Sojourn in this land; and I will be with thee and bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries; and I will perform the oath which I swore unto Abraham thy father.
Famine has struck the land, and Isaac is drifting toward Egypt. God stops him with a command and a promise. The command is to stay — and to stay as a sojourner, not a settler. The promise is God's own presence, the land, and an oath already sworn to his father.
Isaac was heading the same way his father once went. God stopped him first, and the wording of God's instruction matters:
Perhaps Isaac had some thought of going on down to Egypt. We can think so because God appeared to him, telling him not to go there, but to remain in the land of promise (v. 2). He was not told to remain in one place, but to sojourn in the land. He could in this way count upon the blessing of the Lord for himself and his descendants.
Egypt stood for natural resources. Staying in the land meant living by faith instead:
This was a fresh call in new circumstances, for the Lord appeared to him again. He was not called to journey to a land, but to live where He would show him. He was not to look for natural resources (Egypt). He was not to go back, but to live by faith.
God had told Abraham to leave everything and go. He tells Isaac the opposite, and that reversal is Isaac's test:
Here we have Isaac's distinctive trial of faith. God called Abraham to leave his land, his relatives, and his father's house for the land that the Lord would show him — and He did show him. But God charged Isaac not to leave, but to sojourn in that land. This had its own difficulties, which grace does not spare... So Isaac did not go down into Egypt, because the Lord had plainly forbidden it — not even under the pressure of famine in the land. Abraham, as we know, did go. But there he dishonoured the Lord, his wife, and himself, however rich he became as a result.
Isaac avoided Egypt and stopped at Gerar instead. Commentators rank the two places rather than treat them as the same:
There is a manifest difference between Egypt and Gerar. Egypt is the expression of the world in its natural resources, and its independence of God... In distance, Egypt lay further from Canaan than Gerar did. In moral terms, it stands for a soul further from God... So compared with Egypt, Gerar was a step forward. But it still lay within reach of very dangerous influences. Abraham got into trouble there, and so does Isaac, in this chapter, and that, too, in the very same way.
Sojourning and settling are not the same thing. One writer traces Isaac's later troubles to the moment he blurred the two:
He allows him to sojourn there, to test whether it can be done. But He adds, "Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you." Isaac not only sojourns in Gerar, but dwells there, and as a consequence his troubles begin. He has another lesson to learn here. However prosperous he may be in the land of the Philistines, he can never enjoy the peace and calm his soul wanted while he is mixed up with them.
The promise does not remove the famine. It shrinks it. God meets Isaac's fear, then lifts his eyes past it:
The Lord takes such an interest in His people that He makes everything which concerns us His own concern. We only have to give Him glory by leaving Him to show that He needs the famine to prove how far above it He is. So God is seen coming down into the little circle of Isaac's doubts and fears to hold him up. He also lifts the hopes of this resurrection heir of promise into the full breadth and length of His own purposes for Isaac's descendants, and the possession of all the countries around him. What was the famine in the presence of such a God?
The land is not offered to Isaac on new terms. It rests on an oath already sworn, and that oath carried no conditions:
In Genesis 15 the promise rests on a covenant God made with Abraham, again without condition. It is an outright gift of the land... God confirms these promises to Isaac (Gen. 26:3-4) and to Jacob (Gen. 35:10, 12). Here are "the promises made to the fathers"... God makes them to Abraham, whether spiritual or earthly, without any condition.
- Stay. The trial is not to go somewhere, but to remain — God forbade him the very road his father had taken.
- Sojourn. The word means living in the land as a temporary resident. God did not tie Isaac to one spot, and He did not mean him to settle down either.
- Halfway. Gerar is nearer God than Egypt, yet still within reach of dangerous influences. Father and son both failed there in the very same way.
- Presence. The promise attached to obedience is God Himself. He answers famine not by explaining it, but by proving He is greater than it.
- Oath. God had already sworn this to Abraham without conditions. Isaac's obedience places him inside the promise; it does not create it.
And I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and unto thy seed will I give all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves --
A famine has driven Isaac to Gerar. There God appears to him and repeats the promise once sworn to his father Abraham. Three questions follow. Who is this "offspring"? Why are the descendants counted as stars? And how can one family bring blessing to every nation?
These words are not new. One writer follows the promise back through Genesis, and finds one part of it that never drops out:
God first gave the promise of blessing when His call first reached Abraham. This is in Genesis 12:3. Then in Genesis 18:18 He confirms it to him. Again, in Genesis 22:16-18 the promise grows fuller, and we discover that the fulfilment comes through "the Seed," who is Christ... Then further, He confirms the promise to Isaac and to Jacob, in Genesis 26:4 and Genesis 28:14; and both times "the Seed" appears. Once He enters, the Seed never drops out, because everything depends on Him for its fulfilment.
Does "offspring" mean a crowd of descendants, or one person? The New Testament settles it:
As God had said to Abraham, so He assures Isaac, "in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed" (v. 4). The "offspring" here is not their many descendants, for Galatians 3:16 insists, "It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ." Abraham is a picture of God the Father, and in His Son, the Lord Jesus, all nations will be blessed.
The picture God gives Isaac differs from the one He later gives Jacob. Writers read that difference as deliberate:
God speaks of multiplying Isaac's descendants "as the stars of heaven." He does not tell Isaac, as He does Jacob later, that his offspring would be "like the dust of the earth" (Genesis 28:14). This is because Jacob is seen as the father of Israel, while Isaac pictures Christ and stands out for His relationship to Rebekah, a picture of the church. Israel is God's earthly people, so the dust of the earth signifies their number. The church is heavenly, so the stars of heaven stand for it.
The promise reaches past one family. Writers point to what it means for people outside Israel:
"The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed." It showed that they would be blessed as Gentiles — not by becoming Jews in effect; for the blessing would flow out to them as Gentiles. "So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith."
This promise was never a secret. The people who received it were never meant to keep it for themselves.
It was no secret that the nations were to be blessed. That promise was as ancient as the one that gave Abraham's descendants their special place of honour. God repeated it to Isaac (Genesis 26:4) and again to Jacob (Genesis 28:14). A Jew should never have thought of the LORD's pledge of blessing to his race without remembering one thing: he himself was to be the channel of blessing to the nations.
There is no "if" in what God says here. The certainty rests somewhere other than in the man who hears it:
The promise was absolute and unconditional. It announced that God Himself would accomplish the blessing through the one promised Seed, and that accomplishment depended on His own faithfulness alone... Such was the force of the unconditional promise made to Abraham. It made the blessing of the nations certain: the question of righteousness was not raised. God had promised to Abraham, and confirmed it to the one Seed. His faithfulness would perform it.
The same chapter records Isaac denying his wife, just as his father had done. Promise and failure stand side by side:
Genesis 26:1-22 shows the weakness of Isaac's faith. Like Abraham, he would have gone down to Egypt during the famine, but God restrained him. He shows the same weakness as his father in denying his wife. Along with this, we have the faithful mercy of God which restores him and gives abundant blessing.
- Repeated — The same promise runs from Genesis 12 to 22 to 26 to 28. Once "the Seed" enters, He is never left out again, because everything depends on Him.
- Singular — The nations are blessed in one Person, not in a crowd. Galatians 3:16 names Him: Christ.
- Starry — Isaac hears of stars; Jacob hears of dust. Commentators take the stars as pointing beyond Israel to the church.
- Unconditional — God attaches no condition to Isaac. The promise rests on His own faithfulness, and that makes the blessing of the nations certain.
- Undeserved — God gives it to a man who then denies his wife. The same chapter shows His mercy restoring him and blessing him anyway.