Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #5 of Genesis, chapter 26, and we are going to read Genesis 26:7-11:

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. 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. 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. And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us. And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.

I will stop reading there.  As we began to get into in our last study, this account is very similar to events in Genesis 20; and the latter, in turn, is similar to events in Genesis 12.  The big difference between Genesis 12 and Genesis 20 is that it concerns Pharaoh the Egyptian in chapter 12 and it was Abimelech, the king of Gerar, in chapter 20.

The similarities are that Isaac was saying the same thing as his father Abraham had said of Sarah; he said that she was his sister, and he was not admitting that she was his wife.  It is also similar in that it was the king of Gerar, Abimelech, and they had the same names, although they were different kings.  Also, the thing was found out, regarding the fact that the woman was the wife and not the sister.  All these things are very similar, and with a casual reading, you might think that it is just a third time that God is telling us the same thing. 

But there are key and major differences between Genesis 26 and the other two historical accounts.  One major difference was that Rebekah was not taken into the king’s house to become his wife.  She was not made part of the harem.  It says in Genesis 26:7:

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.

Then it says in Genesis 26:8:

And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time…

That also seems to be different than the other two accounts.  We are told that Isaac had been there a long time.  The Hebrew word translated as “time” is the word “yôm,” which is the typical word for “day,” and it is translated as “time” in over forty instances in the Old Testament.  But, literally, this is saying, “when he had been there a long day.”   And the word “long” identifies with obedience.  If we get a chance, we can look at a place where that is found.  It is found in the book of Deuteronomy and some other places, and it is used several times in the context of obeying God’s commandments.  Keeping His commandments will result in the prolonging of days, and the word “prolong” is this word translated as “long.”  So we could read it, “and when he had been there a prolonged day,” and that is interesting because we have learned that Judgment Day is a prolonged period of time.  It is called a “day” in the Bible, but Judgment Day had its start when judgment began at the house of God (May 21, 1988), but the final judgment of the inhabitants of the world began on May 21, 2011.  And Biblical evidence is pointing to the end of judgment as 2033, which is over two decades later and, yet, it is all referred to by God as Judgment Day.  So is Judgment Day in view?  It is certainly something for us to consider, and I will explain why in this study or the next study. 

But first, it should be pointed out that this “constant” is seen.  I mean, here we are in Genesis 26 at the beginning of the Bible, and it is already the third time that this point is being made that there is no admitting to the relationship of a “wife,” but the emphasis is on being a “sister.”  So there is a relationship between the woman and the man, but the emphasis is not on the relationship of marriage.  That is not brought to the surface or acknowledged when the opportunities were given to acknowledge it.  When the men asked Isaac, he could have said, “She is my wife.”  When Abraham was asked (twice), he could have said, “She is my wife.”  But in all three cases, the statement was made, “She is my sister.”  It was true in Abraham’s case, as Sarah was his half-sister.  But, here, in the case of Isaac and Rebekah, Rebekah was his cousin.  So on the earthly, historical level, Isaac appears to be lying.  But the spiritual meaning is always the more important meaning, and Isaac was telling the truth because Isaac is a type of Christ and Rebekah is a type of the elect, and all the elect are Christ’s sisters.  Remember that Jesus said this in Matthew 12:50:

For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

This means that it was true, spiritually, that Rebekah was Isaac’s sister, if we substitute “Christ” for Isaac and “the elect” for Rebekah.  Yes – the elect are the “sister” of Christ.  However, Rebekah, the historical woman, was not the sister of Isaac, the historical man.  But, you see, God is more concerned with the main focus of the Bible, which is the deeper spiritual meaning, and it was the absolute truth concerning the relationship between Christ and His people.

So if Abraham was a picture of God and Isaac is a picture of God and Sarah and Rebekah are pictures of the elect, it makes us wonder, “Why would God not immediately acknowledge or admit that it is His wife?”  After all, the elect are, indeed, the wife of the Lord Jesus Christ.  That is interesting, is it not?  We certainly know that God died for His bride.  That is what formed the woman or bride, spiritually, and we saw that back in the beginning in the account of Adam being put into a deep sleep and God taking one of his ribs and forming the woman.  We saw that the “deep sleep” pointed to the death that the Lord Jesus (as typified by Adam) experienced in his atoning death on behalf of all those He died for, forming the “woman,” the bride of Christ.  So, certainly, God is not ashamed to be called our God and to identify with that marriage relationship with His people.  After all, He gave His very life in order to form that bride, so why not proudly proclaim it?  (Pride or being proud in the Bible can be rightly used of God in the sense that we can glory in Him, but it does have some negative connotations when applied to man.)  But why did God not declare, “This is my wife”?  If Abraham or Isaac were to have said that and to fully trust in God by saying, “She is my wife,” it would indicate that God fully confesses and acknowledges that His people are His bride. 

Why not?   Three times…and I can see why God keeps saying the same thing again, and again, and again, in the Bible because we have “thick heads” and we are very limited creatures, especially since we fell into sin.  The sins in our bodies have corrupted us and weakened us and our ability to think, in general, and to operate in the physical world.  Of course, we were completely dead in the spiritual world, and after salvation God awakened us: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”  We have been given light of understanding.  He has opened our eyes of understanding so that we can begin to learn spiritual things, but it is a slow process, so God has to say things again, and again, and again, in order for it to sink in.  Jesus even said to His disciples, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.”  Then He recounted all the things that had been written about Him in the prophets and the Psalms and all the Old Testament Scriptures. 

So we might get a little bored and tired of hearing this about Abimelech, again; the land of the Philistines, again; or another instance of a man of God saying his wife is his sister, again.  But it was necessary for it to get through to us, and I think that by God’s grace, it is finally sinking in.  The reason God did not immediately acknowledge that she was his wife, but did acknowledge the family relationship of being a sister, is because it is spiritually pointing to the elect that were in the world, and to what Christ did at the foundation of the world in paying for their sins.  He died for us, and His blood was shed, and we can liken it to being poured into a basin.  But prior to salvation, the elect were children of God even as others, but different from all the inhabitants of the world that were not chosen and elected to salvation because Christ never died for them, and God had no plan to apply the shed blood of Christ to them to forgive their sins and translate them out of darkness into the kingdom of light.  But God did have a plan for those few elect, so there is a “family relationship.”   The elect were not the same.  We were not under the Law.  We were typified as orphans because we were delivered from the Law.  Our father was not the devil, although we were not yet of God the Father, but we were strangers because we were not citizens of Satan’s  kingdom of this world in the sense that Christ had paid for our sins, but neither were we yet of the kingdom of God.  Poor creatures!  We were strangers to both, although we identified more with the kingdom of Satan, being children of wrath even as others.  The same thing applied to being “widows,” and dead to the Law through the sacrifice of Christ performed at the foundation of the world and, yet, not yet adopted into the family of God.  The elect were in an “in between state” initially, so it was said, “She is my sister,” and thus Pharaoh took her, or Abimelech, King of Gerar, took her and placed her in his house with all the other women that were his wives.  You see, it is a picture of bondage and being in the house of Satan, just like all the other unsaved people.  But there is a difference about that one particular woman.  Then God plagued Pharaoh’s house and God plagued Abimelech by shutting up the womb of all his wives.  God Himself came to Pharaoh and to Abimelech and made it known: “She is another man’s wife.”  Then the reply was, “Oh, he told me she was his sister,” which was true.  And, spiritually, it was true that the marriage relationship, the intimacy of the spiritual marriage between Christ and His people, was not yet activated because the blood of Christ had not yet been applied to make the persons adopted sons, bringing us into the family of God, and making us part of the bride of Christ and a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, being no longer a stranger, and so forth. 

And that is the reason God is drawing this picture.  There is no acknowledgement to begin with, but when God plagued the house of Pharaoh, it was as though He had come to “spoil” Satan’s house.  Remember the parable of the strong man, where you have to bind the strong man and then spoil his goods.  So that is what the Lord did.  He delivered Sarah from Pharaoh and He delivered Sarah from Abimelech.  Two times.  And we spoke about the two major outpourings of the Holy Spirit in connection with that, when we went through those chapters.

So we can see why there is this delay in coming out and saying, “She is my wife.”  Then after the deliverance, it is fully made known, is it not?  The enemy (Pharaoh and all those in Egypt at that time) understood: “She is a man’s wife.”  Likewise, in the case of Abimelech in Genesis 20, it was understood that she was a man’s wife, and his house was spoiled, and he gave gifts unto Abraham, along with releasing and delivering up Sarah.  We can see the picture.  I think I can see the spiritual picture in a clearer way than I saw it before, so I am glad we have gone over it one more time.

But having said that, it presents problems for what we are reading in Genesis 26, and I am sure you have noticed it, too, because Rebekah was not taken.  She was not held hostage.  She was not in bondage.  Abimelech, the men of the place (his lords) did not take Rebekah.  They left her with Isaac, and that is the “monkey wrench” thrown into the works. (That is an expression.)  That is the problem as far as understanding this chapter.  What is going on?  Why is God going over these similar things another time, but why does Isaac not say that she is his wife?  If it is the same idea or spiritual picture, is it because there is no relationship formed yet because there needs to be salvation?  But there is no captivity, and that means there is no deliverance from captivity.  And it was not discovered by a plague – there is no judgment upon Abimelech to release a wife that is held captive.  Again, that just leads to these questions.  It is similar, but different, and by God’s grace, we have to come to understand, as much as possible, why it is different.  What is God trying to teach us and, yet, using the same type of typology to teach a different truth that is along the same lines?  You know, I have been struggling with this as I try to understand it, and I think the answer comes down to Genesis 26:8:

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.

Again, Isaac is sporting with Rebekah when he had been there a “long day,” and it had not been discovered that they were man and wife, a couple.  It was thought up until that point that they were brother and sister, but they were married, and it was discovered as a result of Abimelech happening to glance out a window and seeing them sporting together – not in an intimate embrace or something that would “jump out” to indicate they were married.

As far as the word “sporting,” Lord willing, we will look at this word in our next study and see how it is related to the word “Isaac.”  And it is a word that means “laugh,” “mock” or “play,” and it is also translated as “sporting” or “sport.”  It was the same word used of Sampson when Sampson’s eyes were put out and the lords of the Philistines brought him forth to the stadium to cause Sampson that he “may make them sport.”  It had to do with “mocking.”  But it is a word that identifies with laughter, mocking, playing, and sporting.  How could that convince Abimelech?  It just seemed he just looked out the window, saw them sporting and he knew right away that they were man and wife.  On one hand, if there had been “playing around” in a way that a husband and wife might do, like physical touching that would not be appropriate, it would indicate on a natural or moral level that they had a highly moral society in that day.  Just think about the way in which people are intimate physically in our world today.  And if we saw two people that were playing around and touching, we would not immediately think they were married.  More than likely, they are not married.  So that is one thing we can see – it did indicate that those people were not “barbarians” in that sense.  They had a very high regard for physical contact as something that should be within a marriage.   Historically, it could have been that, and we will see that this word is used of Potiphar’s wife concerning Joseph when she said to her husband that he had “brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us.”  She made a false accusation (against Joseph) of attempted sexual relations.  So it can have that tie-in.  But it is unusual that Abimelech sees them “sporting” and immediately concludes that they are man and wife, and he was correct.

Lord willing, we will try to dig deeper into this question the next time we get together.