Topic: Persons Of The Bible - Isaac

The name "Isaac" is derived from the Hebrew name יִצְחָק (Yitzchaq) which meant "he laughs or laughter."

Isaac was the only son whom Sara bore to Abraham, in the hundredth year of Abraham's age, at Gerar. (B.C. 1897.) In Isaac's infancy he became the object of Ishmael's jealousy; and in Isaac's youth the victim, in intention, of Abraham's great sacrificial act of faith.

Isaac was the longest lived of the three patriarchs (Gen. 21:1-3). Isaac was circumcised when eight days old (4-7); and when he was probably two years old, a great feast was held in connection with his being weaned. The next memorable event in Isaac's life is connected with the command of God given to Abraham to offer him up as a sacrifice on a mountain in the land of Moriah (Gen. 22). When Isaac was forty years of age Rebekah, his cousin, was chosen for his wife (Gen. 24). After the death and burial of Isaac's father Isaac took up his residence at Beer-lahai-roi (25:7-11), where his two sons, Esau and Jacob, were born (21-26), the former of whom seems to have been Isaac's favorite son (27,28).

Driven by famine to Gerar, Isaac acquired great wealth by his flocks but was repeatedly dispossessed by the Philistines of the wells which he sunk at convenient stations. At Gerar, Isaac practiced deception as to his relation to Rebekah, imitating the conduct of his father in Egypt (12:12-20) and in Gerar (20:2). The Philistine king rebuked him for his prevarication. After sojourning for some time in the land of the Philistines, he returned to Beersheba, where God gave him fresh assurance of a covenant blessing, and where Abimelech entered into a covenant of peace with him.

The next chief event in Isaac's life was the blessing of his sons (Gen. 27:1).

After the deceit by which Jacob acquired his father's blessing, Isaac sent his son to seek a wife in Padan-aram. All that we know of Isaac during the last forty-three years of his life is that he saw that God, with a large and prosperous family, return to him at Hebron. (Genesis 36:27).

Isaac died at Mamre, "being old and full of days" (35:27-29), one hundred and eighty years old, and was buried by his two sons in the cave of Machpelah. In the New Testament, reference is made to Isaac having been "offered up" by his father (Heb. 11:17; James 2:21), and to his blessing his sons (Heb. 11:20). As the child of promise, he is contrasted with Ishmael (Rom. 9:7, 10; Gal. 4:28; Heb. 11:18).

In reference to the offering up of Isaac by Abraham, the primary doctrine taught are those of sacrifice and substitution, as the means appointed by God for taking away sin; and, as co-ordinate with these, the need of the obedience of faith, on the part of man, to receive the benefit (Hebrews 11:17). The animal which God provided and Abraham offered was in the whole history of sacrifice the recognized type of "the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." Isaac is the type of humanity itself, devoted to death for sin.

Isaac is "at once a counterpart of his father in simple devoutness and purity of life, and a contrast in his passive weakness of character, which in part, at least, may have sprung from his relations to his mother and wife. After the expulsion of Ishmael and Hagar, Isaac had no competitor, and grew up in the shade of Sarah's tent, molded into feminine softness by habitual submission to her strong, loving will." His life was so quiet and uneventful that it was spent "within the circle of a few miles; so guileless that he let Jacob overreach him rather than disbelieve his assurance; so tender that his mother's death was the poignant sorrow of years; so patient and gentle that peace with his neighbors was dearer than even such a coveted possession as a well of living water dug by his own men; so grandly obedient that he put his life at his father's disposal; so firm in his reliance on God that his greatest concern through life was to honor the divine promise given to his race." Quote taken from Geikie's Hours, etc.

Derived from Easton's and Smith's Bible Dictionaries

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