Now that Isaac has married Rebekah, his story truly begins,
according to the opening lines of our Parasha, “This is the story of Isaac.” As
we read Isaac’s story, there is a sense of déjà vu.
Rebekah is barren, like Sarah. Like in Abraham and Sarah’s
story, there is a famine in the land, and Isaac passes his wife off as his
sister, fearing that the inhabitants of the area will kill him because Rebekah
is so beautiful.
And then, Isaac redigs wells that his father Abraham had dug
a generation before – wells which the Philistines had stopped up. Isaac gives
those wells the same names his father had given them.
Isaac has two sons, like his parents. And one son, Jacob, is
sent away to the “homeland” to find a wife for himself, paralleling Abraham’s
servant’s journey to the same place to find a wife for Isaac in the previous
generation.
After Abraham almost sacrifices Isaac on the mountain, the
Torah doesn’t show them together again until Isaac and Ishmael come together to
bury their father. We may imagine that Isaac and Abraham never saw each other
again alive. And yet, Isaac’s life is tracing the lines of his father’s life.
He is redigging the wells that his father had previously dug, literally and figuratively.
As we study together, let us look for the parallels and look
for the places where Abraham and Isaac’s lives differ. Why these variations on
the same themes from the prior generation? Is this the Torah’s way of showing
us God’s hand in events? And why these themes – barrenness, sibling conflict,
exile? What is the message behind them about how the covenant is passed down
from one generation to the next?
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