Genesis 26:1-22

1Now there was a famine in the land—aside from the previous famine that happened in Abraham’s days. So Isaac went to King Abimelech of the Philistines, to Gerar.

2Then Adonai appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land about which I tell you.

3Live as an outsider in this land and I will be with you and bless you—for to you and to your seed I give all these lands—and I will confirm my pledge that I swore to Abraham your father.

4I will multiply your seed like the stars of the sky and I will give your seed all these lands. And in your seed all the nations of the earth will continually be blessed,

5because Abraham listened to My voice and kept My charge, My mitzvot, My decrees, and My instructions.”

6So Isaac stayed in Gerar.

7Now the men of the place asked about his wife. So he said, “She is my sister,” because he was afraid to say, “my wife”—“or else the men of the place would kill me on account of Rebekah, because she’s good looking.”

8Now after he had been there for a long time, King Abimelech of the Philistines peered down through the window and saw, behold, Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah.

9So Abimelech called Isaac and said, “So in fact she’s your wife! Now how could you say, ‘She’s my sister’?” Isaac said to him, “Because I said, ‘Or else I might die because of her.’”

10Then Abimelech said, “What is it that you’ve done to us? One of the people could have easily slept with your wife and you would’ve brought guilt on us.”

11So Abimelech commanded all the people saying, “Whoever touches this man or his wife will surely die!”

12Then Isaac sowed in that land and in that year reaped a hundredfold. Adonai blessed him

13and the man became great and continued to become greater until he became very great.

14He acquired livestock of sheep and livestock of cattle, and numerous servants. Then the Philistines envied him.

15All the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham the Philistines stopped up and filled with dirt.

16So Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much more powerful than us.”

17So Isaac departed from there, camped in the Valley of Gerar and dwelled there.

18Then Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham—the Philistines had stopped them up after Abraham’s death. He gave them the same names that his father had given them.

19Then Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found a well of living water there.

20But the shepherds of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s shepherds saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Quarrel, because they quarreled with him.

21Then he dug another well and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Accusation.

22Then he moved from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it. So he named it Wide Spaces and said, “Because now Adonai has created wide spaces for us and we will be fruitful in the land.”