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And the LORD appeared unto him, and said, Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of:
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;
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;
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.
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.
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.
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.
And Abimelech charged all his people, saying, He that toucheth this man or his wife shall surely be put to death.
Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.
And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great:
For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him.
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.
And Abimelech said unto Isaac, Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.
And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there.
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.
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.
And they digged another well, and strove for that also: and he called the name of it Sitnah.
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.
And he went up from thence to Beersheba.
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.
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.
Then Abimelech went to him from Gerar, and Ahuzzath one of his friends, and Phichol the chief captain of his army.
And Isaac said unto them, Wherefore come ye to me, seeing ye hate me, and have sent me away from you?
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;
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.
And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.
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.
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.
And he called it Shebah: therefore the name of the city is Beersheba unto this day.
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:
Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

26:2 the LORD appeared. This is apparently the first time in over fifty years that God had appeared to Isaac; here He confirmed the covenant made with Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah. It was also the first famine in the land of promise since Abram had gone down to Egypt over a century earlier. Isaac, unused to such testings, now needed special assurance.


26:5 my laws. Long before Moses, there were divine commandments and laws, and Abraham obeyed them. Certain law codes found among the Babylonians, the Hittites and others also antedate Moses and agree in many respects with the Mosaic laws, perhaps reflecting a primeval system given by God (possibly only verbally) that disappeared after Babel except for those, like Abraham, who retained and obeyed the truth. Note also the same implication in Job 23:12.


26:7 my sister. Critics allege that this is merely another version of the story of Abraham’s experience in Gerar (Genesis 20:1-8). This is not possible; the scribal “redactors” whom these same critics think brought the different components of Genesis together would have been far too shrewd to deliberately create such an obvious barrier to its acceptance by their readers. The event must have taken place as described. Isaac and Rebekah repeated the same fabrication that Abraham and Sarah had attempted over a century earlier, for essentially the same reasons, and with essentially the same results–human rebuke for their deception, but God’s protection in spite of this.


26:9 she is thy wife. The Nuzi tablets, from northern Mesopotamia and describing life and customs in the patriarchal age, indicate that it was possible for a man to adopt a woman as his sister, then later also take her as his wife. It is thus at least possible that Rebecca was both wife and sister to Isaac–the same for Abraham and Sarah.


26:12 hundredfold. This is the first mention of seed-sowing in the Bible. Throughout the Bible, seed-sowing is commonly symbolic of Christian witnessing, and this aspect is paramount in the first mention of seed-sowing in the New Testament (Matthew 13:23). In both cases, it is providentially significant that the good seed brought forth a hundredfold.


26:25 builded an altar. According to records, this is the only altar built by Isaac. God appeared to him again after he was back at Beer-sheba (“well of the covenant”), where he had lived in his closest fellowship with God. The well had belonged to Abraham, and it was accepted as such by the Philistines (still a relatively small body of settlers that had come from their own homeland in Crete), so Isaac knew he was now justified in staying there. The ancient town of Beer-sheba has been partially excavated, and visitors today are shown a well claimed to be that of Abraham and Isaac.


26:31 betimes. An archaic expression meaning “promptly.”


26:35 grief of mind. Here is further proof of God’s wisdom in choosing Jacob. Esau disregarded both God’s primeval principle of monogamy and the need to marry a wife who believed in the true God. Instead he married two pagan Hittite women, whose idolatry and ungodliness grieved his parents. Even more tragically, Isaac seems to have made no attempt to prevent this, and was still resolved to give Esau his patriarchal blessing.


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