16. So Abimelech said to Isaac, “Go away from us; you have become far too numerous for us.”
17. Isaac left there and camped in the Wadi Gerar where he stayed.
18. Isaac reopened the wells which his father’s servants had dug back in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; he gave them names like those that his father had given them.
19. But when Isaac’s servants dug in the wadi and reached spring water in their well,
20. the shepherds of Gerar argued with Isaac’s shepherds, saying, “The water belongs to us!” So he named the well Esek, because they had quarreled there.
21. Then they dug another well, and they argued over that one too; so he named it Sitnah.
22. So he moved on from there and dug still another well, but over this one they did not argue. He named it Rehoboth, and said, “Because the Lord has now given us ample room, we shall flourish in the land.”
23. From there Isaac went up to Beer-sheba.
24. The same night the Lord appeared to him and said: I am the God of Abraham, your father. Do not fear, for I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of Abraham, my servant.
25. So Isaac built an altar there and invoked the Lord by name. After he had pitched his tent there, Isaac’s servants began to dig a well nearby.
26. Then Abimelech came to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath, his councilor, and Phicol, the general of his army.
27. Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me, since you hate me and have driven me away from you?”
28. They answered: “We clearly see that the Lord has been with you, so we thought: let there be a sworn agreement between our two sides—between you and us. Let us make a covenant with you:
29. you shall do no harm to us, just as we have not maltreated you, but have always acted kindly toward you and have let you depart in peace. So now, may you be blessed by the Lord!”