Literary Devices – Bereshit 26/0

Literary Devices – Bereshit 26

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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.

Type Scene

Wife-Sister Stories in which one poses one's wife as one’s sister are examples of a type-scene, a literary technique in which a basic narrative sequence appears multiple times in Tanakh, each time with modifications that serve the needs of the specific story. Paying attention to the deviations from the expected template often reveals the hidden messages of the individual story.

Articles

• See R. Amnon Bazak's essay "The Differences Between Abraham and Isaac", Torah MiEtzion: New Readings in Tanach on Bereshit. He notes some of the unique features of the Rivka-Yitchak variation of the story.³ He suggests that the differences illustrate the unique personality and contributions of Yitzchak, who has an inseverable bond to the land of Israel and whose experiences and choices build upon Avraham’s in an upward trajectory.

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.

³ He notes that Yitzchak does not leave the Land of Israel, Rivka is not actually taken captive by the king, and Yitzchak only says that she is his sister when asked (unlike Avraham, who makes this claim preemptively).