Who are the biblical patriarchs?

'Head of a family,' applied in the N.T. to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as ancestors of the Israelites, and to the twelve sons of Jacob. David also is thus designated. Acts 2:29; Acts 7:8-9; Heb. 7:4. In other passages the same persons are called 'the fathers.'

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were distinctively the "fathers of Israel," the heads of a people called of God, to walk in the earth, as happily dependent on Him. Abraham leads the way; and while most exemplary for the faith which characterised him, he had also to contend with peculiarities of natural character and conflicts, unknown to Isaac and Jacob. If the path was higher, the difficulties were greater; if the faith was more vigorous, the resistance and denial of nature were more obstinate and severe; but in leadership, this became him. The mighty agencies of divine faith engaged in fatal conflict each daring opposition, which wilful nature, struggling for existence, raised against it. The combat was a close one:— dependence on God, wresting the creature from the government of his own will in order to subject it to God's will, must have evoked nature's bitterest antagonism. Abraham properly presents the leadership in this momentous engagement. Isaac follows: a leader, to be sure, but in a subordinate degree. Abraham, as it were conquers the country; Isaac is required to retain it. Abraham storms the fortress, endures all the contingencies of a protracted siege, effects an entrance, and possesses it; Isaac must hold the position against the common foe. Abraham suffers while contending for possession; Isaac, while keeping it. Abraham's hindrances are generally from the force of circumstances outside him; Isaac's, almost always from personal weakness. Isaac presents to us the inability of nature, in its best and fairest condition, to hold the path of faith, on which, through grace, man is set. His failures are not so much the strength of the enemy turning him aside, as the mere weakness of humanity. The disciples slept when the Lord asked them to watch, not from evil, for "the spirit was willing," but because "the flesh was weak," and it could not demonstrate the very feelings it commended. Isaac teaches us how weak and rickety the best part of our nature is in the path of faith, how it fails therein, and hence the discipline necessary for it.

An Englishman who believes may speak of God as his Father; but he cannot talk of "the God of his fathers" except as imitating the phrase of a Jew. This reference of course is to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are the true fathers whom God chose to be the depositories of promise, on behalf of their seed and land, yet to be verified under Messiah: a most happy time for the world, after its hitherto sinful and sad history. I do not of course speak of the gospel, founded on Christ's cross and calling us as the church to heavenly glory. But there is a bright and blessed time for the earth when Israel shall be truly the people of Jehovah exalted above all nations and a blessing to them. The church will have a glorious place in heaven, and will reign over the earth, but not on it. This is the mistake often made in rendering Rev. 5:10. It ought to be not "on" but "over." There is an idiom in the construction which bears this out. Why it should have been over looked by many excellent scholars seems strange; for the usage is plain enough.

God's divine wisdom chose and fitted Abraham, a man of outstanding faith, to be the father of this favoured nation. Stephen, in his masterful address to the Jewish council recorded in Acts chapter seven, reminds them of this great beginning of their distinctive history: “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham” (Acts 7:2). Here was a great man, separated from his own family, brought into a different land but having no possession in it, yet promised that it would be given to the nation that came from him. Then when one hundred years of age he received the son through whom this promise was to be fulfilled (Genesis 21:5). This and other succeeding events in Israel's history illustrate the sovereign and miraculous power of God in conclusive proof of His choice of that nation for His own wise purpose.

Then Isaac had two sons, but God set aside the older and designated Jacob as His choice to be the immediate father of the nation Israel, and gave him the name Israel. Twelve sons were born to Jacob and these were destined to be the heads of the twelve tribes of which the nation was formed.

The first fourteen flourished during the patriarchal age; "the patriarch David" (Acts 2:29), completing the list. They were for the most part "men of renown" and "elders," who received a good report through faith, whom the Lord greatly honoured, each in his own generation, by taking them up, and using them as instruments in His hands, of shaping the destinies of the nation that grew so very rapidly, and was so highly favoured of Jehovah.

Until we reach Enoch the antediluvian patriarchs are mentioned without comment, save their age when the son was born in whom the line of faith and promise was continued, and the total years of their long lives. Enoch was the seventh from Adam, as we are reminded in the epistle of Jude, and he was an outstanding character, as outstanding for good as Lamech, the seventh from Adam in the line of Cain, had been for evil. If in the one we see the world in its rebellion and sinfulness beginning to take shape, in the other we see the believer's separate pathway through the world.

Gen. 5, in giving us a list of these, presents some very striking facts. For not only are their respective ages given, but the very great ages, to which most of them attained, enabled certain "holy prophets," whose names are here given, to testify to many succeeding generations the wondrous works of God. Before the flood there was delivered an oral testimony. Adam and Methuselah were contemporary for over 240 years. One interpretation of the name given to the latter by his father Enoch is, "At his death the breaking forth of waters." These two things are certain, viz., that Enoch foresaw coming judgments, and that the days of the long life of his son was in itself a manifestation of the longsuffering of God ere that judgment by water was outpoured. For Methuselah died just before the flood. The words, "and he died," repeated so many times in this chapter, furnish us with a striking contrast to the words, "And He shall live" written with reference to David's Son and Lord in Ps. 72:15.

Having glanced at ancient Egypt in its greatness, we will transfer our thoughts to the land of Canaan, or rather, to the men dwelling there in tents, whom God had called out of the surrounding idolatry to serve Him. There was civilization and there were kingdoms of great importance in Canaan, but we shall merely glance at the surroundings of the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob dwelt in tents and owned no landed possessions, but they were wealthy in flocks and herds, and more, they were great men — not indeed kings, but the noble heads of a royal race. A kingly dignity attaches itself to their words and ways, and this we see mingled with a simplicity of life impossible in palaces. The ruins of the temples and the records of the long since dead palace life of old Egypt remain to this day; but in a manner as remarkable, the dignity of the tent and the simplicity of its life abides still. We can learn the life lived by the ancient Egyptians from observing the pictures on their monuments; we can see the life lived by the patriarchs by observing the children of the desert, the Ishmaelites, who trace their parentage to Abraham.

The Pentateuch furnishes a necessary introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Its place is so manifestly at the beginning, that few words are needed in justification of this statement. Without the Pentateuch, the book of Joshua, for instance, and the whole subsequent history of Israel, would be suspended in the air, as we might say; a contention indeed which higher criticism has made, following the example of secular histories. With these, indeed, the origin and early development of nations is largely enshrouded in shadow, myths and fables which it is well-nigh impossible to separate from authentic history. If Israel's history were a mere secular work, no wonder that it should be contended that their origin too is in a haze of myth and contradictory fable in which it is impossible to separate the elements of the truth from the surrounding mass. But if the true historian of the people of God is none other than the Holy Spirit, we may be sure that the method of His work, as well as the contents of the history will be absolutely perfect. With this in mind, how naturally and beautifully the narrative begins in Genesis, with the whole human family in view, but gradually narrowing down to the elect family whose history is also traced through various generations, showing, not merely the antecedents, but the characteristics of the founders of the nation of Israel. These natural traits, as seen in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with the twelve patriarchs, are stamped indelibly upon the nation of Israel as a whole.

We do not now speak of those characteristics of faith which are the fruit of grace alone, but of the natural elements of independence as seen in Abraham, the separateness as seen in Isaac, and of an energy, none too scrupulous of method, as seen in Jacob. These characteristics are reproduced in the twelve patriarchs and extend to their descendants. We find them spread abroad upon the entire page of Old Testament history; and without this introduction, we should be left in the dark as to very much of what is recorded in the later historical books, the prophecies, etc.

It all hangs perfectly together: man under this patient but strong hand of God, ever to be watched, never to be reckoned upon. On the other hand, faith in God always therefore the one necessity, always sure amid all changes. With this, as the apostle shows, witnesses that covenant of circumcision of which Stephen thereupon speaks. Abraham is near a hundred years old," his body now dead," nothing more to be expected from it. Just there it is that God, as the "Almighty" God, comes in to renew His assurance of what He will do, when Abraham can do nothing. Circumcision is "the putting off the body of the flesh" (Col. 2:11); and thus it was to him "the seal of the righteousness of faith which he had, being yet uncircumcised" (Rom. 4:11). Where then is the law, and all the work of man in which Israel so trusted, in the covenant given to a man with a "body now dead"? And this sign is now to be put upon all the seed of Abraham: "And so he begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob, and Jacob the twelve patriarchs" or tribe-fathers.