(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)
“Isaac dug again the wells of water, which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham. He called their names after the names by which his father had called them. Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of flowing water. The herdsmen of Gerar argued with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well Esek, because they contended with him.”
(Genesis 26:18-20)
Isaac had left where he had been at the request of the king. He was wealthy and done very well building on what Abraham had given him. He had obeyed the Lord and the Lord had blessed him in spite of the famine. Isaac wasn’t trying to re-invent the wheel. He moved to Gerar, a place Abraham had dwelt in before. He went to the wells his father had dug, and he re-dug them. He knew they were good. He knew they would provide for his animals. He was using good sense.
The Philistines hadn’t wanted these wells. They hadn’t cared about them. They had stopped them up and ignored them. But as soon as Isaac wanted them, they refused to let him have them. It was petty. They were doing it in order to strife with Isaac’s men. On purpose. They were jealous and they wanted to hinder him every chance they got in every way they could.
Isaac didn’t fight them for the well. He could have. He had moved here because the king had been fearful of Isaac’s wealth and size. He had more than the city-state had. He was a force to be reckoned with. His men were the men his father had had. His father had won wars with men like these (Genesis 14). There is no reason to think that Isaac hadn’t kept good men, trained new ones, and continued the tradition of being ready for anything. But Isaac wasn’t a man of war. He wanted peace. He didn’t want strife. He let them claim whatever they wanted to claim and moved on. It wasn’t worth it to him.
The sage Chizkuni writes: ‘כשמות אשר קרא להן אביו, “as had been their names when his father had named them.” He wished to draw attention to the fact that the success of these wells had been and continued to be due to the merit of his father. In order to prove that this was so, when he left the vicinity of Avimelech’s capital and settled where Avraham had lived for a while and [demonstrated that the success depended not on the quality of the earth and the skill of its farmers, but on the goodwill enjoyed by them in the heavenly spheres and] based on this he concluded a treaty with Avimelech. לאמור לנו המים, saying: “the water is ours.” They argued that the water from the well had originally been flowing in the river that was theirs. They used the same argument with the second well Yitzchok’s servants brought in. When Yitzchok moved away further and again succeeded in bringing in a well, they did not argue about it [they finally realised that it was he who was blessed, and that he had not robbed them of anything (verse 22)].’
The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 20. That digging a well was something permitted, and the ground and well in common land, became the property of the one who had dug it, we can take for granted from a son of Abraham; moreover we find confirmation of this, above in Ch. 21,30, for there Abraham only demanded official recognition that he had dug the well. Moreover it was a well of “live” i.e. spring-water which they found, coming up from the depth, so that no one could claim it was drained off their land. Nevertheless they quibbled — in the exact style which down the centuries has been used against the Jews in Galut — “yes, you dug the well, the hole belongs to you, but the water is ours”. — עשִׂקֻ occurs in תנ״ך only in this single instance. In Rabbinic Hebrew עסק is quite common. מתעסק ,עסוק, to busy oneself with something. עיסקא, a business, and עסיקין, quite in the sense of our word here, litigation about the title to property. The root seems related to עשׁק, חזק, עזק, אזק, all of which have a meaning of a strong grasping and holding fast. Hence עשק means to grasp something forcibly with your mind, to try and obtain something by sophistry. But עסק is used quite generally in Rabbinic Hebrew to designate giving one’s whole mind up to obtaining ones purpose or to obtaining an object, to occupy oneself with something.’
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