THE story of Isaac is brief; his life uneventful, perhaps we might say monotonous. The record shows that the Lord appeared to him on two distinct occasions; at Gerar (Gen. 26: 2–5), renewing the covenant previously made with Abraham, with a very full restatement of all its salient points; also at Beersheba (26: 23–25) where we are told “he builded an altar and called on the name of the Lord,” in the steps of his godly father.――――We see a point of his character in the fact stated incidentally, that Esau’s marriage into Hittite families “was a grief of mind to Isaac and to Rebekah.” Esau lacked sympathy with the spirit of the pious patriarchs and utterly failed to appreciate the inheritance of blessings which had lain so near the heart of his grandfather Abraham and of his father Isaac――facts which the historian touches briefly――“Thus Esau despised his birthright.” The writer to the Hebrews puts the case forcibly: “Who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright” (12: 16).――――We have no means of knowing how persistently and wisely Rebekah had labored to win and hold him by her maternal opportunities and power. In later years she seems to have withdrawn her heart from him to give it (with apparently extreme partiality) to Jacob.――――Of her duplicity in the matter of the paternal blessing, it can scarcely be necessary to say that the fact of its being recorded by no means proves that the Lord justified it. Indeed the absence of any explicit condemnation can not be taken as equivalent to a justification. Jacob’s exile from his father’s house and home for twenty long years――so manifestly the result of this duplicity――must have been to her mind painfully suggestive. It seems plainly to have been one of God’s ways in providence to rebuke and chasten her for this wrong, and perhaps we may add, to save Jacob’s soul by removing him from a maternal influence which was so defective――not to say faulty and pernicious. As to Isaac, one point only is named of him by the writer to the Hebrews in his catalogue of illustrious examples of faith: “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come” (11: 20). These benedictions (recorded Gen. 27: 28, 29, 33, 37, 39, 40) must be regarded as far more than a venerable father’s good wishes――indeed as nothing less than prophetic benedictions――words uttered under the divine impulses of the Holy Ghost. Their broad outlook embraced the great outlines of the future history of the two nations that were before him in the person of his two sons. _Jacob._