John Gill Bible Commentary

Then, Isaac sowed in that land,.... In the land of Gerar; after matters were settled between him and Abimelech, and he had ordered his servants to do him no hurt, he sowed wheat or barley, or some such grain: and received in the same year an hundred fold; in which he sowed it, and which many take to be a year of famine; and so it was the more extraordinary, that there should be such a plentiful crop produced on Isaac's ground, when there was such barrenness elsewhere: but it does not seem likely that it should be the same year of famine in which Isaac came to Gerar, since he is said to have been them a "long time", Gen 26:8; before this sowing and plenty upon it were. This increase is far from being incredible; for Pliny (d), besides instances he gives of an hundred fold, says, that in a field at Byzacium in Africa one bushel produced one hundred and fifty bushels; and from the same place, the deputy of Augustus there sent him from one grain very few less than four hundred, and to Nero three hundred stalks from, one grain. Herodotus (e) speaks of a country, near to the place where the Euphrates runs into the Tigris, on which the city Ninus was, which nowhere failed of producing two hundred fold, and the better sort of it even three hundred; see Mat 13:23, and the Lord blessed him; and prospered and succeeded all his endeavours; and this was the true reason of the fertility of the land he manured and sowed. (d) Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 10. (e) Clio sive, l. 1. c. 193.