Genesis Chapter 26

1 Isaac was broke, so following in his father’s footsteps he headed to Gerar where Abimelech was king.

2 God came walking up the road from Egypt and waved Isaac back.  He said; “Don’t go down there.”

3 “Why don’t you listen like your father did, stay here, I told your father that I’d give all these lands to his children, which will be your children.”

4 “And it looks like you actually sleep with your wife, so you might actually have enough children to keep hold of it.”

5 “You know your father always did what he was told, so just be a good boy like he was and I’ll take care of you too.”

6 So Isaac stayed in Gerar.

7 The men there asked about his wife, and he followed his father’s lead and said she was his sister.  She was beautiful, and it always seemed to work out well for his father – though his wife seemed to want the money up front instead of waiting to get paid afterward.

8 Isaac had been there for quite a while before he slipped up and the king saw him molesting his ‘sister’.

9 So Abimelech sent for Isaac.  He said; “Did you think that stupid trick would work again, we learned after your father was here not to mess around with strange women.”  Isaac replied, “Well I figured it was worth a shot, I’m pretty broke at the moment and she’s used to earning money this way.”

10 Then Abimelech said, “Yeah and if we’d taken her up on her offers of sex for pay you’d have made us feel guilty afterward about sleeping with your wife and called on your friend God to curse us or something unless we bought you off.”

11 So Abimelech grabbed the loud speaker and said in to it; “No one is to sleep with Isaac’s hooker/wife, any man who does will be put to death – any woman that does will be recorded and put on youtube.”

12 Since his first plan failed Isaac planted some crops.  Then gathered a bunch of hungry men around him and started raiding other farms, when people asked where he got the crops he would say that God had blessed his field and it yielded more than it appeared to.

13 In this way the surrounding people became poor and Isaac became rich.  He didn’t limit his raiding to crops, he raided the whole countryside.

14 In the end he had flocks, slaves, herds, gold and silver.  But the pretence of God having blessed him didn’t last forever.  Eventually people started to wonder how he grew gold in his fields.

15 So to get Isaac to leave they filled in all his wells with dirt

16 Abimelech said to him; “Get out of here, you’re robbing my people – if you stay around any longer I’ll see how you like being raided.”

17 So Isaac and his troupe left in a hurry.

18 They got far enough away that Isaac figured Abimelech would leave them alone, then he set his people to digging new wells.  Water was important.

19 In the first well they discovered water

20 But the people nearby showed up with their lawyers and disputed their water rights.  Since they didn’t have a water rights contract Isaac was forced to leave.

21 Then they dug another well – and again lawyers plagued him about water rights, so he left it alone.  He named the well Sitnah, which means ‘where to drown lawyers’.

22 Moving on they dug another well.  They were far enough away by that point that no one cared if they used the water so he named it Rehoboth, which means ‘middle of nowhere’.  He said, “Finally no one is bitching about where we settle down, time to rob the rich and give to me again!”

23 From there Isaac walked to Beersheba one night

24 He ran in to God on the road.  God said; “I’m kind of lonely Isaac.  Come over here, I’ll show you how to increase the number of your children, and I’ll bless you … all you have to do is … “

25 Isaac waved God off, “Stay out of my tent, I don’t swing that way – I know you and my father were ‘buddies’, you can’t fool me with that ‘increasing the number of your children’ bit.”  Isaac set up his tent and locked it shut, just in case.

26 When Isaac got back he found Abimelech waiting for him, with his advisor and military commander.

27 Isaac asked them, “What do you want now?  I haven’t had time to raise an army to come back and invade you, I’m not on your land anymore you can’t banish me any further.”

28 They answered, “We were kind of worried that’s what you were planning, and if God decides to actually help you out things would go pretty badly for us.  So we came to make peace so you don’t invade us.”

29 “Just, promise that you won’t sick God on us – we didn’t really do you any harm, and let you take away all the stuff you looted.”  Isaac said, “Smoking the peace pipe on an empty stomach can make you pretty sick, so lets eat!”

30 Then Isaac had a big dinner prepared, and they ate. 

31 Then they smoked the peace pipe.  Abimelech danced with a fruit and his advisors ran around terrified of some type of giant purple monster.  The next morning they left.

32 That day Isaac’s servants came to him and told them they’d dug another well and found water – they were quite excited.

33 Isaac said; “WTF are you digging more wells for?  We have lots of water – don’t you have enough work to do?  Starting tomorrow you four are digging new latrines.”

34 When Esau was 40 years old he married Judith.  He also married Basemath.  He would have married more, but discovered quickly why men usually only married one at a time.

35 Isaac was jealous and Rebekah was upset with him.

Commentary:

Hilarious that Isaac tried the same trick his father used.  I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.  Good thing the king knew what was going on this time – its like an early form of welfare or something from the state, pretend your wife is your sister then guilt people in to giving you free cash!

I think Isaac got the Robin hood thing backwards, or maybe took it too far.  I’m not sure how long he was hoping for that lie to keep him going.  I mean telling people God was providing for you while their stuff was going missing is kind of suspicious.

Another example of polygamy right here.  Not sure why marriage got shrunk down to just two people.  Apparently you could marry whoever you wanted back in the old days – why Abraham married another man, how much more liberal can you get?  God obviously doesn’t judge sexuality (especially considering he was trying to get Isaac to polish his royal sceptre).