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Who was Isaac?

Isaac was the son of a great father and the father of a great son, but he himself left a mixed record. 

Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old (Gen. 21:5) and Sarah 90 (Gen 17:17), exactly a quarter of a century after the family had migrated from Haran, its ancestral homeland, in response to divine prompting and the promise of an offspring (12:4)

Isaac was thus a miracle child.

Isaac’s beautiful and suggestive name, “he laughed,” commemorates the two laughings at the promise of God—the laughing of the father’s joy and the laughing of Sarah’s incredulity, which soon passed into remorse and faith (Gen 21:6).

Isaac brought laughter before and after his birth and through Isaac’s miraculous birth, God’s eternal purpose for the blessing of the world was fulfilled (Gen 22:18).

We have no record of Isaac’s early life apart from the fact that he was circumcised when he was eight days of age (Gen 21:4)

According to Josephus the historian, when Isaac was twenty-five years of age, he was taken from Beer-sheba to the land of Moriah, where, as the burnt offering, Abraham presented him to God.

Isaac’s faith and obedience in the Lord when Abraham bound him as a sacrifice is exemplary, for he must have truly believed what his father had told him: “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (Gen 22:8)

When the Lord did provide the sacrificial lamb and Isaac was saved, this was yet another miracle in his life.

Isaac was thirty-six years old when his mother Sarah died. He was comforted when he took Rebekah as his wife at forty years of age to help fill the vacant place in his heart. To the credit of Isaac it must be said that he was the only one of the patriarchs who had but one wife. 

Isaac’s marriage, though happy and promising at the start, brought new trials and difficulties into his life. Rebekah went through the same experience as her mother-in-law, Sarah—childlessness. God heard Isaac’s prayer, and in due course, the barren Rebekah became the mother of twin sons who, even in the womb, foreshadowed the long fierce struggle of the races that would spring from them.

So we see that the life of Isaac was a life of miracles. Isaac was faithful to God. He never forgot how God saved him from death and provided a ram to be sacrificed in his place. He watched and learned from his father Abraham, one of the most faithful men of the Bible.

Isaac seems to have outlived his wife and died at the age of 180 (Gen 35:28).

For the last fifty years of his life, Isaac was almost blind, both physically and spiritually, a sad and pitiful state for God’s chosen one – the degeneration of a promising one.

Quote: “How quickly we forget God's great deliverances in our lives. How easily we take for granted the miracles he performed in our past.” – David Wilkerson

Prayer: Lord, I pray that I may never forget your miracles in my life and continue to trust you and commit myself to you till the end of my days. Amen