Isaac

Yitz'chak was forty years old when he took Rivkah, the daughter of B'tu'el the Arami from Paddan-Aram and sister of Lavan the Arami, to be his wife.

Yitz'chak prayed to ADONAI on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. ADONAI heeded his prayer, and Rivkah became pregnant.

Then his brother emerged, with his hand holding 'Esav's heel, so he was called Ya'akov [he catches by the heel, he supplants]. Yitz'chak was sixty years old when she bore them.

Yitz'chak favored 'Esav, because he had a taste for game; Rivkah favored Ya'akov.

A famine came over the land, not the same as the first famine, which had taken place when Avraham was alive. Yitz'chak went to G'rar, to Avimelekh king of the P'lishtim.

So Yitz'chak settled in G'rar.

But one day, after he had lived there a long time, Avimelekh king of the P'lishtim happened to be looking out of a window when he spotted Yitz'chak caressing Rivkah his wife.

Avimelekh summoned Yitz'chak and said, "So she is your wife, after all! How come you said, 'She is my sister'?" Yitz'chak responded, "Because I thought, 'I could get killed because of her.'"

Yitz'chak planted crops in that land and reaped that year a hundred times as much as he had sowed. ADONAI had blessed him.

Avimelekh said to Yitz'chak, "You must go away from us, because you have become much more powerful than we are."

So Yitz'chak left, set up camp in Vadi G'rar and lived there.

Yitz'chak reopened the wells which had been dug during the lifetime of Avraham his father, the ones the P'lishtim had stopped up after Avraham died, and called them by the names his father had used for them.

Yitz'chak's servants dug in the vadi and uncovered a spring of running water.

But the herdsmen of G'rar quarreled with Yitz'chak's herdsmen, claiming, "That water is ours!" So he called the well 'Esek [quarrel], because they quarreled with him.

There he built an altar and called on the name of ADONAI. He pitched his tent there, and there Yitz'chak's servants dug a well.

Yitz'chak said to them, "Why have you come to me, even though you were unfriendly to me and sent me away?"

The next morning, they got up early and swore to each other. Then Yitz'chak sent them on their way, and they left him peacefully.

That very day Yitz'chak's servants came and told him about the well they had dug, "We have found water."

But they became a cause for embitterment of spirit to Yitz'chak and Rivkah.

In the course of time, after Yitz'chak had grown old and his eyes dim, so that he couldn't see, he called 'Esav his older son and said to him, "My son?" and he answered, "Here I am."

Rivkah was listening when Yitz'chak spoke to his son 'Esav. So when 'Esav went out to the country to hunt for game and bring it back,

Yitz'chak said to his son, "How did you find it so quickly, my son?" He answered, "ADONAI your God made it happen that way."

Yitz'chak said to Ya'akov, "Come here, close to me, so I can touch you, my son, and know whether you are in fact my son 'Esav or not."

Ya'akov approached Yitz'chak his father, who touched him and said, "The voice is Ya'akov's voice, but the hands are 'Esav's hands."

Then his father Yitz'chak said to him,"Come close now, and kiss me, my son."