“God Provides Water of Life”

Genesis 26:12-25

 

We started this chapter with God’s blessed chosen one getting caught in a famine. His immediate response was to go down to Egypt. He makes it as far as Gerar where the king, Abimelech lived and God appeared to Isaac and told him not to go down to Egypt, but to hang out where he was. God also gave him the blessing speech. 

 

What does the chosen one do? 

 

He creates a situation where he decides to give up his wife for his own well being. In the process, he manages to put an innocent king, or at least semi-innocent king and the king’s city in danger. 

 

Didn’t God just tell him that all the nations would find blessing through him and his seed? 

It certainly didn’t look like Isaac was bringing blessings? 

 

In fact, throughout this entire chapter one has to wonder how blessings will be passed on from such a sketchy character as Isaac. The narrator provides us with a great deal of tension created by the moral complexity of God’s chosen one. 

 

We left off last week with King Abimelech giving orders that no one was to harm Isaac and his wife. In verse 11 he said, 

“Anyone who harms this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

 

Wow, it looks like Isaac will actually get away with his cowardice. 

 

What does Isaac decide to do next? 

 

He decides to become a farmer. He sowed seed. Turns out he was pretty good at it. He reaped a hundredfold. 

 

Was he really that good of a farmer? Or was it because the Lord blessed him? 

 

At least someone in the story is faithful. God does what He says He will do. Here’s the irony, turns out God doesn’t bless Isaac just a little bit. The next verse tells us that Isaac became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became really wealthy. 

 

Health and wealth gospel right here! 

But wait a minute! 

Isaac tells lies, nearly puts an entire nation in danger and what happens to him? 

He becomes really wealthy. 

 

This isn’t the first time God has followed through with doing what He said He would do, despite the behavior of the chosen one. The same thing happened to Isaac’s father, Abraham. 

 

Again we have the

• I am going to bless you
• Horrible behavior
• And then God blesses him

 

The narrator is definitely trying to highlight the tension of God demonstrating to His chosen one this:

Look, you are the chosen one. I have chosen you to be the conduit of blessing to all the nations. In order for you to truly understand what this means, in order for you to be able to spread the blessing, you are going to need to be able to experience receiving a blessing. Even when it seems wrong. 

Oh, and can you hear the Eden melody? 

 

The blessed one, 

put in a land of blessing and what do they do? 

Deceive and lie. 

Remember what happened after the Eden deception? 

The humans were exiled. 

 

Then you get the story of the next generation, with two sons, one chosen and one not chosen. The non-chosen brother reacts how, when he looks upon the blessing of the chosen one? He gets angry.

 

In today’s narrative, how do the Philistines feel about Isaac’s blessing? They get angry, or jealous. Things begin to heat up. In their anger, the Philistines manage to fill in all of the wells that Isaac’s father’s servants had dug in the time of Abraham. Now who is acting like a spoiled brat? Whatever….it worked.

Does anyone have to pay any consequences for the poor behavior? No, King Abimelek tells Isaac to leave, move away. He had become too powerful. That’s one way to try to solve the problem.

 

So Isaac moved away and he set up camp in the Valley of Gerar. The NIV translation is a bit misleading, because when we read the word “valley” we think of a lush green area around a river or stream. Actually, if you remember, they were experiencing a famine. There was no water, not even a trickle. Isaac and his entourage were camping, outside the city, on a wadi, or a dried up river bed. 

 

What was Isaac to do? They were in the midst of a famine. He couldn’t go back to the city. All the wells that his father had dug had been stopped up. But he did go around and undig them and rename them the same name his father had given them. 

But this still left him in a dried up river bed wondering, “Why not try and dig some new wells?” So Isaac’s servants dug in the wadi and discovered a well of fresh water there. In Hebrew it reads, “mayim khayyim” or “water of life.” 

 

Uh-oh! The herdsmen from the city, the ones who work for Abimilek, quarreled with Isaac saying, “That water is ours!” So Isaac named the well, “Esek,” meaning “contention” because the men were contentious. 

 

What does Isaac decide to do? 

Move on and dig another well. 

Lo and behold, they quarrel over that one also. 

So Isaac named it Sitnah, or satan, which means opposition. Isaac continued on, dug another well, and this time, no one quarreled with him. 

Isaac named this one Rehoboth, meaning “wide places,” saying that the Lord has widened a place for us so that we can be fruitful in this desert land in a time of famine.

 

From there Isaac went up to Beersheba. This is a compound Hebrew word, with be’er = the word well, and sheba uses the Hebrew letters for the number seven. It also has the same Hebrew letters for the word “oath” or “promise.” And lo and behold, the Yahweh appeared to him and told him, 

“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.”

What does Isaac do? 

What any respectable human does after being told by Yahweh that they would be blessed and have lots of descendants. 

He built an altar, called on the name of the LORD, pitched his tent, and had his servants dig another well. 

Okay, what are all these wells about? 

Why do I need to know about all of these wells? 

What is going on here? 

Let’s go back to the core notes of this melody. We began with Yahweh providing life in the land of non-life. 

Just like in the beginning, the first image we were given was the dry land and plants coming from the chaos waters. 

Following that, with Noah, we were given lots of water in a desolate land. 

As we continue to read the Hebrew Scriptures, we will discover that the biblical authors will take from the first narrative or the second narrative,  

or sometimes both narratives in order to bring up the creation motif of the melody. 

The wilderness narratives are like that, but they not only use the Eden narratives, they will add on some of the other instances that have used the Eden motif, in between. In this story we recognize the word, “quarreling.” Remember how the Israelites grumble and quarrel with Moses, in the wilderness? It’s the exact same Hebrew word. The vocabulary of wilderness stories in Exodus and Numbers, begins right here with people quarreling about water in the wilderness.

This is an example of where we should be recognizing words that spread across whole sections of the Bible. Nothing is written in this book, willy-nilly. 

 

 

So when you are reading through a story and your intuition tells you, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen that word before, I wonder if there is a connection? It’s worth checking out. There may not be a connection, but more times than not, there is. 

Have you caught on to what’s happening with Isaac’s narrative so far? 

In the previous paragraph we had the blessed one, with some deception and treachery.  He was then exiled from the city because of the hostility over him being the chosen one. The non-chosen one gets angry. That creates two groups who argue and quarrel over resources and water. And God keeps showing favor to the chosen one, which keeps aggravating the non-chosen one and we are provided with the repetitive nature of it all. 

In fact, we are told about a well, and then another well, and then another well. It’s as if the waters are rising. The waters of conflict that is. 

Let’s take a glimpse back. 

In Genesis 3, the agent of deception is called the snake. 

In the Cain and Abel story, it was called “sin.” 

In this narrative, we have hostile nations' responses to the newly dug wells. The central name of the place was “satan,” or “sitnah.” 

The word satan is not a name, it's a noun that describes somebody’s posture to another person. A satan is a hostile figure, one who is opposed. That well was called, “opposition.” 

This is the first time the root for the word “satan” is in the Bible. Now remember, this is not the name of anybody. It is used to describe somebody who’s in a hostile position to another person. 

For example, the Angel of Yahweh calls himself a satan when he stands opposed to Balaam riding on his donkey.  

Knowing that this describes opposition, why do you think it is being brought up in the center of the rivalry in this narrative? 

This story it’s about blessing in the land, water in the dry and thirsty land surrounding the story of nations at odds with each other. 

What is going to happen? 

How is God’s blessing going to spread to the nations with the chosen one acting like a snake and when the non-chosen ones are envious and angry and resent the blessing of the chosen one? 

This is heavy duty theology being slugged out right here?

 

Now, let’s go back to the naming of the first well they dug, verse 19. Isaac named it “mayim khayyim” or “water of life.” In Hebrew, the phrase, “water of life” is used to describe running fresh water as opposed to stagnant still water.

 

We should hear a ding, ding, ding in our head and immediately go back to the garden of Eden. Put your finger there, remember, in the New Testament, the gospel authors had grown up studying and memorizing the Hebrew Scriptures. These hyperlinks were part of their Hebrew education. So in John chapter 4 when Jesus and his disciples go into the region of Samaria, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave Joseph, and they come to a well, the well of Jacob, and Jesus was sitting there around the “seventh” hour, and He meets a woman of Samaria… BINGO… the water becomes for Jesus an image of the water of life. 

He tells the woman, “I could give you the water of life, the living water, which He equates with eternal life.” 

 

These layers of imagery continue throughout the New Testament as well. Isn’t this cool? Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, eat your heart out. 

 

We are left in today’s story with an intertribal crisis, everybody hates everybody, and nobody can find water, except for the chosen one, who doesn’t even deserve being blessed, but he’s the one God’s chosen. Next week we finish the narrative of Isaac where everything gets resolved. 

Check in time. 

 

Turn on the news tonight and what will you hear? 

A story involving intertribal crises, everybody hating everybody, a world full of need, except for some, who may not even deserve being blessed, sound familiar? 

Let’s draw the lens in closer 

 

You and I are the chosen ones. Those of us who follow Christ have been chosen by Christ. We have been chosen to be the conduit of blessing to all the nations. In order for us to truly understand what this means, in order for us to be able to spread the blessing, we are going to need to be able to experience receiving a blessing. 

 

This is it. The Lord’s Supper. The physical representation of our Savior giving His life, His blood, for us, for sinners, who don’t deserve it. On the outside, this seems backwards, in God’s eyes, it’s called grace. 

 

Lord’s Supper.