Genesis 26

Isaac and the Wells of Abraham

In a famine the Lord keeps Isaac in the land and renews to him the oath He swore to Abraham. Isaac repeats his father’s fear at Gerar, prospers, reopens his father’s wells and digs new ones until there is room, and the king who sent him away comes to swear peace with the man the LORD is with. Esau’s marriages close the chapter in grief.

Genesis chaptersChapter 26 of 50

After Abraham’s death (verse 18). The chapter ends when Esau is forty and Isaac a hundred (Gen. 25:26). The text gives no year. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Isaac’s life, as Genesis tells it, gathers around a few events: his birth, the offering on Mount Moriah, his marriage, and his dealings with his sons.

Isaac’s life, as Genesis tells it, gathers around a few events: his birth, the offering on Mount Moriah, his marriage, and his dealings with his sons. Genesis 26 comes between his marriage and the blessing of his sons, after Abraham has died (verse 18), and it follows Isaac as head of the family.

What Isaac meets is largely his father’s life over again: a famine (Gen. 12:10), a king named Abimelech at Gerar (chapter 20), a wife called a sister (chapters 12 and 20), a quarrel over a well (Gen. 21:25), and an oath with Abimelech and his captain Phichol at Beer-sheba (Gen. 21:22–31). The incidents “resemble in many respects certain events in the life of Abraham,” though each has its own turn. The wife-and-sister story is explained at its first telling (see the note on Gen. 12:13); the note on verse 7 here gives only what is different.

The scene is the south of Canaan, the region of Gerar and Beer-sheba in the Negev, where flocks and herds lived by their wells.

The thread through the chapter

The question under Genesis 26 is whether the promise made to Abraham will pass to his son, and the chapter answers it in two voices.

The question under Genesis 26 is whether the promise made to Abraham will pass to his son, and the chapter answers it in two voices. At the start the LORD tells Isaac, “I will be with thee, and will bless thee” (verse 3), and at Beer-sheba He says it again: “I am with thee, and will bless thee” (verse 24). At the end Abimelech, the king who had sent Isaac away, says the same thing from outside: “We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee… thou art now the blessed of the LORD” (verses 28–29). The king's words echo the LORD's, nearly word for word in Hebrew. Between the promise and the king’s confession the reader watches it come true: a harvest in a famine year, herds and servants, and wells that keep coming up with water.

Isaac walks almost step by step in his father’s footprints: famine, Gerar, the same fear for his life, the same quarrel over water, the same oath at the same well. Some of what he has, he inherits. He reopens Abraham’s wells and gives them back Abraham’s names (verse 18), and the LORD blesses him “for my servant Abraham’s sake” (verse 24). But the LORD also appears to Isaac himself, twice, and Isaac answers by building his own altar and calling on the name of the LORD (verse 25), as Isaac and Jacob each did when God renewed the covenant with them. His father’s covenant becomes his own.

The last two verses turn to the next generation. Esau, at forty, marries two Hittite women outside the covenant, and the chapter that began with the promise renewed ends with the question of who will carry it on.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–6

The covenant renewed to Isaac

In plain words

There was a famine in the land, a second one after the famine in Abraham’s time, and Isaac went to Abimelech, king of the Philistines, at Gerar. The Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt. Stay in the land I will tell you about. Live in this land as a foreigner, and I will be with you and bless you. To you and your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will keep the oath I swore to your father Abraham. I will make your descendants as many as the stars of the sky and give them all these lands, and through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” So Isaac stayed in Gerar.

1 And 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.

Context #

Abimelech, the Philistines, and Gerar

This Abimelech may or may not be the king Abraham dealt with in chapter 20 (see the note on Gen. 20:2).

This Abimelech may or may not be the king Abraham dealt with in chapter 20 (see the note on Gen. 20:2). Both patriarchs met “a ruler, or successive rulers, in the area named Abimelech,” and the two kings are “possibly the same person, an early tradition having been preserved in two different forms.” Genesis itself tells Isaac’s stay as a separate, later event.

The word Philistines raises a second question, since the Philistines best known in the Bible are the confederation of five cities that was at its height in the days of Saul. They came from Caphtor and held the coastal lowland “before the days of Abraham.” One older commentary reads the name otherwise: this region had “not yet been occupied by the Philistines,” and the writer used “a not unnatural anachronism,” calling the people of Gerar by the name his readers knew.

Gerar itself was no village. It lay “near Gaza,” on the edge of the land of Canaan (Gen. 10:19). Its Middle Bronze Age fortifications “enclose an area of forty acres, making the site one of the largest in southern Canaan,” and Beer-sheba, where the chapter ends, was “a place under the control of Gerar.”

Sources: “Abimelech”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Philistines”, Bible Dictionary. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. “Gerar”, Bible Dictionary. George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.

2 And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of:

Context #

Why Isaac had to stay in the land

Isaac seems to have been doing what his father had done. In an earlier famine Abraham “went down into Egypt to sojourn there” (Gen. 12:10), and in one reading Isaac “also intended…

Isaac seems to have been doing what his father had done. In an earlier famine Abraham “went down into Egypt to sojourn there” (Gen. 12:10), and in one reading Isaac “also intended to go there, but on the way, viz., in Gerar,” he was told to stay. The LORD’s words echo Moriah. “Dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of” is in Hebrew asher omar eleikha, “of which I will tell you,” the same phrase as “one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” in Gen. 22:2.

The reason is that Isaac was the heir of the land itself: “As he was the seed to whom the land of Canaan was promised, he was directed not to leave it.” Abraham had made his servant swear never to take Isaac back to Haran: “Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again,” because the LORD had sworn, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Gen. 24:6–7). Now the LORD keeps him from Egypt as well. A generation later He told Jacob the opposite: “fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation” (Gen. 46:3).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.

3 Sojourn 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;

Language #

Heir and stranger in the same land

The LORD promises Isaac “all these countries” and in the same breath tells him to sojourn in them.

The LORD promises Isaac “all these countries” and in the same breath tells him to sojourn in them. The Hebrew verb, gur, means to “dwell as a new-comer… without original rights,” and it is the word used for how the patriarchs lived in Canaan. So Isaac is told to live as a resident foreigner in the land God has just promised to give him and his seed.

The New Testament makes this the shape of the patriarchs’ faith. Abraham “sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” (Heb. 11:9). Stephen notes that God gave Abraham “none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on” (Acts 7:5). “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off” (Heb. 11:13).

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

4 And 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;

5 Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.

Related Scriptures #

Laws before Sinai

The LORD renews the promise to Isaac because of Abraham’s obedience, and the Hebrew repeats His words on Moriah.

The LORD renews the promise to Isaac because of Abraham’s obedience, and the Hebrew repeats His words on Moriah. There the blessing came “because thou hast obeyed my voice” (‘eqev asher shama‘ta beqoli, Gen. 22:18); here it is “Because that Abraham obeyed my voice” (‘eqev asher shama‘ Avraham beqoli). Isaac receives a blessing his father’s obedience secured, and the LORD says so again at Beer-sheba: “for my servant Abraham’s sake” (verse 24).

The list that follows is surprising in Genesis: “my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws” (mishmarti, mitsvotai, chuqqotai, vetorotai). These words “frequently recur among the legal expressions of a later date,” the language of the law of Moses. Deuteronomy uses them for it: “keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway” (Deut. 11:1). How could Abraham keep laws long before Sinai?

Scripture answers that he had them. Abraham sought “to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God” (Abr. 1:2); he “received the priesthood from Melchizedek” (D&C 84:14); and God “preached before the gospel unto Abraham” (Gal. 3:8). On this view the law given at Sinai was not the first. Latter-day Saints, drawing on Joseph Smith’s teaching and on D&C 84:23–27, read the law of Moses as “a renewal of the covenant status that had existed between God and his people from the beginning.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Shon D. Hopkin, “The Covenant among Covenants: The Abrahamic Covenant and Biblical Covenant Making”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 223–50.

6 And Isaac dwelt in Gerar:

Verses 7–11

Rebekah at Gerar

In plain words

When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, “She is my sister.” He was afraid to say, “She is my wife,” thinking, “The men here might kill me to get Rebekah, because she is beautiful.” After he had been there a long time, Abimelech, king of the Philistines, looked out of a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah. Abimelech called Isaac and said, “She is obviously your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac answered, “Because I thought I might be killed on account of her.” Abimelech said, “What have you done to us? One of the men might easily have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us.” So Abimelech warned all the people: “Anyone who harms this man or his wife will be put to death.”

7 And 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.

Context #

Isaac repeats his father’s words

Isaac says what Abraham said twice before, and for the same reason: fear that the men of the place would kill him for his wife.

Isaac says what Abraham said twice before, and for the same reason: fear that the men of the place would kill him for his wife. The story is told three times in Genesis, of “Sarah and Abraham in Genesis 12:10–20 and 20:1–18; Rebekah and Isaac in 26:1–16,” and the note on Gen. 12:13 explains Abraham’s case. Isaac’s differs in two ways.

First, Genesis records no word from the Lord to Isaac about it. The Book of Abraham has the Lord tell Abraham, “Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live” (Abr. 2:24); Isaac says only that he “feared.” Second, Rebekah was not his half-sister, as Sarah was Abraham’s (Gen. 20:12). She was the daughter of Bethuel, son of Isaac’s uncle Nahor (Gen. 24:15). Hebrew drew kinship widely, with “no definite linguistic separation between siblings and their offspring” (Abraham calls his nephew Lot “his brother,” Gen. 14:14), so a near relative could be called a sister. But even for Sarah, writers “generally feel uncomfortable relying solely on such an explanation.”

Faithful readers do not have to defend every choice the patriarchs made. It “can be uncomfortable to think of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah lying to save their own skins,” but “as fallen human beings, they could sometimes make less than perfect choices,” and modern revelation says that they “have entered into their exaltation” (D&C 132:37). This time no one took Rebekah: the king found out for himself (verse 8) and put his whole people under pain of death not to touch either of them (verse 11).

Sources: Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Gaye Strathearn, “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah”, In Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2005), 100–116.

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, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife.

Language #

A play on Isaac’s name

Abimelech saw Isaac doing what his name says. The Hebrew for “sporting” is metsacheq, from tsachaq, “laugh.”

Abimelech saw Isaac doing what his name says. The Hebrew for “sporting” is metsacheq, from tsachaq, “laugh.” In this form it means to “sport, play,” and here it is used “of conjugal caresses.” Isaac’s name, Yitschaq, means “he laugheth,” and the lexicon counts this verse among the plays on it. Whatever the king saw from his window, it was not how a man treats his sister.

The word runs through Isaac’s story. Abraham “laughed” when told that Sarah would bear a son (Gen. 17:17); Sarah “laughed within herself” in the tent (Gen. 18:12); and at his birth she said, “God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me” (Gen. 21:6). The same form, metsacheq, is Ishmael’s “mocking” in Gen. 21:9, which led to his being sent away.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. “Isaac”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

9 And 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.

10 And 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.

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

Verses 12–22

Prosperity and the wells

In plain words

Isaac planted crops in that land and that same year reaped a hundred times what he sowed, because the Lord blessed him. He grew richer and richer until he was very wealthy. He had flocks and herds and many servants, and the Philistines envied him. They had stopped up all the wells his father’s servants had dug in Abraham’s day, filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.”

So Isaac left and camped in the valley of Gerar and settled there. He reopened the wells that had been dug in his father Abraham’s time, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found a well of spring water. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, “quarrel.” They dug another well, and they quarreled over that one too, so he named it Sitnah, “hostility.” He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth, “room,” saying, “Now the Lord has given us room, and we will flourish in the land.”

12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.

Context #

A hundredfold in a year of famine

Isaac was a herdsman who also farmed, and in a famine year his field returned a hundred times what he sowed.

Isaac was a herdsman who also farmed, and in a famine year his field returned a hundred times what he sowed. Genesis shows him “engaging in both agriculture and pastoralism in the region of Gerar.” The ancestors of Israel were not wanderers cut off from the towns; they “were economically integrated into the larger economies of the Canaanite kingdoms.”

The harvest was extraordinary. In one reading it was “an unusual blessing, as the yield even in very fertile regions is not generally greater than from twenty-five to fifty-fold.” The text gives the reason in four words: “and the LORD blessed him.” It is the first fulfillment of verse 3, “I will be with thee, and will bless thee,” and verse 13 piles up the result: Isaac “waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great.”

Sources: George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

13 And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great:

14 For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him.

15 For 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.

16 And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.

17 And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there.

18 And 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.

Context #

His father’s wells

Wells were worth fighting over in the south of Canaan, and Isaac’s wealth soon brought his people into “conflict with the herders from the sedentary population over access to water.”

Wells were worth fighting over in the south of Canaan, and Isaac’s wealth soon brought his people into “conflict with the herders from the sedentary population over access to water.” The quarrels of this chapter fit their world: the “seizure and defense of wells” mentioned in the Egyptian Tale of Sinuhe “also finds parallels in the lives of Abraham and Isaac in the Negev.” Abraham had already had a well “violently taken away” by Abimelech’s servants, and had made the king accept seven ewe lambs “that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well” (Gen. 21:25, 30).

After Abraham died, the Philistines filled those wells with earth (verse 15), and Abimelech told Isaac to leave (verse 16). Isaac did not start with new wells. He opened his father’s again and gave them back the names Abraham had given them. The heir took up what his father had left.

Sources: George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

19 And Isaac’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water.

20 And 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.

21 And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.

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.

Language #

Strife, hostility, and room

Isaac’s three new wells tell a story in their names. The first was a real prize: “a well of springing water,” in Hebrew “a well of living water” (be’er mayim chayyim), that is,…

Isaac’s three new wells tell a story in their names. The first was a real prize: “a well of springing water,” in Hebrew “a well of living water” (be’er mayim chayyim), that is, “flowing, fresh” water from a spring. The herdsmen of Gerar claimed it, and Isaac named it Esek, “contention” (verse 20). They fought over the second too, and he named it Sitnah, “hostility” (verse 21), a name “connected with the same root as the word satan, ‘adversary.’” Each time, Isaac moved on instead of fighting, though prosperity “depended upon unhindered access to a supply of water.”

The third well no one disputed, and he named it Rehoboth, “broad places, or, room.” His explanation uses the same root: “the LORD hath made room for us” (hirchiv YHWH lanu), “and we shall be fruitful in the land.” Isaac gives the room to the LORD. The Bible Dictionary’s sketch of him fits this scene: “a peace-loving shepherd of great personal piety.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. “Isaac”, Bible Dictionary.

Verses 23–25

The Lord appears at Beer-sheba

In plain words

From there he went up to Beer-sheba. That night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.” Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. He pitched his tent there, and his servants dug a well.

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 thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.

Related Scriptures #

The God of Abraham, and of Isaac

This is the first time in Genesis that God introduces Himself as the God of a man.

This is the first time in Genesis that God introduces Himself as the God of a man. To Abraham He had been “the LORD that brought thee out of Ur” (Gen. 15:7) and “the Almighty God” (Gen. 17:1). To Isaac He is “the God of Abraham thy father,” and the title grows with each generation. To Jacob He is “the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac” (Gen. 28:13); to Moses, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex. 3:6). Jesus drew a doctrine from that title: Moses “calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him” (Luke 20:37–38).

The verse also gives Abraham a title of his own: “my servant Abraham,” a title “only found in this place in Genesis.” Isaac answers the appearance as his father had answered his. He builds an altar, calls on the name of the LORD, and pitches his tent (verse 25), the three things Abraham did between Beth-el and Hai (Gen. 12:8). When God renewed the Abrahamic covenant with Isaac and with Jacob, “they do offer sacrifice or provide some type of unique witness that they will obey God’s command.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Shon D. Hopkin, “The Covenant among Covenants: The Abrahamic Covenant and Biblical Covenant Making”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 223–50.

25 And 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.

Verses 26–33

The oath with Abimelech

In plain words

Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath his adviser and Phichol the commander of his army. Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me, since you hated me and sent me away?” They answered, “We have clearly seen that the Lord is with you. So we said, ‘Let there be an oath between us,’ and we want to make a covenant with you: that you will do us no harm, just as we did not touch you, did you nothing but good, and sent you away in peace. Now you are the one the Lord has blessed.” Isaac made them a feast, and they ate and drank. Early the next morning they swore an oath to each other, and Isaac sent them on their way in peace. That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug: “We have found water!” He named it Shebah, “oath,” and so the city is called Beer-sheba to this day.

26 Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army.

27 And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?

28 And 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;

Language #

What Abimelech saw

Abimelech came because he had watched the promise of verse 3 come true.

Abimelech came because he had watched the promise of verse 3 come true. “I will be with thee,” the LORD had said; now the king says, “the LORD was with thee,” in nearly the same Hebrew, and says it emphatically: ra’o ra’inu, “seeing we have seen.” He ends by calling Isaac “the blessed of the LORD” (verse 29), the other half of the promise. He, or a king of the same name, had said the same of Abraham: “God is with thee in all that thou doest” (Gen. 21:22).

What he asks for is a covenant sealed by an oath: “let there be an oath (alah) between us… and let us cut a covenant (nikhretah berit).” “To cut a covenant” is the phrase that “became common in the biblical texts” for making one. Isaac answers with a feast, and they swear the next morning (verses 30–31). Sacred meals “were often a part of the covenant-making or covenant-renewal process”; Jacob and Laban later seal their covenant the same way, when Jacob “offered sacrifice upon the mount, and called his brethren to eat bread” (Gen. 31:54). The king who sent Isaac away (verse 16) is sent away by him “in peace.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Shon D. Hopkin, “The Covenant among Covenants: The Abrahamic Covenant and Biblical Covenant Making”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 223–50.

29 That 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.

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

31 And they rose up betimes in the morning, and sware one to 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 digged, and said unto him, We have found water.

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

Language #

Beer-sheba named a second time

Beer-sheba had already been named once, when Abraham and Abimelech swore their oath there: “he called that place Beer-sheba; because there they sware both of them” (Gen. 21:31;…

Beer-sheba had already been named once, when Abraham and Abimelech swore their oath there: “he called that place Beer-sheba; because there they sware both of them” (Gen. 21:31; see the note there on the name’s two senses, “well of seven” and “well of the oath”). Now Isaac’s servants find water on the day of his own oath with Abimelech, and he names the well Shib‘ah, which the text gives as the explanation of the city’s name. The word is a rare form of shevu‘ah, “oath.” So the city is Beer-sheba, “well of the oath.”

The two namings need not compete. In one reading this one “does not shut the other… out, but seems to confirm it”: “As the treaty made on oath between Abimelech and Isaac was only a renewal of his covenant concluded before with Abraham, so the name Beersheba was also renewed.” The place kept the memory of both oaths.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. “Beersheba”, Bible Dictionary.

Verses 34–35

Esau’s wives

In plain words

When Esau was forty years old he married Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite. They made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.

34 And 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:

Context #

Why Esau’s marriages grieved his parents

Esau married outside the covenant, and both his parents felt it. The Hittites of Genesis “were a branch of the Canaanites,” and Abraham had made his servant swear “that thou shalt…

Esau married outside the covenant, and both his parents felt it. The Hittites of Genesis “were a branch of the Canaanites,” and Abraham had made his servant swear “that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites” (Gen. 24:3). Had Isaac married a Canaanite, “he would not have been able to enter the Lord’s covenant of marriage and receive the Lord’s promised blessings associated with the Abrahamic covenant.” Esau, at forty, the age at which Isaac had married Rebekah (Gen. 25:20), took two Hittite wives.

The marriages belong with the sale of the birthright in the chapter before: they are “additional examples of Esau’s disregard for his birthright.” In them Esau chose “to marry a Hittite and give up the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant his father and grandfather had sacrificed so dearly to preserve.”

The grief carries into the next chapters. Rebekah tells Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth” (Gen. 27:46); Isaac charges Jacob, “Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan” (Gen. 28:1); and Esau, “seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father,” marries a daughter of Ishmael as well (Gen. 28:8–9), perhaps trying “to repair his relationship with his mother.” Rebekah “is never shown to turn her back on Esau” for any of it.

Sources: “Hittites”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Genesis 24–33, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84. Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425.

35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 26

The God who appears to Isaac at Beer-sheba is the God whom Nephi foresaw coming to earth: “the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yieldeth himself, according to the words of the angel, as a man, into the hands of wicked men” (1 Ne. 19:10). When the risen Lord visited the Nephites, He said of Himself, “I am he that gave the law, and I am he who covenanted with my people Israel” (3 Ne. 15:5). The covenant renewed to Isaac in this chapter was His covenant.

Its central promise points to Him as well. “In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (verse 4) repeats to Isaac the oath sworn on Moriah, and Paul reads the seed as one: “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal. 3:16; see the note on Gen. 22:18).

Worth exploring next

Abraham’s life and Isaac’s. Read Gen. 20 and Gen. 21:22–34 beside verses 1–33 and notice what repeats and what changes.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Gen. 28:13; Ex. 3:6; Luke 20:37–38; 1 Ne. 19:10; D&C 136:21.
Heirs who lived as strangers. Heb. 11:8–16.
Esau’s marriages and Jacob’s. Gen. 27:46–28:9.
Isaac’s world. “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC” (in From Creation to Sinai, Religious Studies Center) describes the herds, wells, and towns of the Negev where Isaac lived.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.
“Isaac”, Bible Dictionary.
“Abimelech”, Bible Dictionary.
“Philistines”, Bible Dictionary.
“Gerar”, Bible Dictionary.
“Beersheba”, Bible Dictionary.
“Hittites”, Bible Dictionary.
Genesis 24–33, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
Avram R. Shannon, “Abraham: A Man of Relationships”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 279–310.
Gaye Strathearn, “The Wife/Sister Experience: Pharaoh’s Introduction to Jehovah”, In Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo and Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2005), 100–116.
Shon D. Hopkin, “The Covenant among Covenants: The Abrahamic Covenant and Biblical Covenant Making”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 223–50.
George A. Pierce, “The Ancestors of Israel and the Environment of Canaan in the Early Second Millennium BC”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 163–92.
Aaron P. Schade, “Isaac and Jacob: Succession Narratives, Birthrights, and Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 335–84.
Camille Fronk Olson, “The Matriarchs: Administrators of God’s Covenantal Blessings”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2021), 385–425.
Genesis 24–36: The Covenant Line Continues with Isaac and Jacob, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).

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