For Teaching

Genesis 26: What the Passage Says

115 claims across 35 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Genesis 26 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

A famine comes to the land and Isaac goes to Abimelech king of the Philistines at Gerar, where the LORD tells him not to go to Egypt and repeats to him the promise of land, descendants, and blessing sworn to Abraham. Isaac calls Rebekah his sister, Abimelech discovers she is his wife and forbids anyone to harm them; Isaac's crops and herds grow so large that the Philistines envy him and Abimelech sends him away. Isaac reopens his father's wells, moves on twice after quarrels over water, and at Beersheba receives the promise again, builds an altar, and swears a treaty with Abimelech. The chapter closes with Esau marrying two Hittite women, who bring grief to Isaac and Rebekah.

Claim by Claim

26:1
- There was a famine in the land.
- This famine was distinct from an earlier famine that occurred in the days of Abraham.
- Isaac went to Abimelech king of the Philistines, to Gerar.
26:2
- The LORD appeared to Isaac.
- The LORD told him not to go down to Egypt.
- The LORD told him to settle in the land that He would tell him of.
26:3
- The LORD told Isaac to stay in this land as a resident foreigner.
- The LORD said He would be with Isaac.
- The LORD said He would bless Isaac.
- The LORD said He would give all these lands to Isaac and to his offspring.
- The LORD said He would carry out the oath He had sworn to Abraham, Isaac's father.
26:4
- The LORD said He would multiply Isaac's offspring like the stars of the heavens.
- The LORD said He would give all these lands to Isaac's offspring.
- The LORD said all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Isaac's offspring.
26:5
- The reason given is that Abraham obeyed the LORD's voice.
- Abraham kept the LORD's charge.
- Abraham kept the LORD's commandments.
- Abraham kept the LORD's statutes.
- Abraham kept the LORD's laws.
26:6
- Isaac settled in Gerar.
26:7
- The men of the place asked Isaac about his wife.
- Isaac said that she was his sister.
- Isaac was afraid to say that she was his wife.
- Isaac feared the men of the place would kill him on account of Rebekah.
- Rebekah was beautiful in appearance.
26:8
- Isaac had been there a long time.
- Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out through a window.
- Abimelech saw Isaac caressing Rebekah his wife in a way that showed she was not his sister.
26:9
- Abimelech summoned Isaac.
- Abimelech said that Rebekah was certainly Isaac's wife.
- Abimelech asked how Isaac could have said she was his sister.
- Isaac said he had said it because he thought he might die on account of her.
26:10
- Abimelech asked Isaac what he had done to them.
- Abimelech said one of the people might easily have lain with Isaac's wife.
- Abimelech said Isaac would have brought guilt upon them.
26:11
- Abimelech commanded all the people.
- Abimelech said that whoever touched this man or his wife would surely be put to death.
26:12
- Isaac sowed in that land.
- Isaac reaped a hundredfold in that same year.
- The LORD blessed Isaac.
26:13
- The man became great.
- He kept on growing greater.
- He became very great.
26:14
- He had flocks.
- He had herds.
- He had a large body of servants.
- The Philistines envied him.
26:15
- Abraham's servants had dug wells in the days of Abraham, Isaac's father.
- The Philistines had stopped up all those wells.
- The Philistines had filled those wells with earth.
26:16
- Abimelech told Isaac to go away from them.
- Abimelech said Isaac had become much mightier than they.
26:17
- Isaac departed from there.
- Isaac encamped in the valley of Gerar.
- Isaac settled there.
26:18
- Isaac dug again the wells of water that had been dug in the days of Abraham his father.
- The Philistines had stopped up those wells after Abraham died.
- Isaac gave the wells the same names his father had given them.
26:19
- Isaac's servants dug in the valley.
- They found there a well of living water.
26:20
- The herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen.
- The herdsmen of Gerar said the water was theirs.
- Isaac named the well Esek.
- The name was given because they contended with him.
26:21
- They dug another well.
- They quarreled over that well also.
- Isaac named it Sitnah.
26:22
- Isaac moved on from there.
- Isaac dug another well.
- They did not quarrel over that well.
- Isaac named it Rehoboth.
- Isaac said the LORD had now made room for them.
- Isaac said they would be fruitful in the land.
26:23
- Isaac went up from there to Beersheba.
26:24
- The LORD appeared to Isaac that night.
- The LORD said He is the God of Abraham, Isaac's father.
- The LORD told Isaac not to fear.
- The LORD said He was with Isaac.
- The LORD said He would bless Isaac.
- The LORD said He would multiply Isaac's offspring.
- The LORD said this was for the sake of His servant Abraham.
26:25
- Isaac built an altar there.
- Isaac called on the name of the LORD.
- Isaac pitched his tent there.
- Isaac's servants dug a well there.
26:26
- Abimelech went to Isaac from Gerar.
- Ahuzzath, Abimelech's friend, went with him.
- Phichol, the commander of Abimelech's army, went with him.
26:27
- Isaac asked them why they had come to him.
- Isaac said they hated him.
- Isaac said they had sent him away from them.
26:28
- They said they had clearly seen that the LORD was with Isaac.
- They said they had proposed that there be an oath between them and Isaac.
- They proposed to make a covenant with Isaac.
26:29
- The covenant was that Isaac would do them no harm.
- They said they had not touched Isaac.
- They said they had done nothing but good to Isaac.
- They said they had sent Isaac away in peace.
- They said Isaac was now blessed of the LORD.
26:30
- Isaac made them a feast.
- They ate and drank.
26:31
- They rose early in the morning.
- They swore an oath to one another.
- Isaac sent them away.
- They departed from him in peace.
26:32
- That same day Isaac's servants came to him.
- They told him about the well they had dug.
- They said they had found water.
26:33
- Isaac called the well Shebah.
- For that reason the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.
26:34
- Esau was forty years old.
- Esau took Judith, daughter of Beeri the Hittite, as a wife.
- Esau took Bashemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite, as a wife.
26:35
- The two wives were a bitterness of spirit to Isaac.
- The two wives were a bitterness of spirit to Rebekah.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

26:1: The Philistines were a people settled on the coastal plain southwest of Canaan. In the books of Samuel they are Israel's chief rivals, arriving from the Aegean around 1200 BC; their appearance here, centuries earlier, is one of the places where Genesis uses a later, familiar name for the inhabitants of that region. Gerar was a town in the dry southern country between the coast and the desert. "Abimelech" means roughly "my father is king" and may be a royal title rather than a personal name, which is why a king of Gerar by that name also appears in Abraham's lifetime (Genesis 20).
26:2: Egypt, watered by the Nile rather than by rainfall, did not fail when the rains failed in Canaan, so it was the standard destination for herdsmen escaping famine, Abraham went there in Genesis 12, and Jacob's sons will later. The instruction not to go is therefore telling Isaac to give up the obvious survival move.
26:3: "Stay as a foreigner" translates a word for living long-term in a land where you hold no ancestral property and no citizen's rights: you live at the goodwill of the locals, dependent on their protection, and cannot own land or graze freely by right. It is the same status Abraham held.
26:4: The Hebrew verb here can be read two ways, and translators divide on it: either "all the nations will be blessed through your descendants," or "all the nations will bless themselves by your descendants": that is, they will use his family as the standard in their own blessings, saying "may we be as fortunate as they are." Both senses are grammatically available.
26:5: "Commands, rules, and laws" are the standard set of Hebrew legal terms used later for the body of law given through Moses. Applying them to Abraham, who lived long before that law existed, is a way of saying his conduct amounted to the same thing.
26:7: Saying a woman is your sister rather than your wife removes the motive to kill you: a husband is an obstacle to be got rid of, but a brother is the man you must negotiate with, which buys time. Abraham used the same tactic twice (Genesis 12 and 20). Note that in Abraham's case the claim was half true (Sarah was his half-sister) while Rebekah is Isaac's cousin once removed, not his sister.
26:8: The Hebrew verb translated "being affectionate with" is *metsaheq*, from the same root as Isaac's name, *Yitzhaq*, "he laughs." The line reads something like "Isaac was Isaac-ing with Rebekah," and the word is plainly sexual enough that Abimelech draws the obvious conclusion. English cannot carry both the pun and the sense at once.
26:9: "Of a surety" is old English for "certainly" or "beyond doubt."
26:10: In the thinking behind this scene, guilt for adultery falls on a whole community, not only on the individual who committed it, and it exposes them all to punishment. Abimelech's complaint is not moral squeamishness but alarm: Isaac's lie could have brought disaster on his entire people without their knowing why.
26:11: "Touches" here has its legal sense, harms, molests, interferes with. The decree puts Isaac and Rebekah under royal protection, backed by the death penalty.
26:12: A hundredfold return is an enormous yield; ordinary grain harvests in this region ran to perhaps five- or tenfold. It is also worth noting that Isaac is sowing crops at all, his family are herdsmen, and planting grain means settling in one place long enough to see a harvest through.
26:13: "Waxed" is old English for grew or increased. The verse stacks three expressions for growth in a row, a Hebrew way of saying the increase kept going and going.
26:14: Wealth in this world was counted in livestock and in people. "Servants" covers a household of dependent workers, many of them owned rather than employed, and a large one meant both labor and a private force capable of defending itself, which is exactly why the Philistines found Isaac alarming as well as enviable.
26:15: In semi-arid country a well is capital: digging one is expensive, and holding one amounts to a claim on the surrounding grazing land. Filling a well with dirt does not destroy it permanently but makes it useless without heavy labor to reopen it. It was a recognized hostile act, the equivalent of driving someone off the land without a fight.
26:17: The "valley" is a wadi, a streambed that runs with water after rain and lies dry the rest of the year. Water can often be reached by digging into its gravel bed, which is why the well-digging happens there.
26:18: Restoring his father's wells and giving them back their original names is a legal move as much as a practical one. Names attached to wells recorded who had the right to draw from them, so Isaac is publicly reclaiming Abraham's water rights rather than starting from nothing.
26:19: The Hebrew phrase is "living water", water from an underground spring, moving of its own accord, as opposed to standing water collected in a cistern. It was prized as fresher, cleaner, and unlikely to run out.
26:20: *Esek* means "quarrel" or "contention." Naming places after what happened at them is common in Genesis, and the name is usually a pun on a word in the sentence that explains it.
26:21: *Sitnah* means "hostility" or "accusation", from a legal root meaning to oppose someone or bring a charge against them. The same root lies behind the word *satan*, "adversary."
26:22: *Rehoboth* means "wide open spaces" or "room," and Isaac's explanation ("the LORD has made room for us") is a play on the name.
26:23: Beersheba lies at the southern edge of settled Canaan, on the border of the desert. Abraham had made a treaty and dug a well there in Genesis 21, so Isaac is returning to his father's ground.
26:25: An altar is a raised stone platform for burning animal or grain offerings. "Called on the name of the LORD" is an idiom for public worship, proclaiming the god's name aloud and claiming the site for him, which, together with building the altar and pitching the tent, amounts to formally taking possession of the place.
26:26: "One of his friends" renders a court title, not a personal description: the King's Friend was an official position, a royal confidant or adviser. Phichol's title marks him as head of the armed forces. Abimelech is arriving with his cabinet, which signals that this is a state visit, not a social one.
26:28: What they propose is a treaty of the ordinary ancient kind between unequal parties: a sworn agreement, with the gods called as witnesses, binding both sides to non-aggression. Breaking such an oath was believed to bring down the punishment of the deity invoked, which is what made it enforceable between people who had no shared court to appeal to.
26:29: "We have not touched thee" means we have not harmed you. In the King James, to touch someone often means to hurt them.
26:30: Eating together sealed a treaty. The shared meal was part of the legal procedure, not hospitality added afterward: it made the two parties, for the purposes of the agreement, members of one household.
26:31: "Betimes" is old English for early. Rising at first light to complete the oath signals that the business is being taken seriously.
26:33: *Shebah* echoes the Hebrew word for "oath" and also the word for "seven" (oaths were sworn by sevens; compare the seven lambs in Genesis 21). *Beersheba* can accordingly be read as "well of the oath" or "well of seven." "To this day" is the narrator speaking to his own readers, long after the events.
26:34: The Hittites here are a local Canaanite group, not the great Anatolian empire of the same name; Genesis uses the term for people living in and around Hebron. The point of recording the marriages is that Esau married local women, whereas Abraham had gone to great lengths to get Isaac a wife from the family back in Mesopotamia (Genesis 24), and Jacob will be sent to do the same. Forty is also the age at which Isaac himself married.
26:35: The Hebrew is literally "bitterness of spirit" to Isaac and Rebekah. The phrase describes deep and lasting distress, not passing annoyance.

Read Genesis 26