[5] Because that Abraham
obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and
my laws. [6] And Isaac dwelt in Gerar:
Abraham obeyed my voice - Do thou do so too, and the
promise shall be sure to thee. A great variety of words is here used to
express the Divine Will to which Abraham was obedient, my voice, my charge,
my commandments, my statutes, and my laws - Which may intimate, that Abraham's
obedience was universal; he obeyed the original laws of nature, the revealed
laws of divine worship, particularly that of circumcision, and all the
extraordinary precepts God gave him, as that of quitting his country, and
that (which some think is more especially referred to) the offering up
of his son, which Isaac himself had reason enough to remember. Those only
shall have the benefit of God's covenant with their parents, that tread
the steps of their obedience.
[7] And the men of the place
asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to
say, She is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me
for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon.
He said, she is my sister - So Isaac enters into the
same temptation that his father had been once and again surprised and overcome
by, viz. to deny his wife, and to give out that she was his sister! It
is an unaccountable thing, that both these great and good men should be
guilty of so odd a piece of dissimulation, by which they so much exposed
both their own and their wives reputation.
[8] And it came to pass, when
he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked
out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah
his wife. [9] And Abimelech called
Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and how saidst thou,
She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for
her.
This Abimelech was not the same that was in Abraham's
days, Genesis 20:2- 18, for this was near an hundred years after, but that
was thecommon name of the Philistine kings, as Caesar of the Roman emperors.
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