anyway, one day Abimelech looked out his window and got an eyeful. The King James Version of the Bible says that Isaac was “sporting” with Rebekah. The NIV says he was caressing her. One of the commentaries said that the word that was used in Hebrew was the same word from which his own name was derived, a word meaning laughter. Anyway, whatever they were doing, they weren’t acting like brother and sister. And Abimelech called Isaac on the carpet for it. “She’s your wife!” he told him. “Why in the world did you say she was your sister?”

Isaac then confessed his fear of the people, and Abimelech told him something that sounds absolutely horrible to me. He said that any one of the Philistine men could have slept with Rebekah. The King James Version adds an adverb: they would have done this lightly. Nothing is said about whether or not Rebekah would have accepted such a thing happening to her, and the assumption is, since she was married to Isaac, she wouldn’t have. Therefore, Abimelech was saying that since Isaac had denied his status as Rebekah’s husband, the Philistine men would have, had God not protected her, raped her and thought nothing of it. Abimelech wasn’t saying this out of concern for Rebekah, however. He said that Isaac would have made the Philistine men guilty. After all, they did have some standards. Then Abimelech attempted to put Isaac’s mind at ease by making an edict that if anyone harmed either Isaac or his wife, it would be their heads.

I had never associated what happened next with this story before I did my research for this blog. I would have considered it two separate stories, even though they are found in the same chapter of the Bible. But the commentaries pointed out that there is definitely a connection. But this story is getting so long that I’m going to treat it as two separate stories, so you’ll have to wait until next week, or the next time I post, which will hopefully be next week, to find out what it was. Or read Genesis 26 for yourself. I’ll leave you with this hint, which explains the connection: It’s human nature to dislike being feared, and the Philistines didn’t like it any more than anybody else would.

In re-reading what I have written here, I realize that I’m being less friendly to Abraham and Isaac than most people who write about them are, and I sound like a feminist. Let me tell you that I’m not one. I simply don’t believe that God chose Abraham or Isaac because they were better than other people, and I think the Bible is clear about that. God never told us why He chose Abraham and his family, only that He did. I have read that one item of evidence that points to the Bible being actual history, which it is, because God cannot lie, is that it shows its heroes warts and all. Abraham and Isaac truly loved and worshipped God. But they were part of a culture that thought nothing of treating women as lower than themselves. That did not make it right in the eyes of God, only in the eyes of culture. In this day and age, how many Christians do what culture says is okay, but God says isn’t? But God is merciful, just as he was to Abraham and to Isaac.