Now there was a famine in the land besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.
And Yahweh appeared to him and said, “Do not go down into Egypt. Continue to live in the land I tell you about.
Stay in this land and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and to your seed I will give all these lands, and I will fulfill the oath that I swore to Abraham your father.
I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and will give to your seed all these lands. And by your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed,
because Abraham listened to my voice and kept my requirements, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”
Isaac and Abimelech
So Isaac settled in Gerar.
And the men of the place asked him about his wife, and he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “My wife.” He thought, “The men of this place might kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to look at.”
But it came to pass when he had been there a long time that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw, and behold, Isaac was caressing Rebekah, his wife.
So Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, surely she is your wife! So how could you say, ‘She is my sister?’” And Isaac said to him, “Because I said, ‘I might die because of her.’”
Then Abimelech 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 on us!”
And Abimelech commanded all the people, saying, “He who touches this man or his wife will be put to death, yes, death.”
Isaac sowed seed in that land, and reaped in that same year a hundredfold; Yahweh blessed him in that way.
And the man grew great, and grew more and more until he became very great.
He had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, and a great household. So the Philistines envied him.
Now all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped up and filled with earth.
And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
So Isaac departed from there and encamped in the valley of Gerar and lived there.
Then Isaac reopened the wells of water that they had dug in the days of Abraham his father. For the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.
Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of running water.
The herdsmen of Gerar argued with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” He called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him.
They dug another well, and they argued over that also. So he called its name Sitnah.
He left that place and dug another well. They did not argue over that one. He called it Rehoboth. He said, “For now Yahweh has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
He went up from there to Beer-sheba.
Yahweh appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.”
So he built an altar there and called on the name of Yahweh, and pitched his tent there. Isaac’s servants also dug a well there.
Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phicol the captain of his army.
Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?”
They said, “We saw plainly that Yahweh was with you. We said, Let there now be an oath between us, even between us and you, and let us cut a covenant with you,
that you will do us no harm, as we have not touched you, and as we have done to you nothing but good and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of Yahweh.”
He made them a feast, and they ate and drank.
They rose up some time in the morning and swore one to another. Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.
It came to pass the same day that Isaac’s servants came and told him concerning the well that they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.”
He called it Shibah. Therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba to this day.
When Esau was 40 years old, he took as wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite,
and they became a bitterness of spirit to Isaac and to Rebekah.