The generations of Yit-zak (Isaac) are presented in this parsha.
In this week’s reading, Jacob and Esau are born. Isaac relocates to Philistine territory where he digs wells, resulting in friction between him and the locals. Rebecca and Jacob successfully deceive Isaac, tricking him into giving to Jacob the blessings he had intended for Esau.
Please stand with me while I read from the parsha:
Gen 26:12 And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The LORD blessed him,
Gen 26:13 and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy.
Gen 26:14 He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him.
Gen 26:15 (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.)
Gen 26:16 And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
Gen 26:17 So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there.
Gen 26:18 And Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, which the Philistines had stopped after the death of Abraham. And he gave them the names that his father had given them.
The following is based on FFOZ Torah Club volume 5.
At this point, Isaac returned to his semi-nomadic way of life and brought his flocks and herds into the valley of Gerar on the edge of the Negev desert. As he went, he reopened the wells of his father Abraham. The Phillistines had filled in Abraham’s wells as an exercise of their sovereignty and to perhaps discourage nomadic shepherds and herdsmen like Isaac from grazing in their territory.
Isaac reopened the wells. The Torah uses four short stories to describe how Isaac named the four wells. He named one ‘Contention’ because as he dug it, the herdsmen of Gerar came out and contended with his shepherds. He dug a second one and named it ‘Hostility’ because of a dispute with the same herdsmen. He moved further into the Negev, away from Gerar, and dug a third well. He named it ‘Broad Places’ because he had finally escaped the Phillistines and had plenty of space.
It seems like Isaac named the wells without any thought as to what they had been called in his father’s day. However, as we read, the Torah says that he gave them the same names that his father had given them. This becomes clear in the story about the well in Beersheba, named ‘Well of an Oath’. He camped at Beersheba and swore a covenantal oath with the Phillistine king just as his father had done and named the well ‘Well of an Oath’ just as his father had done.
The story of Isaac reopening Abraham’s wells indicates that Isaac is the legitimate heir of the Abrahamic legacy. Like Abraham, Isaac sojourned as a stranger in a strange land, without land and water rights.
On another level, the story illustrates the value of returning to original sources. Isaac could have dug new wells. Instead he chose to restore Abraham’s wells. He could have chosed new names. Instead he chose to use the names that Abraham had given them.
In a similar way, the biblical path of faith is not one of innovation and novelty. Instead, we find our spirits satisfied drinking from the wells of faith from which our fathers drank. When Yeshua offered the woman at the well the living water of salvation He wasn’t speaking of literal water, but salvation. Yet, He offered that living water to he at Jacob’s well. The journey into the Hebrew roots of Christianity is much like Isaac’s journey back to the wells of his father Abraham. The original sources have been filled in and concealed by time and hostile Phillistines. The Sabbath has been lost. The appointed times of God have been forgotten. The Torah itself has been, figuratively, filled in with earth.
We don’t need to dig new wells or create new names. If we will only make the effort to open up these original wells up again, we will find that they are as deep and filled with living water as when our fathers first drank from them.
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