Genesis 26:9

So Abimelech summoned Isaac and said to him, “Now I realize that she is really your wife! So why did you say, ‘She is my sister’?” Isaac replied to him, “I said that because I thought that someone here might kill me to get her.”

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

And Abimelech called Isaac, and said, Behold, of a surety she is thy wife: and how saidst thou, She is my sister? And Isaac said unto him, Because I said, Lest I die for her.

In Context

8When Isaac had been there a long time, one day Abimelech, the king of the Philistine people-group, looked down from a window in his palace and was surprised to see Isaac caressing his wife Rebekah.

10Abimelech said, “◄You should not have done this to us!/Why did you do this?► [RHQ] One of our people might have ◄had sex with/slept with► [EUP] your wife, and you would have caused us to be guilty of a great sin!”

Read all of Genesis 26

Cross References

Genesis 12:18When the king realized why that was happening, he summoned Abram and said to him, “Why did you do this to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?

Acts 12:11Then Peter finally realized that what had happened to him was not a vision, but it had really happened. So he said to himself, “Now I really know that the Lord God sent an angel to help me. He rescued me from what Herod planned to do [MTY] to me, and also from all the things that the Jewish leaders [SYN] expected that Herod would do to me.”

Matthew Henry on Genesis 26:7-12

Isaac's Denial of His Wife. ( b. c. 1840.) 6 And Isaac dwelt in Gerar: 7 And the men of the place asked him of his wife; and he said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, She is my wife; lest, said he, the men of the place should kill me for Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon. 8 And it came to pass, when he had been there a long time, that Abimelech king of the Philistines looked out at a window, and saw, and, behold, Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife. 9 And Abimelech called Isaac, and said,… Read the whole commentary →

This Verse In Other Editions

Study Genesis 26:9