(Beraishis 26:33)
Yitzchak, like his father before him, dug wells. This is a way of providing for your flocks, and also helping the community. Like Avraham, Yitzchak had to contend with people denying his right to the water, and he had to stake his claim clearly and publicly. In this case, he named the well, “shiva,” as it was the seventh well he’d dug.
The posuk tells us, “...therefore, the name of the city is Beer Sheva until this very day.” It would seem that it got that name because of the well, but firstly, a few verses earlier, it says, “And he went up from to Beer Sheva.” Even if you say that it was a retroactive reference, we find that in the times of Avraham the place was called Beer Sheva because of the “shvua,” the covenant and oath, that Avraham made with Avimelech. Why then does the Torah tells us the city got the name from the well, when it already had the name from a previous time?
One very simple answer is provided by the Bechor Shor, that in Avraham’s time the region got the name, and now a specific city was referred to as Beer Sheva. Others say that during Avraham’s time it only had the name because of the oath, and now it gained an additional meaning of “seven” because of the well.
Another explanation is that after Avimelech and his people violated the covenant they had established with Avraham, they stopped using the name Beer Sheva, as they tried to forget or deny that they had given their word. Now, however, that a new covenant was made, and the seventh well dug, they reverted to the old name and it remained that name for generations to come.
We find that the name of the place had different meanings to different people, yet the name remained the same. There was not just a singular way of looking at something which everyone agreed to, but rather, different people arrived at the same “conclusion” in different ways.
If you had a difficult math problem, one mathematician might solve it using algebra, and another using fractions, but they would both achieve the correct result. If the process is true, the result will be the same regardless of which system is used. Similarly, in Hashem’s world, He arranges things so the same thing; a date, a number, a word, can mean much to various people, each according to their own circumstance.
The fact that the place was called Beer Sheva by Avraham for one reason and by Yitzchak for another, enlightens us to the magnificent complexity and simplicity of Hashem’s orchestration of the world. We each have our own path, but if we’re heading towards the same goal, closeness to Hashem, we will arrive at the same place.
