Beersheba #22

Beersheba is a town on the southern edge of the hill country of Judah, where the land begins to give way to the dry Negev. Its name in Hebrew is generally understood as “well of the oath” (or possibly “well of seven”), and Genesis connects both meanings to a treaty over water rights between Abraham and Abimelech, king of Gerar (Genesis 21:22-34). Because it marked the far south of the settled land, Scripture repeatedly describes Israel’s extent as “from Dan to Beersheba” (Judges 20:1; 1 Samuel 3:20; 2 Samuel 24:2).

Biblical Significance

Abraham gives Abimelech seven ewe lambs as witness that he dug the well, both men swear an oath, and Abraham plants a tamarisk tree and calls on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God (Genesis 21:27-33). It is in the wilderness of Beersheba that Hagar and her son Ishmael wander after being sent away, until God opens her eyes to a well of water (Genesis 21:14-19).

Isaac renews the connection. After quarrels over wells elsewhere, he comes up to Beersheba, where the Lord appears to him by night and repeats the promise made to Abraham; Isaac builds an altar, and his servants dig a well as Abimelech’s men come to make peace (Genesis 26:23-33). Jacob leaves Beersheba on his way to Haran, and later stops there on the way down to Egypt to offer sacrifices, where God speaks to him in visions of the night and promises to go with him and bring him back (Genesis 28:10; 46:1-5).

In later centuries Beersheba is a normal town of Judah. Samuel appoints his sons as judges there (1 Samuel 8:1-2), and Elijah, fleeing Jezebel, leaves his servant at Beersheba before continuing alone into the wilderness (1 Kings 19:3-8). The prophet Amos warns Israelites against making pilgrimage to Beersheba as a substitute for seeking the Lord (Amos 5:5; 8:14).

Today

The ancient site is Tel Beer-sheba (Tel Sheva), a mound a few miles east of the modern Israeli city of Beersheba in the Negev. Excavations led by Yohanan Aharoni in the late 1960s and 1970s uncovered a carefully planned Iron Age fortified town with a gate complex, storehouses, and a water system. The stones of a large four-horned altar of dressed stone were found reused in a later wall, which has prompted discussion of cult reforms in Judah. The site was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

A deep well near the tell is popularly called Abraham’s Well. Whether it is the well of Genesis is a matter of local tradition, since the patriarchal accounts do not give enough detail to identify a particular shaft. The identification of Tel Beer-sheba with the biblical town is widely accepted.