Who is the son of Abraham? We learn from the Bible that Isaac is the son promised by God to Abraham and Sarah when they were too old to hope for a son. The “good news” of Isaac’s birth was brought to Abraham by God in Hebron. The “Oak of Mamvri” is the first fulfillment of God’s promise. “I will multiply you, raise from you peoples, and kings shall rise from you.
I will make my covenant between you and me and your descendants from generation to generation. To be an everlasting covenant, so that I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” (Acts 17:6-8).
The meaning of Isaac’s name
Isaac is translated as “laugh.” This verb appears several times in the biblical text throughout the account of Isaac, the son of Abraham. On learning that he was to become a father at an old age, Abraham. “Fell on his face and laughed” (Acts 17:17). His wife Sarah, who had heard the news while in the tent, “laughed to herself” (Acts 18:12).
Then, when the child is born, Sarah imagines how “everyone who hears this will laugh” (Acts 21:6). So Isaac, the son of Abraham, was funny but joyful news to Sarah.
The name’s significance has often been explained by the fact that even God shared the parents’ joy at his birth.
The gift God offered to Abraham
This priceless gift to Abraham’s family was to be the object of the great patriarch’s trial of faith: “Abraham, Abraham! Take your son, Isaac, your only son. Whom you love. And go to the land of Moriah and bring him there as a burnt offering on a mountain, which I will show you!” (Acts 1-2). Abraham’s ordeal reveals obedience to the deity even if it seems seemingly absurd. How do you kill your son?
St. John Chrysostom says, “God did not tempt Abraham because he did not know what he would do, but so that those of his time and those of later times and up to the present might know the love of God.”
Abraham’s son Isaac cannot believe his father wants to harm him.
Isaac’s obedience makes the two, father and son, live up to the “expectation,” for as Abraham obeyed God, Isaac followed his father.
Why did God obey Abraham to kill Isaac?
God asked Abraham to kill Isaac to test his faith.
Abraham set out on his journey with two servants, a donkey, his beloved son Isaac, and firewood for a sacrifice. His absolute obedience to God’s perplexing command brought God the glory that is His due and is an example of how to glorify God. Genesis 15:6 says, “Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.”
This truth is the foundation of the Christian faith, as repeated in Romans 4:3 and James 2:23. The righteousness counted to Abraham is the same righteousness estimated to us when we receive it by faith.
Abraham asks Eliezer to choose a wife for Isaac.
Now “old and ancient, blessed by God with all things,” Abraham asks his servant Eliezer to go to the lands from which he had come in his youth. To find a wife for Isaac, as God had promised he would. “Then Abraham said to the eldest servant of his household, who was over all that he had, ‘Put your hand under my thigh and swear to me by the Lord God of heaven and the God of the earth that you will not take a wife for my son Isaac from the daughters of Canaan, in the midst of whom I dwell, but will go to my land, where I was born.
And he, Eliezer, went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. And he said, “Lord God of my master Abraham, bring me this day, and have mercy on my master Abraham.
How Eliezer met Rebekah?
Eliezer met her after he prayed. Behold, I stand at this well, and the daughters of the city’s inhabitants shall come out to draw water. So the girl to whom I shall say: “Go forth thy little warrior, that I may drink,” and who shall answer me, “Drink! And I will water all the camels until they are full,’ that shall be the one you have appointed for your servant Isaac, the son of Abraham, and by it, I will know that you have mercy on my master Abraham.”
But he had not finished thinking these things over when Rebekah came out with a charger on her shoulder. She was beautiful in appearance, a virgin whom no man had known. And she came to the well and filled her pitcher and went back.
Then Abraham’s servant ran before her and said, “Give me a drink of water from your pitcher.” And she said, “Drink, my lord!” And immediately let down her urchin in her arms and gave him water until he stopped drinking. Then he said, “And I will draw water for your camels until they all drink.”
Rebeka’s choice
She chose to go with Eliezer. And immediately, he emptied his bear into the watering trough, ran back to the well to draw water, and watered all the camels. The man looked at her in wonder and was silent, wanting to know whether the Lord had blessed his journey. When all the camels had ceased drinking, the man gave her a golden ring, weighing half a shekel, and two bracelets on her hands, weighing ten shekels of gold.” (Acts 24:2-22).
Therefore, the choice of Rebekah as a wife for Isaac was a divine appointment. In connection with this choice, Isaiah the Hermit, a fifth-century Church Father, says, “Christ also seeks souls as pure as virgins, who have no blemish in them.” Having learned why Eliezer was in those lands, Rebekah resolutely chooses to become Isaac’s wife.
The last scene of his life on earth
Isaac is a blind older man, ready to bless his beloved son, Esav.
For the deceived brother, Esav, the father has only a modest consolation, the only blessing for him. I was that he would somehow be freed from his brother’s dominion. Jacob leaves for Mesopotamia, from where he returns twenty years later.
The divine promise made to Abraham will be fulfilled through him: “Behold, I will increase him and multiply him greatly. Twelve kings shall be born of him, and I will make of him a great people” (Acts 17:19-20). Isaac dies at the age of about 180. His sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, where Jacob and Rebekah are also buried according to tradition.
Isaac in the New Testament
The New Testament authors made several references to the character of Isaac, the son of Abraham, whenever the context demanded it. Thus we find expressions such as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” St Paul calls Isaac ‘our father.’
The Church Fathers will often use the comparison between the salvation of Isaac and the Resurrection of Christ. The birth of Isaac of Sarah, long barren, is seen in the same light as the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah with the bond between Christ and the Church.
Isaac’s hometown
Negev, in southern Palestine, in the Kadesh and Shur area.
References to Isaac in the Bible
The story of Isaac is described in chapters 17, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, and 35 of Genesis. In the rest of the Bible, God is often referred to as “the God of Abraham, Isaac Jacob.”
Biography of Isaac
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