And Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.- Gen_21:33.
1. A short time after Abraham's removal from the immediate neighbourhood of Gerar, Abimelech, in consideration of the stranger's power and influence, thought it expedient to conclude an alliance with him. It was not merely the natural desire to be on terms of friendship with a prosperous man that prompted this league; nor was it merely a private agreement of social confidence and respect; it was a formal tribal treaty, entered into with customary ceremony, and confirmed by the presence of the chief men of the country. Abimelech brings with him Phicol, the vizier or commander-in-chief, as witness of the transaction. The special occasion for the meeting arose from one of those disputes concerning water which are so common among the denizens of the desert. Then a formal treaty was struck between the two parties, “and Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.”
2. We are now far away from the hills of Judæa, in the wide upland valley, or rather undulating plain, sprinkled with shrubs, and with the wild flowers which indicate the transition from the pastures of Palestine to the desert,-marked also by the ancient wells, dug far into the rocky soil, and bearing on their stone or marble margins the traces of the long ages during which the water has been drawn up from their deep recesses. Such are those near the western extremity of the plain, still bearing in their name their identification with “the well of the oath,” or “the well of ‘the Seven' ”-Beersheba,-which formed the last point reached by the patriarchs, the last centre of their wandering flocks and herds; and, in after times, from being thus the last inhabited spot on the edge of the desert became the southern frontier of their descendants. This southernmost sanctuary marks the importance which, in the migratory life of the East, was and is always attached to the possession of water. Here the solemn covenant was made, according to the significant Arab forms, of placing the seven lambs by themselves, between Abraham and the only chief of those regions who could dispute his right, the neighbouring king of the Philistines or Avites. “And Abraham,” still faithful to the practice which he had followed in Canaan itself, “planted there a grove,”-not now of ilex or terebinth, which never descend into those wild plains, but the light feathery tamarisk, the first and the last tree which the traveller sees in his passage through the desert, and thus the appropriate growth of this spot. Beneath this grove and beside these wells his tents were pitched, and “he called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.”
Of all names in Palestine there are hardly any better known than Beersheba. Nothing could more aptly illustrate the defencelessness of these southern slopes of Judah than that this site which marked the frontier of the land was neither a fortress nor a gateway, but a cluster of wells in the open desert. But, like Dan, at the other end of the land, Beersheba was a sanctuary. These two facts-its physical use to their flocks, its holiness to themselves-are strangely intermingled in the stories of the patriarchs, whose herdsmen strove for its waters; who themselves plant a tamarisk, and call on the name of Jehovah, the Everlasting God. The two great narratives of the Pentateuch differ in describing the origin of Beersheba. The one imputes it to Abraham, the other, in very similar circumstances, to Isaac. The meaning of the name as it stands might either be the Well of Seven or the Well of (the) Oath, and in one passage both etymologies seem to be struggling for decision, though the latter prevails. There are seven wells there now, and to the north, on the hills that bound the valley, are scattered ruins nearly three miles in circumference.1 [Note: G. A. Smith, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land, 284.]
It was the same wilderness into which Ishmael had gone forth and become an archer, and where he was to be made a great nation. It is as though the strong Bedouin (shall we add the strong parental?) instinct had, in his declining days, sprung up again in the aged patriarch-as if the unconquerable aversion to the neighbourhood of walls and cities, or the desire to meet once more with the firstborn son who recalled to him his own early days, drew him down from the hills of Judæa into the congenial desert. At any rate, in Beersheba, we are told he sojourned “as a stranger” many days. In Beersheba Rebekah was received by his son Isaac into Sarah's vacant tent; and in the wilderness, as it would seem, “he gave up the ghost and died in a good old age,” in the arms of his two sons,-Isaac, the gentle herdsman and child of promise; Ishmael, the Arabian archer, untamable as the wild ass of the desert,-“and they buried him in the cave of Machpelah.”2 [Note: Dean Stanley.]
