The Envy of the Unblessed Text: Genesis 26:12-17
Introduction: The Offense of Blessing
We live in an age that has made envy into a virtue. Our entire political discourse is driven by it. We call it by sanitized names like "social justice" or "equity," but at its root, it is the same green-eyed monster that has slithered through the hearts of men since Cain first looked at his brother's accepted offering. It is the resentment of the unblessed toward the blessed. It is the hatred of God's favor on another. And if we are to understand the world, and our place in it as God's people, we must understand that the blessing of God is an offense to the world. It is a provocation. When God blesses His people, He is not just doing something for them; He is doing something to the world. He is demonstrating His sovereign choice, His unmerited favor, and this necessarily creates a division.
The world can tolerate a private, pietistic religion that keeps to itself and bothers no one. It can even tolerate a religious fervor that is miserable, because a miserable Christian confirms the world's suspicion that God is a cosmic killjoy. But what the world cannot, and will not, tolerate is a joyful, prosperous, and fruitful Christian. A blessed Christian is a walking, talking refutation of the world's entire operating system. The world believes that satisfaction is found in autonomy, in rebellion, in throwing off God's constraints. So when a man like Isaac, living in submission to God's covenant, thrives in the very midst of a famine, it is a direct challenge to the gods of the age. It is a sign and a wonder, and the world has only two responses to such a sign: repentance or rage. Bow the knee, or get a shovel and start filling in the wells.
In this short passage, we see the dynamic that will play out through all of redemptive history. God blesses His covenant people, not because they are so clever, but because He made a promise. This blessing results in tangible, visible fruitfulness. This fruitfulness provokes the envy of the surrounding pagan culture. And this envy results in petty, spiteful, and ultimately self-defeating acts of hostility. This is not just Isaac's story. This is the story of the church. This is our story. And we had best learn its lessons well.
The Text
And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year one hundredfold. And Yahweh blessed him, and the man became great and continued to grow greater until he became very great; and he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and many servants, so that the Philistines were jealous of him. Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are too mighty for us.” And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar and settled there.
(Genesis 26:12-17 LSB)
God's Outrageous Favor (v. 12-14)
We begin with the simple, declarative statement of God's covenantal goodness.
"And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year one hundredfold. And Yahweh blessed him, and the man became great and continued to grow greater until he became very great; and he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and many servants, so that the Philistines were jealous of him." (Genesis 26:12-14)
The context here is crucial. There is a famine in the land (v. 1). This is not a time of universal prosperity. This is a time of scarcity. And in the middle of this scarcity, Isaac obeys God's command not to go down to Egypt (v. 2), but to sojourn in the land of the Philistines. He obeys, he sows, and God explodes the harvest. A hundredfold return is an astronomical, supernatural yield. This is not just good farming; this is the manifest blessing of God. The text is explicit: "And Yahweh blessed him." This is the engine of the whole narrative. Isaac's prosperity is not the result of his own ingenuity, though he was no doubt industrious. It is the direct result of God's covenant promise being fulfilled to the son of Abraham.
Notice the progression: he became great, continued to grow greater, until he became very great. This is a picture of compounding blessing. God's favor is not a static, one-time event. It is a dynamic, growing reality. The result is immense wealth in the currency of that day: flocks, herds, and a large household of servants. God is not stingy. He is not an ascetic who is allergic to material blessing. The Gnostic lie that the spiritual is good and the material is bad is just that, a lie. God created the material world, and He delights in blessing His people within it. This is not the "health and wealth" heresy that turns God into a cosmic vending machine for our greed. This is covenantal blessing, where material prosperity is an outward sign of God's faithfulness to His promise and a platform for future kingdom work.
But this blessing has an immediate, and predictable, consequence: "so that the Philistines were jealous of him." The Hebrew word here for jealous is the root from which we get the word "zeal." It is a burning, intense envy. They saw the blessing, but they did not see the Blesser. They saw the fruit, but they did not honor the Root. They coveted the results of Isaac's relationship with God, but they wanted nothing to do with Isaac's God. This is the heart of all paganism. It wants the gifts without the Giver. It wants the rain, but not the one who sends it. And when it cannot have the gifts, it seeks to destroy them.
The Spite of Men (v. 15-16)
The envy of the Philistines immediately curdles into active hostility. Their response is not to ask Isaac about his God. It is to attack his livelihood in the most destructive way possible.
"Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, 'Go away from us, for you are too mighty for us.'" (Genesis 26:15-16 LSB)
In that arid land, water was life. A well was an immense asset, a source of sustenance for man and beast. To dig a well was a constructive, life-giving act. To stop up a well with earth was a purely destructive, nihilistic act. Notice what they are doing. They are not simply stealing the water. They are rendering the source of the water useless. This is cutting off your nose to spite your face. In their envy, they would rather destroy a source of life that benefits the entire region than allow the man blessed by God to have it. This is the logic of socialism and every other envious political system. It is better for everyone to be equally poor and miserable than for one to prosper by the hand of God.
They are not just attacking Isaac; they are attacking his heritage. These were the wells "his father's servants had dug." This is an attempt to erase the legacy of Abraham. It is an attack on the covenant line. The world's hostility is never just about you. It is about the God you represent and the covenant history you embody. When they attack you for your faithfulness, they are attacking the generations of faithful saints who came before you, and ultimately, they are attacking Christ Himself.
Then comes the official word from the king, Abimelech. "Go away from us, for you are too mighty for us." This is the language of fear. The blessing of God on Isaac has made him a geopolitical threat. His prosperity was not a quiet, private affair. It had public, political consequences. The world system is always threatened by a people who are blessed by a source outside of that system. If your well-being comes from God, then the state cannot control you with its spigots. A man who fears God does not need to fear Abimelech. And Abimelech knows it. So the solution is expulsion. Get out. Your success is a reproach to us.
A Pilgrim's Response (v. 17)
Isaac's response to this envy and hostility is instructive. It is not what our flesh would counsel.
"And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar and settled there." (Genesis 26:17 LSB)
Isaac does not fight. He does not stand on his rights. He does not form a militia to protect his wells. He departs. He moves on. At this point in redemptive history, the land is promised, but it is not yet possessed. Isaac, like his father Abraham, is a sojourner. He is a pilgrim. His response is one of meekness. But we must not mistake this meekness for weakness. Meekness is power under control. Isaac was "very great," and Abimelech admitted he was "too mighty for us." Isaac likely had the resources to fight and win. But he chose not to.
Why? Because his trust was not in the wells, but in the God who provides the water. He knew that if God could make him prosper in one place, He could make him prosper in another. His security was not in a location, but in the covenant promise of God. He is free to move because he is not tied to the resources of the world. This is a profound lesson for us. The world threatens to take away our job, our status, our security. And the faithful Christian can say, "You can have it. You can fill my well with dirt. My God can dig another one. My life is not in your hands."
Isaac moves on, and as we see in the following verses, he begins digging wells again. He re-digs the wells of his father. He is not deterred by the hostility. He simply continues the constructive, life-giving work of his father in a new place. He does not curse the Philistines; he keeps digging. This is the pattern of faithful kingdom work. The world will throw dirt. Our job is to keep digging, to keep unstopping the ancient wells of God's truth and God's blessing, knowing that our ultimate hope is not in the well, but in the Fountain of Living Waters Himself.
Conclusion: Blessed to be a Problem
The story of Isaac and the Philistines is a paradigm for the church in the world. God has blessed us in Jesus Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. He has called us to be fruitful and to multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. As we walk in faithfulness, God's blessing will become manifest. It will show up in our families, in our businesses, in our communities. We will become "very great" in the things that matter.
And we must not be surprised when this provokes the envy of the world. We must expect it. The world's Abimelechs will see our fruitfulness, which comes from a source they cannot control, and they will declare us "too mighty." They will see our joy as arrogance. They will see our prosperity as an injustice. They will see our moral standards as a threat. And they will get out their shovels. They will try to stop up the wells of Christian heritage. They will fill the wells of biblical education with the dirt of secularism. They will stop up the wells of Christian morality with the filth of sexual rebellion. They will stop up the wells of free enterprise with the mud of envious legislation.
What then shall we do? We do what Isaac did. We refuse to put our trust in the wells. We put our trust in the God of the wells. We refuse to answer their spite with our own. We answer their destructive rage with constructive, faithful work. We move on, and we keep digging. We re-dig the old wells of our fathers, the wells of sound doctrine, of robust worship, of Christian education, of family piety. We are not fighting for a particular piece of dirt. We are contending for a covenant. And the God of that covenant has promised that the meek, those who trust in Him and not in their own strength, will inherit the earth. The Philistines get to keep their dirt for a little while. Isaac, and the children of Isaac, get the world.