Jacob

Father?

Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

Benlin Alexander, 2015

In the stories of the Old Testament, woven among examples of faith and failure, is a disturbing thread connecting some of the narrative’s most recognizable and influential figures, yet amidst sin’s stain, God’s character glimmers from an unexpected source.

 

Jacob

In Genesis 34, Jacob’s family arrives in the vicinity of a Canaanite town called Shechem. His daughter Dinah goes out to meet the young women and instead encounters the prince of the town, named Shechem son of Hamor the Hivite. Using language that echoes Eve’s taking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3), Shechem saw Dinah and took her, an assault by a powerful man on a foreign woman apparently isolated from her family protectors.

Unsatisfied by the initial taking, Shechem desires to keep her and asks his father to speak to Jacob about marriage. Perhaps wisely, Jacob waits to reply until his sons return from the field, yet when they do, he still does not speak. The sons take over the negotiation with intent to deceive. They usurp their father’s position, agree to the marriage on the condition all the men of Shechem be circumcised, then exploit the vulnerability resulting from the mass circumcision by mercilessly attacking the city, slaughtering the men, enslaving the women and children, and plundering the town’s material goods. Wronged by Shechem the man, they wrong Shechem the entire town, evoking the memory of (Genesis 6-11) pre and post-Flood strongmen who through violence consolidated power and acquired famous names.

Through it all, Jacob remains silent, speaking out only on his deathbed (Genesis 49), unwilling or unable to help his daughter.

 

Judah

Judah’s daughter-in-law Tamar loses her first husband, Judah’s oldest son, to tragedy and her second husband, Judah’s second son, to God’s discipline after he cruelly misuses her. She then languishes, abandoned because Judah fears losing his third son if he marries them as custom demands for the preservation of the firstborn’s line (Genesis 38). Tamar desires the marriage and to have children, likely because she has limited options for a family, economic security, and someone to care for her as she grows old. Denied and effectively abandoned by Judah for many years, she resorts to dressing as a prostitute and deceiving Judah into sleeping with her so she might become pregnant. When Judah discovers her pregnancy, he threatens to burn her for participating in prostitution until she confronts him with evidence he is the father, at which time Judah acknowledges her as more righteous than he because he had denied her marriage to his remaining son. Had Judah followed through on his threat, he would have killed his own unborn sons.

Judah abandons his daughter-in-law, sexually uses her, threatens to kill her, and relents only when it becomes clear he is at fault.

 

Jephthah

The warrior judge Jephthah rashly promises God he will offer as a burnt offering the first thing that emerges from his house when he returns from defeating the Ammonites (Judges 11). When his daughter comes out dancing to celebrate his victory, he is devastated but insists he must honor his vow. She requests a period to mourn but accedes to his demand.

Jephthah apparently burns his daughter on the altar.

David

The story of David’s daughter Tamar unfurls slowly in layers of deceit (2 Samuel 13). Her half-brother Amnon desires her. He lies to their father, lies to family and servants, lies to and isolates her. Despite her desperate pleading, he brutally misuses then discards her, leaving her shamed and without recourse, her potential destroyed, her life ruined. Like Jacob’s sons, Tamar’s brother Absalom seeks murderous revenge. Like Dinah, Tamar disappears from the story.

Like Jacob, David says and does nothing.*

 

Each of these men is a leader in Israel, chosen by God to represent him to the nations, yet each catastrophically fails to care for the vulnerable in his own house.

 

God’s pattern of movement

Genesis 1 and 2 are each paradigmatic stories of God making an ordered land and placing people there to live in relationship with him. They and later Eden passages present a combined portrait of a well-watered mountain garden where God meets with people. In generation after generation, God takes his people on a similar journey:

In Genesis 1, from the formless and void to a land populated with plants, trees, and animals

In Genesis 2, from the empty ground where God forms man to the Eden garden

In Genesis 6-9, from the watery waste to Noah’s mountain vineyard

In Genesis 12, from a region of violent, powerful rulers to a fruitful land promised as an inheritance to Abram’s descendants

In Exodus, from the hostile spiritual desert of Egypt to God’s tangible presence on Sinai

In Numbers – Joshua, from the wilderness to the fruitful land of Canaan

 

From the earliest books of the Bible, God’s consistent work is evident, moving his people from the empty wilderness to a Garden of Eden-like place where he will provide for and be in relationship with them.

 

One leader imitates God’s pattern

Tucked away among stories of conquest, deceit, failure, and victory in the book of Joshua is another account of an Israelite leader and his daughter. We first meet Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite in Numbers 13 when he is sent out with Joshua and ten others on a leaders’ reconnaissance of the land of Canaan. In Numbers 14, when the leaders return, God himself identifies Caleb as one “with a different Spirit who followed me fully.” In the remaining short bursts of Caleb’s story we have, he stays true to God’s assessment, steadfast in obedience, comprehending and implementing God’s vision.

 

In Joshua 15, Caleb’s daughter Achsah is newly married to a future, righteous judge of Israel, Othniel. She boldly approaches her father, dissatisfied. Her inheritance is a wilderness. Unexpectedly, in this tiny passage, we find the faintest glimmer of hope among the Israelite leaders’ relationships with their daughters. The man who fully follows God imitates God’s character by adding to his daughter’s wilderness inheritance a new territory, a Garden of Eden-like fruitful land with double springs.

 

In Numbers 14, Caleb briefly stood alone as an advocate for God’s vision of bringing the Israelites into the land of Canaan, the land God intended as an inheritance for them, where he would dwell with them. In Joshua 15, Caleb stands alone among the stories of his fellow Israelite leaders and their daughters, not silent or powerless to act, but, as God consistently does, hearing her, recognizing her plight, and giving her a fruitful place to thrive.

*Thanks for this connection to Dr. Joanna Kline, whose Harvard PhD dissertation and upcoming book dwell extensively on parallels between David’s and Jacob’s families

The Geography of Jacob's Sons

Following his father Isaac’s death, it appears Jacob remained in the vicinity of Hebron and that we can assume his sons’ movements radiated out from that center. 

Jacob’s son Joseph takes the focus in the narrative. We meet him as a boy, a dreamer, favored by his father, reviled by his brothers. Jacob sends this favored son to check on his brothers near Shechem, presumably at the land Jacob had purchased. When Joseph arrives, they are not there. A man near Shechem advises him they have gone to Dothan.  

These details may suggest intensifying motives for Joseph’s brothers’ betrayal – why are they in another Canaanite town? They had destroyed Shechem, looted it, and enslaved its people. Is it still a ruin? Are they looking for entertainment and companionship in another town? Are they capitalizing on their reputation as successful warriors to oppress others? What does their father suspect is going on that moved him to send Joseph to check on them?  

At Dothan, Joseph finds them, but we have no record of a conversation with them. They take and imprison him in a cistern in the wilderness. After some debate that included the option of killing him, they determine to sell him as a slave to passing traders. The traders are called Ishmaelites, so they are cousins, all descendants of Abraham. We learned in Genesis 25 that Ishmael’s descendants settled across a broad band of territory from Shur near the border of Egypt, all the way to Asshur near the Tigris far to the northeast, however Ishmael himself stayed in the wilderness of Paran not far northwest of Midian. That the traders are also called Midianites is not explained in the text. Commentators have suggested various explanations to resolve the apparent conflict. Given their proximity, it seems reasonable that descendants of Ishmael migrated from Paran to Midian, intermarried, and settled there. The author’s use of both terms may be part of a narrative strategy in Joseph’s story – the number two is present throughout. 

The traders take Joseph to Egypt and sell him to Potiphar, a captain of Pharaoh’s guard. Presumably, Joseph lives in the capitol city. The story gives us few details about Egypt or the Egyptians, but we have some ideas from modern archaeology and scholarship where he might have been. 

The author abruptly abandons Joseph and returns to the vicinity of Hebron to consider Judah, who departs to live with a Canaanite friend and marry a Canaanite woman in the town of Kezib. After a series of tragedies resulting in the loss of his wife and sons, leaving only his youngest and Tamar, the widow of his older sons, Judah travels to Timnah. On the way, he encounters an apparent prostitute who later is revealed to be Tamar. She bears Judah’s twin sons Perez and Zerah.

What does geography tell us about Judah’s story? He left his father’s house, is a day’s walk away. He has his sheep sheared by specialists at a remote location, so he is likely wealthy at this point. He has no obvious heir to continue his family line and receive his accumulating wealth. It is a story in some ways reminiscent of Abraham’s, but in Judah’s case, it was sin that denied him an heir. Tamar, who was exiled to her father’s house – a bit of geography, though we don’t know where her father’s house was – meets Judah near Timnah and tempts him to impregnate her. In the end, Judah is convicted by her actions and gains heirs through her because of her bold decisions.  

We jump immediately back into Joseph’s story. He is now likely in the Egyptian capitol living in the house of a captain of Pharaoh’s guard. His geography hints at a pattern – in his father’s house, he was elevated, not working but checking on his brothers, then they threw him in a pit. With Potiphar, he was elevated, given charge over the house, then Potiphar threw him in prison, apparently also a pit. Finally, pharaoh elevates him, putting him charge of all Egypt, supervising the work of gathering food in preparation for a famine. Considering the size of ancient Egypt gives us an idea of Joseph’s assigned responsibility – there were roughly 500 miles of Nile River in ancient Egypt with farmland on either side. In the north, the Nile fans out into a massive delta of fertile farmland. The pharaoh put Joseph in charge of it all, to gather food, to store it, to distribute it, to buy up the people’s resources and land, and ultimately to buy the people themselves for the pharaoh, 500 miles of farmland and workers all acquired for the government of Egypt at Joseph’s direction. 

When, in Genesis 42, Joseph’s brothers travel down to Egypt to buy grain, they have a roughly 200 mile, 10 day journey across a desert waste. They make the journey three times, the final one with their father and his entire household, a permanent move into the land of Egypt. Abraham had traveled there and been expelled by the pharaoh. God forbade Isaac from traveling there. God had also, in Genesis 15, forewarned Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land for four hundred years. Undoubtedly these events would be foremost in Jacob’s mind as he traveled toward Egypt. On the way, in Beersheba, God spoke to him in a night vision and assured him that he would remain with Jacob going down to Egypt, that he would be reunited with Joseph, and that he would return. 

After arriving in Egypt, Joseph arranges for his father to meet the pharaoh, who honors Jacob and gives his family the land of Goshen to live and raise flocks in. Goshen appears to be a territory rather than a city, perhaps stretching from ~15 miles short of the sea down to the Wadi Tumilat in the vicinity of the city of Avaris where archaeologists have uncovered a structure that some commentators allege has striking correlations with Joseph’s story.

As Joseph’s power grows and he welcomes his family, geography helps us to understand his significance, the promises God has made, and Jacob’s blessing and inheritance for his children: 

“So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. Each of the Egyptians sold his field, for the famine was severe. So the land became Pharaoh’s. Joseph made all the people slaves from one end of Egypt’s border to the other end of it. But he did not purchase the land of the priests because the priests had an allotment from Pharaoh and they ate from their allotment that Pharaoh gave them.” (Genesis 47:20-22, NET)

 

“Israel settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and they owned land there. They were fruitful and increased rapidly in number. “ (Genesis 47:27, NET)

 

“Jacob said to Joseph, ‘The Sovereign God appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, “I am going to make you fruitful and will multiply you. I will make you into a group of nations, and I will give this land to your descendants as an everlasting possession.”’ 

‘Now, as for your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, they will be mine. Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine just as Reuben and Simeon are.  Any children that you father after them will be yours; they will be listed under the names of their brothers in their inheritance. But as for me, when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died—to my sorrow—in the land of Canaan. It happened along the way, some distance from Ephrath. So I buried her there on the way to Ephrath’ (that is, Bethlehem).” (Genesis 48:3-7, NET)

 

“Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you back to the land of your fathers. As one who is above your brothers, I give to you the mountain slope, which I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.’” (Genesis 48:21-22 , NET)

When Jacob gives Joseph this piece of land, we learn for the first time that Jacob “took [it] from the Amorites with [his] sword and…bow.” The land is apparently in the vicinity of Shechem because Joseph is later buried there, and Shechem lies between mountain slopes. There is no mention earlier in the narrative of a conflict with the Amorites or that the Amorites are in that area. These details are puzzling and don’t seem to fit well in the narrative. In my experience, it is exactly this kind of detail that is worth meditating on and praying over – perhaps God will reveal a truth we haven’t perceived before. Regarding this passage, it hasn’t happened for me yet.

“…[Jacob] instructed them, “I am about to go to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite. It is the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought for a burial plot from Ephron the Hittite. There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah; there they buried Isaac and his wife Rebekah; and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave in it were acquired from the sons of Heth.” (Genesis 49:29-32, NET)

 

“So Joseph went up to bury his father; all Pharaoh’s officials went with him—the senior courtiers of his household, all the senior officials of the land of Egypt, all Joseph’s household, his brothers, and his father’s household. But they left their little children and their flocks and herds in the land of Goshen. Chariots and horsemen also went up with him, so it was a very large entourage.

When they came to the threshing floor of Atad on the other side of the Jordan, they mourned there with very great and bitter sorrow. There Joseph observed a seven-day period of mourning for his father. When the Canaanites who lived in the land saw them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This is a very sad occasion for the Egyptians.” That is why its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.

So the sons of Jacob did for him just as he had instructed them. His sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, near Mamre. This is the field Abraham purchased as a burial plot from Ephron the Hittite. After he buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, along with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to bury his father.” (Genesis 50:7-14, NET)

The details in this account are also strange. The funeral party is somehow on the other side of the Jordan River. A direct path from Egypt to Hebron, where Abraham’s tomb is, is nowhere near the Jordan. In order to arrive at the location described, it appears the funeral party must travel as much as 250 miles off of a direct ~200 mile route to Hebron, roughly doubling the distance. Why would they do this? It seems the most likely explanation is to reenact Jacob’s entry into the land from the east where he met angels and wrestled with God.

“Joseph lived in Egypt, along with his father’s family. Joseph lived 110 years. Joseph saw the descendants of Ephraim to the third generation. He also saw the children of Makir the son of Manasseh; they were given special inheritance rights by Joseph.

 Then Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die. But God will surely come to you and lead you up from this land to the land he swore on oath to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath. He said, ‘God will surely come to you. Then you must carry my bones up from this place.’ So Joseph died at the age of 110. After they embalmed him, his body was placed in a coffin in Egypt.” (Genesis 50:22-26, NET)

The Geography of Jacob and Esau

Jacob and Esau’s birthplace is not obvious in the story. Context suggests Beersheba or its vicinity. Following Jacob’s ruse that fooled Isaac into giving the younger Jacob the firstborn blessing, which moved Esau to threaten to kill Jacob, his mother Rebekah advises him to flee to Haran, the city where her brother Laban lives. His father Isaac tells him to flee to the region of Paddan Aram. A city named Harran exists there today, presumably in roughly the same location. 

Jacob leaves Beersheba for Haran and rests in a place called Luz. While traveling toward the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, he sees in Canaan a dream vision reminiscent of the story of Babel, another city between the Euphrates and Tigris, where the people attempted to build to heaven. After seeing God at the top of a stairway to heaven, he renames the place Bethel. 

Jacob arrives in the “land of the eastern people” and finds men from Haran, who tell him of his relatives. Soon his cousin Rachel and then her father Laban arrive. Laban deceives Jacob the deceiver into marrying his two daughters. Although not exactly geography, it is worth nothing the role the dark tent plays in Jacob’s story. Jacob deceives his blind father there, Laban and his daughters later deceive Jacob in one, and Rebekah deceives Laban regarding his idols in her tent. Like Abraham and Isaac before him, God blesses Jacob in another’s land despite his deception. 

Jacob apparently lives in the vicinity of Haran, though we find he moves his herds and flocks to keep them separate from Laban’s and, presumably, as needed to find food, water, and shelter. After working seven years each for his wives and agreeing to manage Laban’s flocks for a time for a cut of their offspring, Jacob learns from God that he should “Return to the land of [his] fathers and to [his] relatives.” Realizing that Laban does not want him to leave, Jacob resorts to deception and flees toward Canaan. “He left with all he owned. He quickly crossed the Euphrates River and headed for the hill country of Gilead.” 

“Three days later Laban discovered Jacob had left. So he took his relatives with him and pursued Jacob for seven days. He caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead.” (Genesis 31:21-22, NET)

Jacob and Laban negotiate an agreement and build stone pillars to memorialize it at a place Jacob calls Galeed, meaning something like “witness pile” and Mizpah, meaning “watchtower.” Laban names it Jegar Sahadutha, “witness stones” in Aramaic. The pile of stones is apparently on the top of a mountain, where it can be seen and function as a watchtower. 

“So Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.” (Genesis 32:1-2, NET) Jacob is on his way to Bethel where God met him at the top of a stairway to heaven, with angels traveling up and down. Here, he discovers angels encamped on the ground. This is quite a statement to let pass without further comment, yet the author does, creating narrative tension – What is the significance of angels living in a particular place here on earth? What is their intent? What event will they participate in? 

Yet the story moves on – Jacob sends messengers to contact his brother about meeting for the first time in decades in the hope of reconciliation. Fearing Esau’s response, Jacob divides his family and sends them ahead of him across the Jabbok River, a tributary of the Jordan. He is alone on the far side of the river from Esau’s approaching men when he encounters a “man.” They wrestle, the man wounds his hip, but Jacob prevails and demands a blessing. The man’s response suggests his divinity. Jacob apparently has wrestled with God. Jacob names the place Peniel, meaning “face of God,” then crosses the Jabbok at Penuel. The slight difference in the names has unknown significance, though at least one commentator assesses the latter to mean “He turns to God” as a resolution to the conflict between Jacob and the God-man.

John Sailhamer, in his book Genesis Unbound, proposes the land between four rivers as a geographic approximation of future Israel and uses this incident along with Joshua’s encounter with an angel as he enters the Promised Land in Joshua 5 as support for his theory: when the people of God approach the land of promise from the east, they are met by an angel, just as angels were posted east of Eden to keep Adam and Eve from returning. Archaeologist Adam Zertal in his book A Nation Born proposes that structures he found in the vicinity of Jacob’s crossing of the Jabbok and Jordan into the land correlated with locations and purpose of the conquest-era Israelite Gigals, meaning that both Jacob and Joshua would have met an angel and crossed into the land at roughly the same location.

The Genesis description and the limits placed on a traveler by the geography help us to make a well-informed guess about the hills on which Jacob and his family’s actions took place. In the below images, we can see a narrow route through the mountains carved by the Jabbok River. Jacob apparently stayed on the north side of the river until he neared the Jordan, split his family into two camps, possibly on two hills across the river from each other in defensible positions with good visibility.

Jacob finally meets Esau, who is coming up from Edom in the south. Esau’s territory, Edom, will return to prominence in the biblical narrative during the Conquest and later in the Prophets. Once reconciled, Esau invites (pressures?) Jacob to travel with him to Edom. Jacob defers, dishonestly telling Esau he will meet him there in time, then travels northwest toward Shechem rather than south toward Edom.  

While there are later references to a Sukkoth in this area in Gideon’s story and some scholars have engaged in informed speculation about its location – on a hill north of the Jabbok, east of the Jordan – a precise location for Jacob’s Sukkoth is unlikely to be found because the temporary shelters its name refers to would likely leave no trace distinguishable from uncountable nomadic herders over the intervening millennia.  

“After he left Paddan Aram, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and he camped near the city. Then he purchased the portion of the field where he had pitched his tent; he bought it from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for 100 pieces of money. There he set up an altar and called it ‘The God of Israel is God.’” (Genesis 33:18-20, NET)

This short passage contains significant hooks connecting it to stories past and future. 

A careful reader will notice the city is named Shechem and so is the son of its ruler. We have seen this before in the narrative, first with Cain in Genesis 4:17. It’s an indicator of a worldly ruler attempting to make a name for himself and his family, a thread that runs from Cain through Lamech, Nimrod, and Babel. This is a place in rebellion against God. 

Jacob purchases land near Shechem for 100 pieces of money, an event recalled in Joshua 24:32, when Joseph’s bones, having been disinterred from Egypt during the Exodus, are finally laid to rest on his father’s land during the Conquest. Jacob will send Joseph to find his brothers near Shechem, presumably on this land he owns. The young Joseph will be forcibly removed from this land, then returned here long after his death. In contrast to the pagan ruler, Jacob builds an altar and names it “The God of Israel is God.” Although he includes himself in the name (he too is apparently at least a little vain) his focus is on God; he is claiming pagan territory in God’s name. The one previous story of land purchase in Canaan was Abraham’s purchase of land near Hebron on which he would bury Sarah and later be buried himself.  

The textual hints about the nature of Shechem pan out, and we find that Shechem, like Lamech and the sons of God before him, is a sexual abuser. Abraham rescued Lot when he was kidnapped, so also do Jacob’s sons rescue their sister Dinah. Unlike Abraham who refused to benefit materially from the rescue and was blessed by Melchizedek as approved by God, Jacob’s sons pillage and destroy Shechem and were cursed by Jacob and apparently the surrounding peoples so that Jacob’s family must flee in fear of retribution. God supernaturally protects them as they travel toward Bethel, where Jacob first saw God as he fled his own consequences of theft as a young man. At Bethel, Jacob builds an altar and names it El Bethel, reaffirming his commitment to God and claim of the land for God.  

Rachel, the favored wife whose life is marked by weeping and the threat of death, goes into labor and, after bearing a son Benjamin, dies near Ephrath, later known as Bethlehem. After burying her, Jacob moves on to a place called Migdal Eder, likely a high place in the vicinity of Bethlehem with a watchtower for guarding flocks of sheep. Its location is not known. Here, his son Reuben betrays him by sleeping with his concubine/wife Bilhah.  

Jacob then moves on to Mamre near Kiriath Arba, also known as Hebron, where his father Isaac dies. Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave containing Abraham, Sarah, and his wife Rebekah’s remains.

Here, the text makes a departure from Jacob’s narrative as it did with Isaac’s to focus on the other son not in the line of promise. By giving us the geography of Esau and his descendants, it prepares us to receive future narratives throughout the Hebrew Bible. Esau and his descendants marry into the surrounding cultures – Hittites, Hivites, Ishmaelites, and apparently Horites. They live in Seir, a mountainous region southeast of the modern Dead Sea, which became known as Edom, another name for Esau. Esau’s apparent descendants the Amalekites later live to the west near the border of Egypt, perhaps ranging across Sinai and Seir as raiders. 

Jacob’s further movements correlate well with those of some of his sons, so we will consider the end of his life in the next post, The Geography of Jacob’s Sons.

The Geography of Isaac and Ishmael

The account of Isaac’s birth does not mention a location. Context suggests somewhere in the vicinity of Gerar and Beersheba. 

When Ishmael laughs at Isaac, the child named “laughter,” Abraham exiles Hagar and Ishmael to wander in the wilderness of Beersheba. Ishmael later lives in the wilderness of Paran (which we will again see during the Israelites’ wilderness wandering following the Exodus) and marries a wife from Egypt.

Abraham negotiates with Abimelech of Gerar for wells in Beersheba. It is apparently from there that God calls Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on a mountain in Moriah. Assuming this is the same Mount Moriah Solomon builds his temple on (2 Chronicles 3:1), it is in the vicinity of Melchizedek’s Salem.  

The following accounts are sparse and focus on Abraham, so we do not have certainty about Isaac’s whereabouts. Interestingly, after the sacrifice of the ram rather than Isaac on Mount Moriah, we learn that Abraham returned with his servants to Beersheba but nothing about where Isaac went. When Abraham buys the field and cave of Machpelah and buries Isaac’s mother Sarah, the account is silent about Isaac.

We next hear of Isaac and his location when Abraham sends a servant to find a wife for him. He is mourning his mother in the wilderness near Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar realized God saw her. Though unclear on their meeting place, it seems most reasonable to receive Genesis 24:62 to mean that Isaac came to Hebron (though Beersheba is also a strong candidate) from Beer Lahai Roi to meet Rebekah, while Rebekah came from Aram Naharaim. It appears that Isaac travels from just inside the Genesis 15:18 southwestern border of the land - “the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…’” (ESV) – while Rebekah travels from just outside its northern border. They approach one another, traversing the whole length of the land to meet and become one. 

Rebekah and her son Jacob’s stories spend significant time north of the Euphrates River with Abraham’s extended family. Rebekah lives in a region called Aram Naharaim and the city of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. Isaac later tells Jacob to flee to Paddan Aram, where Rebekah’s family lives. The distinction between the regions of Aram Naharaim and Paddan Aram is unclear if there is one at all. The fact that Abraham left from Haran and his grandson Jacob flees there suggests that the extended family remained in the same region and that the use of different names may emphasize their different meanings or the region’s name in two languages rather than two distinct locations. Paddan Aram means “Plain of Aram” in Aramaic and Aram Naharaim means “Aram between Two Rivers.” Rebekah’s brother is called “Laban the Aramean,” so the repeated use of Aram and Aramean likely gives intentional weight to Abraham’s family’s background as Arameans.

God tells Rebekah that her twin sons Jacob and Esau are two nations, but we do not learn the location of their birth.  

During a famine, Isaac travels to Gerar where God forbids him from going to Egypt for help and tells him instead to rely on God’s provision. After an episode recalling Abraham’s in which he lies about and uses his wife in attempt to gain favor with Abimelech, like Abraham, God blesses Isaac despite his bad behavior. He becomes an annoyance to the people in the land because of his success and the resources all his cattle are consuming, so he moves progressively farther from Gerar until he and Abimelech can resolve the conflict, allowing him to settle peacefully at Beersheba.

The account of Isaac’s sons’ birth does not mention a location. Jacob’s ruse to steal the blessing Isaac intended for Esau likely took place at Beersheba because Jacob flees from there to meet Rebekah’s family. At this point, the focus shifts to Jacob’s story. Isaac and Rebekah’s experience is a mystery. Jacob returns to Isaac in Mamre outside the city of Kiriath Arba also known as Hebron. Jacob and Esau bury him there with Rebekah in the cave where his father and mother are buried. 

Regarding Ishmael’s family, Genesis 25 tells us “His descendants settled from Havilah to Shur, which runs next to Egypt all the way to Asshur.” Interestingly, these boundaries are similar to those given to Abraham for Canaan. They reach from the northern Sinai peninsula to the vicinity of Nineveh in the northeast, between the Tigris and Euphrates. The location of Havilah is not known. Ishmael’s descendants’ territory stretches from a little west of Abraham’s promised land toward Egypt in Shur to the vicinity of the Tigris River, northeast of the apparent north border of the promised land - from Shur to Asshur. In Genesis 16 and 17, God says to Abraham that Ishmael will live away from his brothers and “I will indeed bless him, make him fruitful, and give him a multitude of descendants. He will become the father of twelve princes; I will make him into a great nation.” (Genesis 17:20, NET) The scope of his descendants’ territory is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Ishmael’s father.

The locations in Isaac’s story tell a subtle story of their own. Early in his life, he lives with Abraham, but following his near-sacrifice on Mount Moriah, he disappears from Abraham’s story until after his mother Sarah’s death. We next find him near Beer Lahai Roi, where Hagar fled with Ishmael after Sarah ordered them away from her family. Was he seeking God in the wilderness after nearly being sacrificed? Was he running away from his family as Hagar did? Was he in a kind of exile that prefigures future events? It’s difficult to know. Much of Isaac’s story is an enigma. We know with specificity where he was nearly sacrificed and later that he re-opened his father’s wells after the Philistines filled them in, finally settling at Beersheba. When his son Jacob returns, years after fleeing his Esau’s wrath, Isaac is in Kiriath Arba, and his wife is not mentioned. Finally, Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave of Machpelah with his mother and father.