Isaac, Disputed Wells and Room to Live

Abimelech was the king of Gerar in Abraham’s day too (20:2), and Phichol reappears in verse 26, so the names may be royal titles or family names. Calling him king of the Philistines is debated, since the Philistines of later history arrived around 1200 BC; some scholars call it an updating of the name, others an earlier Aegean group.

This is the first time the LORD is said to appear to Isaac. Abraham went down to Egypt in his famine (12:10) and Jacob will die there, but Isaac is told to stay, and he is the one patriarch who never leaves the land of Canaan in his life.

“I will be with thee” is spoken here for the first time in Scripture. Its Hebrew, ehyeh immakh, is the phrase God gives Moses at the bush in Exodus 3:12, just before the name “I AM”, ehyeh. “All these countries” is plural, the territories of the several peoples then living there.

The blessing of the nations repeats 22:18 word for word, and both use a reflexive form of the verb, the nations “shall bless themselves” by your seed. In 12:3, 18:18 and 28:14 the form is the passive, “be blessed”. Translators have long argued over whether the difference means anything.

Charge, commandments, statutes, laws: mishmereth, mitsvot, chuqqot, torot, the vocabulary of Deuteronomy (compare Deuteronomy 11:1), applied to a man who lived before Sinai. The Mishnah draws the conclusion that Abraham kept the whole law before it was given; Genesis itself only lists the words.

Three Hebrew words, and they are the obedience: he stays. Gerar lay in the western Negev near Gaza, probably at Tel Haror, so staying meant living under a foreign king in a famine rather than going down to Egypt’s river.

“Fair to look upon” are the words used of Rebekah at the well in 24:16. If the twins were already born, the pretence would have been hard to keep, so many readers place this episode before chapter 25’s births; Genesis arranges by subject here, not by date.

“Sporting” is metsacheq, a play on Isaac’s own name, Yitschaq, he laughs. The same verb was Ishmael’s “mocking” in 21:9 and how Lot’s sons-in-law heard him in 19:14. It took “a long time” for the pretence to fail, and it failed through a window, not a confession.

Isaac gives a bare reason, “Lest I die for her.” Abraham, caught the same way in 20:11–12, offered two excuses, that there was no fear of God in the place and that Sarah really was his half-sister. Isaac has no half-truth to fall back on; Rebekah is not his sister in any sense.

“Lightly” in 1611 means almost or easily: kimat, nearly. “Guiltiness” is asham, the word for the guilt offering in Leviticus 5. “What is this thou hast done?” is the question God put to Eve in 3:13 and Pharaoh put to Abram in 12:18.

“Shall surely be put to death” is mot yumat, the formula of Israel’s later law codes, as in Exodus 21:12. The king’s protection extends to the wife as well as the husband: “this man or his wife”. Isaac’s fear is answered by the man he feared.

Isaac is the only patriarch recorded sowing a crop, which semi-nomads did in good ground. The Hebrew says a hundred “measures”, shearim; the Greek read the same consonants with other vowels as seorim, barley, a hundredfold of barley. Both readings mean a harvest far beyond the ordinary.

The Hebrew hammers one root, gadal, three times: the man became great, and went on becoming great, until he was very great. The King James keeps the rhythm with waxed, grew and became. The growth is described before its cause is named in verse 14.

“Store of servants” is avuddah, a household of servants, the word used of Job’s “very great household” in Job 1:3. “Envied” is qana, the jealousy Rachel feels for Leah in 30:1 and Joseph’s brothers feel for him in 37:11.

Stopping wells was an act of war in a dry country; Israel stops the wells of Moab in 2 Kings 3:25. These were Abraham’s wells, the ones over which he made a treaty with the earlier Abimelech at Beersheba (21:25–30). Filling them with earth made the land unlivable without a fight.

“Mightier than we” is atsamta, the word Pharaoh uses when he fears Israel in Exodus 1:9: “more and mightier than we”. The first king to send away a patriarch’s family for being too strong is this one. Isaac goes without argument.

The valley of Gerar is a nachal, a wadi, a watercourse dry for most of the year where water could still be found by digging beneath the bed. Isaac moves out of the town but not out of the king’s country.

“After the death of Abraham” dates the damage. The treaty the earlier Abimelech swore with Abraham in 21:23 was to cover “my son, nor with my son’s son”, and once Abraham died it was ignored. The Hebrew for “digged again” is literally he returned and dug.

“Springing water” is mayim chayyim, living water, water that flows from a spring rather than collecting in a cistern. It is the phrase Jeremiah uses of God as “the fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 2:13). Finding it in a wadi bed was a real prize.

Esek means strife or contention, and this is its only appearance. The herdsmen of Gerar do not claim the land, only the water: “The water is ours.” Isaac names the well after the quarrel and leaves it to them.

Sitnah means hostility or accusation, from the root of satan, adversary; the word is used of a written accusation in Ezra 4:6. The names grow sharper, strife and then enmity, and Isaac moves again without a word recorded.

Rehoboth means broad places, open room, and Isaac explains it with the same root: the LORD “hath made room”, hirchiv. The psalmist uses it in Psalm 4:1, “thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress.” “Fruitful” is the word of the first blessing in 1:28.

Beersheba was Abraham’s home after the mountain in Moriah (22:19) and the place of his well treaty. Isaac goes back to the one well whose ownership was sworn to, and moves out of Philistine country.

“My servant Abraham” is the first time in Scripture God calls anyone “my servant”; the title will belong later to Moses, David and Job. “Fear not” was said to Abram in 15:1. The promise is given “for my servant Abraham’s sake”, blessing carried over from one life into the next.

“Called upon the name of the LORD” is what Abraham did at Bethel (12:8) and at Beersheba itself (21:33). The verb for digging changes here, from chaphar in verses 15 to 22 to karah, a word that also means to buy or to bargain; the change may be only variety.

Ahuzzath is called “one of his friends”, probably a court title, like Zabud “the king’s friend” in 1 Kings 4:5. Phichol has the name of the army commander who came with the earlier Abimelech in 21:22. Three men of rank come to a man they expelled.

“Hate” is sana, a strong word, and Isaac uses it to their faces; it is the sharpest thing he says in Genesis. He asks them the question they came prepared to answer, which lets them speak first.

“We saw certainly” is a doubled verb, “seeing we saw”. The phrase “betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee” repeats itself the way treaty language does, careful to name both parties. The Philistines call God by his name, the LORD, as Laban did.

“As we have not touched thee” answers the royal order of verse 11: whoever touches this man shall die. They say they sent Isaac away “in peace”, which verse 16 described otherwise. “The blessed of the LORD” is what Laban called the servant in 24:31.

The feast, mishteh, is named from the verb to drink. Eating together sealed agreements, as Jacob and Laban eat on the heap of witness in 31:54. Isaac feeds the men who stopped his father’s wells.

“Betimes” means early. “Sware one to another” is literally “a man to his brother”. The verse ends with the phrase they used in verse 29, “in peace”; this time it is Isaac who sends them away, and the words are true.

The well is the one begun in verse 25, and the report arrives “the same day” as the treaty. The Hebrew message is two words, matsanu mayim, we found water.

Shebah sounds like both the number seven and the word for oath. The Greek translators chose the second and named the well “Oath”. “Unto this day” is the note of a later writer for whom the city was still standing.

Esau marries at forty, the age at which his father married Rebekah (25:20), so the two marriages are set side by side. The names differ in 36:2–3, where Esau’s wives are Adah daughter of Elon, Aholibamah and Bashemath daughter of Ishmael; no one has fully reconciled the two lists.

“Grief of mind” is morat ruach, bitterness of spirit. Rebekah picks up the complaint in 27:46, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth”, and uses it to send Jacob away, so these two verses set up the whole next move.