People of the Bible

Isaac

The patriarchs and matriarchs · Around 1900 BC (traditional) · Appears in Genesis 21 to 35

Isaac is the son of Abraham and Sarah, the child of promise born in their old age, and the second of the three patriarchs. His life links the great story of Abraham to that of Jacob and the twelve tribes. He is remembered for being carried up Mount Moriah as a willing offering, for his marriage to Rebekah, and for a quiet, faithful life.

And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.Genesis 26:24 (KJV)

The child of laughter

Isaac was the long-promised son, born to Abraham and Sarah when they were far past the age of children, the answer to twenty-five years of waiting. His very name, meaning laughter, held both the doubt his mother had once felt and the joy his birth had brought. From his first breath he was the child on whom all the promises of God to Abraham depended, the single thread through which a great nation and a blessing for all the earth were meant to come.

His childhood is quiet in the record, marked mostly by the tension between him and his older half-brother Ishmael, until Ishmael and his mother Hagar were sent away and the covenant was fixed on Isaac alone. He grew up the cherished heir of an aging father, unaware, at first, of the trial that would test that whole family to its depths.

The offering on Moriah

While Isaac was still young, God tested Abraham by commanding him to take his son, his only son whom he loved, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain in the land of Moriah. Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice up the hill on his own shoulders, and his one recorded question pierces the story: Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering. His father answered, My son, God will provide himself a lamb.

Old enough to resist and yet submitting, Isaac let himself be bound and laid upon the altar over the wood. At the last moment, as Abraham reached for the knife, the angel of the LORD called from heaven and stopped him, and there in a thicket was a ram, caught by its horns, which Abraham offered in his son's place. Isaac came down the mountain alive, a son given back as from the dead, and the place was named The LORD will provide. That day marked him forever as the promised son who had lain upon the altar and been spared.

Rebekah, and a settled life

When Isaac was grown, Abraham would not have him marry among the Canaanites and sent his trusted servant back to his own kindred to find a wife. Guided by prayer and providence, the servant met Rebekah at a well, and she consented to leave her home and go to a husband she had never seen. Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and he loved her, and was comforted after his mother's death. For twenty years they had no children, and Isaac entreated the LORD for his wife, and she conceived twins, Esau and Jacob, who struggled even in the womb.

Unlike his restless father and his scheming son, Isaac lived a settled, largely peaceful life. He stayed in the land God had promised, tended his flocks, and grew wealthy. When the Philistines stopped up the wells his father had dug, Isaac patiently dug them again rather than fight, and when they quarreled over the water, he moved on and dug another, choosing peace over strife until at last there was room and he could say the LORD had made room for them.

The same peaceable spirit marked his dealings with the Philistine king Abimelech. After their quarrels over the wells, the king came to Isaac seeking a treaty, saying he had plainly seen that the LORD was with him, and the two made a covenant of peace, ate and drank together, and parted in friendship. That very day Isaac's servants brought news that they had found water in a fresh well. Isaac's quiet trust left blessing and peace in its wake wherever he settled.

The God of his father at Beersheba

In his own generation Isaac received the covenant God had made with his father. When famine came, God told him not to go down to Egypt but to stay in the land, and renewed to him the very promises given to Abraham: to be with him, to bless him, to multiply his descendants as the stars of heaven, and through his seed to bless all the nations of the earth. Isaac believed, sowed in that land, and reaped a hundredfold, and the LORD blessed him until he grew very great.

At Beersheba the LORD appeared to him by night and said, Fear not, for I am with thee, and Isaac built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD. His faith was not dramatic but real, received from his father and personally his own. So God bound his own name to this quiet man forever, choosing to be known through all the ages as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and Isaac took his place as the steady second link in the chain of promise.

His character and significance

Of the three patriarchs Isaac is the quietest. He digs no empire and fights no great battles, and much of his life is spent staying in the land, tending flocks, reopening old wells, and yielding rather than quarreling. He is a man of prayer, praying for his barren wife, and a man of peace. His willingness on Moriah, submitting to his father and to God, marks him as trusting rather than heroic, faithful in the ordinary rhythm of a settled life rather than in dramatic exploits.

His one great failure came at the end, when, old and blind, he loved Esau for the venison he brought and meant to give him the covenant blessing, only to be deceived by Jacob and Rebekah. Yet even that human mess did not derail God's purpose. Isaac is the bridge of the covenant, the link between Abraham who received the promise and Jacob whose sons became the twelve tribes, and God binds his own name to him forever as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Where Isaac points to Christ

On Mount Moriah Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice up the hill, just as Jesus carried his cross up to Golgotha in the same region. He was the beloved and only son, offered by his father in obedience and yet received back, as the book of Hebrews says, in a figure from the dead. His silent submission on the altar foreshadows the greater Son who set his face to go to his death.

But there is a deep difference that makes the gospel shine. Where Isaac was spared by a ram caught in a thicket, no substitute was provided for Jesus, for he himself was the Lamb that God provided, given in our place. Abraham's ancient answer, God will provide himself a lamb, was fulfilled at last on those same mountains when the Father gave his own Son, and the promised son who once came down from Moriah alive became the picture of the true Son who went up to the cross and rose again.

A note on the sources: everything above is drawn from the biblical text itself. Where a detail comes from later tradition rather than Scripture, it is named as tradition. Dates for the earliest figures are traditional and approximate, and Scripture does not always give them. The aim is to tell each life honestly, and to let it do what the whole Bible does, point to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Related: Abraham · Jacob · All the people of the Bible