Genesis 26:15
For all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth. For all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.
The verse belongs to God's providential dealings with Abraham's chosen family through whom the promised Seed would come. It belongs to the time when famine brought Isaac into the land of the Philistines, where he received abundant blessing in that land. It stands with the covenant promise renewed to Isaac and connected with Jacob, which gave Abraham and his seed the whole earth as an inheritance, whose complete fulfillment depended on their obedience and loyalty to God as King.
The stopping happened after Abraham died, even though the covenant Abraham had made with Abimelech had been respected during Abraham's lifetime. The Philistines' stopping of Abraham's wells came from jealousy of Isaac's prosperity, following their earlier jealousy of Abraham. The filling of the wells with earth shows the hostility and obstruction Isaac's family faced over the wells. By stopping and filling all the wells, the Philistines proved in the strongest way that they did not want the wells at all.
Reopening the stopped wells and restoring Abraham's names for them could aggravate the Philistines. When Isaac as heir of the covenant dug the wells again, they became doubly his by inheritance from Abraham and by his own redigging, and even more his because the Philistines had rejected them. When the Philistines claimed the reopened water, Isaac yielded it without striving for his rights, yielding more than justice required. By refusing to contend and committing his cause to God, Isaac received God's blessing and God worked for him.
This yielding reveals a lamb-like, submissive disposition like his submission to be offered as a sacrifice, in contrast to striving for one's own rights, so the verse tests whether the reader belongs to Isaac and the new covenant of yielding or to the other son and the old covenant of striving. The blocked wells picture a heart in which God once opened a well of living water but whose spiritual life and power have since been obstructed, and the obstructions must be cleared away so the flow of living water can return with power to testify, exhort, pray, and rejoice and water others.