There was a famine in the country—not the one that happened before in Abraham's time, but a later one. So Isaac moved to Gerar in the territory of Abimelech, king of the Philistines.
“We have come to live in Egypt because there's no grass left in Canaan for our flocks to eat,” they explained. “The famine is really bad in Canaan. So we would like to please ask permission to live in Goshen.”
Then this is what you are to publicly declare before the Lord your God, “My father was an Aramean who moved from place to place. There were only a few of them when he and his family went to live in Egypt. But they became a large and powerful nation.