Genesis 26

¹⁰Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

¹¹After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who lived near Beer-lahai-roi.

²²At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do.

²³Now, therefore, swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants. Show to me and to the country in which you reside the same kindness that I have shown to you.”

¹Now Abraham journeyed from there to the region of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he was staying in Gerar,

²Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech king of Gerar had Sarah brought to him.

⁷Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

¹Then the Lord appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre in the heat of the day, while he was sitting at the entrance of his tent.

¹When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be blameless.

¹Then the Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your kindred, and your father’s household, and go to the land I will show you.

³Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.

¹⁰Then the Lord said, “I will surely return to you at this time next year, and your wife Sarah will have a son!” Now Sarah was behind him, listening at the entrance to the tent.

¹¹And Abraham and Sarah were already old and well along in years; Sarah had passed the age of childbearing.

¹⁵Look, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

⁹the covenant He made with Abraham, and the oath He swore to Isaac.

¹⁶saying, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your only son,

¹⁷I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.

⁹By faith he dwelt in the promised land as a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.

⁸And to you and your descendants I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as an eternal possession; and I will be their God.”

⁷Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

²⁵And you are sons of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers when He said to Abraham, ‘Through your offspring all the families of the earth will be blessed.’

⁵And the Lord took him outside and said, “Now look to the heavens and count the stars, if you are able.” Then He told him, “So shall your offspring be.”

²I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

³I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

⁸The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and foretold the gospel to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”

¹⁷I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.

¹⁸And through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

¹⁶I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one could count the dust of the earth, then your offspring could be counted.

²⁴Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

¹⁸And through your offspring all nations of the earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

¹⁶saying, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your only son,

²¹Was not our father Abraham justified by what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?

¹Hallelujah! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments.

²His descendants will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed.

⁸By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, without knowing where he was going.

¹Now Abraham journeyed from there to the region of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he was staying in Gerar,

²⁵The fear of man is a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is set securely on high.

²Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech king of Gerar had Sarah brought to him.

¹³Please say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake, and on account of you my life will be spared.”

¹⁶Now the girl was very beautiful, a virgin who had not had relations with any man. She went down to the spring, filled her jar, and came up again.

¹²Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father—though not the daughter of my mother—and she became my wife.

¹³So when God had me journey from my father’s house, I said to Sarah, ‘This is how you can show your loyalty to me: Wherever we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’”

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her

⁵For as a young man marries a young woman, so your sons will marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you.

¹⁸May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth:

¹⁹A loving doe, a graceful fawn—may her breasts satisfy you always; may you be captivated by her love forever.

⁶For at the window of my house I looked through the lattice.

⁹My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattice.

²⁸Sisera’s mother looked through the window; she peered through the lattice and lamented: ‘Why is his chariot so long in coming? What has delayed the clatter of his chariots?’

⁹Enjoy life with your beloved wife all the days of the fleeting life that God has given you under the sun—all your fleeting days. For this is your portion in life and in your labor under the sun.

¹⁸So Pharaoh summoned Abram and asked, “What have you done to me? Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife?

¹⁹Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her as my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!”

⁹Then Abimelech called Abraham and asked, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such tremendous guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done.”

¹⁰Abimelech also asked Abraham, “What prompted you to do such a thing?”

¹⁵“Do not touch My anointed ones! Do no harm to My prophets!”

⁶Then God said to Abimelech in the dream, “Yes, I know that you did this with a clear conscience, and so I have kept you from sinning against Me. That is why I did not let you touch her.

²⁹So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.

⁸For this is what the Lord of Hosts says: “After His Glory has sent Me against the nations that have plundered you—for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye—

⁸Still other seed fell on good soil, where it sprouted, grew up, and produced a crop—one bearing thirtyfold, another sixtyfold, and another a hundredfold.”

³Stay in this land as a foreigner, and I will be with you and bless you. For I will give all these lands to you and your offspring, and I will confirm the oath that I swore to your father Abraham.

¹²“For the seed will be prosperous, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will yield its produce, and the skies will give their dew. To the remnant of this people I will give all these things as an inheritance.

¹⁰Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your store of seed and will increase the harvest of your righteousness.

¹¹You will be enriched in every way to be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will produce thanksgiving to God.

¹By now Abraham was old and well along in years, and the Lord had blessed him in every way.

³⁵“The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, menservants and maidservants, camels and donkeys.

²²The blessing of the Lord enriches, and He adds no sorrow to it.

³Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever.

³⁵“The Lord has greatly blessed my master, and he has become rich. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, menservants and maidservants, camels and donkeys.

¹¹And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept in mind what he had said.

³and he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man of all the people of the East.

²For resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.

⁴Wrath is cruel and anger is like a flood, but who can withstand jealousy?

²²The blessing of the Lord enriches, and He adds no sorrow to it.

¹³Our storehouses will be full, supplying all manner of produce; our flocks will bring forth thousands, tens of thousands in our fields.

¹⁴Our oxen will bear great loads. There will be no breach in the walls, no going into captivity, and no cry of lament in our streets.

³⁰He replied, “You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well.”

²⁵But when Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized,

⁹“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become too numerous and too powerful for us.

²And on that day, declares the Lord of Hosts, I will erase the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered. I will also remove the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land.

⁴Sorrows will multiply to those who chase other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood, or speak their names with my lips.

³¹So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath.

¹⁷For I will remove from her lips the names of the Baals; no longer will their names be invoked.

³⁸as well as Nebo and Baal-meon (whose names were changed), and Sibmah. And they renamed the cities they rebuilt.

¹⁰Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

¹¹“Sir,” the woman replied, “You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then will You get this living water?

³⁸Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said: ‘Streams of living water will flow from within him.’”

¹⁵You are a garden spring, a well of fresh water flowing down from Lebanon.

²⁵But when Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had seized,

⁶At the beginning of the reign of Xerxes, an accusation was lodged against the people of Judah and Jerusalem.

⁶I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will descend from you.

⁷but the Israelites were fruitful and increased rapidly; they multiplied and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.

⁵In my distress I called to the Lord, and He answered and set me free.

⁵²And the second son he named Ephraim, saying, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

³May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, so that you may become a company of peoples.

¹⁹He brought me out into the open; He rescued me because He delighted in me.

¹So Israel set out with all that he had, and when he came to Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

¹Then all the Israelites from Dan to Beersheba and from the land of Gilead came out, and the congregation assembled as one man before the Lord at Mizpah.

³¹So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath.

¹After these events, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

⁶Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

⁷I will establish My covenant as an everlasting covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

³²‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look.

¹²“O Lord, God of my master Abraham,” he prayed, “please grant me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham.

¹But now, this is what the Lord says—He who created you, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine!

²When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you go through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched; the flames will not set you ablaze.

¹⁸So Abram moved his tent and went to live near the Oaks of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the Lord.

¹⁷I will offer to You a sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.

⁷Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” So Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

⁸From there Abram moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. There he built an altar to the Lord, and he called on the name of the Lord.

¹Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and settle there. Build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”

²⁰There he set up an altar and called it El-Elohe-Israel.

¹⁵And Moses built an altar and named it The Lord Is My Banner.

²²At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do.

²³Now, therefore, swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants. Show to me and to the country in which you reside the same kindness that I have shown to you.”

³One night, however, God came to Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken, for she is a married woman.”

¹⁶Then Abimelech said to Isaac, “Depart from us, for you are much too powerful for us.”

⁷Jephthah replied to the elders of Gilead, “Did you not hate me and expel me from my father’s house? Why then have you come to me now, when you are in distress?”

³⁵This Moses, whom they had rejected with the words, ‘Who made you ruler and judge?’ is the one whom God sent to be their ruler and redeemer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush.

⁹Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him

²⁷But the man who was abusing his neighbor pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?

¹⁴Then Joseph sent for his father Jacob and all his relatives, seventy-five in all.

²²At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do.

²³Now, therefore, swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants. Show to me and to the country in which you reside the same kindness that I have shown to you.”

¹⁴This is what the Lord says: “The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, along with the Sabeans, men of stature, will come over to you and will be yours; they will trudge behind you; they will come over in chains and bow down to you. They will confess to you: ‘God is indeed with you, and there is no other; there is no other God.’”

⁹Their descendants will be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the Lord has blessed.

³¹So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath.

³²After they had made the covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army got up and returned to the land of the Philistines.

⁷Now the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so they may know that I am with you just as I was with Moses.

⁵From the time that he put Joseph in charge of his household and all he owned, the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s household on account of him. The Lord’s blessing was on everything he owned, both in his house and in his field.

³¹“Come, you who are blessed by the Lord,” said Laban. “Why are you standing out here? I have prepared the house and a place for the camels.”

²²At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army said to Abraham, “God is with you in all that you do.

²I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

¹⁵May you be blessed by the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

¹⁷I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.

¹⁴He owned so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him.

¹⁵So the Philistines took dirt and stopped up all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham.

³But Lot insisted so strongly that they followed him into his house. He prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

¹⁴Pursue peace with everyone, as well as holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.

¹⁸If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone.

⁵⁴Then Jacob offered a sacrifice on the mountain and invited his relatives to eat a meal. And after they had eaten, they spent the night on the mountain.

⁹Show hospitality to one another without complaining.

⁸So the child grew and was weaned, and Abraham held a great feast on the day Isaac was weaned.

¹⁵“Will you lead me to these raiders?” David asked. And the man replied, “Swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me into the hand of my master, and I will lead you to them.”

³³“Swear to me first,” Jacob said. So Esau swore to Jacob and sold him the birthright.

³¹So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath.

³²After they had made the covenant at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his army got up and returned to the land of the Philistines.

¹⁶So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the Lord hold David’s enemies accountable.”

¹⁷And Jonathan had David reaffirm his vow out of love for him, for Jonathan loved David as he loved himself.

⁴⁴Come now, let us make a covenant, you and I, and let it serve as a witness between you and me.”

¹⁶Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and their oath serves as a confirmation to end all argument.

⁴Idle hands make one poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.

⁷Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.

⁴The slacker craves yet has nothing, but the soul of the diligent is fully satisfied.

²⁵So Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord, and he pitched his tent there. His servants also dug a well there.

⁴if you seek it like silver and search it out like hidden treasure,

⁵then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.

³¹So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath.

²⁸“We can plainly see that the Lord has been with you,” they replied. “We recommend that there should now be an oath between us and you. Let us make a covenant with you

²Esau took his wives from the daughters of Canaan: Adah daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibamah daughter of Anah and granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite,

¹³These are the sons of Reuel: Nahath, Zerah, Shammah, and Mizzah. They are the grandsons of Esau’s wife Basemath.

¹⁶And when you take some of their daughters as brides for your sons, their daughters will prostitute themselves to their gods and cause your sons to do the same.

³and I will have you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I am dwelling,

⁹Esau went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, in addition to the wives he already had.

⁵and Oholibamah gave birth to Jeush, Jalam, and Korah. These were the sons of Esau, who were born to him in the land of Canaan.

⁴⁶Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a Hittite wife from among them, what good is my life?”

⁸And seeing that his father Isaac disapproved of the Canaanite women,

²the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took as wives whomever they chose.