Now there was another famine in the land, subsequent to the one that had occurred in Abraham’s time. And Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar.
1. And there was a famine. Moses relates that Isaac was tried by nearly the same kind of temptation as that through which his father Abraham had twice passed. I have before explained how severe and violent was this assault.
Here, I. God tried Isaac by his providence. Isaac had been trained up in a believing dependence upon the divine grant of the land of Canaan to him and his heirs; yet now there is a famine in the land, Gen 26:1. What shall he think of the promise when the promised land will not find him bread?
Commenting on Genesis 26:1-5
And there was a famine in the land,.... In the land of Canaan, as the Targum of Jonathan expresses it: besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham; of which see Gen 12:10; which was an hundred years before this: and Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines, unto Gerar; where his father Abraham had sojourned before he was born; and...