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Jacob and Esau
This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac,
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and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean.
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Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.
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After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.
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Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
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Isaac and Abimelek
Now there was a famine in the land—besides the previous famine in Abraham’s time—and Isaac went to Abimelek king of the Philistines in Gerar.
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The Lord appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live.
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So Isaac stayed in Gerar.
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When Isaac had been there a long time, Abimelek king of the Philistines looked down from a window and saw Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah.
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So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, “She is really your wife! Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac answered him, “Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.”
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Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him.
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Then Abimelek said to Isaac, “Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us.”
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So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar, where he settled.
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Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.
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Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there.
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But the herders of Gerar quarreled with those of Isaac and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they disputed with him.
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Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.
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Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?”
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Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank.
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Early the next morning the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they went away peacefully.
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That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, “We’ve found water!”
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They were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah.
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When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for Esau his older son and said to him, “My son.” “Here I am,” he answered.
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Isaac said, “I am now an old man and don’t know the day of my death.
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Now Rebekah was listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau. When Esau left for the open country to hunt game and bring it back,
