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1 And there was a famine in the land, besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines, in Gerar.

2 And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, “Do not go down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall show you;

3 sojourn in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you; for unto you and your seed I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to Abraham your father;

4 and I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and will give to your seed all these lands; and in your seed shall all the nations of the earth [a]be blessed;

5 because Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.”

6 And Isaac dwelt in Gerar;

7 and the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, “She is my sister,” for he feared to say, ‘My wife,’ he said, “lest the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah;” because she was fair to look upon.

8 And 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 Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.

9 And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, “Behold, surely she is your wife; why then do you say, ‘She is my sister?’” And Isaac said to him, “Because I said, Lest I die because of her.”

10 And Abimelech said, “What is this you have done to us? One of the people might easily have lain with thy wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”

11 And Abimelech charged all the people, saying, “He that touches this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.”

12 And Isaac sowed in that land, and found in the same year a hundredfold; and the LORD blessed him.

13 And he became successful, more and more until he became very great:

14 and he had possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household; and the Philistines envied him.

15 Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped, and filled with earth.

16 And Abimelech said unto Isaac, “Go from us; for you have become much greater than we are.”

17 And Isaac departed from there and camped in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there.

18 And Isaac dug again wells of water, which they had dug 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.

19 And Isaac’s servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of [b]springing water.

20 And the herdsmen of Gerar argued with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours;” and he called the name of the well [c]Esek[Calumny;Contention], because they contended with him.

21 And they dug another well, and they strove for that also: and he called the name of it [d]Sitnah[Enmity].

22 And he removed from there, and dug another well; and for that they did not strive; and he called the name of it [e]Rehoboth; and he said, “For now the LORD has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.”

23 And he went up from thence to Beer-sheba.

24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, “I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with you, and will bless you, and multiply your seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.”

25 And he built an altar there, and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

26 Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath his friend, and Phicol the captain of his host.

27 And Isaac said unto them, “Why did you come here, seeing as you dislike me and have sent me away?”

28 And they said, “We saw plainly that the LORD was with you, and we said, “Let there now be an oath between us, between ourselves and you, and let us make a covenant,

29 that you shall do us no harm, as we have not harmed you, and as we have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace, such that you have become the blessed of the LORD.”

30 And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.

31 And they rose up betimes in the morning, and swore an oath to one another; and Isaac sent them away, and they departed from him in peace.

32 And it came to pass the same day, that Isaac’s servants came, and told him concerning the well which they had dug, and said unto him, “We have found water.”

33 And he called it Shibah: therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba unto this day.

34 And when Esau was forty years old he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:

35 yet they were nothing but a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.

[3] The GNV headings often split passages such as this into out-of-context quotations. The heading now seen on (2) was moved from (3); in the GNV it omits ‘do not go down into Egypt’ as part of the conditions of the promise. Although minor in this case, I found this sort of splitting to be pervasive. I do not think it is directly malicious although it certainly provides a premise and a context for which a malicious quoting could occur.

[4] Or, bless themselves

[5] This passage is probably going to end a lot of arguments a missionary might raise over Abraham. Ultimately, the reason why Abraham was chosen for the covenant is because he followed God's commands – not because he had a particular kind of faith – but because his faith gave him license to perform works.

[19] Hebrew living.

[20] That is, Contention.

[21] That is, Enmity.

[22] That is, Broad places, or, Room.

[28] What became of this? As a result, the LORD commanded the Israelites not to make an oath with the inhabitants of the land?

[33] abundance

[34] The Hittites were the descendants of Heth (see: Genesis 27:46).

[35] Hebrew bitterness of spirit.

Selected commentary.

h.אל תרד מצרימה GO NOT DOWN INTO EGYPT — Because he thought of going down to Egypt as his father had gone down in time of famine. He said to him, “Do not go down to Egypt for you are a burnt-offering without blemish and residence outside the Holy Land is not befitting you” (Genesis Rabbah 64:3).

h.האל is the same as האלה THESE.

h.והתברכו בזרעך AND IN THY SEED SHALL BLESS THEMSELVES — A man will say to his son, “May your seed be as the seed of Isaac”. Such is the meaning of this phrase wherever it occurs in the entire Scriptures. The following passage is that from which this meaning may be derived for all such passages: (47:20) “By thee shall all Israel bless their children saying, “May God make thee [as Ephraim and Manasseh]”. So, too, in the case of a curse do we find a similar idea: (Numbers 5:27) “And the woman shall become a curse”, meaning that one who curses his enemy will say “May you be like such and such a woman”. Similar, also, is (Isaiah 65:15) “And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto mine elect”, meaning that one who takes an oath will say “May I be like such-and-such a person if I have really done so-and-so”.

h.שמע אברהם בקלי ABRAHAM HEARKENED TO MY VOICE when I put him to the test.

h.וישמר משמרתי AND KEPT MY CHARGE — This refers to precautionary measures which are intended to make us avoid the infringement of Biblical prohibitions: such are the Rabbinical inhibition of marriage between relatives in the second degree and the Rabbinical regulations regarding not doing certain acts on the Sabbath (cf. Yevamot 21a).

h.מצותי MY COMMANDMENTS — those matters which, had they not been written in the Torah, we would nevertheless hold that they are fitting matters to be the subject of a commandment, such as robbery and murder (cf. Yoma 67b).

h.חקותי MY ORDINANCES — matters which our evil inclination and the heathen nations argue against the necessity of prohibiting, such as the eating of swine’s flesh and the wearing of garments made of a mixture of wool and linen — things for which there are no apparent reasons but which are the King’s decrees and enactments imposed on His subjects (Yoma 67b).

h.ותורתי AND MY LAWS — The plural serves to include with the written Law also the Oral Law which prescribes commands that are an ancient institution given by God to Moses from Sinai (cf. Genesis Rabbah 64:4).

h.לאשתו means CONCERNING HIS WIFE, just as (20:13) “Say about me (לי), He is my brother”.

h.כי ארכו WHEN HE HAD BEEN THERE A LONG TIME — He thought, “From now I need have no fear since they have not molested her up to now”, and he was not sufficiently strict in guarding his actions (Genesis 20:13).

h.אחד העם ONE OF THE PEOPLE — the one singled out from the people — viz., the king (cf. Targum).

h.והבאת עלינו אשם means had he really lain with her you would have now brought guiltiness upon us (i. e. the verb is not in the future but in the conditional past tense).

h.בארץ ההוא IN THAT LAND although it (Gerar) had not the sacred importance of Erez Yisroel proper — i. e., as the territory of the seven nations, and is therefore not as fertile as the Holy Land (cf. Ketubot 112a).

h.בשנה ההיא IN THAT YEAR although it was not a normal year, being a year of famine.

h.בארץ ההיה בשנה ההיא In that land and in that year. — Why is there mention of the two — that land and that year? To tell you that that soil was hard and that year was a hard one (Genesis Rabbah 64:6).

h.מאה שערים AN HUNDREDFOLD — for they had estimated how much it should have yielded and it yielded one hundred for every measure which they had estimated. Our Rabbis said that the estimate was made for the purpose of the tithe (Genesis Rabbah 64:6).

h.כי גדל מאד UNTIL HE BECAME VERY GREAT — so that people used to say, “Rather the dung of Isaac’s mules than all Abimelech’s gold and silver’’(Genesis Rabbah 64:7).

h.וְעֲבֻדָּה רבה means a great many things to do (i. e. great undertakings) O. F. ouvraine. The word עֲבוׂדָה denotes one thing to be done whereas עֲבֻדָּה denotes many things to be done (a collective noun)

h.סתמום פלשתים THE PHILISTINES STOPPED THEM, saying, “They may become a source of danger to us because of marauding troops that may invade us” (i.e.,they may invade our country to obtain possession of the wells, or if they invade us for any other reason they will be able to find a supply of water). (Tosafot Sotah [10].) The rendering of the Targum טמונין means “stopping up” and we find it in the language of the Talmud (Pesachim 42a) “Chokes up (מטמטם) the heart”.

h.בנחל גרר IN THE VALLEY OF GERAR — far away from the city.

h.וישב ויחפר AND ISAAC DIGGED AGAIN — those wells which they had dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up before Isaac left Gerar he once again dug.

h.עשק means DISPUTE.

h.כי התעשקו עמו means THEY ENGAGED WITH HIM about it in strife and DISPUTE.

h.שטנה old French nuisement; English hindrance.

h.ופרינו בארץ WE SHALL BE FRUITFUL IN THE LAND — as the Targum translates it וניפוש and we shall increase in the land).

h.ואחזת מרעהו — as the Targum renders it: וסיעת מרחמוחי which means a company formed from his friends, the מ meaning from סיעת ממאוהביו. There are some who explain that in מרעהו the מ is part of the noun מרע — just like (Judges 14:11) “Thirty companions (מרעים)” in the narrative of Samson — in order that the word ואחזת should be taken to be the construct state to מרעהו (the company of his friends). But it would not be a polite thing to speak thus of a king — the company of his friends — for if this were the meaning it would imply that he (Abimelech) took with him the whole company of his friends and that he had no more than one group of friends. For this reason it should be interpreted in the first way (that אחזת is not construct). And you need not be surprised at the ת of אחזת although the word is not in the construct state, for we have similar cases in Scripture: (Psalms 60:13) “help (עזרת) against the adversary”, and (Isaiah 51:21) “Drunken, (שכרת) but not with wine”.

h.אחזת signifies a collection and band, and a band is so called because the people who constitute it are held נאחזין together.

h.ראו ראינו WE SAW PLAINLY (literally, seeing we have seen) — We saw it in the case of your father and we see it in the case of yourself (Genesis Rabbah 64:10).

h.‘תהי נא אלה בינותינו וגו means LET THE OATH that has existed BETWEEN US since the days of your father CONTINUE NOW BETWEEN US AND YOU.

h.לא נגענוך WE HAVE NOT TOUCHED THEE when we said to you “Go from us”.

h.אתה THOU — thou, also, do with us in a like manner.

h.שבעה [AND HE CALLED IT] SHIBAH (swearing), in allusion to the Covenant (cf. v.31; “And they swear” etc.).

h.בן ארבעים שנה [AND ESAU WAS] FORTY YEARS OLD — Esau is compared to a boar, as it is said, (Psalms 80:14) “The boar from the wood doth ravage it”. The boar when it lies down stretches forth its cloven hoof as much as to say, “See, I am a clean animal” (whilst really cloven hoofs are a feature of clean animals only in conjunction with another that is lacking in the swine). In the same way these dukes of Esau rob and extort and pretend to be honorable (Genesis Rabbah 65:1).

h.מרת רוח [AND THEY WERE] A VEXATION OF SPIRIT — the expression means opposing the spirit of a person. The first word is of the same root as (Deuteronomy 9:24), “Ye have been rebellious (ממרים)”: all their actions tended to be a grief

h.ליצחק ולרבקה TO ISAAC AND REBEKAH, because they worshipped idols (Genesis Rabbah 65:4).