A sceptical reading of the Bible – Genesis. Chapters 25 To 26
Though now close to death himself, Abraham remarries, this time to a girl called Keturan. She bears him several children, all of who are named in the next few verses.
Abraham loves his son enough to shower them with gifts and wealth, but he makes sure they are kept distant from Isaac, by giving them their own lands. Isaac’s bloodline is the chosen people. The descendants of the other children are not so important to Abraham or to God. .
At 175, Abraham dies, and Isaac buries him beside Sarah in the family crypt-cave they bought in Hesh in Chapter 23.
Isaac finds Rebecca barren, and it looks initially as if their lives will follow a similar story to that of Abraham & Sarah in her struggles to conceive. However, a quick prayer to God by Isaac, and Rebecca is fertile again right away.
Flash forward 9 months. Rebecca is due to have twins, and finds them fighting in her womb even before their birth. God tells her that the boys will grow to rule separate mighty kingdoms, and to expect conflict between them.
Though twins, only one can be born at a time, meaning the first boy out of the womb is to be regarded as the first born, and the chief heir to his father, Isaac. That privilege goes to Esau, a red-fleshed and heavily hairy-bodied child, gruff and surly from birth.
The second son is Jacob.
Though Isaac loves his brother dearly, Rebecca favours her second son over Esau, and plots heavily against him at every turn.
Jacob quickly tunes into his mother’s plans and within a few verses of us being told how much he loves Esau, Jacob is also plotting his downfall. It begins when Jacob sweet-talks the older brother out of concern for his birthright, making Jacob, the second son of Isaac, heir to his father’s wealth and power. Worse will follow.
Isaac plays out one of Abraham’s old confidence trick swindles, but it almost goes terribly wrong for him. As a famine strikes his land, Isaac is advised by God to seek sanctuary in Egypt,
As Abraham had done twice with Sarah a generation earlier, Isaac passes Rebecca off as his sister and not his wife in order to try to sell her into a harem, but a wise Philistine king has seen the couple embracing and plotting the scheme. He reproaches the couple severely and warns his people not to interfere with their presence in Egypt.
Left unchallenged or molested, though obliged to stay for many years due to the duration of the famine in surrounding lands, Isaac becomes a successful farmer, and that makes him both wealthy and powerful. Fearing his status rivals his own, the king tells him to get out of Egypt.
Isaac travels to Gerar, finding the wells there built by Abraham on his journeys through the region as described in earlier chapters. We now see the purpose of those episodes as Isaac and his brethren benefit from the wells Abraham consecrated as holy before God hundreds of years before.
The people of Gerar, knowing nothing of the history of the wells, consider them their own, as they are on their lands. Isaac is forced to move away, and he visits other towns where we saw Abraham place wells in Genesis. Each time, Isaac is again moved on, into forced nomadic living, though with God providing water at appropriate needed well stations.
Eventually, the people of Gerar send an army captain to talk with Isaac. They have realized somehow that he has divine favour and protection. They want a share of it. Isaac welcomes the alliance with the Gerarians and all seems well again.
Trouble is brewing though, with word that Esau has married a woman of Hittite race, who are not popular in Isaac’s circles.
All text quotations from http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1801
Arthur Chappell
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