BRAGADAYJAH 83

God is a covenant keeper. He is God and he cannot lie, and he cannot break His promises. God promised Abraham to make his son Isaac a blessing and God kept his promise. So Isaac, once his affair with Abimelech was settled, settled down to planting and growing crops; and to this end he was very successful. In the first year of planting, his crops increased a hundredfold and thereafter, his fortunes grew and grew until he became a great man in the land. As Isaac grew in wealth, of flocks and herds and servants, the Philistines envied him. They went about filling up the wells that Abraham his father had dug. And it got to the point where Abimelech the king suggested to Isaac that he should go away from among them because he had grown too big for comfort. So Isaac departed from among them and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar and dwelt there Returning to Gerar, Abraham reopened the wells that the Philistines had stopped up after the death of Abraham, and called the wells by the same names as his father had called them. Notwithstanding that Abraham had moved away, he was still in territory claimed by the Philistines and they did their best to provoke war with Isaac. Having herds of animals to take care of, one thing Isaac needed apart from grass was water; and so to provide water for his flock he had to dig wells. But it turned out that every time Isaac dug a well, the Philistines would move in and claim it. He dug the first well, and the Philistines claimed it; Isaac moved away and dug another; they claimed it again; he moves away and dug a third, and this time they left him alone; and Isaac’s reaction was, this time the Lord has made room for us; so he called the name of the place Rehoboth. But eventually, he moved away again and settled in Beersheba. More