The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan catches Isaac mid-thought. "It had been in Izhak's heart to go down to Mizraim," it tells us (Genesis 26:2). The famine has struck. His father went down to Egypt when the land failed. The path is worn smooth. Isaac is already packing in his mind.
Then the Lord appeared to him and said a single, absolute sentence. "Go not down to Mizraim. Dwell in the land as I have told thee."
Why not Egypt?
The rabbis taught that Isaac was a olah temimah — a perfect offering. Once bound on the altar at the Akedah, Isaac became, in the sages' reading, holy ground himself. Just as the ashes of a korban could not leave the Temple precincts, Isaac could not leave the Land. His feet belonged to Canaan now. Egypt was off-limits — not because Egypt was evil, but because Isaac was consecrated.
The Targum's phrasing is striking. God does not argue. God does not explain. God simply says dwell in the land as I have told thee. It is the voice of the One who knows that Isaac, unlike Abraham, is not called to wander. Isaac is called to stay.
The deeper lesson
Pseudo-Jonathan, compiled and reworked across centuries of Jewish life, is speaking to a people who have wandered. Every exile generation reads this verse with a catch in the throat. There are times when the holy answer is to stay — to plant deeper, to trust the thin soil under a failing sky, to not run even when the pantry is bare.
Isaac stays. And the famine, in time, lifts.