‘Rehoboth’ means ‘spacious’ or ‘roomy.’ And so we have the three wells here—Esek, Sitnah, Rehoboth. Two of them were quarreled over and finally get to Rehoboth, and everything is good—they have room, they have peace, they have water. And what does Isaac do?
He left. I do not know why he left. Nobody knows why he left. Perhaps a good reason would be that there, in the valley of Gerar, he could not trade very well. He had lots of flocks and herds. That was money on the hoof, as it were. That was his stock in trade. He needed to go to a place where he could sell what he had and buy what he needed. So he went to Beersheba, which was on the caravan route. It makes sense to me. But he gave up a good well. Rehoboth was a good well and they had plenty of space when he left.
In chapter 46 this one happened to Jacob, but this one in a way reflects back on Isaac because in the earlier part of chapter 26 Isaac was in a quandary about what to do about something and he was thinking about going down to Egypt and God stopped him from going there. We know what happened to Abraham there. God let him go down there and he got into a bushel of trouble. But in this case God intervened and He stopped Isaac from going there and He reoriented him and said, Instead go to Beersheba, which is where he went. And there He appeared to him to reassure him that he had done the right thing.
