הכתב והקבלה — ויקרא להן שמות כשמת אשר קרא להן אביו

Q — Why does the Torah report Yitzchak's re-digging of Avraham's wells, restoring their old names? And why did the plishtim bother to fill in wells they could have used?

A — HaKtav VeHaKabbalah dismisses both the property-fight reading (Rashbam) and the pure-allegory reading (Rabbeinu Bachya). The wells were Avraham's *missionary technology*. People needed water; people came. Avraham named each well after a divine attribute ('ה' יראה,' 'ה' נסי'), so that asking the way to the well meant pronouncing Hashem's name. The kindness drew the heathens in; the name taught them theology. The plishtim recognized exactly what they were filling in: not water sources but ideological infrastructure. Yitzchak's renaming is therefore not a property gesture but a re-establishment of the missionary network — same wells, same names, same teaching.