Isaac Settles in Gerar

26 Now there was a famine in the land [of Canaan], besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to ^[a]Abimelech king of the Philistines. ² The Lord appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I will tell you. ³ Live temporarily [as a resident] in this land and I will be with you and will bless and favor you, for I will give all these lands to you and to your descendants, and I will establish and carry out the oath which I swore to Abraham your father.^{(A) 4} I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of the heavens, and will give to your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth be blessed,^{(B) 5} because Abraham listened to and obeyed My voice and [consistently] kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

⁶ So Isaac stayed in Gerar. ⁷ The men of the place asked him about his wife, and he said, “She is my ^[b]sister,” for he was afraid to say, “my wife”—thinking, “the men of the place might kill me on account of Rebekah, since she is very beautiful.” ⁸ It happened when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out of a window and saw Isaac ^[c]caressing Rebekah his wife. ⁹ Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, “See here, Rebekah is in fact your wife! How did you [dare to] say to me, ‘She is my sister’?” And Isaac said to him, “Because I thought I might be killed because of her [desirability].” ¹⁰ Abimelech said, “What is this that you have done to us? One of the men [among our people] might easily have been intimate with your wife, and you would have brought guilt on us [before God].” ¹¹ Then Abimelech commanded all his people, “Whoever touches this man [Isaac] or his wife [Rebekah] shall without exception be put to death.”

¹² Then Isaac planted [seed] in that land [as a farmer] and reaped in the same year a hundred times [as much as he had planted], and the Lord blessed and favored him. ¹³ And the man [Isaac] became great and gained more and more until he became very wealthy and extremely distinguished; ¹⁴ he owned flocks and herds and a great household [with a number of servants], 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 stopped up by filling them with dirt. ¹⁶ Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from here, because you are far too powerful for us.” ¹⁷ So Isaac left that region and camped in the Valley of Gerar, and settled there.

Quarrel over the Wells

¹⁸ Now Isaac again dug [and reopened] the wells of water which had been dug in the days of Abraham his father, because the Philistines had filled them up [with dirt] after the death of Abraham; and he gave the wells the same names that his father had given them. ¹⁹ But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing [spring] water, ²⁰ the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours!” So Isaac named the well Esek (quarreling), because they quarreled with him. ²¹ Then his servants dug another well, and they quarreled over that also, so Isaac named it Sitnah (enmity). ²² He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over that one; so he named it Rehoboth (broad places), saying, “For now the Lord has made ^[d]room for us, and we shall be ^[e]prosperous in the land.”

²³ Then he went up from there to Beersheba. ²⁴ The Lord appeared to him the same night and said,

²⁵ So Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord [in prayer]. He pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

Covenant with Abimelech

²⁶ Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with Ahuzzath, his [close friend and confidential] adviser, and Phicol, the commander of his army. ²⁷ Isaac said to them, “Why have you [people] come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?” ²⁸ They said, “We see clearly that the Lord has been with you; so we said, ‘There should now be an oath between us [with a curse for the one who breaks it], that is, between you and us, and let us make a covenant (binding agreement, solemn promise) with you, ²⁹ that you will not harm us, just as we have not touched you and have done nothing but good to you and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed and favored of the Lord!’” ³⁰ Then Isaac held a [formal] banquet (covenant feast) for them, and they ate and drank. ³¹ They got up early in the morning and swore oaths [pledging to do nothing but good to each other]; and Isaac sent them on their way and they left him in peace. ³² Now on the same day, Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug, saying, “We have found water.” ³³ So he named the well ^[f]Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.^(C)

³⁴ When Esau was forty years old he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite as his wives; ³⁵ and they were a ^[g]source of grief to [Esau’s parents] Isaac and Rebekah.

Uzziah Succeeds Amaziah in Judah

26 Then all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king in place of his father Amaziah. ² He built Eloth and restored it to Judah after the king [Amaziah] slept with his fathers [in death]. ³ Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Jechiliah of Jerusalem. ⁴ He did right in the sight of the Lord, in accordance with everything that his father Amaziah had done. ⁵ He continued to seek God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding ^[a]through the vision of God; and as long as he sought (inquired of, longing for) the Lord, God caused him to prosper.

Uzziah Succeeds in War

⁶ He went out and made war against the Philistines, and broke through the wall of Gath, the wall of Jabneh, and the wall of Ashdod; and he built cities near Ashdod and [elsewhere] among the Philistines. ⁷ God helped him against the Philistines, and against the Arabs who lived in Gur-baal, and the Meunites. ⁸ The Ammonites paid tribute (money) to Uzziah, and his fame spread abroad, even as far as the border of Egypt, for he became very strong. ⁹ Uzziah also built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate, the Valley Gate, and at the corner buttress [of the wall], and fortified them. ¹⁰ He also built towers in the wilderness and dug many cisterns, for he had a great deal of livestock, both in the lowlands and in the plain. He also had farmers and vinedressers in the hill country and in the fertile fields, for he loved the soil. ¹¹ Moreover, Uzziah had an army ready for battle, which went into combat by divisions according to the number of their muster as recorded by Jeiel the scribe and Maaseiah the official, under the direction of Hananiah, one of the king’s commanders. ¹² The total number of the heads of the fathers’ households, of valiant men, was 2,600. ¹³ Under their command was an army of 307,500, who could wage war with great power, to help the king against the enemy. ¹⁴ Moreover, Uzziah prepared shields, spears, helmets, body armor, bows, and sling stones for the entire army. ¹⁵ In Jerusalem he made machines of war invented by skillful men to be put on the towers and on the [corner] battlements for the purpose of shooting arrows and large stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped until he was strong.

Pride Is Uzziah’s Undoing

¹⁶ But when Uzziah became strong, he became so proud [of himself and his accomplishments] that he acted corruptly, and he was unfaithful and sinned against the Lord his God, for he went ^[b]into the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense.^{(A) 17} Then Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him eighty priests of the Lord, men of courage. ¹⁸ They opposed King Uzziah and said to him, “It is not for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord, but for the priests, the sons of Aaron who have been consecrated to burn incense. Get out of the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful and will have no honor from the Lord God.” ¹⁹ Then Uzziah, with a censer in his hand to burn incense, was enraged; and while he was enraged with the priests, ^[c]leprosy broke out on his forehead before the priests in the house of the Lord, beside the incense altar. ²⁰ As Azariah the chief priest and all the priests looked toward him, behold, he was leprous on his forehead; and they hurried him out of there, and he also hurried to get out because the Lord had stricken him. ²¹ King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death; and, being a leper, he lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord. And his son Jotham took charge of the king’s household, judging and governing the people of the land.

²² Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, from the first to the last, Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz, has written.^{(B) 23} So Uzziah slept with his fathers [in death], and they buried him with his fathers in the burial field of the kings [outside the royal tombs], for they said, “He is a leper.” And his son Jotham became king in his place.

Rank in the Kingdom

18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”^{(A) 2} He called a little child and set him before them, ³ and said, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless you repent [that is, change your inner self—your old way of thinking, live changed lives] and become like children [trusting, humble, and forgiving], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ Therefore, whoever ^[a]humbles himself like this child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ⁵ Whoever receives and welcomes one ^[b]child like this in My name receives Me; ⁶ but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble and sin [by leading him away from My teaching], it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone [as large as one turned by a donkey] hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.^(B)

Stumbling Blocks

⁷ “Woe (judgment is coming) to the world because of stumbling blocks and temptations to sin! It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to the person on whose account or through whom the stumbling block comes!^(C)

⁸ “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble and sin, cut it off and throw it away from you [that is, remove yourself from the source of temptation]; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into everlasting fire. ⁹ If your eye causes you to stumble and sin, pluck it out and throw it away from you [that is, remove yourself from the source of temptation]; it is better for you to enter life with only one eye, than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fiery hell.

¹⁰ “See that you do not despise or think less of one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven [are in the presence of and] continually look upon the face of My Father who is in heaven.^{(D) 11 [c]}[For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.]

Ninety-nine Plus One

¹² “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them gets lost, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountain and go in search of the one that is lost?^{(E) 13} And if it turns out that he finds it, I assure you and most solemnly say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that did not get lost. ¹⁴ So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones be lost.

Discipline and Prayer

¹⁵ “If your brother sins^[d], go and show him his fault in private; if he listens and pays attention to you, you have won back your brother. ¹⁶ But if he does not listen, take along with you one or two others, so that every word may be confirmed by the testimony of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷ If he pays no attention to them [refusing to listen and obey], tell it to the ^[e]church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile (unbeliever) and a tax collector.^{(F) 18} I assure you and most solemnly say to you, whatever you bind [forbid, declare to be improper and unlawful] on earth ^[f]shall have [already] been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose [permit, declare lawful] on earth ^[g]shall have [already] been loosed in heaven.^(G)

¹⁹ “Again I say to you, that if two ^[h]believers on earth agree [that is, are of one mind, in harmony] about anything that they ask [within the will of God], it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.^{(H) 20} For where two or three are gathered in My name [meeting together as My followers], I am there among them.”^(I)

Forgiveness

²¹ Then Peter came to Him and asked, “Lord, how many times will my brother sin against me and I forgive him and let it go? Up to seven times?” ²² Jesus answered him, “I say to you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven.

²³ “Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. ²⁴ When he began the accounting, one who owed him 10,000 ^[i]talents was brought to him. ²⁵ But because he could not repay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and his children and everything that he possessed, and payment to be made. ²⁶ So the slave fell on his knees and begged him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ ²⁷ And his master’s heart was moved with compassion and he released him and forgave him [canceling] the debt. ²⁸ But that same slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him ^[j]a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began choking him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe!’ ²⁹ So his fellow slave fell on his knees and begged him earnestly, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ ³⁰ But he was unwilling and he went and had him thrown in prison until he paid back the debt. ³¹ When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and they went and reported to their master [with clarity and in detail] everything that had taken place. ³² Then his master called him and said to him, ‘You wicked and contemptible slave, I forgave all that [great] debt of yours because you begged me. ³³ Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave [who owed you little by comparison], as I had mercy on you?’ ³⁴ And in wrath his master turned him over to the torturers (jailers) until he paid all that he owed. ³⁵ My heavenly Father will also do the same to [every one of] you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”

Prayer for Protection, Guidance and Pardon.

A Psalm of David.

Parental Counsel