Abstract
Biblical Isaac seems to face a series of traumas. Despite the literal meaning of his name (Isaac/Yitzh̲aq/he will laugh), there appears to be little joy in his life. This article argues that contrary to this reading, other dynamics are at play. Isaac overcomes his early experiences and achieves a great deal in his time..
The life of biblical Isaac seems to be a perverse misreading of Psalm 126:5 (“Those who sow in tears shall reap with joy”). On a plain reading of the biblical text, Isaac's life would seem to reflect the experience of being sown in joyous laughter but then time and again living through episodes reaped in tears. Rarely was a child more desired than Isaac. Sarah and Abraham were well on in years when God told the patriarch that his wife Sarah would bring bear a child (Gen 17:16). Abraham is amazed and astonished. He literally falls to the ground laughing (vayitzh̲aq—Gen 17:17). Sarah in her own right is incredulous upon hearing the news that she will give birth. Four times in three verses (Gen 18:12, 13, 15 [twice]) the root letters tzadeh-h̲et-quf [laugh] appear in the text. Yet conceive she does and in his time, as reported in Genesis 21, Isaac is born. Sarah then proclaims, “God has brought me laughter [tzh̲oq]; all who hear will laugh [yitzh̲aq] with me” (v 6). Her statement, just as Abraham's reaction in chapter 17 puns on Isaac's name, for Isaac/Yitzh̲aq translates as “he/one will laugh.” In those opening verses of chapter 21, the root letters tzadeh-h̲et-quf tumble over each other; they appear eight times, five actually mentioning Isaac by name.
Isaac's connection with joy, however, is short-lived. When he is about three, he is weaned. At that time, or perhaps shortly afterwards Sarah sees Isaac's older stepbrother Ishmael “playing” or laughing (Gen 21:9—metzah̲eq, again with the same root letters, tzadeh-h̲et-quf). Ishmael's actions appear to engage and enrage Sarah; she then orders Abraham to send away his second wife and his firstborn son, Hagar/Ishmael. What did Sarah see? This word, metzah̲eq or its near homonyms have a variety of meanings. At various points it is translated as “laugh,” “play,” “fondle,” “caress,” “insult,” “seduce,” “dally,” “worship [idols],” “revel,” or “kill.” Most Bible translations use the word “playing” in this context. Nonetheless, the same root letters and in fact in this same verbal form, can have a very different meaning. In Gen 26:8, as shall be explained below, NRSV translates the verb as “fondling,” as do Speiser, NAB, New Jerusalem Bible, JPS’ The Contemporary Torah, and NJPS-TANAKH. NIV and Revised English Bible features “caressing,” and NEB “laughing.” Everett Fox uses the phrase “laughing-and-loving.” That same verb root appears as seduce, dally, or insult (Gen 39:14), and idolatrous revel in Exodus 32:6. (For a variety of possible pejorative meanings see the midrash collection Genesis Rabbah 53.11. For a different view, that the verb here in Genesis 21 centers on a religious/idolatry controversy related to circumcision-as-an-Egyptian rite, see Savina J. Teubal: 37–41). What Ishmael was actually doing, what so perturbed Sarah, leading her to take this precipitous action—calling for the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael—has been a matter of scholarly debate. Richard Elliot Friedman translates metzah̲eq as “fooling around.” David W. Cotter (140) explains that this “is actually a very good choice; it captures in English the same salacious tone the verb has elsewhere in the Pentateuch.” John Hartley suggests “mocking.” Gerhard Von Rad explains that whatever Ishmael did, it “need not be anything evil at all. The picture of the two boys playing with each other on an equal footing is quite sufficient to bring the jealous mother to a firm conclusion: Ishmael must go!” (227). A note in The New Revised Standard Version (Annotated Bible) suggests that “The jealous mother [Sarah] could not stand seeing the two boys on the same level, even at play” (comment on Gen 21:9–10). E. A. Speiser writes that Ishmael's “‘playing’ with Isaac need mean no more than the older boy was trying to amuse his little brother. There is nothing in the text to suggest that he was abusing him” (155).
In the Christian Scriptures Paul (Gal 4:23–31) uses this family separation to make his claim that Christians are the Children of the Promise, although he does not specifically deal with the verb describing Ishmael's actions. Jerome (4th century
Genesis 21 details Ishmael's departure, and when last seen Isaac is bereft of Hagar and Ishmael. Genesis 22 will bring further grief to Isaac's life. There is no way of knowing how many years pass between Genesis 21 and 22. Traditions vary on this matter, but a good case can be made that Isaac is a young teenager at this time. (There is a well-known tradition that Isaac is thirty-seven at the time of the Binding. This would necessitate Genesis 23 following immediately time-wise on Genesis 22. There is nothing in the text to support this contention.) In Genesis 22 Isaac is old enough to walk along with his father (vv 6, 8) and he asks Abraham a serious and relevant question (v 7). He is also strong enough carry the wood for the sacrifice (v 6). Abraham specifically terms Isaac a young man (na'ar, v 5). On Mt. Moriah, Abraham, suddenly and again without warning, acts in a way to traumatize his son, bringing Isaac grief and pain. Abraham takes Isaac and binds him, then places him atop the wood on an altar. There are no words of explanation by Abraham, nor are there exclamations from Isaac, never mind words of protest. Next Abraham reaches out and takes a knife to slay his son Isaac/Yitzh̲aq/he will laugh. In that split second before the knife cuts through Isaac's throat, an angel calls out to Abraham: “Do not lay your hand upon the lad/young man” (na'ar, v 12). Isaac suddenly/without warning is saved from death. What does Isaac think? What does Isaac feel? As Isaac himself, the Bible is silent about these matters. In fact, Isaac totally disappears from the text. Never again do we see Isaac and Abraham conversing. In fact they do not appear together until the day of Abraham's burial, when Isaac together with Ishmael will place the patriarch in the cave at Machpelah (Gen 25:9). By then decades will have passed. In the meantime we have learned that Isaac is living at Beer Lehai Roi, and that he is forty years old (Gen 25:20) when he marries Rebekah (cf. Gen 24:62–67).
The Bible tells us that Isaac loved Rebekah and that he found comfort in her following his mother Sarah's death (Gen 24:67). Such a description of Isaac's regard for Rebekah is highly unusual. No such words describe the relationship of Adam/Eve; Abraham/Sarah; Abraham/Hagar; Jacob/Leah; Jacob/Bilhah-Zilpah; Moses/Zipporah; David/Michal; David/Abigail; David/Bathsheba, etc. The one exception to this is Jacob's love for Rachel. In all of the Bible, it is only Isaac who is described as finding comfort in his wife.
Isaac loves/finds comfort in Rebekah, but parenthood eludes them. They sow without success; they reap only tears. Unlike Abraham and later Jacob, Isaac does not opt for a secondary wife to try to bring forth issue. Rather Isaac, with Rebekah by his side, implores God to intervene. She then conceives, but it is not an easy pregnancy. Nonetheless, eventually Esau and Jacob are born. Time passes, and because of a regional famine, the family relocates to the Philistine enclave of Gerar. Fearing that because Rebekah is so good-looking the locals might kill him to make her available to someone else, Isaac claims that she is his sister. This mimics previous behaviors by Abraham (Gen 12; 20). Nonetheless, Isaac's desire for Rebekah/their mutual affection wins out, and at one point he fondles her. The text again puns on his name, for it reads Yitzh̲aq metzah̲eq et Rivqa ishto (Gen 26:8). As the Fox translation of this sentence reads, Isaac was “laughing-and-loving” with Rebekah. Laughter, yes, but fraught with dire possible consequences. None other than the ruler of Gerar, Abimelech see Isaac and Rebekah's actions. Their true marital relationship is exposed. Their joy reaps fears and probable tears. In the event, their worst concerns that he might be killed are not realized, but clearly their lives had been endangered. Still, life in Gerar and its environs is fraught with dangers. Isaac is successful and grows rich, but there are serious conflicts with the locals. Isaac may sow in joy, but he reaps in tears. Time and again, Isaac digs wells, but the Philistines stop them up. There are tensions over watering rights. Isaac and Rebekah need to return to Beersheba. Even then their life is not easy. Esau marries local Hittite women, which disturbs his parents. “They were a bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah” (Gen 26:35).
Genesis 27 relates the narrative of the “theft of the blessing.” On a surface reading of the text, Rebekah and Jacob collude to deny Isaac's intent to give the primogeniture blessing to Esau. Their action is often described as “subterfuge” or “duplicity.” Isaac is of advanced age. He tells Esau that before he dies he wants to give him the special blessing. Isaac appears as a helpless casualty, whose desires are thwarted. With this understanding, it would be fair to describe Isaac as a victim of elder abuse, his wife and son taking shameless advantage of his infirmities. In old age these family members maltreat and traumatize Isaac, just as he suffered child abuse at the hands of his own father so many years earlier. If there is laughter in Isaac's life, again it is bitter, not joyful laughter. Here too, those closest to him betray Isaac's trust.
Yet, is this a correct analysis? Was Isaac the victim of elder abuse, as a plain reading of Genesis 27 seems to indicate? Was he unaware of what Rebekah and Jacob were doing? Adrien Janis Bledstein offers the thought that Isaac actually is cognizant of this attempt at what appears to be a usurpation of his wishes to bless Esau. She renames the characters by drawing on their etymological roots. Rebekah is Binder (connected to the root letters resh-bet-quf, rbq, tying fast), Jacob is Heel (aqev, heel, Gen 25:26), Esau is “Hairy-man” (Gen 25:25), and Isaac is Trickster (her reading of the word Isaac/Yitzh̲aq). Bledstein concludes “Isaac … is not deceived” (283). In her view Isaac has his own reasons for wanting to test Jacob. He wants reassurance of Jacob's resolve, of his willingness to face difficulties. Consequently he consciously sets hurdles for Jacob. When it comes to Jacob drawing near and being smelled, Isaac as
Trickster smells him and may be pleased that even clothing has been considered by Binder [Rebekah] for the deception of both Hairy-man and Heel [Esau and Jacob]. Each time Trickster [Isaac] tests, either Heel's [Jacob's] response or Binder's [Rebekah's] preparation permit Trickster to pretend to be deceived by Heel's hoax” [Bledstein: 289—emphasis mine].
Yet there may be even a more intriguing answer to this matter. A strong case can be made that it is Jacob who is being deceived, for this ruse is a deliberate plan worked out ahead of time between Isaac and Rebekah, working in tandem.
Isaac may be of limited vision as indicated at the opening verse of chapter 27, but he is far from senile. Put another way, although he may have limited sight, he still contains good insight. His statement in the next verse that he may die any day is vastly overstated. He will live for many more decades. That Isaac can distinguish aurally which son is before him is patently clear: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau” (v 22). A close reading of the text in Genesis provides several clues which indicate that “Jacob-as-faux-Esau” is part of a wider plan, one devised by Jacob's parents.
Why would Isaac and Rebekah need to devise such a hoax? Genesis explains that Isaac favors Esau (Gen 25:28). This need not mean that he favors him for all things. Perhaps he favors Esau because Isaac likes game, or Esau is the adventurous son, reminding him of his own companion from an earlier age, his older brother Ishmael. When it comes to the special patriarchal/primogeniture blessing, it is likely that both Isaac and Rebekah see that Jacob is the more likely son to fulfill this dream. There are multiple problems: technically this benison should go to the firstborn son, but Esau has married local women, a matter of some distress to his parents as noted earlier (Gen 26:35). In the meantime Jacob is a homebody and seems neither eager to marry nor to face life's challenges (Gen 25:27). What will motivate Jacob to change direction even if he received the blessing? One answer may be to avoid being the object of Esau's rightful anger. In this kind of explanation, Isaac and Rebekah need to devise a plan where Jacob will have seriously to exert himself, even to put himself in some danger, in order to earn this desired and desirable blessing. Jacob has to strive for this goal; he cannot feel that it was simply given to him. Consequently, Rebekah cannot be seen speaking to Isaac after she has convinced Jacob to play out his part, lest Jacob realize his parents have colluded on this matter. The Isaac-Rebekah plan will hinge on a key word, the sacred name of the family deity,
When Isaac informs Esau that he wants him to go out and hunt for some game, he says: “Prepare a dish for me such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may give you my innermost blessing before I die” (Gen 27:4). When, however, Rebekah supposedly reports those words to Jacob, she explains instead that Isaac had said, “Bring me some game and prepare a dish for me to eat, that I may bless you, with
Following the deception, at the close of Genesis 27 Rebekah voices her fears to Jacob, and urges him to leave. She has learned that Esau plans to kill Jacob. She then tells Isaac that she abhors her life because of her Hittite daughters-in-law. She complains to him that if Jacob also marries such local women, her life will be worthless. As chapter 28 commences, Isaac immediately summons Jacob and sends him off to Paddan-Aram to Uncle Laban, with strict instructions to marry within the family. Isaac never reprimands Rebekah for her (obvious) role in this matter. Isaac does not seem in the least bit angry with Jacob; indeed it is quite the opposite. Isaac sends Jacob off with additional blessings and links Jacob to Abraham's name twice on that occasion (Gen 28:3–4). These are not the words or the actions of a man who feels that he has been abused, duped, or deceived by his wife and second son. Isaac and Rebekah are a couple that support each other; they think alike. In the quiet of their home we can imagine them sharing some quiet laughter, congratulating themselves how well they have carried off this “deception.”
Nonetheless, in the view of many commentators, Isaac is a weak and relatively unimportant character. He is characterized primarily as a bridge, the necessary generational link between Abraham and Jacob (Plaut: 289). Fox correctly describes Abraham as “a towering figure, almost unapproachable as a model in his intimacy with God and his ability to hurdle nearly every obstacle.” Jacob, explains Fox, “emerges as the most dynamic and most human personality in the book” of Genesis. Fox, however, dismisses Isaac as “practically a noncharacter.” He explains that Isaac “has almost no personality of his own” (Fox: 111). Fox's comments echo Sarna's when he describes Isaac's personality as a “rather pale one” especially since he is “overshadowed … by the towering figures of his father Abraham and his son Jacob” (Sarna: 4). Cotter notes that various commentaries refer to Isaac as a “dim and transitional figure … a passive figure, more acted upon than acting” (181). Hartley describes Isaac as “almost invisible” in Genesis 24, and says that this “anonymity is in keeping with his role in other narratives” (221). Iain Provan terms Isaac as “a rather ‘flat’ character, a pale reflection, only, of his father” (152). Paul Borgman describes Isaac as “passive,” and “never too adept at anything.” He muses that “[p]erhaps God takes by the hand those who can't quite cope, but whose heart is fine, though fragile” (138, 127). These dismissals of Isaac and his life are overstated. Given the crises he faced as a youngster (the splitting away of the only close kin he knew, his older stepbrother and his stepmother; his near-death experience on Mt. Moriah), and then later the exposure in Gerar of his being married to Rebekah, and with it the threat of death, it is a credit to Isaac how much he does achieve. His life is a triumph over adversity.
In light of Isaac's traumatic past, especially at the hands of Abraham, that he imitates many of the actions of his father shows a remarkable strength of character: attempting to trick a local ruler, specifically reopening wells that his father first dug, and concluding land-based treaties. He is able to replicate several of what he understands to be Abraham's successful ventures. Somewhat surprisingly, it is Isaac who lives the longest among the patriarchs. His lifespan is greater than either Abraham's or Jacob's (Gen 35:28–29; cf. Gen 25:7; 47:28). At his death he lives the ideal biblical age and half as more as well. This is extraordinary. Isaac is more than just a bridge between generations. He is a great deal more than a noncharacter, someone who is but a dim and transitional figure. Although he is not the larger-than-life figure as were his father Abraham and his son Jacob, yet he does achieve a great deal in his life. He was conceived in joyous laughter, although he knew episodes of painful tears. At the end of the day, he triumphs. He gets to see that the third generation forges a relationship with