Genesis 26
1 There was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that had occurred in Abraham’s days. Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, at Gerar.
2 The LORD appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land I tell you.
3 Live as a foreigner in this land, and I will be with you and bless you. For I will give all these lands to you and your descendants, and I will uphold the oath I swore to Abraham, your father.
4 I will multiply your descendants like the stars of the sky and give all these lands to your descendants. Through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed.
5 For Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar.
7 The men of the place asked about his wife, and he said, “She is my sister.” He was afraid to say, “She is my wife,” thinking, “The men of the place may kill me because of Rebekah, for she is beautiful.”
8 After he had been there many days, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out through the window and saw Isaac caressing Rebekah, his wife.
9 Abimelech called Isaac and said, “So she is your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might die because of her.”
10 Abimelech said, “What have you done to us? One of the people might easily have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us.”
11 Then Abimelech ordered all the people, “Anyone who touches this man or his wife will surely be put to death.”
12 Isaac sowed in that land, and that year he reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him.
13 The man grew wealthy, and kept growing wealthier, until he became very wealthy.
14 He had flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and many servants, and the Philistines envied him.
15 The Philistines had stopped up and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham, his father.
16 Abimelech said to Isaac, “Leave us, because you have become far more powerful than we are.”
17 Isaac left there, camped in the valley of Gerar, and settled there.
18 Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham, his father, and that the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death. He gave them the same names his father had given them.
19 Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found a spring of flowing water there.
20 The herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they had quarreled with him.
21 They dug another well, and quarreled over that one too, so he named it Sitnah.
22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. He named it Rehoboth and said, “Now the LORD has made room for us, and we will thrive in the land.”
23 From there he went up to Beersheba.
24 That night the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of Abraham, your father. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants because of Abraham, my servant.”
25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the LORD. He pitched his tent there, and Isaac’s servants dug a well there.
26 Abimelech came to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath, his friend, and Phicol, the commander of his army.
27 Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and sent me away from you?”
28 They answered, “We have seen clearly that the LORD is with you. So we said, ‘Let there be an oath between us, between us and you, and let us make a covenant with you.’
29 Do us no harm, just as we did not touch you and treated you only well, and sent you away in peace. You are now blessed by the LORD.”
30 Isaac prepared a feast for them, and they ate and drank.
31 They got up early in the morning and swore an oath to each other. Isaac sent them on their way, and they left him in peace.
32 That same day, Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said to him, “We have found water.”
33 He named the well Shibah; that is why the city is called Beersheba to this day.
34 When Esau was forty years old, he took Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite, as wives.
35 They were a source of bitterness to Isaac and Rebekah.
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