Isaac our Father

Isaac our Father, the second of the three patriarchs, is the son of Abraham and Sarah and the half-brother of Ishmael. The story of his life is told in the book of Genesis, and he is regarded as the link between Abraham, who opened the way of faith, and Jacob, from whom the twelve tribes came. According to the biblical chronology he was born in 1713 BCE, when Abraham was a hundred and Sarah ninety, and he died at the age of a hundred and eighty. His birth was an open miracle: Sarah had been barren all her life, and at the angels' announcement in the plains of Mamre she laughed within herself, "after I am grown old shall I have pleasure, and my lord being old also?" God kept His promise, Sarah bore a son, and for the sake of that laughter he was named Isaac. On the day he was weaned Abraham made a great feast, and at that time Ishmael was sent away with Hagar his mother from Abraham's house. The defining event of his life is the binding. God commanded Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that He would show him, and the two went up together to Mount Moriah, Isaac carrying the wood of the offering and asking, "where is the lamb for a burnt offering?", and hearing from his father, "God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son". At the last moment Abraham's hand was stayed by the call of the angel from heaven, and a ram caught in the thicket by its horns was offered up in his place. By the reckoning of the commentators Isaac was then about thirty-seven, and by tradition the event took place on Rosh Hashanah. After Sarah's death Abraham sent his servant to Aram Naharayim, and he brought Rebecca daughter of Bethuel from there. Isaac married her at the age of forty, and he loved her, "and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death". Rebecca too was barren, and Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, "and the Lord was entreated of him", and at the age of sixty the twins Jacob and Esau were born to him. In the days of a famine Isaac came to Abimelech king of the Philistines in Gerar, and was commanded, "go not down into Egypt". There, fearing for his life, he said that Rebecca was his sister, and he too, like his father, was caught up in an affair with Abimelech until the truth came out. God blessed him, and he sowed in that land and reaped a hundredfold in that year; he dug wells, and the herdsmen of Gerar quarrelled over them, and so he called them Esek and Sitnah, and the third he called Rehoboth, saying, "for now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land". From there he went up to Beersheba, and there the Lord appeared to him and said, "fear not, for I am with you", and there he made a covenant with Abimelech. In his old age his eyes grew dim, and he asked Esau his son to hunt him game and make him savoury food, and then to bless him. Rebecca and Jacob came first and Jacob received the blessing in place of Esau, "the voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau", and so Esau cried "a great and exceeding bitter cry". Isaac blessed Jacob again afterwards, with the blessing "and God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a multitude of peoples", and sent him to Paddan-aram to take a wife from the daughters of Laban. Isaac died at the age of a hundred and eighty in Kiriath-arba, and Jacob and Esau his sons buried him in the Cave of Machpela. In the story of the patriarchs Isaac represents the attribute of might, hence "the fear of Isaac", and the sages established the afternoon prayer in his name. Alongside the tradition, current biblical scholarship debates whether the patriarchal period was a historical era, and the traditions of Isaac are associated with the biblical Negev, the valley of Beersheba; the various scholarly positions are gathered in the source article.

Isaac our Father is the second in the chain of the patriarchs, and through him the covenant continued: "and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him". From him came Jacob and Esau, and from him onward the promise of the land was kept. The sages attached to him the attribute of might, "the fear of Isaac", and the afternoon prayer, and the binding he underwent was engraved as one of the foundations of the faith of Israel, read in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah. The figure of the son bound upon the altar became a symbol of devotion and of standing in trial for the generations.