FROM FAMINE TO FORTUNE

BOOK OF GENESIS

CHAPTER  26

            So good to have you back again to find out what happens next in the book of Genesis.  You are halfway through the first book of the Bible!  To refresh you on where we left off, we found out that Esau had traded his birthright for a bowl of soup. 

            As we pick up where we left off, there was another famine.  God told Isaac to go to Egypt and live in a place where He would tell Isaac of.  Then we find a story in Chapter 26 that is very similar to the previous stories about Abraham telling the Pharaoh and Abimelech that Sarah was his sister, only this time it was Isaac saying that Rebekah was his sister. 

            When the king found out that Rebekah was Isaac’s wife, he ordered that anyone who touches either one of them would be put to death.  The king knew that God was serious about plaguing entire kingdoms for such things. 

            Isaac planted in that land.  The Lord blessed him and Isaac harvested a hundredfold in that one year.  He grew rich and the Philistines (a people from Canaan) were jealous of him.  All the wells that Abraham’s servants dug when he was alive were filled up with dirt by the Philistines. 

            The king told Isaac to leave because he was growing so quickly, and Isaac left there and settled in the valley. Isaac started re-digging the wells that Abraham first dug. The herdsmen of the area fought with Isaac over some of the wells.  But God appeared to Isaac and said, I am the God of Abraham, your father:  don’t be afraid, I am with you and I will bless you and multiply your seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.  Isaac built an altar there and his servants started digging another well.

            When the king saw that Isaac was blessed he visited Isaac and asked to make a covenant with him to live in peace with one another.  The same day, Isaac’s servants told him that they had found water. 

            In the meantime, when Esau was 40 years old, he took two wives that were from Canaan.  This troubled Isaac and Rebekah greatly.

            The next time, we’ll find out how Jacob actually received not only Esau’s birthright but the blessing that his Dad, but NOT God, intended for Isaac’s oldest son Esau.  It is what makes the Muslims hate the Israelites to this very day.