Genesis 26

Chapter 26

Isaac Settles in Gerar

¹Now there was ^aa famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to ^bAbimelech king of the Philistines.

²The Lord ^aappeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; ^1bstay in the land of which I shall tell you.

³“Sojourn in this land and ^aI will be with you and ^bbless you, for ^cto you and to your ¹descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish ^dthe oath which I swore to your father Abraham.

⁴“^aI will multiply your ¹descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and ^bby your descendants all the nations of the earth ²shall be blessed;

⁵because Abraham ^1aobeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.”

⁶So Isaac ¹lived in Gerar.

⁷When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, “^aShe is my sister,” for he was ^bafraid to say, “my wife,” thinking, “¹the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebekah, for she is ^cbeautiful.”

⁸It came about, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out through a window, and saw, and behold, Isaac was caressing his wife Rebekah.

⁹Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, certainly she is your wife! How then did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” And Isaac said to him, “Because I said, ‘I might die on account of her.’ ”

^10aAbimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”

¹¹So Abimelech charged all the people, saying, “He who ^atouches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

¹²Now Isaac sowed in that land and ¹reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And ^athe Lord blessed him,

¹³and the man ^abecame rich, and continued to grow ¹richer until he became very wealthy;

¹⁴for ^ahe had possessions of flocks ¹and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.

¹⁵Now ^aall the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up ¹by filling them with earth.

¹⁶Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are ^1atoo powerful for us.”

¹⁷And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and ¹settled there.

Quarrel over the Wells

¹⁸Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which ¹had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he ²gave them the same names which his father had ³given them.

¹⁹But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of ¹flowing water,

²⁰the herdsmen of Gerar ^aquarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well ¹Esek, because they contended with him.

²¹Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it ¹Sitnah.

²²He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it ¹Rehoboth, for he said, “^2aAt last the Lord has made ³room for us, and we will be ^bfruitful in the land.”

²³Then he went up from there to ^aBeersheba.

²⁴The Lord ^aappeared to him the same night and said,

“^bI am the God of your father Abraham;

^cDo not fear, for I am with you.

I ^dwill bless you, and multiply your ¹descendants,

For the sake of My servant Abraham.”

²⁵So he built an ^aaltar there and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

Covenant with Abimelech

²⁶Then ^aAbimelech came to him from Gerar ¹with his adviser Ahuzzath and Phicol the commander of his army.

²⁷Isaac said to them, “^aWhy have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?”

²⁸They said, “We see plainly ^athat the Lord has been with you; so we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, even between ¹you and us, and let us make a covenant with you,

²⁹that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you ¹and have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the ^ablessed of the Lord.’ ”

³⁰Then ^ahe made them a feast, and they ate and drank.

³¹In the morning they arose early and ^1aexchanged oaths; then Isaac sent them away and they departed from him in peace.

³²Now it came about on the same day, that Isaac’s servants came in and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.”

³³So he called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is ^aBeersheba to this day.

³⁴When Esau was forty years old ^ahe ¹married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite;

³⁵and ^athey ¹brought grief to Isaac and Rebekah.