On September 12, 2005, the last Israeli soldiers left the Gaza Strip. Within hours, crowds poured into the empty communities of Gush Katif and set the synagogues on fire. Then they turned on the greenhouses. For three decades, Jewish farmers in Gush Katif grew vegetables in those greenhouses on what used to be sand dunes. International donors paid about $14 million to leave them standing as the basis of a Palestinian economy. Looters stripped out the irrigation pipes, the pumps and the plastic sheeting and carried them away. Gaza received a working agricultural industry as a gift, and its new owners started by tearing it apart.
In his book, Universal Zionism, Rabbi Tuly Weisz finds that same scene in the book of Genesis. The Philistines, jealous of Isaac, stop up every well that Abraham’s servants dug and fill them with earth (Genesis 26:15). In the Negev, a well is the difference between life and death. Filling one in doesn’t give the Philistines a single extra drop of water. It only makes sure nobody else drinks. Weisz sees the same instinct at work in Gaza: people who would rather destroy what Jews built than benefit from it.
The story of how Isaac got to that point is just as familiar. A famine hits the land, and Isaac plants anyway. He reaps a hundredfold in a single year, and his flocks, herds and household keep growing until the Philistines can’t stand it. Their king doesn’t hide his resentment:
The Sages explain what the king meant: “All that growth of yours, did it not come to you from us? Once you had a single flock, and now you have many flocks.” In other words, your wealth belongs to us, and your success came out of our pockets.
Isaac leaves. He moves to the wadi of Gerar, and the local herdsmen fight him over every well he digs. He moves again, and finally goes up to Beersheba. Then something strange happens. Abimelech rides out to Isaac’s tent with his adviser Ahuzzath and Phicol, the commander of his army, and asks for a treaty. Isaac’s reply is blunt:
Isaac asks the right question. Abimelech threw him out for being too strong. Now Isaac is stronger and richer than before and living farther away, and the king of the Philistines travels to his tent with his top general to ask for peace. What happened between Gerar and Beersheba?
The Bible answers with a list of wells, which seems like an odd way to answer anything. Isaac starts by going back to the wells his father dug, the ones the Philistines filled in. He clears them out and gives them “the same names that his father had given them” (Genesis 26:18). He doesn’t invent new names or accept the ones his enemies would prefer. He restores the originals. Then his servants find fresh water in the wadi, and the herdsmen of Gerar claim it immediately: “The water is ours” (Genesis 26:20). Isaac names that well Esek, meaning “contention.” The next one brings more fighting, and he calls it Sitnah, meaning “hostility.” He doesn’t go to war over either one, and he doesn’t leave the land. He keeps digging. The third well brings no dispute, and he names it Rehovot, meaning “room,” because God has finally made space for him in the land.
Every Jewish well in this land carries a name from before. Hebron, Shiloh and Beth-el appear in the Bible long before anyone in Ramallah or Gaza decided to fill them with earth. Modern Israel did what Isaac did. It went back to the places its fathers dug and cleared them out under their original names.
Then the story moves from water to worship. That night in Beersheba, God appears to Isaac: “Fear not, for I am with you” (Genesis 26:24). Isaac builds an altar there and “invoked the LORD by name” (Genesis 26:25). Now the wells have a purpose. Isaac has been surviving and building, and now he declares, in front of everyone, who made it possible.
Only then does Abimelech arrive, and he explains why himself: “We now see plainly that the LORD has been with you” (Genesis 26:28). The Hebrew doubles the verb, ra’o ra’inu, literally “seeing, we have seen.” Rashi explains the repetition: “We saw it with your father, and we saw it with you.” The Philistines watched two generations. They saw Abraham prosper in their land, and they saw his son plant in a famine and reap a hundredfold. They filled in his wells and saw him dig them out again. Isaac didn’t win them over with a concession. He returned nothing, and he didn’t apologize for his flocks. What moved them was watching God at work in a Jewish family living on its land.
Rabbi Weisz describes modern Zionism in three stages, and Isaac’s chapter follows them closely. Political Zionism built the state and made it secure. Those are the wells, dug and redug against every effort to stop them. Religious Zionism gave the state meaning and brought Jews back to the biblical heartland. That is the altar at Beersheba. Universal Zionism, Weisz argues, is the stage that now lies before Israel: sovereignty turned outward, so that the nations see the God of Israel through the people of Israel and come to the tent on their own.
Look at what Isaac does when they arrive. “Then he made for them a feast, and they ate and drank” (Genesis 26:30). Abimelech rewrites history right there at the table. He claims the Philistines always treated Isaac well and sent him away in peace. Isaac doesn’t correct him or demand an apology. He serves the meal. Weisz argues that the tables have turned for Israel too. For decades, Israel’s role was to ask the world for help. Now Israel can ask the nations how it can help them.
There is a limit, and Isaac sets it. The next morning the two sides swear an oath, and Abimelech goes home in peace. Isaac stays in Beersheba. He doesn’t move back to Gerar, and he doesn’t give up a single well to make the treaty go more smoothly. Weisz warns that openness to the nations without boundaries turns into relativism, and that a mission without a distinct identity loses its power to change anyone. Isaac sets a generous table, but on his own land, and the treaty comes to him.
Gaza still has its well-fillers. They burned the synagogues and wrecked the greenhouses in 2005, and eighteen years later they crossed the border on October 7. But other people are making the trip to Beersheba. In September 2020, two Arab states that boycotted Israel for decades signed the Abraham Accords at the White House. They didn’t come because the withdrawal from Gaza impressed them. That withdrawal bought Israel nothing but rockets. They came because they saw a strong country with technology, water, security and a future, and they wanted a share in it. Hundreds of millions of Christians stand with Israel today, many of them because of their faith, not in spite of it. They read the same chapter Abimelech lived through, and they see plainly.
The Bible ends the scene with one more detail. That same day, Isaac’s servants come running with news about the well they were digging: “We have found water!” (Genesis 26:32). Isaac’s job never changed, and neither has Israel’s: keep digging and invoke God’s name in public. When the nations come asking, Israel should be ready to feed them, and stay where it is.
