Torah18 min
Isaac in Gerar: The Sinai Vocabulary Before Sinai and the Triad Seeded at Beersheba
Genesis Genesis 26:1-33
Genesis 26 is the only chapter in the Torah where Isaac is the active patriarch. The famine, the lie at Gerar, the hundredfold harvest, the four wells, the night theophany at Beersheba, and the treaty with Abimelech stage a deliberate replay of Abraham's life. But two verses make this chapter's contribution canonical: Genesis 26:5 (the fullest pre-Sinai cluster of Sinai-legal vocabulary in the canon — four legal nouns stacked together, citing the Akedah-oath) and Genesis 26:24 (the first installment of «I am the God of Abraham your father,» the formula Jesus deploys against the Sadducees and Stephen quotes at his death).