(I.) The Dispensational Application.-In the chapter to which we are now come, the outward application has a prominence which it scarcely has elsewhere in the book of Genesis. No wonder, since in Isaac we have Christ personally, the central theme of the Spirit of God. The lapse here of that individual application which we have found so continuous hitherto,-the thread, indeed, on which the other truths are strung,-has its own significance and beauty. Of course it may be said that it is difficult to say whether this lapse be more than one in our knowledge; and indeed we have no plummet to fathom the depth of our ignorance. "If any one think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know." Still the fullness of detail on the one side, so coinciding with the apparent failure on the other, seems to speak plainly. It is (if I may venture to say so,) as when the geologist finds a sudden up burst from beneath disturb the regularity of the strata he is tracing out, but finds in it the outcropping of seams of precious metal or mineral, thus exposed for man's behoof and need. It is no disturbance really of the divine plan-no interruption to that continual thought and care for us which the individual ap-plication argues. What untold blessing in being thus permitted, in fellowship with Him whose record this is, to occupy ourselves with Christ!
Is there not a lack of ability generally for this, in spite of the way in which God is opening His Word to us, that speaks sorrowfully for the state of our souls? Are not Christians dwelling upon that which they count of profit to them, to the losing sight very much of that which is of greatest profit ? Is not even the gospel preached without the witness of that box of ointment for the head of Christ which He said should be told every where "for a memorial [not of Him, but] of her"?
Isaac is undoubtedly the living type of Christ which gives Him Tom us most in the work He has done for God, and thus for us. For a moment, as it were, from the solemn institution of sacrifice the vail is almost removed. Man for man it is must suffer:man, but not this man. Isaac is withdrawn, and faith is left looking onward to the Lamb that " God will provide for Himself" as a burnt-offering.
But if Isaac be the type of this, another comes no less distinctly into view. It is a father here who gives his son. Abraham seems, indeed, the most prominent figure, and necessarily for the type. It is the father's will to which the son obediently gives himself. In the antitype, the God who provides Himself the lamb answers to the father in this case. It is the Son of God who comes to do the Father's will. But what a will, to be the Father's!
" And it came to pass after these things"-the break is plain with what had gone before,-" that God did tempt [or"try"] Abraham, and said unto him, ' Abraham:' and he said, ' Here am I.' " . We wonder at this strange testing of a faith God held precious. Was it not worth the while to be honored with such a history? This was his justification by works now, God bringing out into open sight before others that which He Himself had long before seen and borne witness of. And then how wonderful to see in this display of a human heart the manifestation of the Father's !
How all is measured out to Abraham!-"And He said, 'Take now thy son,-thine only son,- Isaac,-whom thou lovest; and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.'" But who can fail to see that in these elements of sorrow that filled to the brim the father's cup we have the lineaments of a sacrifice transcending this immeasurably? Let us not fear to make God too human in thus apprehending Him. He has become a man to be apprehended.
"Thy son, thine only son," God says to Abraham:and " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life." Thus is manifested His love, that it is His Son that He has given,-His only begotten Son. This is too human a term for some, who would fain do Him honor by denying this to be His divine title. They own Him Son of God, as "that holy thing" born of the virgin Mary; they own Him too as "God over all blessed forever;" but His eternal sonship they do not own.* *Two popular commentaries, those of Adam Clarke and Albert Barnes, are infected with this doctrine.* But thus it would not be true that" the Father sent the Son to be the propitiation for our sins," nor that "God gave His only begotten Son." And this term, " only begotten," is in contrast with His title as "First-begotten,"- " First-born among many brethren. "The former as decisively excludes others from sharing with Him as the latter admits. And when the " Word was made flesh, and tabernacled among us " (Jno. 1:14, Gr.), the glory of Deity seen in the tabernacle of His manhood was " the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Again, if God only could fully declare God, it is "the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."
John thus, whose peculiar theme is the divine manifestation in the Word made flesh, dwells upon this term, " the only begotten." " Had the Father no' bosom,'" it has been well asked, " before Christ was born on earth? " Nay, if there were no Son before then, there was of necessity no Father either. " He that denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father."
The Jews even understood that in claiming God to be His Father, He made Himself equal with God. Men argue from it now to show that, if true in the fullest way, it would make Him inferior! No doubt one may fail, on the other hand, by insisting too much on the analogy of the merely human relationship. We are safe, and only safe, in adhering to Scripture; and there the revelation of the Father and the Son are of the essence of Christianity.
"He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." Here we are apt to fail, not in overestimate of the Son's sacrifice, but in losing sight of the Father's. It is this surely that in these words the apostle insists on:it is this which peculiarly the type before us dwells on. Let us not miss by any thought of impassivity in God the comfort for our hearts that we should find in this. We may easily make Him hard where we would only make Him changeless. But what to us does it imply, this very title, "Father"? and who is the Author of this fount of gushing feeling within us, which if it were absent we should necessarily regard as the gravest moral defect? "He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall He not see?" and He who gave man the tender response of the heart to every appeal of sorrow, what must He be who has made us thus?
God has given His Son, and His heart has been declared to us once for all. If He try us too, as He tried Abraham, how blessed to think that in this carefully measured cup of his, God was saying, as it were, " I know-I know it all:it is My Son, My Isaac, My only one, I am giving for men." The tree is cast into these Mara-waters thus that sweetens all their bitterness.
Isaac's own submission is perfect and beautiful. He was not the child that he is often pictured, but, as it would appear, in the vigor of early manhood. He nevertheless submits himself absolutely. How fitting a type of Him who stops the resistance of His impulsive follower with the words, " Put up again thy sword into its sheath:the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"
Through all this trial of Abraham's we must not miss the fact that the faith of resurrection cheers the father's heart. The promises of God were assured in him, of whom He had said, " In Isaac shall thy seed be called." If therefore God called for him to be offered up, resurrection must restore him from the very flames of the altar; and " in a figure," as the apostle says, from the dead he was received. The figure of resurrection here it is very important to keep in mind, for it is to Christ in resurrection that the events following typically refer.
In fact, Isaac is spared from death; and here occurs one of those double figures by which the Spirit of God would remedy the necessary defect of all figures to set forth Christ and His work. Isaac is spared; but there is substituted for him " a ram caught in a thicket by his horns." Picture of devoted self-surrender, as we have seen elsewhere the ram is; he is "caught by his horns"- the sign (as others have noticed) of his power. Grace recognizes our impotence as claim upon His might:as He says, "I looked, and there was none to help, and I wondered that there was none to uphold; therefore Mine own arm brought salvation to Me."
In a figure, however, Isaac is raised from the dead; and as risen, the promise is confirmed to him,-" In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." It is Christ raised from the dead who is the only source of blessing to the whole world. The value and necessity of His sacrificial work are here affirmed. Death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; only beyond death, then, can there be fulfillment of the promise, however free.
With the typical meaning of what follows (in Ch. 23:and 24:) many are happily familiar now. Sarah passes away and gives place to Rebekah,- the mother to the bride (24:67). Sarah is here the covenant of grace in connection with the people "of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came." God's dealings with the nation, in view of this, (for the present,) end, and a new thing is developed,-the Father's purpose to have a bride for His risen Son. The servant's mission shows us the coming of the Holy Ghost to effect this. Isaac remains in Canaan, as Christ in heaven. The Spirit of God, having all the fullness of the divine treasury "under His hand," comes down in servant-guise as the Son came before. Thorough devotedness to the father's will and the son's interests marks the servant's course. For those who are by grace allowed to be identified with the blessed service thus pictured, how instructive the fact that even his name we have no knowledge of. From what Abraham says, in chapter xv, of the steward of his house, it is generally inferred that it is Eliezer of Damascus, but this is by no means certain. Certainly he is the representative of One who does not speak of Himself, or seek His own glory; and for those whom He may use as His instruments, the lesson is plain.
So also is that of the waiting upon God which is so striking in Abraham's messenger. What sustains in prayer like singleness of eye ? If it is our own will we are seeking, what confidence can we have? Here we find prayer that God answers to the letter. If Christ's interests be ours, how fully may we count upon God glorifying His beloved Son! "Let it be she whom Thou hast appointed for Thy servant Isaac." How blessed to be working on to an already predestined end!
As for Rebekah, it is to be noted that she is already of Abraham's kindred:it is not an outside stranger that is sought for Isaac; and this is surely impressed on us in chapter xxii, where Nahor's, children are announced to Abraham. It is in the family of faith that the Church is found:it is the gathering together of the children of God who are scattered abroad (Jno. 11:52); not, as so many imagine, identical with the whole company of these, but only with those of the present period- from Pentecost till the Lord calls up His own. " Thou shalt go to my land and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac." Rebekah does not, therefore, I believe, represent the call of sinners by the gospel, but the call of saints to a place of special relationship with Christ on high. This is what began at Pentecost, plainly, where the hundred and twenty gathered were already of the " kindred;" and this is the character of the work ever since, although all that are saved now are added to the church. But this is a special grace none the less. We are in the mission-time of Genesis xxiv, and the Spirit of God is seeking a bride for the risen Son.
It is thus also, I doubt not, that Rebekah is found by the well of water, the constant figure of truth as a living reality for the soul. Already she has this, when the call is received to be Isaac's bride in Canaan. Indeed Isaac's gifts are already upon her before she receives this. She is betrothed, as it were, before she realizes or has received the message. So at Pentecost, and for years after, the Church, already begun, knew not the character of what had begun. It is only through Paul's ministry that her place with Christ is fully at last made known.
Simplicity of faith is found in Rebekah; she believes the report of him whom she has not seen, and as the messenger will have no delay, so she on her part seeks none. The precious things she has received are earnest already of what awaits her. Details of the journey there are none; but at the end, Isaac comes to meet her. "And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac, she lighted off the camel. For she had said unto the servant, 'What man is this that walketh in the fields to meet us?' And the servant had said, 'It is my master.' Therefore she took a vail and covered herself."
What a word for heart and conscience in all this! Are we thus simple in faith, thus prompt and unlagging? And at the end of our journey nearly now, when the cry has already gone forth, " Behold the Bridegroom!" for those to whom the Interpreter-Spirit has spoken,-shall there not be with us any thing that answers to this beautiful action of Rebekah's, when "she lighted off the camel" and " took a vail and covered herself" ? It is He whose glory Isaiah saw, before whom the seraphim cover themselves; and the nearness of the place to which we are called, and the intimacy already ours, if we enjoy it, will only manifest themselves in deeper and more self-abasing reverence.
The rest is Isaac's joy. What gladness to think of His who even in glory waits as a Nazarite yet, to drink the wine new with us in His Father's kingdom!
In chapter 25:we find another wife of Abraham, and a hint of the multiplied seed which was to be his; from which Isaac, as the heir of the promises, is separated entirely. Ishmael's family is then rehearsed. These three,-Isaac and his bride, Ishmael, and Keturah's sons,-seem sufficiently to point out the diverse blessing of the family of faith in the Church, Israel, and the millennial nations.
Further than this, whether the dispensational application can be traced, I am not clear. It is plainly a history of failure that begins", very dis-tinct in character from the previous one; which, moreover, seems to have a very plain end in chap-ter 25:18.