Isaac and Abimelech
26
📚And there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine 📖 that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimelech 📖 king of the Philistines 📖. 2 📚And the LORD appeared 📖 to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt. Stay in the land which I will tell you about. 3 📚Stay in this land for a time, and I will be with you, and will bless you. For to you and to your offspring I will give all these lands, and I will confirm the oath which I swore to Abraham your father, 4 📚and I will make your offspring to increase in number like the stars of heaven, and will give all these lands to your offspring, and in your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed,5 📚because Abraham obeyed 📖 my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws”.
6 📚And Isaac stayed in Gerar, 7 📚and the men of the place asked him about his wife, and he said, “She is my sister”, for he was afraid to say, “She is my wife”, thinking “The men of the place will kill me for Rebekah, because she is beautiful to behold”.
8 📚And when he had been there a long time, it so happened that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out a window and now saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. 9 And Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Look, surely she is your wife, and how is it that you said, ‘She is my sister?’” And Isaac said to him, “Because I said that I may die 📖 on her account”.
10 📚And 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”.
26:10 Again an outsider has to rebuke one of God’s people (Gen 20:9).⚜
11 📚And Abimelech ordered all his people, saying, “He who touches this man or his wife will surely be put to death”.
12 📚Then Isaac sowed seed in that land and obtained in the same year a hundredfold, and the LORD blessed him, 13 📚and the man became rich and went on increasing until he became very rich. 14 📚He had possessions of flocks, possessions of herds, and great number of servants, and the Philistines envied him. 15 📚So all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham the Philistines stopped up and filled them with earth.
16 📚And Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us. For you are much more powerful than we are”.
17 And Isaac left there and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and stayed there. 18 📚And Isaac dug out the wells of water again, which 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 according to the names which his father had given them.
19 📚And Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. 20 📚And the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours”, and so he called the name of the well Esek, because they quarreled with him.
26:20 “Esek” means “dispute”. “Sitnah” means “opposition”. “Rehoboth” means “wide space”.⚜
21 📚And they dug another well, and quarreled about that one also, and so he called its name Sitnah. 22 📚And he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel about that one, and he gave it the name Rehoboth, saying, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land”.
26:12-22 God forgave Isaac and gave him blessing. However, though Isaac was prospering materially his days in Gerar were a time of continual strife and difficulties. He is an example to us of a man of peace who would rather move on than fight with his neighbors. And he did not take revenge on them (Rom 12:17-19; Heb 12:14).⚜
23 📚And he went up from there to Beersheba. 24 📚And the Lord appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you, and will bless you, and increase the number of your offspring, for the sake of my servant Abraham 📖”.
25 📚And he built an altar 📖 there, and called on the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there. And Isaac’s servants dug a well there.
26 📚Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath, one of his friends, and Phichol, the commander of his army, came with him. 27 📚And Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you hated me and sent me away from you?”
28 📚And they said, “We saw that the LORD was really with you, and we said, ‘Now let there be an oath between us, between us and you, and let us make a covenant with you 📖, so 29 📚that you will not harm us, just as we have not touched you, and have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace. You are now blessed by the LORD.’ ”
30 📚And he made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. 31 📚And they got up early in the morning, and gave their oath to one another. Then Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.
32 📚And it so happened that the same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water”. 33 📚And he called it Shebah 📖. Therefore the name of the city is Beersheba 📖 to this day.
34 📚And Esau was forty years old when he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 📚They were a grief of mind to Isaac and to Rebekah.
26:34-35 Esau married women of the land who worshiped idols and gods other than Jehovah the one true God. Isaac did not do for Esau what Abraham had done for him (Gen 24:3-4). The Hittites were a powerful people whose center of power was in what is now called Turkey. Many of them had settled in Canaan and the country was once controlled by them (Gen 23:3; Num 13:29; 2 Sam 11:3).⚜