Yitzchak gets by far the least amount of coverage in the Torah from our 3 אבות. He gets introduced in פרשת וירא, then comes the story of the עקידה. He gets married in פרשת חיי שרה, then in the beginning of our פרשה he moves to גרר for some time due to a famine, he digs wells, and then at the end of the פרשה he gives the ברכות to יעקב instead of עשו, and those are literally all the stories we have of him. Why do we hear so little about him, and what do these stories teach us about Yitzchak?
I want to focus on the story of digging wells in this week’s פרשה since I think most people gloss over it since it is strange and obscure, without an obvious meaning or message.
There are 3 points that keep coming up in the story of Yitzchak in this week’s פרשה. The first is the well digging, first to re-dig the wells of his father, then his own wells. He digs back the wells that his father had dug, in middle of a peace treaty meeting, his servants find it important enough to tell him that they had successfully found water, and he names a city באר שבע after the fact that there were 7 wells dug there. The second is the fact that Yitzchak expands exponentially, he is the first person that the Torah to records giving birth to twins, which is essentially an expansion of the typical birth. The Pasuk says ויגדל האיש וילך הלוך וגדל עד כי גדל מאד, and the concept of a well is expanding the reach of the underground water to flow on the ground as well. And the third is that Yitzchak was in many ways nothing other than the continuation of his father Avraham. And not to say that he didn’t have his own personality. I think that the personality of Yitzchak is what naturally comes from Avraham. We know that Avraham symbolizes חסד, the unstoppable outpouring of love and giving. The type of giving that compels a sick man to sit in the beating sun to wait for guests that in all likelihood would never show up, and they didn’t. Guests didn’t actually come, Hashem sent supernatural messengers, but in the natural world Avraham was doing something completely insane. We also know that Yitzchak symbolizes גבורה, the stopping of that outpour, the weaning off relying on someone else that gives to you. As we said last week the way to truly give is to give in a weaning way. Yitzchak was the completion of Avraham’s mission. And I think this is what the Torah means when it says ואלה תולדות יצחק בן אברהם אברהם הוליד את יצחק. Yitzchak’s legacy was the fact that he was Avraham’s son. But it doesn’t end there. When Hashem speaks to Yitzchak for the first time in the Torah, He says “I will keep the covenant that I promised to Avraham your father”, the only reason that Yitzchak gets the promise is because he is Avraham’s son. And Hashem says this in the next Pasuk, He says עקב אשר שמע אברהם בקלי וישמר משמרתי מצותי חקותי ותורתי. When Yitzchak digs wells, he focuses on re-digging the wells of his father.
I think these three aspects tie beautifully into one another. I think that Yitzchak was the natural continuation of his father, and that is what urged him and prompted him to dig wells, which is what eventually led to his success. Allow me to explain.
The Torah tells us that Yitzchak became great and he multiplied exponentially, to the point where the king of גרר expels him since he had become too powerful. He settles in נחל גרר, literally translated the stream of גרר, the suburbs of the city. This is where the well digging begins. But if he lived in a place called the stream of גרר, presumably there was water there. If he lived by a river, why on earth would he need to go searching for water? This was obviously not a search for water, this was an existential need for Yitzchak to dig wells and bring water from under the ground up to the surface.
I think the Torah is telling us the recipe for greatness. The way to become great is, in the most paradoxical way, to restrict yourself. When you restrict the outpour is when you can truly blossom, without boundaries and restrictions there is no foundation on which to build upward toward greatness. When someone digs a well, essentially what they are doing is limiting the area in which they can live and exist. On a space where there used to be land that I could walk on, there is now water which I would drown in if I tried to walk there. It is a limitation on my space, but that limitation and removal of ground allows something that was invisible before to come to the surface and to be seen and experienced. Whenever someone limits themselves, they are “digging a well” which will allow something new to become real, something invisible to come into the world.
This is truly the whole story of Yitzchak. To truly live you must be ready to die, to truly spread out you must be ready to be bound like he shows us in the עקידה story. To have a place to live you must be willing to take some of your ground away to give space for water to spring forth as he demonstrates in this week’s פרשה. True strength is knowing when to limit yourself and where to set boundaries.