NOTES for Gen 26:1-35
Neither Abraham’s nor Isaac’s relations with the local inhabitants were at all simple. This is understandable: Palestine was already fairly densely populated at that time. Moreover, both Abraham and Isaac differed from the others in their religion: they worshiped their own God, the God of Abraham. Their God resembled neither the local Baals nor El Elyon, who was worshiped in Jerusalem at that time.
Most likely, it was this circumstance that eventually compelled Abraham to move to Beersheba. There, according to ancient tradition reflected in the Bible, Isaac succeeded in finding “a well of living water.” This was the name given in those days to springs which, unlike ordinary wells, could provide water at any time. An ordinary well in the desert is not a shaft driven deep down to the nearest aquifer, as in other regions, but a pit in the ground where atmospheric and soil moisture accumulates.
To keep the accumulated water from evaporating, the well was covered from above with a large stone. Such wells always belonged to some clan or tribe; they were never unowned or abandoned. The amount of water in them was always limited, and to steal someone else’s water by emptying a well that did not belong to you was a serious crime that could easily provoke intertribal clashes or even a major war.
A living spring, a “well of living water,” solved this problem completely: the tribe that owned such a spring no longer had to worry about water. It is no surprise that such a discovery was perceived as a gift from God. At that time there was an oasis at Beersheba that became the home of Abraham’s descendants until their migration to Egypt.
There they could worship their God in peace, without irritating anyone by their presence or their religion. At times—under Isaac and later under Jacob—Abraham’s descendants briefly returned to Samaria, where Abraham had lived immediately after moving to Palestine. Nevertheless, after Isaac discovered it, Beersheba with its oasis remained a kind of desert capital for Abraham’s descendants.