Isaac and Rebekah

At about the same time, when Abraham was a hundred years old, his son Isaac was born. Then Sarah drove out the slave woman by whom Abraham had had a son; she is said to have lived in the desert with her son, protected by God’s help. Not long after this God tested Abraham’s faith and required that his son Isaac be sacrificed to him by his own father. Abraham did not hesitate to offer him. He had already laid the boy on the altar and was drawing his sword to kill him when a voice came from heaven commanding him to spare the young man, and a ram was found close by to serve as the victim. When the sacrifice had been offered, God spoke to Abraham and promised him the things he had already said he would give him. [a]

Sarah died in her hundred and twenty-seventh year, and her husband saw to her burial in Hebron, a town of the Canaanites, since Abraham was living there. Then Abraham, seeing that his son Isaac was now a grown young man, for he was in fact in his fortieth year, told his servant to look for a wife for him, but only from the tribe and land he himself was known to come from. He was told, however, that when he found the girl he was to bring her into the land of the Canaanites, and not to suppose that Isaac would go back to his father’s country to get a wife. So that the servant would carry out these instructions diligently, Abraham had him swear an oath with his hand resting on his master’s thigh. The servant set out for Mesopotamia and came to the town of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. He went into the house of Bethuel the Syrian, Nahor’s son, and when he had seen Rebekah, a beautiful virgin, the daughter of Nahor, he asked for her and brought her back to his master.

After this Abraham took a wife named Keturah, who is called his concubine in Chronicles, and had children by her. But he left his property to Isaac, Sarah’s son, while he gave gifts to the sons he had fathered by his concubines; and so they were separated from Isaac. Abraham died after living a hundred and seventy-five years, and his body was laid in the tomb of Sarah his wife.