Literary Devices – Bereshit 26/0

Literary Devices – Bereshit 26

This topic has not yet undergone editorial review

Allusions At times, a story in Tanakh will allude to a previous one, calling on the reader to compare the two.

Yitzchak and Avraham Makbilot Bamikra points out multiple implicit and explicit allusions to the Avraham narrative in this chapter, presenting Yitzchak's life as mirroring that of his father's.:  

• Both Avraham and Yitzchak experience famine in the land of Israel.¹
• Both Avraham and Yitzchak are granted Divine promises of land and offspring.
• Both Avraham and Yitzchak claim that their wives are their sisters, and are ultimately found out and confronted by the king.
• Yitzchak re-digs the wells previously dug by Avraham’s servants.
• Both Avraham and Yitzchak build altars.
• Both Avraham and Yitzchak give Beer Sheva its name.²
• Hashem’s command to “live in the land that I will say to you” echoes both Hashem's original command to Avraham to go to the land "that I will show you" (12:1) and the directive to sacrifice Yitzchak "on the mountain I will say to you" (22:2). 

Articles

• See Avraham and Yitzchak for discussion. 
• See R. Amnon Bazak’s essay, "The Differences Between Abraham and Isaac", Torah MiEtzion: New Readings in Tanach on Bereshit , for analysis of the differences among the parallels. For an online version, see here.

Character Titles

¹ Verse 1 draws an explicit comparison between the two.

² See Rashbam, R"Y Bekhor Shor and R. D"Z Hoffmann for discussion of the relation between these two namings of Beer Sheva.