The Mekhilta continues tracing the lineage of prayer through the patriarchs, turning to Isaac. The Torah says that "Isaac went out lasuach in the field" (Genesis 24:63) — and the Mekhilta identifies this mysterious word "sichah" as prayer.
The proof is stacked three verses deep from Psalms. First: "Evening, morning, and noon asichah and moan, and He has heard my voice" (Psalms 55:18). The root word "sichah" appears in a context that is unmistakably about crying out to God — a desperate, repeated appeal made three times daily. Second: "With my voice I cry out to the Lord. I pour out before Him sichi. I tell my trouble before Him" (Psalms 142:2-3). Here "sichah" means the pouring out of one's heart, the raw and unfiltered expression of inner anguish directed toward God. Third: "A prayer of the afflicted one when he faints, and before the Lord pours forth sicho" (Psalms 102:1). The word becomes the title of the psalm itself — a prayer born from affliction and exhaustion.
Through these verses, the Mekhilta establishes that Isaac's walk in the field was not a casual stroll or a moment of meditation. It was prayer in its most intimate form — a solitary figure standing in an open field, pouring out his heart to God without witnesses, without ceremony, without walls around him.
Isaac's contribution to the family trade of prayer was this quality of inwardness. Where Abraham built altars and called out publicly, Isaac walked alone into a field and spoke to God in the language of personal affliction. Both forms were prayer. Both were inherited by the Israelites standing at the edge of the sea.