"So Isaac stayed in Gerar. When the men of that place asked him about his wife, he said, "She is my sister," because he was afraid to say, "She is my wife." He thought, "The men of this place might kill me on account of Rebekah, because she is beautiful." When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. So Abimelech said, "What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us." So Abimelech gave orders to all the people: "Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death." Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, "Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us." So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. Isaac's servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen and said, "The water is ours!" So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him. Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, saying "Now the LORD had given us room and we will flourish in the land." From there he went up to Beersheba. That night the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham." Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well. Meanwhile, Abimelech and come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. Isaac asked them, "Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?" They answered, "We saw clearly that the LORD was with you; so we said, 'There ought to be a sworn agreement between us' – between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you that you will do us no harm, just as we did not molest you but always treated you well and sent you away in peace. And now you are blessed by the LORD." Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. Early the next morning the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and the left him in peace. That day Isaac's servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, "We've found water!" He called it Shibah, and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba." (Genesis 26:6-33)
In the previous posting we saw the Lord telling Isaac that if he will "stay in this land for awhile" He would be with Isaac, bless him, and "confirm the oath" that the LORD swore to his father Abraham. So Isaac stayed. And the LORD did bless him…so much so that the Philistines became envious of him to the point of persecuting him for his wealth.
The first persecution from the Philistines toward Isaac was to fill up all the wells that had been dug in his father's time. Water has always been (and will always be) a precious commodity; for with water there is life and without it there is death. The Philistines knew this and their act of stopping up the wells was beyond petty jealousy; it had become a deadly jealousy.
But that wasn't enough to satisfy the jealousies of the Philistines. Abimelech now tells Isaac that he must "move away from us." If they couldn't stop the blessing upon Isaac, at least they wouldn't have to witness it day after day if he were out of sight. And besides fear had begun to set in that Isaac would become much more powerful than even Abimelech himself. Best to get him out of town altogether.
So Isaac went to live in the "valley" of Gerar…he moved out from the more populated area surrounding the town into the less populated countryside. He began to re-dig the wells that the Philistines had stopped up. But he continued digging more wells even than his father had; and as new wells were dug and new water found, the Philistine herdsmen would get wind of it and run out to falsely claim it as their own. And so the persecution continued.
The first fresh water well found, Isaac named Esek which means "contention." The next well of fresh water found was named Sitnah which means "strife."
The third well was named Rehoboth which means "wide places" as this was the first well without contention or strife; and Isaac believed that the persecution had been stopped by the LORD and was a sort of confirmation that he would be allowed to remain here and flourish.
Isaac then goes to Beersheba. You will recall that Beersheba means" the well of the seven oaths" and was the place where his father Abraham before him had dug a well after he had sworn an oath with this same Abimelech, king of the Philistines, using seven ewe lambs as confirmation of his oath. Obviously that well has since been filled in by the Philistines.
That same night that Isaac arrives in Beersheba, the LORD appears to him (possibly in a dream) and confirms the oath He had made with Abraham, telling Isaac not to fear for He is with him…this is obviously a prophetic word to Isaac for only the Lord knows who is on his way to visit Isaac.
After the appearance of the Lord, Isaac builds an altar, has his servants begin to dig a new well, and then Abimelech arrives on the scene with his two main men, one of which is Phicol, commander of the Philistine army…the same man who had accompanied Abimelech when an agreement of peace had been struck between Abraham and Abimelech so many years before.
At the arrival of Abimelech with his two powerful cohorts, Isaac is naturally braced and awaiting further persecution; but then Abimelech states that he wants there to be a treaty of peace between them. Surely at that point, Isaac remembers the word of the LORD and now understands why the LORD spoke that word to him. And so he relaxes and becomes cordial to Abimelech even though Abimelech was never anything but hostile to Isaac (although Abimelech's memory seems a bit fuzzy about the particulars of his own treatment of Isaac in the past.) It is very clear that Abimelech is more fearful of Isaac than Isaac is of him. After all, the LORD had just confirmed that He was on Isaac's side. Isaac knew he had nothing to fear.
Isaac strikes an accord with Abimelech, and that same day his servants come to him saying they found fresh water in the well they had been digging….the LORD's way of confirming his pleasure of Isaac's actions towards the man who had been Isaac's enemy for so long. Isaac names the well Shibah meaning "an oath" in memorial to the LORD's oath to him.
Isaac trusted in the word of the LORD and did not give way to fear; and was blessed as a result. That is a WORD to us all.
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