John Chrysostom : In case you might think he was talking about that previous famine, accordingly he added, "besides the famine in the patriarch's time," that is to say, another similar famine beset the land in Isaac's time as in his father's time. The scarcity of the necessities of life threw everyone into great apprehension, compelled them to leave their own home and travel to those places where it was possible to find an abundance of resources.Hence this good man too, on seeing the famine, "took the journey," the text says, "to visit Abimelech in Gerar." This was where Abraham came too, you remember, after his return from Egypt. — HOMILIES ON Genesis 51.5-6 Augustine of Hippo : FAMINE ARRIVED AT THE TIME OF ISAAC. — And there was a famine in the land, besides the former famine, which was in the time of Abraham; and Isaac went to Abimelech the king of the Philistines to Gerera. to Abimelech king of the Philistines . In relation to this text we can ask when this event occurred. Was it after Esau had sold his birthright for a meal of lentils, that this begins to be narrated? Or, as is often the case, did the narrator return to this matter by recapitulation, when, abandoning the story about his children, he returned to that passage that we have mentioned of the plate of lentils? We ask ourselves, too, why does Abimelech himself appear here, who had even desired Sarah, and his companion and the chief of his troops is also mentioned (Cf. Gen. 21:22, 32; 26:26.); could they still be alive? Because, when he became a friend of Abraham, Isaac was not yet born, but his birth was already promised. Suppose that it happened a year before Isaac was born. Then after Isaac, at the age of sixty, had children, but they were young when Esau sold his birthright. Suppose also that they were about twenty years old. Then Isaac's age, when the event of his sons took place, would be about eighty years. Suppose Abimelech was a young man when he desired Sarah and became friends with Abraham. He could, therefore, be almost a hundred years old, if he went to that land pressed by famine after that event of his children. Nothing, therefore, obliges us to think that the departure of Isaac for Gerera is reported by way of recapitulation. But as it is said that Isaac remained for a long time in this country, that he dug wells, on the occasion of which there were disputes, and that he became very rich (Cf. Genesis 26:14). It would be strange that these things are mentioned if the author does not resort to recapitulation. These things would therefore have been passed over in silence, in order to enable the narrative to speak first of the sons of Isaac to the place where the lentil dish is mentioned. [ — QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 74 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)