A Large Family Circle

In the previous two posts Fertile Crescent and Beer-sheva, we have followed the journey of Abraham from the rich waters of Mesopotamia to the arid land of the Negev where Abraham settled in response to the call of God. He named his settlement Beer-sheva, ‘the well of the oath’ to commemorate both his treaty with the resident king who recognized Abraham’s legitimacy and his ownership of a contested well that Abraham’s servants had dug.

Gerar Valley

It turns out this was not the only well Abraham dug to sustain his herds and flocks. A generation later when Abraham’s son Isaac settled in the Gerar Valley, 15 miles west of Beer-sheva (about 10 miles east from modern day Gaza) the locals harassed him by plugging all his wells with dirt and debris, ‘wells that his father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham,’ Genesis 26:15.

Wells and cisterns were crucial in the Negev for economic survival, and clearly Abraham had invested considerable effort to acquire them as means for prosperity. Wells were an important
means of life and prosperity for Abraham, but they were not his ultimate focus of concern. The tradition tells us that having left the prosperous urban centers of Ur and Haran, Abraham was searching for something no amount of money could buy, a city whose architect and builder was God, a community characterized by godliness.

Gera Valley Today

Abraham was married but childless – seemingly infertile – as he departed the lush lands of the Fertile Crescent. The decades ahead unfold a plot-line that culminates in God promising that Abraham’s offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, i.e. innumerable!

God promised to ensure Abraham’s fruitfulness even in the most barren land. But God’s plan went far beyond biological progeny for Abraham, and land rights in Canaan.  God’s mission was the creation of a people who would flourish in every area of life and who would become channels of God’s living waters to the rest of the world.

Gerar Valley Images Source:
BiblePlaces.com