And there was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham. And Isaac went unto Abimelech king of the Philistines unto Gerar.
And there was a famine in the land ... Isaac went unto Abimelech ... unto Gerar. A pressure of famine forced Isaac to leave Hebron, whither he had returned from Lahai-roi (Genesis 25:11), with the view, it appears, of seeking for his family and flocks, as Abraham had done at a similar crisis, the means of provision in Egypt, which Canaan did not afford. The great central road from Canaan into that country lay through Gerar, the capital of the early Philistine kingdom (see the note at Genesis 20:1); and though that city was usually a stage for traveling caravans, the arrival of so great an emir as Isaac, with so large a number of flocks and herds within the Philistine territory, necessarily brought the patriarch into direct correspondence with the pastoral king, in order to solicit permission, or obtain a lease, to pasture his cattle in the immediate vicinity of the place. It is quite common for Arab shiekhs in the present day to encamp with their flocks for a season, on certain stipulated terms, in the environs of inhabited towns.