Of course it was right in Isaac to receive them, and plight them his friendship, and to exchange the good offices and pledges and securities of neighbourliness which they sought. For we ought to forgive, if it be seventy times seven a day. But with that there is to be faithfulness in its season--faithfulness as well as forgiveness. "If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." But Isaac was not quite up to this sturdier virtue. He complains to Abimelech, but it is in such soft and easy terms, that it seems to carry no authority to the conscience with it. Not so his entering into covenant with him. He strikes hands readily, and, I may say, heartily. He makes a feast for the king of Gerar, and sends him away as his ally, without his being brought to any acknowledgment of the wrong which his people had done to the man whose friendship he was now seeking and getting. Nor is there on the lips of Isaac any gainsaying of Abimelech's assertion, that he had done nothing but good to Isaac all the time he had been in his country. As far as this intercourse went, and as far as we can discover the mind of the king of Gerar, he was not convicted by Isaac, but returned home with his friends at peace with himself as well as with Isaac. Isaac had not made good to Abimelech's conscience the complaint he had made to his ear--there was want of character and force in it--it partook of Isaac's own nature.
This was but poor virtue in Isaac. It is but poor virtue in ourselves, when it appears--and some of us have to treat it as such, and confess it as such, at times. It is agreeable in a certain form of amiable human nature; but it is not service to God. We are humbled by reason of that in our own ways. It is poor, and our Isaac here gives us, in measure at least, a sample of this.
It was, however, otherwise with Abraham. The king of Gerar had sought Abraham in his day, and sought him for a like reason, and with a like desire. Abraham meets him in as noble a spirit of forgiveness as Isaac would have done, with an equal readiness of heart and hand to accept him, and to pledge him. But with all this, he rebukes him and makes him feel the rebukes. "Abraham reproved Abimelech," as we read, but as we do not read in the case of Isaac. Abraham will not send him away satisfied with himself, as Isaac did, with an unanswered boast in his mouth of his and his people's virtues. He will assure him, as fully as Isaac could have done, of his full forgiveness and reconciliation; but he will not hide it from him, that his conscience may have a question with him, though his neighbour may accept him and pardon him; that there are matters (as between him and the Lord) which Abraham's feast and Abraham's friendship could never settle.
This was real, real before God, where reality, beloved, ever puts us. May we know that secret better, and be upright before Him! This was beautiful--and by this Abraham was blessing Abimelech, and not merely gratifying him. But this was not so with Isaac; and we may leave him on this occasion, in chap. xxvi., with something of this inquiry in our hearts, Was it mere nature, or the renewed mind in the saint, that acted thus?--a question which still occurs.
Isaac was an elect one, as surely as Abraham; a stranger with God in the earth; one who used his altar as well as carried it. He was meditating in the field when he got his Rebecca, and he had prayed for the mercy, when Esau and Jacob were given to him. We speak of character in him only, when we thus contrast him with another. We speak of the living, practical ways of a saint; and we see in him what was below a witness for God abroad, though amiable and devout at home. This is found in Isaac; and kindred things are still found, again I may say, as many of us know to our humbling. As one once said to me, "There is much that goes with others for being spiritual, because it is done for the eye and taste of our fellow-Christians, and not, as in God's presence, with a single heart to Him."
This indeed is true; and this searches our hearts to their profit. Such notices of our common ways may convict, but they need by no means dishearten us. Quite otherwise; they may be welcomed as for blessing. The light that penetrates to scatter our darkness, leaves itself behind to gladden us, and has title to assert the place as all its own--so that we ought to be able, in spirit, to sing of present light and past darkness, to know what we were, and what we are, and still to sing--
"All that I was, my sin, my guilt,
My death was all my own--
All that I am I owe to Thee,
My gracious God, alone.
"The evil of my former state
Was mine and only mine--
The good in which I now rejoice
Is Thine and only Thine.
"The darkness of my former state,
The bondage, all was mine--
The light of life in which I walk,
The liberty is Thine."
This is standing, not attainment; this is what faith entitles us to celebrate. Faith takes up this language, and the soul surely hears it and understands it. But faith is the spring, in the inworking power of the Holy Ghost. As in Heb. xi., from beginning to end, it is faith that is celebrated. Enoch, and Moses, and David, and the prophets, and the martyrs of other days, may be presented there in their fruits and victories, but it is faith, and not the people of God, that the Spirit by the apostle is celebrating in that fine chapter.
But I must return to Isaac.
At the close of chapter xxvi. we read: "And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: which were a grief of mind to Isaac and to Rebekah."