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The Story of Isaac: His Sojourn in Philistia

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The Story of Isaac: His Sojourn in Philistia PART THIRTY-EIGHT THE STORY OF ISAAC: I HIS SOJOURN IN PHILISTIA 1 (Gen. 26:l-34) 1 .i The Biblical Record 1 And there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham, And lsaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines, unto Gerar. 2 And Jehovah appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: 3 sojourn in this land, and 1 will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give at1 these lmds, and I will establish the oath which I swure unto Abraham thy father; 4 and 1 will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed dl these lands; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; 5 because that Abraham obeyed my voice, und Kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. 6 Aiid Isaac dwelt in Gerar: 7 and the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, My wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon. 8 And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech King of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. 9 And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and bow saidst thou, She is my sister? And lsaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest 1 die because of her. 10 And Abimelech said, What is this thou bast done unto us? one of the people might easily have lain with thy wife, and thou wouldest have brought guiltiness upon us. 11 And Abimelech charged all the people, saying, He that touch- eth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death. 38 ISAAC - HIS SOJOURN IN PHILISTIA 12 And Isaac sowed in that land, and fomd in the saw year a huvdredfold: and Jehovah blessed him. 13 And the man waxed great, and grew wore and more until be becaw very great: 14 and he had possessions of flocks, and possessiorw of herds, and a great household: and the Philistines envied him. 15 NQW all the wells which his father’s servants had digged iii the days of Abraham his Juther, the Philistines bad stopped, and filled with earth. 16 Aizd Abinzelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art ilzucb inightier than we. 17 And Isaac departed thence, aizd encamped in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. ‘ 18 And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which \they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abra- hum: and he talled their names after the names by which his father had called thena. 19 And Isaac’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. 20 And the herdsinen of Gerar strove with Isaac’s herds- wvz, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek, because they colztewded with him. 21 And they digged aizother well, and they strove for that also: aizd he called the nanze of it Sitnah. 22 And he re- moved froin thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and Be called the name of it Reho- both; and he said, For now Jehovah bath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. 23 Aizd he went up froin thence to Beer-sheba. 24 And Jehovah appeared unto hiin the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear wot, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, awd multiply thy seed for ?ny servant Abraham’s sake. 25 Ai$d he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of Jehovah, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac’s servants digged a well. 26 Then Abimelecb went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phicol the captain of his host. 27 And Isaac said uiito them, Wherefore are ye come unto 39 I 26:1-6 GENESIS me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you-? 28 And they said, We saw plainly that Jehovah was with thee: and we said, Let there now be an oath betwixt u6, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a covenant wi8h thee, 29 that thou wilt do us no hurt, as we haue not tombed thee, and us we haue done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou art now the blessed of Jehovah. 30 And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink. 31 And they rose u$ betimes iB the morning, and sware o~eto another: and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. 32 And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac’s servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water. 33 And he called it Shibah: therefore the Ezame of the city is Beer‘- sheba unto this day. 34 And when Esau was forty years old he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Base- math the daughter of Elon the Hittite: 35 and they were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. 1. Isaac’s Migration to Gerar (vv. 1-6). It will be recalled that Isaac was “tenting” in the vicinity of Beer- lahai-roi (“the well of the Living One who sees me,” cf. 16:14) at the time of his marriage to Rebekah (24:62). Later, he journeyed to Hebron where he and Ishmael buried their father, Abraham, in the cave of Machpelah (25:9). Isaac then returned, we are told, and continued to dwell “by Beer-lahai-roi” (2 5 :11 ) ; evidently it was here that the twins were born and Esau sold his birthright (25:11, 19-26, 27-34). This is obviously where we find him at the beginning of the account in ch. 26, prior to his removal to Gerar. But “there was a famine in the land” (26:1), a second famine, long after the first, which was the one “that was in the days of Abraham.” In time of famine, people of Palestine were accustomed to migrate 40 HIS SOJOURN IN PHILISTIA 26:1-6 to Egypt or to the fertile Philistine maritime plain (about $0 miles long and 11 miles wide) extending along the Mediterranean Sea from what in our time is Joppa at the .north to some distance below Gaza at the south. All Semitic peoples seem to have done this: the Egyptian records are full of accounts of such migrations for the purpose of obtaining food. (Cf. for example, Abraham, Gen. 12:lO; Jacob and his sons, chs, 45, 46; Elimelech and his family, in Moab, Ruth 1: 1 ) . “And Isaac went unto Abimelech, king of the Phil- istines, unto Gerar.” The presence of the Philistines in this region in patriarchal times has been dubbed an ana- chronism by the critics. This view, however, is expressly refuted by evidence now available. In Scripture, the Philistines are said to have come from Caphtor (Amos 9:7, Jer, 47:4, Deut. 2:23; cf. Gen. 10:14-here the sentence, “hence went forth the Philistines,” is commonly viewed today as misplaced by a copyist and to belong after the name cCaphtorim.”). The monuments indicate that the Peleste or Philistines invaded Palestine with other “sea peoples” around 1200 B.C. In time they became amalga- mated with other inhabitants of Canaan, but the name “Palestine” (Philistia) continued to bear witness to their presence. It is further evident that the Philistines had established themselves in this region in smaller numbers long before 1500 B.C. The region around Gerar and Beer- sheba was occupied by them as early as the patriarchal age (Gen. 21:32, 26:l) and before the Mosaic era settlers from Crete had driven out or destroyed the original in- habitants of the region of Gaza and settled there (Deut. 2:23). The consensus of archaeological evidence in our day almost without exception identifies these “sea peoples” as spreading out over the Eastern Mediterranean world from Crete: at its height in the third and second millenia, Minoan Crete controlled a large part of the Aegean Sea, “C, H. Gordon and I. Grim consider that these early 41 26: 1-6 GENESIS Philistines of Gerar came from a previous migration of sea people from th gean and Minoan sphere, including Crete, which is c Caphtor in the Bible and Ugarit tablets, and Ca n is the Canaanite name for Minoan” (Corn , 72). “Biblical notices, which are commonly anachronistic by critics, place scattered groups of these people in S. W. Palestine centuries before the arrival of the main body in the first quarter of the 12th century B.C.” (UBD, 859). Recently an Israeli archaeologist, D. Alon, surveyed the site of Gerar and “found evidence from potsherds that the city had enjoyed a period of prosperity during the Middle Bronze Age, the period of the Biblical patriarchs” (DWDBA, 25 1). “The early Caphtorian migration was one of a long series that had established various Caphtorian folk on the shores of Canaan before 1500 B.C:E.
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