The Rich Foreigner Gets Expelled

Canaan was hot, dry and arid.  Very little rain fell in the best of years and some years there was no rain  at all.  Consequently when crops did not grow and there was little grass in the pastures to feed the flocks, which was a pretty common occurrence in Canaan, there was widespread famine and both people and animals starved.  One such famine occurred during the days of Isaac. 

Isaac was considering moving his flocks south to greener pastures, but the Lord Yahweh appeared to Isaac suddenly one day and told him not to go to Egypt, as his father Abraham had done, but instead to go to the Philistine city of Gerar and reside there as an undocumented alien.  Yahweh told Isaac:  “If you remain at Gerar and settle there, I will give you Gerar and all the surrounding land.  Even though you are a foreigner and an alien, I will give you and your descendants all the lands as far as the eye can see.  I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and all the nations of the earth shall speak well of you.”

So Isaac went to the city of Gerar with his wife Rebekah and settled there as an alien among the Philistines.  When the men of Gerar asked him about his wife, Isaac told them that Rebekah was his sister. He was afraid to tell them that Rebekah was his wife because he thought to himself, “If I tell the men of Gerar that Rebekah is my wife they might kill me so they can have Rebekah for themselves because she is very pretty."

King Abimelech had noticed that Rebekah was quite attractive and had been keeping his eye on her.  One day Abimelech looked out of a window of a nearby house and saw Isaac fondling Rebekah.  Abimelech became angry and sent for Isaac, and said, "So now we find out that Rebekah is your wife! Why did you tell us she was your sister?"

Isaac said to him, "Because I thought I might be killed because of her."

Abimelech said, "What were you thinking? One of the men of the city might easily have had sex with your wife without knowing she was your wife, and you would have brought guilt and punishment on us all." 

Abimelech immediately sent out word to all the people of the town, telling them, "Whoever touches this man or his wife shall be put to death."

Isaac became a farmer and planted crops, and he had a very successful first year with a crop yield of 100 bushels for each bushel of seed that he planted. The Lord Yahweh was good to him, and Isaac became rich, prospering more and more until he became very wealthy, with vast possessions of flocks and herds, and a great many servants and members of his household, so that the Philistines became jealous of him.

The Philistines were unhappy that the rich foreigner was living among them so King Abimelech finally said to Isaac, "You have to leave our city.  Your wealth is causing problems with my people.  You have become too rich and powerful for us."  So the King expelled Isaac and his household from the city of Gerar.

Isaac left the city and set up his tents in the valley outside the walls of Gerar, the same place that his father Abraham had lived many years before, and Isaac intended to make his new home there.

This was not the first time that the Philistines had rejected a foreigner who had done well.  Years before when Abraham had gotten wealthy the Philistines were jealous of him and stopped up his wells by filling them with dirt.  So Isaac cleaned out the old wells and dug new wells. 

Whenever Isaac's servants dug a well in the valley and found fresh spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herders, saying, "The water is ours."  So Isaac's workers went a bit farther out into the valley and dug another well, and the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with them over that well also. 

Finally Isaac moved a long distance down the valley far from Gerar and dug another well, and it was far enough away so the herdsmen of Gerar did not fight over it.  Isaac called the place where they dug the well “Rehoboth,” because he concluded that Yahweh had led them to a new home where they could be happy and prosperous.

A few days later Isaac left Rehoboth and went to Beersheba.  That night the Lord Yahweh appeared to him in a dream and said to him:  "I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will make you prosper, and I will make your offspring numerous.”  When Isaac woke up the next morning he built an altar there, and set up his camp, and his servants dug another well.

King Abimelech had been keeping track of Isaac, and as soon as Isaac set up his new home at Beersheba the King, accompanied by his political advisor and by the commander of his army, went to see Isaac.

Isaac said to the King, "Why did you come here? Since you didn't want me around and expelled me from your city, what do you want?”

Abimelech said, "Isaac, we see that your god, the Lord Yahweh, has been protecting you and making you rich and successful.  We do not want to anger your god, so we have come to ask for a treaty of peace between us.  We have not harmed you.  Let us swear an oath between us that we will do no harm to each other.  You will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace, since you are under the protection of Lord Yahweh.”

Isaac agreed and to celebrate their agreement he made a feast for everyone and together they ate and drank. In the morning Isaac and Abimelech rose early and exchanged oaths of peace, and then Isaac set the King and his companions on their way and they departed from Isaac in peace and friendship.

 

Abraham and his sons are called aliens or foreigners, who camped in tents rather than in the cities, and this seems to reflect a conscious memory of Hebrew ancestors that they were outsiders, camping in the lands around the cities and frequently in conflict with the city dwellers over land and water rights. Three times (twice with Abraham, once with Isaac) we come across a story in which a tribal leader passed off his wife as his sister so that he would not be killed.  A wife was considered property, and sleeping with a man's wife was a serious offense against the man—but if the husband was killed, the widow was available for whoever wanted her, so we conclude that violation of property rights was a more serious crime than murder. The concept of “collective punishment” against a group of people (a city or a tribe) for the sins of a member of the group was common—if one person committed a serious crime, the group could be punished by the gods for that crime. The king’s “protection order” for Isaac and Rebekah was to prevent any action by his people that could bring the anger of Isaac's god against the city.