Chronological Plan

¹Now Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah.

²She bore to him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

³Jokshan fathered Sheba and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim.

⁴The sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abida, and Eldaah. All of these were the sons of Keturah.

⁵Now Abraham gave all that he had to Isaac;

⁶but to the sons of his concubines, Abraham gave gifts while he was still living, and sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the east.

⁷These are all the years of Abraham’s life that he lived, 175 years.

⁸Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people.

⁹Then his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre,

¹⁰the field which Abraham purchased from the sons of Heth; there Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah.

¹¹It came about after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son Isaac; and Isaac lived by Beer-lahai-roi.

¹²Now these are the records of the generations of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s slave woman, bore to Abraham;

¹³and these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, in the order of their birth: Nebaioth, the firstborn of Ishmael, Kedar, Adbeel, Mibsam,

¹⁴Mishma, Dumah, Massa,

¹⁵Hadad, Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah.

¹⁶These are the sons of Ishmael and these are their names, by their villages, and by their camps; twelve princes according to their tribes.

¹⁷These are the years of the life of Ishmael, 137 years; and he breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people.

¹⁸They settled from Havilah to Shur which is east of Egypt going toward Assyria; he settled in defiance of all his relatives.

¹⁹Now these are the records of the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham fathered Isaac;

²⁰and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife.

²¹Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children; and the LORD answered him, and his wife Rebekah conceived.

²²But the children struggled together within her; and she said, “If it is so, why am I in this condition?” So she went to inquire of the LORD.

²³And the LORD said to her, “Two nations are in your womb; And two peoples will be separated from your body; And one people will be stronger than the other; And the older will serve the younger.”

²⁴When her days leading to the delivery were at an end, behold, there were twins in her womb.

²⁵Now the first came out red, all over like a hairy garment; and they named him Esau.

²⁶Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel, so he was named Jacob; and Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them.

²⁷When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field; but Jacob was a civilized man, living in tents.

²⁸Now Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

²⁹When Jacob had cooked a stew one day, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted;

³⁰and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a mouthful of that red stuff there, for I am exhausted.” Therefore he was called Edom by name.

³¹But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.”

³²Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?”

³³And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore an oath to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob.

³⁴Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and got up and went on his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

¹Now there was a famine in the land, besides the previous famine that had occurred in the days of Abraham. So Isaac went to Gerar, to Abimelech king of the Philistines.

²And the LORD appeared to him and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you.

³Live for a time in this land and I will be with you and bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham.

⁴I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,

⁵because Abraham obeyed Me and fulfilled his duty to Me, and kept My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.”

⁶So Isaac lived in Gerar.

⁷When the men of the place asked about his wife, he said, “She is my 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 beautiful.”

⁸Now it came about, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked down through a window, and saw them, and behold, Isaac was caressing his wife Rebekah.

⁹Then Abimelech called Isaac and said, “Behold, she certainly is your wife! So how is it that you said, ‘She is my sister’?” And Isaac said to him, “Because I thought, ‘otherwise I might be killed on account of her.’ ”

¹⁰And Abimelech said, “What is this that you have done to us? One of the people might easily have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.”

¹¹So Abimelech commanded all the people, saying, “He who touches this man or his wife will certainly be put to death.”

¹²Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundred times as much. And the LORD blessed him,

¹³and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy;

¹⁴for he had possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him.

¹⁵Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with dirt.

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

¹⁷So Isaac departed from there and camped in the Valley of Gerar, and settled there.

¹⁸Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham; and he gave them the same names which his father had given them.

¹⁹But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water,

²⁰the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they argued with him.

²¹Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah.

²²Then he moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the LORD has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”

²³And he went up from there to Beersheba.

²⁴And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham; Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants, For the sake of My servant Abraham.”

²⁵So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

²⁶Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar with his adviser Ahuzzath, and Phicol the commander of his army.

²⁷Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have sent me away from you?”

²⁸They said, “We have seen plainly that the LORD has been with you; so we said, ‘An oath must now be taken by us,’ that is, by you and us. So let us make a covenant with you,

²⁹that you will do us no harm, just as we have not touched you and have done to you nothing but good, and have sent you away in peace. You are now the blessed of the LORD.”

³⁰Then he made them a feast, and they ate and drank.

³¹In the morning they got up early and exchanged oaths; then Isaac sent them away, and they left him in peace.

³²Now it came about on the same day, that Isaac’s servants came in and told him about the well which they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water.”

³³So he called it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beersheba to this day.

³⁴When Esau was forty years old he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite;

³⁵and they brought grief to Isaac and Rebekah.