Genesis 26King James Version
Famine in the land. Isaac goes to Gerar. Like his father before him, he tells the king that his wife is his sister. The king discovers the truth when he sees Isaac caressing her. Isaac digs wells his father had dug, the Philistines stop them up, and he digs new ones. He finally finds peace at a place he names Rehoboth, room enough.
Famine drives Isaac to Gerar. God tells him not to go to Egypt but to stay and renew the covenant with him. Isaac, like his father, passes his wife off as his sister. Abimelech discovers the truth by watching them. He rebukes Isaac and protects Rebekah. Isaac's crops multiply, his herds grow, his servants dig wells, but his neighbors envy and quarrel over the water. Abimelech asks him to leave. Isaac moves, digs more wells, and finally finds one without dispute. Abimelech then comes to make a treaty.
Isaac lives in his father's shadow, repeating his mistakes and benefiting from his promises, until he carves out his own space at a well he names Rehoboth: room at last.
22: "And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." After two disputed wells, the third one is peaceable, and Isaac names the relief.
The Negev and Beersheba region is semi-arid. Wells were not just convenient; they were essential and strategic. Owning or controlling a well meant controlling who could live in that area. The quarrels over water in this chapter were not petty; they were life and death. Abimelech's treaty acknowledges that Isaac has become powerful enough to need binding agreements.
Isaac, steady and unspectacular; Rebekah, endangered by his deception; Abimelech, who caught Abraham in the same lie and now catches the son; Esau, who marries Hittite women and grieves his parents.
Isaac is the least developed patriarch, mostly mediating between Abraham and Jacob. But his well-digging and the treaty with Abimelech show him maintaining relationships in difficult territory. The wells become sites of continuity with his father. The chapter ends with Esau's marriages to Canaanite women, a note of trouble to come.
For when you keep getting pushed out of spaces and starting over. Isaac digs a well, they take it; digs another, they take it; moves again, finds peace. The third well has a name. Sometimes that is what endurance looks like.
1And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar.
2And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of:
3Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father;
4And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed;
5Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.
6And Isaac dwelt in Gerar:
7And the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon.
8And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.
9And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her.
10And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us.
11And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.
12Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.
13And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great:
14For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him.
15For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth.
16And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.
17And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there.
18And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped 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 digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water.
20And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours: and he called the name of the well Esek; because they strove with him.
21And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.
22And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.
23And he went up from thence to Beersheba.
24And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake.
25And he builded an altar there, and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there: and there Isaac's servants digged a well.
26Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army.
27And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?
28And they said, We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee: and we said, Let there be now an oath betwixt us, even betwixt us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee;
29That thou wilt do us no hurt, as we have not touched thee, and as we have done unto thee nothing but good, and have sent thee away in peace: thou art now the blessed of the LORD.
30And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.
31And they rose up betimes in the morning, and sware one to 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 told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water.
33And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beersheba unto this day.
34And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:
35Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.