Genesis 26

Isaac and Abimelech

26There was a famine in the land, besides ^athe first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to ^bAbimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar.

²Then the Lord appeared to him and said: ^c“Do not go down to Egypt; live in ^dthe land of which I shall tell you. ^3eDwell in this land, and ^fI will be with you and ^gbless you; for to you and your descendants ^hI give all these lands, and I will perform ⁱthe oath which I swore to Abraham your father. ⁴And ^jI will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands; ^kand in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; ^5lbecause Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

⁶So Isaac dwelt in Gerar. ⁷And the men of the place asked about his wife. And ^mhe said, “She is my sister”; for ⁿhe was afraid to say, “She is my wife,” because he thought, “lest the men of the place kill me for Rebekah, because she is ^obeautiful to behold.” ⁸Now it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked through a window, and saw, and there was Isaac, ¹showing endearment to Rebekah his wife. ⁹Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Quite obviously she is your wife; so how could you say, ‘She is my sister’?”

Isaac said to him, “Because I said, ‘Lest I die on account of her.’ ”

¹⁰And Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might soon have lain with your wife, and ^pyou would have brought guilt on us.” ¹¹So Abimelech charged all his people, saying, “He who ^qtouches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

¹²Then Isaac sowed in that land, and reaped in the same year ^ra hundredfold; and the Lord ^sblessed him. ¹³The man ^tbegan to prosper, and continued prospering until he became very prosperous; ¹⁴for he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and a great number of servants. So the Philistines ^uenvied him. ¹⁵Now the Philistines had stopped up all the wells ^vwhich his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and they had filled them with earth. ¹⁶And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for ^wyou are much mightier than we.”

¹⁷Then Isaac departed from there and ²pitched his tent in the Valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. ¹⁸And Isaac dug again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. ^xHe called them by the names which his father had called them.

¹⁹Also Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found a well of running water there. ²⁰But the herdsmen of Gerar ^yquarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” So he called the name of the well ³Esek, because they quarreled with him. ²¹Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over that one also. So he called its name ⁴Sitnah. ²²And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he called its name ⁵Rehoboth, because he said, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall ^zbe fruitful in the land.”

²³Then he went up from there to Beersheba. ²⁴And the Lord ^aappeared to him the same night and said, ^b“I am the God of your father Abraham; ^cdo not fear, for ^dI am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for My servant Abraham’s sake.” ²⁵So he ^ebuilt an altar there and ^fcalled on the name of the Lord, and he pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

²⁶Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath, one of his friends, ^gand Phichol the commander of his army. ²⁷And Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, ^hsince you hate me and have ⁱsent me away from you?”

²⁸But they said, “We have certainly seen that the Lord ^jis with you. So we said, ‘Let there now be an oath between us, between you and us; and let us make a ⁶covenant with you, ²⁹that you will do us no harm, since we have not touched you, and since we have done nothing to you but good and have sent you away in peace. ^kYou are now the blessed of the Lord.’ ”

^30lSo he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. ³¹Then they arose early in the morning and ^mswore an oath with one another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.

³²It came to pass the same day that Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.” ³³So he called it ⁷Shebah. ⁿTherefore the name of the city is ⁸Beersheba to this day.

^34oWhen Esau was forty years old, he took as wives Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. ³⁵And ^pthey were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.