Yitzaak and Riv-kah, a love story
Over the years, we’ve heard Father Steve characterize the Bible as “a love story.”
A love story - - and it is indeed that - -
a long love story with many books and chapters and verses and characters - - patriarchs, prophets, heroes, kings, apostles - - a few bad guys. The 7-Day Creation Story is about God’s love for us. The Creation Story of God with Adam (and Eve) in The Garden is about God’s love for us. Even the horrifying Book of Joshua is a story of God's love for his people Israel over against their enemies. The Bible is God's love story, and the gospels of God’s ultimate love for us in Jesus Christ.
This morning my mind is on ONE love story, of a patriarch, a hero, because we’re reading about him this summer, in our Old Testament lessons from Genesis:
It’s the love story of Isaac (Yitzaak). Or perhaps the “NON-story” of Isaac, Abraham’s second son and heir, Isaac, whom Sarah bore to Abraham in their ancient age - - Sarah 90, Abraham 99 (for all things are possible with God!!) - - Isaac, Yitzaak, with Riv-kah (Rebecca), conceiving twins Jacob and Esau. Isaac.
Almost no-count in the Bible, with little significant, unique, or special except love, Isaac covers the generation gap between Abraham and Jacob.
Maybe most significant about Isaac is his miracle birth. One day Abraham is sitting in the doorway of his tent in the shade of an oak tree, when three strangers approach. These visitors turn out to be angels, indeed, the very presence of God Himself. It's a Jewish story, but Christian lore has reimagined the three into Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
Abraham and Sarah treat the three visitors to a feast. During the meal, one of them tells Abraham that by this Time next year, Sarah will have a son. Listening inside the tent, Sarah (who has heard this promise several times already, probably from the same angel) - Sarah laughs at the ridiculous thought of conceiving and giving birth at her extreme old age. The angel, who by now is identified as God himself (that’s the way Bible stories go), God hears Sarah laugh, and takes offense, he’s insulted, Sarah has laughed at God, you do not laugh at God, and you certainly are not so rude as to offend your visitors by laughing at the nice things they say.
Sarah denies laughing, but God calls her on her lie, "Oh yes, you DID laugh," and then God tells Sarah, “I’ll show you, you withered up old crone, you WILL get pregnant by God, and suffer the pains of childbirth: you will NOT have the last laugh.
Nine months later, Sarah gives birth to a son, and names him Isaac, which means “the last laugh.”
The story of Isaac is actually about Isaac’s parents, Abraham and Sarah; and phasing to Isaac’s son, Jacob.
Isaac is loved, protected, doted on. When Isaac is weaned, maybe five years old, his mother Sarah looks out the window and sees Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, whom Abraham had with Sarah's slave woman Hagar - - picking on Isaac - - sees Ishmael mistreating Isaac, making fun of Isaac, abusing* Isaac: Ishmael, who up to now was Abraham’s beloved only son, has been displaced and is jealous, a bully. Sarah goes into a rage, and Ishmael and Hagar are banished from the family.
In another story, when Isaac is a boy, God tells Abraham to take his son, his beloved son Isaac, to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering: even God himself is jealous that Abraham loves Isaac so much. And although God stops Abraham at the last moment, it’s the most shameful story in the Bible, reflecting dreadfully on both God who commanded it, and Abraham who would have done it. In fact, Hebrew scholars tell us that when Isaac’s mother Sarah found out about it, she never spoke to Abraham again.
For all this, Isaac does not really have his own story, he's a transition figure between Abraham and Jacob. In fact, Isaac’s few adventures as an adult are little more than repeats of identical stories about Abraham:
> God makes the same covenant with Isaac that he made with Abraham: he’ll have land, many descendants, he’ll father a great nation, and he’ll be blest.
> There was a disgusting Time when Abraham was so afraid kings would kill him and seize his beautiful, sexy 90-year-old wife Sarah to be their wife, that Abraham told Sarah they’d tell everyone they were not husband and wife, but brother and sister: Isaac does the exact same thing with the exact same king, Abimelech (“melech” means “king”), an Abraham story that seems to be repeated so as to have something, anything, to say about Isaac, because Isaac is barely a shadow in the story of the patriarchs.
> Abraham’s wife Sarah was barren, could not have children except, after many long years, with God’s intervention: Isaac’s wife Rebecca is barren, cannot have children except, after many long years, with God’s intervention.
> Counter to tradition, against all custom, Isaac is Abraham’s heir even though he is Abraham's second son: just so, Isaac’s son Jacob is Isaac’s heir even though he also is the second son. In both stories, jealousy and the mothers interfering is a major issue.
> Both first sons Ishmael and Esau, married trashy women who were not acceptable to their parents. So, both second sons, Isaac and Jacob, have arranged marriages to kin, cousins from the old country, to keep the blood line pure. In fact, today’s Genesis reading is about Isaac’s arranged marriage within Abraham’s family from the old country. (A beautiful thing is that with Isaac and Rebecca it was love at first sight, and lifelong).
> Both sets of brothers came together to bury their fathers: Isaac and Ishmael to bury Abraham; Jacob and Esau to bury Isaac.
Some scholars have suggested symbolism, that Abraham was a figure for the ideal obedient righteousness that God called the Israelites to be; while Jacob was a contrasting figure of the devious treachery and sin that God actually encountered in his relationship with the Israelites; with Isaac as connective tissue.
Years ago, maybe in seminary, I read scholars who suggested that, originally, Abraham was the legendary heroic patriarch of southern Israelite tribes, and Jacob of northern tribes; with Isaac introduced as a uniting figure to bring north and south together in common heritage as the Twelve Tribes of Israel. As a Bible student, you can decide those things for yourself, or you can just let the love story be, as the Bible has it for us.
At any event, given few or no stories of his own, Isaac is a transition figure, in a pattern that reflects his father Abraham and anticipates his son Jacob.
And yet, Isaac's is a love story. Read it!! Start at Genesis 18, scan the following chapters about Abraham and Lot if you want to (although it all ties together, and as a literary device, a literary technique, it allows the lapse of Time for Sarah’s pregnancy), read to Genesis 35:29 where Isaac dies and is buried by Jacob and Esau. You’ll find there's surprisingly little about Isaac the second patriarch - - like a loved but largely overlooked significant middle child - - but it’s all fun and good.
Genesis is about beginnings: Creation, Sin, the Flood, ein Volk (a People), a long Abraham story, a short, almost incidental insertion of Isaac, a long Jacob story with lots of droll, subtle Jewish humor, and ending with a very long story that scholars have called “The Joseph Novel.” Along with Mark's gospel, and Revelation the Apocalypse, Genesis is my favorite book of the Bible. I recommend reading it, and to make it fun and good, I recommend a modern translation such as The Voice or The Message. You do not have buy a Bible! You do not have to turn book pages and squint your eyes at small print, you can access it on your computer screen at biblegateway.com, where you can choose the English translations you prefer, you can put as many as five parallel columns on the computer screen in front of you (including Hebrew in one column if you wish, I like to do that); you can enlarge it to whatever print size is comfortable; and it will even read aloud to you.
Genesis: Bereshit, “Beginning” - - full of great love stories. You’ll never read a more wonderful book. I guarantee!
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Homiletic endeavor by the Rev Tom Weller in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, July 9, 2023. Proper 9A. Text: everything in Genesis about Isaac! Not quite as preached, but close enough.
Art: Rembrandt, "Isaac and Rebecca the Jewish Bride"
* Genesis 21:9 מְצַחֵֽק mocking, scoffing, Hebrew צְחַק tsachaq, a primitive root; to laugh outright (in merriment or scorn); by implication, to sport -- laugh, mock, play, make sport of [very subtle of the storyteller, a clever Hebrew word play, צְחַק is related to Isaac's own name, and Ishmael, displaced and jealous, teasing Isaac with mean cruelty; I visualize that Sarah saw Ishmael make the little boy cry; projecting, I also visualize that, had Sarah not insisted that Hagar (of whom Sarah was already bitterly resentful) and Ishmael be sent away, the misplaced and jealous Ishmael eventually would have manage to kill Isaac. TW+]
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis12&version=VOICE;MSG;WLC
