Instead, an underground stream would arise out of the earth and water the surface of the ground.

After the LORD God formed from the ground every wild animal and every bird that flies, he brought each of them to the man to see what he would call it. Whatever the man called each living creature became its name.

therefore the LORD God expelled the man from the garden of Eden so he would work the ground from which he had been taken.

The LORD told him, "This won't happen, because whoever kills you will suffer seven times the vengeance." Then the LORD placed a sign on Cain so that no one finding him would kill him.

So Abraham responded to God, "If only Ishmael would live in constant awareness that you're always with him!"

and said, "Look, my lords! Please come inside your servant's house, wash your feet, and spend the night. Then you can get up early and be on your way." But they responded, "No, we would rather spend the night in the town square."

"I thought that there's no fear of God in this place," Abraham replied, "and that they would kill me because of my wife.

She also said, "Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse sons? Yet I have given birth to a son in my husband's old age!"

"Listen to us, sir. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our burial tombs. None of us would refuse you his tomb for burying your dead."

"What have you done to us?" Abimelech asked. "Any minute now, one of the people could have had sex with your wife and you would have caused all of us to be guilty."

Rebekah also told herself, "Heth's daughters are making me tired of living. If Jacob marries one of Heth's daughters, and she turns out to be just like these other local women, what kind of life would there be left for me?"

and when all the flocks had been gathered there, they would roll away the stone from the opening of the well, water their flocks, and then return the stone to its place covering the opening of the well.

When the flocks mated in front of the branches, they would bear offspring that were striped, speckled, or spotted.

Jacob kept the lambs separate, facing the striped and entirely black ones that belonged to Laban's flock. He set his own herd by itself and would not let them be with Laban's flock.

Whenever the more vigorous of the flock came into heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the flock to make them mate by the branches.

Then Laban asked Jacob, "What did you do? You deceived me, carried off my daughters like you would war captives,

Then Jacob got angry and started an argument with Laban. "What have I done?" he demanded. "What's my crime that would cause you to come pursue me so violently?

If the God of my father the God of Abraham, the God whom Isaac feared had not been with me, you would have sent me away empty handed. But God saw my misery and how hard I've worked with my own hands and he rebuked you last night."

But Laban answered Jacob, "These women are my daughters. These children are my children. The flocks are mine. In fact, everything that you see belongs to me. But what would I do today to my daughters and the children they have borne?

Jacob would later call that place Peniel, because "I saw God face to face, but my life was spared."

They told them, "We can't do this. We can't give our sister to a man who isn't circumcised, because that would be insulting to us.

When Joseph was seventeen years old, he was helping his brothers tend their flocks. He was a young man at that time, as were the children of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. But Joseph would come back and tell his father that his brothers were doing bad things. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his brothers, since he was born to him in his old age, so he had made a richly-embroidered tunic for him.

But Onan knew that the offspring wouldn't be his own heir, so whenever he had sexual relations with his brother's wife, he would spill his semen on the ground to avoid fathering offspring for his brother.

She kept on talking to him like this day after day, but he wouldn't listen to her. Not only would he refuse to have sex with her, he refused even to stay around her.

Jacob would not send Joseph's brother Benjamin to accompany them, because he was saying, "I'm afraid that he'll come to some kind of harm."

"We're all guilty because of what we did to our brother!" they told each other. "We kept on watching his suffering while he pleaded with us! We're in this mess because we wouldn't listen!"

"Didn't I tell you!" Reuben replied. ""Don't wrong the kid!' I said, but would you listen? No! Now it's payback time!"

"The man specifically asked about us and our relatives," they responded. "He asked us, "Is your father still alive?' and "Do you have another brother?' So we answered his questions. How could we have known that he would tell us to bring our brother back with us?"

Joseph's staff served him by himself, his brothers separately, and the Egyptian staff members by themselves, because the Egyptians wouldn't take their meal with the Hebrews, since doing so was detestable for the Egyptians.

So we told Your Excellency, "The young man cannot leave his father, because if he were to do so, his father would die.'

I'll provide for you there, since there are still five years of famine left to go, and you, your households, and everything you own would have otherwise become impoverished.

Jacob sent Judah ahead of them to meet with Joseph, who would be guiding them to Goshen, and so they arrived.

Judah is a lion cub. My son, you have gone up from the prey. Crouching like a lion, he lies down, Like a lioness, who would dare rouse him?

At the conclusion of the mourning period, Joseph addressed Pharaoh's household. "If you're satisfied with me, would you please take this message to Pharaoh for me? Tell him,

As far as you're concerned, you were planning evil against me, but God intended it for good, planning to bring about the present result so that many people would be preserved alive.