Yitzchak Avinu, the second of the patriarchs, was the son of Abraham and Sarah, born when his father was a hundred years old and his mother ninety. His name, meaning "he will laugh", recalls the laughter of Abraham and Sarah at the announcement of his birth. According to the Talmud, he was born on Pesach.

God commanded Abraham to offer his son on the altar on Mount Moriah. Yitzchak, who according to the commentators was then thirty-seven, allowed himself to be bound without resisting: this is the Akeidat Yitzchak, the symbol of complete devotion to the divine will.

At forty, after Sarah's death, he married Rivka, brought from Charan by Abraham's servant. When she arrived he had gone out "to meditate in the field", which the Talmud understands as his institution of the Mincha prayer. At sixty, after their prayers, their twins Yaakov and Esav were born.

He is the only patriarch whose name was never changed and the only one who never left the Land of Israel; he re-dug the wells his father had dug and gave them the names his father had given. In Kabbalah his attribute is gevurah, strict judgment, alluded to in the phrase "the Fear of Yitzchak".

He lived one hundred and eighty years, longer than the other two patriarchs, and died "old and full of days". His sons Esav and Yaakov buried him in Hebron, in the Cave of Machpelah.