26 ¹ There came a famine in the land—not the earlier famine in Abraham's time—and Isaac went to Abimelech the Philistine king at Gerar. 26 ² The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, 'Do not go down to Egypt, but stay in this country as I bid you. 26 ³ Stay in this country and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands. Thus shall I fulfil the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. 26 ⁴ I will make your descendants as many as the stars in the sky; I will give them all these lands, and all the nations of the earth will pray to be blessed as they are blessed— 26 ⁵ all because Abraham obeyed me and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.'

26 ⁶ So Isaac lived in Gerar. 26 ⁷ When the men of the place asked him about his wife, he told them that she was his sister; he was afraid to say that Rebecca was his wife, in case they killed him because of her; for she was very beautiful. 26 ⁸ When they had been there for some considerable time, Abimelech the Philistine king looked down from his window and saw Isaac and his wife Rebecca laughing together. 26 ⁹ He summoned Isaac and said, 'So she is your wife, is she? What made you say she was your sister?' Isaac answered, 'I thought I should be killed because of her.' 26 ¹⁰ Abimelech said, 'Why have you treated us like this? One of the people might easily have gone to bed with your wife, and then you would have made us liable to retribution.' 26 ¹¹ So Abimelech warned all the people, threatening that whoever touched this man or his wife would be put to death.

26 ¹² Isaac sowed seed in that land, and that year he reaped a hundredfold, and the LORD blessed him. 26 ¹³ He became more and more powerful, until he was very powerful indeed. 26 ¹⁴ He had flocks and herds and many slaves, so that the Philistines were envious of him. 26 ¹⁵ They had stopped up all the wells dug by the slaves in the days of Isaac's father Abraham, and filled them with earth. (v.18) Isaac dug them again, all those wells dug in his father Abraham's time, and stopped up by the Philistines after his death, and he called them by the names which his father had given them. 26 ¹⁶ Then Abimelech said to him, 'Go away from here; you are too strong for us.'

26 ¹⁷ So Isaac left that place and encamped in the valley of Gerar, and stayed there. 26 ¹⁸ 26 ¹⁹ Then Isaac's slaves dug in the valley and found a spring of running water, 26 ²⁰ but the shepherds of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac's shepherds, claiming the water as theirs. He called the well Esek That is Difficulty, because they made difficulties for him. His men then dug another well, 26 ²¹ but the others quarrelled with him over that also, so he called it Sitnah That is Enmity. 26 ²² He moved on from there and dug another well, but there was no quarrel over that one, so he called it Rehoboth That is Plenty of room, saying, 'Now the LORD has given us plenty of room and we shall be fruitful in the land.'

26 ²³ Isaac went up country from there to Beersheba. 26 ²⁴ That same night the LORD appeared to him there and said, 'I am the God of your father Abraham. Fear nothing, for I am with you. I will bless you and give you many descendants for the sake of Abraham my servant.' 26 ²⁵ So Isaac built an altar there and invoked the LORD by name. Then he pitched his tent there, and there also his slaves dug a well.