Isaac

But God came to Abimelech that night in a dream. “You are a dead man,” he told him, “because of the woman you took. She is another man’s wife.”

Now Abimelech had not slept with her. He said, “Lord, will you kill people who have done no wrong? Didn’t he tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she said so too: ‘He is my brother.’ My heart was honest when I did this, and I did nothing wrong.”

“Yes,” God said to him in the dream, “I know your heart was honest when you did this. And I held you back from sinning against me, so I did not let you touch her. Now give the man his wife back. He is a prophet. He will pray for you, and you will live. If you don’t give her back, you can be sure that you will die, you and everyone who belongs to you.”

Then Abimelech sent for Abraham. “What have you done to us?” he said. “What wrong did I ever do to you? Why have you made me and my kingdom guilty of such a great sin? What you did to me should never be done to anyone!” And Abimelech asked Abraham, “What were you thinking when you did this?”

Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, ‘Surely nobody here fears God. They will kill me to get my wife.’ Besides, she really is my sister. She is my father’s daughter, though not my mother’s, and she became my wife. When God sent me wandering away from my father’s home, I said to her, ‘This is how you can be kind to me: everywhere we go, tell people that I am your brother.’”

Then Abimelech gave Abraham sheep and cattle, and male and female servants. He also gave Sarah, Abraham’s wife, back to him. Abimelech told him, “Look, my land is open to you. Live wherever you like.”

To Sarah he said, “Look, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. This is for you, in front of everyone who is with you. All of them can see that your name is cleared.”

Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech. He also healed Abimelech’s wife and his female servants, so that they could have children again. The Lord had kept every woman in Abimelech’s household from having children, because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Abraham named his son Isaac, the boy Sarah had given him. Abraham circumcised Isaac when he was eight days old, just as God had commanded. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old.

Sarah said, “God has made me laugh. Everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Then she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? And now I have given him a son in his old age.”

Hagar the Egyptian had given Abraham a son, and Sarah saw the boy mocking. So she said to Abraham, “Get rid of this servant woman and her son! Her son will never inherit anything along with my son Isaac.”

This upset Abraham very much, because the boy was his son. But God told him, “Don’t be upset about the boy and your servant woman. Do whatever Sarah tells you, because your family line will come through Isaac. And I will make the servant’s son into a nation too, because he is your child.”

Early the next morning Abraham took some bread and a leather bag of water and gave them to Hagar. He put them on her shoulder, gave her the boy, and sent her away. She left and wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

When the water in the bag was all gone, she put the boy down under a bush. She went and sat down facing him, a long way off, about as far as an arrow can fly. “I can’t watch the boy die,” she said. She sat there across from him and sobbed out loud.

God heard the boy’s voice. And the angel of God called to Hagar from the sky, “What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid. God has heard the boy, right where he is. Get up, lift the boy up and hold on to him, because I will make him into a great nation.”

God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went over, filled the bag with water, and gave the boy a drink.

God was with the boy, and he grew. He made his home in the wilderness, and as he grew up he became an archer. He lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother got him a wife from the land of Egypt.

“I swear it,” said Abraham.

Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well that Abimelech’s servants had taken by force. “I don’t know who did this,” Abimelech said. “You never told me, and I didn’t hear about it until today.”

So Abraham took sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech. Then the two of them made a covenant. Abraham also took seven female lambs from the flock and put them by themselves.

“What do these seven lambs mean?” Abimelech asked. “Why have you put them by themselves?”

“Take these seven lambs from me,” said Abraham, “as proof that I dug this well.” That place was called Beersheba, because the two of them swore an oath there. The name can mean “well of the oath” or “well of seven.”

So they made a covenant at Beersheba. After that, Abimelech set off with Phicol, his army commander, and they went back to the land of the Philistines.

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree, a desert tree, in Beersheba, and there he prayed to the Lord, the Everlasting God, calling him by his name. Abraham lived for a long time as a foreigner in the land of the Philistines.