Isaac had been very badly treated by the Philistines. One well after another of his own digging was violently taken away from him, as the wells which his father had dug had been filled up. He had yielded to this wrong with a gentle, gracious spirit, in a spirit that well became one of God’s strangers and pilgrims here, who look for citizenship in another world. He went from place to place, as the Philistines again and again strove with him and urged him. This was according to the mind which marks him, as we said, in every incident of his life. Suffering, he threatens not--doing well and suffering for it, he takes it patiently; and this we know is acceptable with God. 1 Peter ii. 20. And so God here attests this; for He owns His servant in this thing, and comes to him by night as He had comforted Abraham. But when, in season, the Philistines are brought to a better mind, and Abimelech the king, with his friend Ahuzzath, and Phichol his chief captain, seek Isaac and alliance with him, I ask, Does not his character, in its way, betray him? 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.