Read with Me
Genesis 26:12-22 (HCSB)
Isaac sowed seed in that land, and in that year he reaped a hundred times what was sown. The LORD blessed him, and the man became rich and kept getting richer until he was very wealthy. He had flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and many slaves, and the Philistines were envious of him. The Philistines stopped up all the wells that his father’s slaves had dug in the days of his father Abraham, filling them with dirt. And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Leave us, for you are much too powerful for us.”
So Isaac left there, camped in the Valley of Gerar, and lived there. Isaac reopened the water wells that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and that the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died. He gave them the same names his father had given them. Then Isaac’s slaves dug in the valley and found a well of spring water there. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Quarrel because they quarreled with him. Then they dug another well and quarreled over that one also, so he named it Hostility. He moved from there and dug another, and they did not quarrel over it. He named it Open Spaces and said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
Listen with Me
Even though Isaac still wasn’t trusting in God to the full extent, he was the inheritor of both the promise and the blessing God had promised to his father, Abraham. So, when he planted a crop, God made it produce 100 times what was sown, an unheard-of rate of return. That blessing was not overlooked by the Philistines. They responded with jealousy, fear, and hatred.
The famine in the land was over, so now Abemelech urged Isaac to return to his own land. So, he took his abundant flocks and herds, and he went.
Water was a valuable resource in those dry areas. Out of jealously, the Philistines had filled the wells in the area that Isaac lived with sand. If Isaac remembered where those wells were (and, like all desert dwellers, he did), he would be able to redig them, which he did calling, calling them the same names given to them by Abraham, who had dug them in the first place.
So, the Philistines change tactics. Wherever Isaac succeeded in digging a new well, they came in and claimed the water. Part of their justification was that these wells were near Gerar, in places that the opponents claimed as being in their territory. But rather than opposing those Philistines (Isaac and his people were farmers and shepherds, not warriors as the Philistines were), Isaac named the wells Esek (“argument”) and Sitna (“opposition”), ironically claiming ownership by naming them. Then he and his group moved further southeast.
Finally, he was far enough away from Gerar and the other Philistine towns that they could not reasonably claim ownership of the new well his men dug. So, he called that well Rehoboth (“making room”) as a testimony that God had enabled him to put enough space between him and his adversaries that he had a place in which he could live in peace.
Pray with Me
Father, Isaac wasn’t perfect in his faith, but he did trust You, and that trust was growing. His faith that all the land really would belong to him and his descendants forever, not then but in the fairly near future, gave him the ability to not try to wrest it away from the current inhabitants by force, but to just keep moving and to trust in Your perfect timing. Lord, helped me to have that same trust in Your word for my own life today. Amen.
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