In his discussion of the biblical type scene, Robert Alter speaks of the “patterns of repetition, symmetry, [and] contrast” which characterize the narratives of Scripture, patterns that give pleasure to the reader while also building up a web of meaningful connections between texts.¹ But if readers are to notice these patterns, translators like myself must ensure that identical phrasing in the original is reflected (where possible) by identical phrasing in the translation, while merely similar phrasing is likewise merely similar—not identical—in translation. Over the past year, I have been checking our team’s translation of Genesis and Exodus, in which repetition, symmetry, and contrast abound. I have spent a considerable amount of time on the covenant promises given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: the promises share a basic symmetry, but they are also characterized by differences; no promise oracle is identical to any other. I was particularly interested in the promises the Lord gave to Isaac in Genesis 26:2-5. On a cursory reading, they seem like a simple repetition of previous promises: offspring, blessing, land. But a closer reading, done in parallel with the specific promises given to Abraham over the course of his life, shows that there’s a clear dependence between the form of the promises in Genesis 26, given to Isaac in Gerar, and the form of the promises repeated to Abraham on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22, just after his (near) sacrifice of Isaac. In this essay I lay out the details of the Lord’s promises to Isaac in Gerar and explore what those promises tell us about both Isaac in Gerar and Abraham at Moriah.

Isaac Among the Patriarchs

Genesis 26 recounts the story of a famine that drives Isaac to sojourn in the Philistine town of Gerar. It is here that the Lord first appears to Isaac and extends the Abrahamic covenant to him. But before examining the promises given at Gerar, we should orient ourselves to Isaac’s role in the patriarchal stories; we can then return to how that role is developed in Genesis 26.

Robert Alter remarks of Isaac that “he is manifestly the most passive of the patriarchs.”² He is the central character of only one chapter, Genesis 26, which comprises a kind of travelogue with three progressive scenes: Isaac’s sojourn in Gerar; his departure and dispute over several wells in the Valley of Gerar; and his resettling in Beersheba, where Abimelech makes a treaty with him. Everywhere else that he appears in Genesis, he is upstaged either by his father, or half-brother, or wife, or sons. But he is by no means an unimportant character. He is, after all (as Alter also says), “the first man … born into the covenant God has made with Abraham and his seed.”³ This is what is crucial about Isaac: not his personality (which is weak) or his exploits (of which there are none), but his status as the elect son who will, together with Rebekah, produce yet another heir to the covenant. Genesis 25 and 27 are especially concerned with Isaac’s sons and which one will be heir to the Abrahamic covenant. But Genesis 26 confirms Isaac’s own status as elect son.

Of course, Isaac’s election is never really in doubt. All the way back in Genesis 17, when the Lord gave the sign of circumcision to Abram, Isaac was identified as the son to whom the Lord would “confirm” the Abrahamic covenant (17:7, 19, 21). And it is not just in Genesis 17 that Isaac is identified as the elect son. Later, when Hagar and her son were expelled, the Lord again identified Isaac as Abraham’s heir: “in Isaac”—not in Ishmael—“your offspring will be called” (21:12).

Nevertheless, at the time of Abraham’s death (25:8-10), the Lord had not yet appeared to Isaac, nor had he confirmed the covenant. It’s true that Abraham, sometime before his death, “gave all that belonged to him to Isaac” (25:5), marking Isaac out as his sole heir; and by the end of chapter 25, Isaac had been blessed by the Lord (25:11), his barren wife had received an oracle and given birth to twin sons (25:19-28), and those sons had established their characters and destinies over a pot of red stuff and a birthright negotiation (25:29-34). But still Isaac himself had not heard directly from the Lord regarding the covenant promises.

Famine and Covenant

Now we reach chapter 26, where we read, “and there was a famine in the land” (26:1), repeating the exact phrase that introduced the famine which sent Abram to Egypt (12:10). In case the reader is slow to notice, Moses explicitly reminds us of Abram’s famine by telling us that this famine is in addition to that earlier one. That earlier famine came right on the heels of Abram’s arrival in Canaan, and it was the first major test of the covenant promises: how could Abram’s offspring inherit a country he has just left, and how could he have offspring if he is killed by the Egyptians or his wife is defiled by the Pharaoh? The Lord’s protection and enrichment of Abram during the famine, and his safe return to the land, were reported as demonstrations that the Lord is fully committed to the promises he had made. The Lord’s election of Abram, announced by word in the first half of Genesis 12, was born out in history—in a famine—in the second half of Genesis 12.

Thus Genesis 26:1 leads the reader to expect that Abraham’s son, displaced by a famine, is about to see for himself that the Lord has chosen him. And so it is: Isaac’s adversity and displacement are the occasion for the first direct word he receives from the Lord, who appears to him and tells him not to go to Egypt, but to stay temporarily in Gerar, a Philistine city. The Lord then explicitly extends the covenant promises first made with Abraham to Isaac, assuring him that this famine will not end his life or destroy his family or permanently separate him from the land. The mere fact that the Lord has finally appeared and spoken to Isaac is enough to make the reader take notice: this is the first of only two times that the Lord speaks directly to Isaac, the second coming soon after he leaves Gerar (26:24). In contrast, the Lord spoke with Abraham on nine different occasions, spanning chapters 12 to 22.⁴

Covenant Promises for Isaac: New and Old

But the importance of these promises to Isaac lies not merely in their narrative prominence, but also—indeed, especially—in the details of their wording. The Lord’s promises to Abraham, repeated multiple times throughout the course of his life, were never repeated verbatim: their repetition was characterized everywhere by variation and development. For example, the promise of offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth (13:16) became offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven (15:5), and after the offering of Isaac, the sand of the sea was added to the stars of heaven (22:17): thus, the promises came to encompass the three primal regions of creation—earth, heavens, and sea—and the final promise included both stars and sand, as though to intensify the effect.

So what form do the promises to Isaac take? Right off we notice a new promise: “I will be with you” (26:3). This is the first time in Genesis that the Lord promises to be with someone, and the explicit verbal pairing of the Lord’s presence and “blessing” is unique to Isaac among the patriarchs.⁵ Starting with Isaac, the Lord’s presence is an increasingly important theme in the patriarchal stories, beginning with Isaac and culminating with Moses building the Tabernacle.

Next comes the promise that “to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands” (26:3), echoing promises made to Abraham throughout his life, but without obviously depending on the wording of any particular previous episode in which promises were made to Abraham.⁶

Isaac’s Covenant as an “Oath Confirmed”

The next words affirm that the Lord really is extending the Abrahamic covenant to Isaac, not just making similar promises: “and I will confirm the oath that I swore to Abraham your father” (26:3). The verbs, italicized here in my translation of the verse, connect to earlier scenes from the life of Abraham. The verb “confirm” takes us back to the last time that the word “covenant” (berith) was used to denote the relationship God established with the patriarchs, back in Genesis 17:21, “but my covenant I will confirm with Isaac.” The expectation set up in Genesis 17:21 is finally confirmed in 26:3.

But why use the noun “oath” (derived from the verb “to swear,” also used in the verse⁷) instead of “covenant” in 26:3? One clue is that the only other time in Genesis that the Lord is the subject of the verb “to swear” is in Genesis 22:16, immediately after Abraham’s (near) sacrifice of his son Isaac. The Angel of the Lord says, “By myself I swear—oracle of YHWH—that because of this thing you did, namely, you did not spare your son, your one-and-only, so blessing I will bless you, and I will multiply your offspring…” (22:16-17a). Thus the wording in 26:3—the verb “swear” and the use of the derived noun “oath” in reference to the covenant—suggests that the Lord, in confirming the covenant with Isaac in Genesis 26, wishes to recall chapter 22’s promises on Mount Moriah, an episode that must have been seared in Isaac’s memory. (And might the expression “Abraham your father” be intentionally poignant in the context of the events on Mount Moriah?)

Isaac’s Covenant Continued: “Stars of Heaven”

If the connection to Mount Moriah seems far-fetched, pay attention to the next part of the Lord’s promise to Isaac: “and I will multiply your offspring like the stars of the heavens” (26:4). This is an almost exact quotation of the Lord’s oracle to Abraham on Mount Moriah: “and multiplying I will multiply your offspring like the stars of the heavens” (22:17). The only difference is the emphatic repetition of the verb “multiplying” in 22:17.⁸ The following clause, “and all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring” (26:4b) is also a direct quotation from Moriah, this one from 22:18.⁹

Heeding the Voice of the Lord

The Lord’s word to Isaac concludes with the reason the Lord is confirming this oath with him: not because of anything Isaac has done, but “because Abraham heeded my voice” (26:5a), another quotation of the Lord’s words to Abraham at Moriah, modified only to reflect the change from second to third person (22:18). This expression used for obedience, “heeding”—literally, “hearing” or “listening to”—someone’s “voice,” is a motif in the Abraham story. Abram erred when he “heeded the voice of Sarai” and slept with Hagar (16:2) rather than fully trusting the Lord’s promise; there the expression echoed God’s earlier rebuke of Adam, that he “heeded the voice of [his] wife” (3:10) rather than trusting and obeying the voice of God. Then, in Genesis 21:12 the Lord actually instructed Abraham to “heed” his wife’s “voice” (a point obscured in most translations) and expel Hagar with her son; here is an irony: listening to his wife’s poor instructions in chapter 16 has made it necessary to once again listen to her voice and carry out a painful dissolution of paternal bonds in chapter 21. But in Genesis 22, on Mount Moriah, Abraham heeds the voice of the Lord, trusting and obeying, and earning the Lord’s commendation. The events on Mount Moriah are the first time in Genesis that the expression “heed (someone’s) voice” describes obedience to God, and it isn’t used that way again until Genesis 26, when the Lord recalls this incident to Isaac, the second son that Abraham was told to separate from.

But in speaking to Isaac, the Lord does not merely repeat his praise of Abraham’s obedience: he amplifies it, saying, “and he kept my keeping: my commands, my ordinances, and my instructions” (26:5). The verb “keep” is a characteristic way to talk about guarding or keeping watch (Adam is placed in the garden to “keep” it in Gen. 2:3). Here in 26:5, that which is kept is a noun derived from the verb “keep,” a “keeping” or “charge.” This noun is used nowhere else in Genesis, but the verb is: Abraham was instructed to “keep” the covenant in 17:9-10; later, just before the judgment on Sodom, the Lord says that he has chosen Abraham to command his children “to keep the way of YHWH, to do righteousness and justice” (18:19). Returning to Gen. 26:5, we observe that the Lord’s judgment that Abraham “kept [his] keeping” immediately follows a reference to the Moriah incident, suggesting that when Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, it was in this very act that he “kept” the “keeping” he had been given, a keeping which in the larger context of the Abraham story means that Abraham was faithful both to the covenant and to the Lord’s ways of righteousness and justice.

After “he kept my keeping” comes a list of three more things kept by Abraham: “my commands, my ordinances, and my instructions” (26:5). As with the noun “keeping,” these nouns show up nowhere else in Genesis, but they are all characteristic ways for talking about the Lord’s law and instructions in the rest of the OT. It is especially worth noticing that the final item in the list is “instructions,” that is, the torath, the plural form of torah. The Lord is unstinting in his praise of Abraham’s faithful obedience, and the context makes clear that his obedience at Moriah is the exemplary act of a lifetime of obeying God.

The View from Gerar: Mount Moriah and Mount Sinai

Little is now known about the town and region of Gerar, apart from the presence of a valley (from which Isaac “went up” to Beersheba, which must have been relatively close by; see Gen. 26:23ff.). Nevertheless, Gerar is an important juncture in the progress of the patriarchal narrative; indeed, because of the Lord’s appearance to Isaac there, we might even think of it as a height from which the reader looks both forward and back: back to the story of Abraham, and forward to the nation of Israel as it receives the Sinaitic covenant.

Reading backwards from Gerar to Abraham, we notice that the Lord evokes Moriah at just that point in the story when Isaac finally receives direct confirmation of the covenant for himself, and the reason given for that confirmation is his father’s obedience on Mount Moriah. Of all the acts of faith, intercession, and obedience on which the Lord could have based Isaac’s claim to the covenant, he chooses this one, suggesting that it was the culminating act of Abraham’s faithful obedience. Furthermore, the Lord affirms Abraham’s obedience in the strongest possible language—again, not just his life of obedience in general, but his obedience at Mount Moriah, where he listened to the word of the Lord alone, giving up the son promised in the covenant, and thus, in a resurrection-like reversal, qualified that son to receive the covenant as heir. This is, in fact, how the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews read Genesis (Heb. 11:17-19), and though some modern readers are reluctant to credit the authors of the New Testament with genuine exegetical insight into the Old, we would do better to “give … heed to the things that we have heard” from these earliest Christian readers of the Scriptures.

If the Lord’s words to Isaac lead the reader backwards in the text to reconsider Abraham on Mount Moriah, they also lead the reader forward, skipping over the life of Jacob and his sons, landing us on another mountain, Sinai, where Moses received the Lord’s “commands” (Exo. 24:12), “ordinances” (Exo. 27:21), and “instructions” (Lev. 26:46). As noted already, apart from their appearance in Gen. 26:5, none of these words is used in the Pentateuch until Israel is preparing for the first Passover, and they are most typically—though not exclusively—used in reference to the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant. There’s no question that the use of these three terms together in Gen. 26:5 is strongly suggestive of the Sinaitic law. What are we to make of this? We might think that Abraham’s obedience is being accommodated to a later era of Israel’s history (can anyone detect a Priestly interpolation here?), perhaps even co-opting Abraham as a good law-abiding Jew. But why not read it the other direction? I suggest that the Lord wishes Israel under the law—the first readers of the narrative—to accommodate themselves to Abraham’s example of obedience. In other words, Abraham’s obedience on Mount Moriah is presented as “legal” obedience so that Israel under the law would know what sort of “legal” obedience God is interested in: not a self-dependent or self-seeking kind of obedience, nor an obedience that divorces the law from the covenant relationship it is embedded in, but rather an obedience which, like Abraham’s, emerges from a posture of faith, an absolute dependence on God’s will and God’s power and God’s commitment to fulfilling his promises, even if that requires God to bring life from death. If James had to remind Christians that Abraham’s obedience proves that faith works, Moses had to remind Israel that Abraham’s obedience proves that works are grounded in faith. Both are good words for us, who now see Mount Moriah and Mount Sinai from another height, a skull-shaped hill outside Jerusalem, where faith and obedience were perfected and offered up to the Father once and for all.

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Joshua Jensen translates and teaches the Bible for the Jarai churches of northeast Cambodia, where he lives with his wife (and faithful editor) and their six kids.

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1. The Art of Biblical Narrative (Basic Books: 1981): 47. ↩︎
2. The Art of Biblical Narrative: 53. ↩︎
3. The Art of Biblical Narrative: 60. ↩︎
4. Episodes in which God speaks directly with Abraham come in the follow places (asterisks mark the passages where the Lord is said to have appeared to Abraham at the time of speaking): Genesis 12:1-3; 12:7*; 13:14-7; 15:1-21; 17:1-22*; 18:1-33*; 21:12-13; 22:1-2; 22:11-18. ↩︎
5. By “explicit verbal pairing” I mean a pairing of “blessing” and presence in immediate syntactic proximity, as they are found in Gen. 26:3 and 26:24. In the Joseph story the pairing shows up in narrative form: “[Joseph’s] lord saw that YHWH was with him” (39:3) continues with “YHWH blessed the house of the Egyptian for Joseph’s sake” (39:5). The form found in Genesis 26 isn’t repeated in Scripture again until Boaz exchanges greetings with his reapers in Ruth 2:4, a clear echo of Genesis 26. ↩︎
6. “To you and to your offspring” may echo Gen. 13:15 and 17:8, where “to you” and “to your offspring” are also paired, and “all the land” is specified. But here it is “lands” rather than land, and specifically “these lands.” ↩︎
7. To capture the fact that “oath” and “swear” share the same Hebrew root, we might translate “the vow that I vowed” or “the pledge that I pledged,” but the first is odd outside a marriage setting, and the second is too weak. Everett Fox tries to capture this with “the sworn-oath that I swore,” working, in part, from Buber-Rosenzweig’s “Schwur … geschworen” in German. ↩︎
8. Abraham’s offspring are also compared to stars back in 15:5, but the wording is quite different there: the phrase “stars of the heavens” is missing (instead Abraham is told to look at the heavens and count the stars); also, the Lord doesn’t use the verb “multiply” in 15:5 as he does on Mount Moriah in 22:17 and at Gerar in 26:4. ↩︎
9. The only other close parallel is in 18:18, but there it is by Abraham—not by his offspring—that all the nations of the earth will be blessed, and the form of the verb is different. ↩︎