The opening verse of this chapter connects itself with Chap. xii. "There was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham." The trials which meet God's people in their course are very much alike; and they ever tend to make manifest how far the heart has found its _all_ in God. It is a difficult matter--a rare attainment--so to walk in sweet communion with God as to be rendered thereby entirely independent of things and people here. The Egypts and the Gerars which lie on our right hand and on our left present great temptations, either to turn aside out of the right way, or to stop short of our true position as servants of the true and living God. "And Isaac went unto Abimelech, King of the Philistines, unto Gerar." There is a manifest difference between Egypt and Gerar. Egypt is the expression of the world in its natural resources, and its independence of God. "My river is mine own," is the language of an Egyptian who knew not Jehovah, and thought not of looking to him for aught. Egypt was, locally, farther removed from Canaan than Gerar; and, morally, it expresses a condition of soul farther from God. Gerar is thus referred to in Chap. x.: "And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon, as thou comest to Gerar, unto Gaza: as thou goest unto Sodom, and Gomorrah, and Admah, and Zeboim, even unto Lasha." (Ver. 19.) We are informed that "from Gerar to Jerusalem was three days' journey." It was, therefore, as compared with Egypt, an advanced position; but still it lay within the range of very dangerous influences. Abraham got into trouble there, and so does Isaac, in this chapter, and that, too, in the very same way. Abraham denied his wife, and so does Isaac. This is peculiarly solemn. To see both the father and the son fall into the same evil, in the same place, tells us plainly that the influence of that place was not good.