Bible Time

¹AND another famine was in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went to Gadar, to Abimeleck king of the Philistines. ²And Yahvah appeared to him, and said, Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land of which I will tell you; ³Reside temporarily in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you; for to you and to your descendants I will give all these kingdoms, and I will perform the oath which I swore to Abraham your father; ⁴And I will make your descendants to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give to your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants will all the nations of the earth be blessed; ⁵Because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.

⁶And Isaac lived in Gadar; ⁷And the men of the place asked him concerning his wife; and he said, She is my sister; for he was afraid to say, She is my wife; lest the men of the place should kill him on account of Rebekah, because she was fair to look on. ⁸And it came to pass when he had been there a long time that Abimeleck king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw Isaac fondling Rebekah his wife. ⁹So Abimeleck called Isaac, and said, Look, she is your wife; how then did you say, She is my sister? And Isaac said to him, Because I said, Lest I may die on account of her. ¹⁰And Abimeleck said to him, What is this thing that you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with your wife, and you would have brought sin on us. ¹¹And Abimeleck charged all the people, saying, Whoever harms this man or his wife will surely be put to death. ¹²Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year 100-fold; and Yahvah blessed him. ¹³And the man became great, and went forward and grew until he became very great; ¹⁴And he had possessions of flocks and possessions of herds and great wealth, so that the Philistines envied him. ¹⁵For all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had polluted them and filled them with earth. ¹⁶And Abimeleck said to Isaac, Go away from among us; for you are much mightier than we.

¹⁷So Isaac departed from there, and encamped in the valley of Gadar, and lived there. ¹⁸And Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug by the servants of his father in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had polluted them after the death of Abraham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. ¹⁹And Isaac's servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living water. ²⁰And the herdsmen of Gadar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, The water is ours; and he called the name of the well Difficulty; because they disputed with him. ²¹And they dug another well, and they also quarreled over it; and he called the name of it the Adversary. ²²Then he moved from there, and dug another well; but over that they did not quarrel; and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now Yahvah has made room for us, and we will multiply in the land. ²³And he went up from there to Beersheba. ²⁴And Yahvah appeared to him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham your father; do not fear, for I am with you, and I will bless you, and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham's sake. ²⁵And he built an altar there, and called on the name of Yahvah, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac's servants dug a well.

²⁶Then Abimeleck went to him from Gadar, and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the general of his army. ²⁷And Isaac said to them, Why have you come to me, seeing that you hate me, and have sent me away from you? ²⁸And they said, We saw certainly that Yahvah is with you; so we said, Let there be now an oath between us and you, and let us make a contract with you, ²⁹That you will do us no evil, just as we have not hurt you, and as we have done nothing but good to you, and have sent you away in peace; you are now the blessed of Yahvah. ³⁰And he made them a feast, and they ate and drank. ³¹And they rose up in the early morning, and took oaths one with another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace. ³²And it came to pass the same day that Isaac's servants came, and spoke to him concerning the well which they had dug, and said to him, We have found water. ³³And he called it Sheba; therefore the name of the town is called Beersheba to this day.

³⁴And Esau was 40 years old when he took as his wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bismath the daughter of Elon the Hivite; ³⁵And they made life miserable for Isaac and Rebekah.