Like Father, Like Son — Modern Paraphrase | fresh.bible
Like Father, Like Son.
Genesis 26 — Isaac finally gets his own chapter and immediately repeats his father's worst mistake
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Key Takeaways
Isaac repeated his father Abraham's exact lie about his wife, proving that inheriting God's promises doesn't automatically cure your fear.
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After surviving famine, conflict, and exile, it was his own son's choices that brought bitterness home.
📢 Chapter 26 — Like Father, Like Son 🪞
is one of the quieter figures in . Sandwiched between the towering faith of his and the wild, dramatic life of his son , Isaac often gets overlooked. But this chapter is entirely his. It's the only full chapter in the Bible dedicated to Isaac's own story — and it's more revealing than you'd expect.
Because what happens here is a fascinating mix of and fear, divine and human failure. Isaac inherits his father's — and also his father's worst habit. And through it all, God keeps showing up anyway.
Stay Put 🌾
A hit the land. This wasn't the first one — there had been one back in day too. (Quick context: famines were existential threats. No grocery stores, no supply chains. When the food ran out, people moved or died.) headed toward , a territory, likely eyeing as the final destination. Same move his had made years earlier.
But God intercepted him:
"Don't go to Egypt. Stay in the land I tell you. Live here, and I will be with you and bless you. I'm giving all these lands to you and your descendants. I will keep the Oath I swore to Abraham your father. I'll multiply your offspring like the stars of heaven. Through your offspring, every nation on earth will be blessed — because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my commands, my laws, my instructions."
So Isaac stayed in Gerar.
Think about what God just did. He took the massive, sweeping he made to Abraham — land, descendants, global blessing — and placed it directly on Isaac's shoulders. Not because Isaac had earned it. Because Abraham had been . Sometimes the blessings you're standing in have roots that go back further than you. And sometimes the hardest act of faith is staying put when everything in you says run.
The Lie That Runs in the Family 😬
Here's where the story gets uncomfortable. The men of noticed — she was beautiful — and started asking about her. His response?
"She's my sister."
Sound familiar? His had pulled the exact same move. Twice. With . Same lie, same fear, same logic: "They'll kill me to get to her." Isaac had inherited the of God — and apparently also his dad's playbook for self-preservation.
It worked for a while. But then , the king, happened to look out his window one day and saw Isaac and Rebekah being, well, clearly not siblings. He called Isaac in immediately:
"She's your wife! How could you say 'She's my sister'?"
Isaac admitted the truth:
"Because I thought someone might kill me over her."
Abimelech was not impressed:
"What have you done to us? Someone could easily have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on all of us."
So Abimelech issued a royal decree to the entire population:
"Anyone who touches this man or his wife will be put to death."
Here's what's striking: the pagan king had to correct the man carrying God's . The person with the Promise acted out of fear, and the person without it acted out of . That's a pattern worth sitting with. Having God's blessing doesn't automatically mean you'll handle every situation with courage. Fear doesn't disappear just because you know the right theology.
Blessed and Banished 📈
Despite failure, God's blessing didn't skip a beat:
Isaac planted crops in that land and harvested a hundred times what he sowed that same year. The Lord blessed him. He became wealthy — and kept getting wealthier. Flocks, herds, a growing household. He had so much that the Philistines started to envy him.
And envy, as it always does, turned into sabotage. The went out and filled in every well servants had dug — packed them with dirt, made them useless. In that region, wells weren't just convenient — they were survival. Filling someone's wells was an act of hostility disguised as pettiness.
Then made it official:
"Leave. You've become too powerful for us."
So Isaac moved to the Valley of and settled there.
It's a pattern that shows up throughout history. Someone is undeniably , and instead of being curious about the source, the people around them get threatened. Success doesn't always earn you allies. Sometimes it earns you enemies who'd rather destroy what you have than ask how you got it.
Dig, Fight, Move, Repeat ⛏️
What did next says a lot about his character. He went back to the wells his had dug — the ones the had filled in — and he reopened them. He even gave them the same names Abraham had used. There's something quietly honoring about that. He wasn't trying to start from scratch. He was reconnecting to what his father had built.
But the conflict wasn't over. His servants dug a new well and struck fresh spring water — and immediately the local herdsmen showed up:
"That water is ours."
Isaac named the well Esek — meaning "dispute" — and moved on. His servants dug another well. Same thing happened:
More quarreling.
He named that one Sitnah — meaning "opposition" — and moved on again. Third time, his servants dug another well. This time? Silence. No one challenged it.
Isaac named it Rehoboth, saying:
"Now the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in this land."
Three wells. Three responses. Dispute, opposition, then room. Isaac didn't fight for the first two. He just kept moving forward. There's a kind of strength in refusing to let conflict define your next move — in trusting that if God is in it, there will eventually be a place where you don't have to fight anymore. Not every battle is yours to win. Some you walk away from so you can get to the thing God actually has for you.
God Shows Up Again 🌙
traveled north to . And that same night — not a week later, not after Isaac proved himself — that same night, the Lord appeared to him:
"I am the God of Abraham your father. Do not be afraid. I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants — for my servant Abraham's sake."
Notice the timing. Isaac had just been pushed out, quarreled over, displaced. He arrived in a new place, probably exhausted and uncertain. And God met him right there with three words that change everything: "Do not be afraid."
So Isaac built an there. He called on the name of the Lord. He pitched his tent. And his servants dug a well.
Altar. . Home. Water. That's the rhythm of someone planting their life in a place because God told them to. It's not flashy. It's not dramatic. It's the quiet, daily act of saying, "I'm going to here, live here, and trust that God will provide here."
When Your Enemies Come Back 🤝
Then something unexpected happened. — the same king who had just told to leave — showed up at . And he didn't come alone. He brought Ahuzzath, his personal adviser, and Phicol, the commander of his army.
Isaac wasn't exactly warm about it:
"Why have you come to me? You hate me. You sent me away."
Fair question. But their answer was revealing:
"We can see clearly that the Lord has been with you. So we said: let's make a sworn agreement between us — that you won't harm us, just as we haven't harmed you. We only did good to you and sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the Lord."
Read between the lines. They weren't coming out of affection. They were coming out of recognition. They had watched Isaac get pushed around, lose wells, get sent away — and somehow keep thriving. The blessing on his life was so obvious that even the people who opposed him couldn't deny it. They didn't want to be his friends. They wanted to make sure they weren't his enemies.
Isaac made them a . They ate and drank together. In the morning, they exchanged and parted in .
And that same day — as if God wanted to put a punctuation mark on the whole thing — Isaac's servants came to him with news:
"We've found water."
He named the well Shibah. And that's why the city is called Beersheba to this day.
Sometimes vindication doesn't come through a dramatic confrontation. It comes through your former critics showing up at your door asking for a peace treaty. You don't have to prove God's blessing is real. You just have to keep living in it. Eventually, even the skeptics will see it for themselves.
A Bitter Ending 💔
The chapter closes with a brief, almost jarring note:
When Esau was forty years old, he married Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite. And they made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.
That's it. No commentary. No explanation. Just the weight of it. had received God's , survived , endured conflict, made with his enemies — and then his own son's choices brought bitterness into his home. These weren't marriages within the family of . They were unions with the surrounding culture that cut against everything God had been building through this family line.
Sometimes the hardest things aren't the famines or the conflicts or the hostile neighbors. They're the ones that happen inside your own house.