Genesis 20–24

Abraham Tricks Abimelech

20Abraham left Hebron and traveled to southern Canaan where he stayed awhile between Kadesh and Shur. When he moved to Gerar, ²he told people that his wife Sarah was his sister. Abimelech king of Gerar heard this, so he sent some servants to take her. ³But one night God spoke to Abimelech in a dream and said, “You will die. The woman you took is married.”

⁴But Abimelech had not gone near Sarah, so he said, “Lord, would you destroy an innocent nation? ⁵Abraham himself told me, ‘This woman is my sister,’ and she also said, ‘He is my brother.’ I am innocent. I did not know I was doing anything wrong.”

⁶Then God said to Abimelech in the dream, “Yes, I know you did not realize what you were doing. So I did not allow you to sin against me and touch her. ⁷Give Abraham his wife back. He is a prophet. He will pray for you, and you will not die. But if you do not give Sarah back, you and all your family will surely die.”

⁸So early the next morning, Abimelech called all his officers and told them everything that had happened in the dream. They were very afraid. ⁹Then Abimelech called Abraham to him and said, “What have you done to us? What wrong did I do against you? Why did you bring this trouble to my kingdom? You should not have done these things to me. ¹⁰What were you thinking that caused you to do this?”

¹¹Then Abraham answered, “I thought no one in this place respected God and that someone would kill me to get Sarah. ¹²And it is true that she is my sister. She is the daughter of my father, but she is not the daughter of my mother. ¹³When God told me to leave my father’s house and wander in many different places, I told Sarah, ‘You must do a special favor for me. Everywhere we go tell people I am your brother.’ ”

¹⁴Then Abimelech gave Abraham some sheep, cattle, and male and female slaves. He also gave Sarah, Abraham’s wife, back to him ¹⁵and said, “Look around you at my land. You may live anywhere you want.”

¹⁶Abimelech said to Sarah, “I gave your brother Abraham twenty-five pounds of silver to make up for any wrong that people may think about you. I want everyone to know that you are innocent.”

¹⁷Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his servant girls so they could have children. ¹⁸The Lord had kept all the women in Abimelech’s house from having children as a punishment on Abimelech for taking Abraham’s wife Sarah.

A Baby for Sarah

21The Lord cared for Sarah as he had said and did for her what he had promised. ²Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age. Everything happened at the time God had said it would. ³Abraham named his son Isaac, the son Sarah gave birth to. ⁴He circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old as God had commanded.

⁵Abraham was one hundred years old when his son Isaac was born. ⁶And Sarah said, “God has made me laugh. ⁿ Everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. ⁷No one thought that I would be able to have Abraham’s child, but even though Abraham is old I have given him a son.”

Hagar and Ishmael Leave

⁸Isaac grew, and when he became old enough to eat food, Abraham gave a great feast. ⁹But Sarah saw Ishmael making fun of Isaac. (Ishmael was the son of Abraham by Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave.) ¹⁰So Sarah said to Abraham, “Throw out this slave woman and her son. Her son should not inherit anything; my son Isaac should receive it all.”

¹¹This troubled Abraham very much because Ishmael was also his son. ¹²But God said to Abraham, “Don’t be troubled about the boy and the slave woman. Do whatever Sarah tells you. The descendants I promised you will be from Isaac. ¹³I will also make the descendants of Ishmael into a great nation because he is your son, too.”

¹⁴Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a leather bag full of water. He gave them to Hagar and sent her away. Carrying these things and her son, Hagar went and wandered in the desert of Beersheba.

¹⁵Later, when all the water was gone from the bag, Hagar put her son under a bush. ¹⁶Then she went away a short distance and sat down. She thought, “My son will die, and I cannot watch this happen.” She sat there and began to cry.

¹⁷God heard the boy crying, and God’s angel called to Hagar from heaven. He said, “What is wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid! God has heard the boy crying there. ¹⁸Help him up and take him by the hand. I will make his descendants into a great nation.”

¹⁹Then God showed Hagar a well of water. So she went to the well and filled her bag with water and gave the boy a drink.

²⁰God was with the boy as he grew up. Ishmael lived in the desert and became an archer. ²¹He lived in the Desert of Paran, and his mother found a wife for him in Egypt.

Abraham’s Bargain with Abimelech

²²Then Abimelech came with Phicol, the commander of his army, and said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything you do. ²³So make a promise to me here before God that you will be fair with me and my children and my descendants. Be kind to me and to this land where you have lived as a stranger—as kind as I have been to you.”

²⁴And Abraham said, “I promise.” ²⁵Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about Abimelech’s servants who had seized a well of water.

²⁶But Abimelech said, “I don’t know who did this. You never told me about this before today.”

²⁷Then Abraham gave Abimelech some sheep and cattle, and they made an agreement. ²⁸Abraham also put seven female lambs in front of Abimelech.

²⁹Abimelech asked Abraham, “Why did you put these seven female lambs by themselves?”

³⁰Abraham answered, “Accept these lambs from me to prove that you believe I dug this well.”

³¹So that place was called Beersheba ⁿ because they made a promise to each other there.

³²After Abraham and Abimelech made the agreement at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, went back to the land of the Philistines.

³³Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba and prayed to the Lord, the God who lives forever. ³⁴And Abraham lived as a stranger in the land of the Philistines for a long time.

God Tests Abraham

22After these things God tested Abraham’s faith. God said to him, “Abraham!”

And he answered, “Here I am.”

²Then God said, “Take your only son, Isaac, the son you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Kill him there and offer him as a whole burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

³Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took Isaac and two servants with him. After he cut the wood for the sacrifice, they went to the place God had told them to go. ⁴On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey. My son and I will go over there and worship, and then we will come back to you.”

⁶Abraham took the wood for the sacrifice and gave it to his son to carry, but he himself took the knife and the fire. So he and his son went on together.

⁷Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!”

Abraham answered, “Yes, my son.”

Isaac said, “We have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb we will burn as a sacrifice?”

⁸Abraham answered, “God will give us the lamb for the sacrifice, my son.”

So Abraham and his son went on together ⁹and came to the place God had told him about. Abraham built an altar there. He laid the wood on it and then tied up his son Isaac and laid him on the wood on the altar. ¹⁰Then Abraham took his knife and was about to kill his son.

¹¹But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham! Abraham!”

Abraham answered, “Yes.”

¹²The angel said, “Don’t kill your son or hurt him in any way. Now I can see that you trust God and that you have not kept your son, your only son, from me.”

¹³Then Abraham looked up and saw a male sheep caught in a bush by its horns. So Abraham went and took the sheep and killed it. He offered it as a whole burnt offering to God, and his son was saved. ¹⁴So Abraham named that place The Lord Provides. Even today people say, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

¹⁵The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time ¹⁶and said, “The Lord says, ‘Because you did not keep back your son, your only son, from me, I make you this promise by my own name: ¹⁷I will surely bless you and give you many descendants. They will be as many as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and they will capture the cities of their enemies. ¹⁸Through your descendants all the nations on the earth will be blessed, because you obeyed me.’ ”

¹⁹Then Abraham returned to his servants. They all traveled back to Beersheba, and Abraham stayed there.

²⁰After these things happened, someone told Abraham: “Your brother Nahor and his wife Milcah have children now. ²¹The first son is Uz, and the second is Buz. The third son is Kemuel (the father of Aram). ²²Then there are Kesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel.” ²³Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. Milcah was the mother of these eight sons, and Nahor, Abraham’s brother, was the father. ²⁴Also Nahor had four other sons by his slave woman Reumah. Their names were Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah.

Sarah Dies

23Sarah lived to be one hundred twenty-seven years old. ²She died in Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan. Abraham was very sad and cried because of her. ³After a while he got up from the side of his wife’s body and went to talk to the Hittites. He said, ⁴“I am only a stranger and a foreigner here. Sell me some of your land so that I can bury my dead wife.”

⁵The Hittites answered Abraham, ⁶“Sir, you are a great leader among us. You may have the best place we have to bury your dead. You may have any of our burying places that you want, and none of us will stop you from burying your dead wife.”

⁷Abraham rose and bowed to the people of the land, the Hittites. ⁸He said to them, “If you truly want to help me bury my dead wife here, speak to Ephron, the son of Zohar for me. ⁹Ask him to sell me the cave of Machpelah at the edge of…