Shechem

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 Abraham

After God scatters and disinherits the rebellious people of Babel in Shinar (between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), he purposes to start a new nation with one who will remain faithful to him, Abram. God calls Abram’s family out of Ur to live in and inherit the land of Canaan. (Genesis 10-11)

There is more than one ancient city in the vicinity of the Tigris and Euphrates named Ur, so scholars debate about which one Genesis refers to. One candidate lies along the Euphrates in the southeast as it approaches the Persian Gulf. Extensive archaeological excavations have revealed a large city with canals, residential and government buildings, and a well-preserved ziggurat. Another, more recently identified candidate lies close to modern Harran, which may make it the most likely of the possibilities.

Any time we put an ancient name on a map, we invite controversy. These are drawn from multiple sources, many of which can be found in our Resources page. All Bible quotations taken and edited for size from NET.

Genesis 11 - Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot. Haran died in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans…

Terah took his son Abram…and…set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there.

Although the route Abram takes into the land is not specified, the locations he first visits suggest his grandson Jacob later follows in Abram’s footsteps, so we borrow from Jacob’s story and the locations of ancient roads to fill in Abram’s detail.

Genesis 12 - Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot… entered the land of Canaan.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the oak tree of Moreh at Shechem.

Abram moves south through the land, stopping at locations that will reappear throughout Israel’s national history. In each place he builds an altar to the Lord near trees, water, or a view of lush vegetation, recalling Eden, where God met with man.

Genesis 12 - Then he moved from there to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.

Abram continually journeyed by stages down to the Negev.

There was a famine in the land, so Abram went down to Egypt

Pharaoh gave his men orders about Abram, and so they expelled him

Abram’s journey to Egypt in a famine prefigures his descendants leaving the land God promised as their inheritance for a foreign land. He meets a foreign woman (the Egyptian Hagar’s name literally means “the foreigner”) who he eventually has a relationship with. Disaster follows. All of these elements return in future stories.

Genesis 13 - Abram went up from Egypt into the Negev

…he journeyed from place to place from the Negev as far as Bethel. He returned to the place where he had pitched his tent at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai.

After his expulsion from Egypt by its ruler, who here fits the pattern of the seed of the serpent, an enemy of God, Abram returns to Bethel, the “house of God".

He and Lot agree to part ways because their flocks are in competition with each other for scarce resources. They view the Jordan River valley from a high place near Bethel. Lot moves down into the valley in the vicinity of the city of Sodom. There are five named cities near Sodom, sometimes called the cities of the plain. Scholars differ on the location of Sodom, some arguing it is to the south of the Dead Sea, others to the north. The northern location makes the most sense with this story, though later ones may cause you to reconsider.

Genesis 13 - Lot looked up and saw the whole region of the Jordan. He noticed that all of it was well watered…like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, all the way to Zoar. Lot chose for himself the whole region of the Jordan and traveled toward the east.

After they part, God tells Abram to walk through the land, for he will give it to Abram. Abram travels down to stay near the city of Hebron. As he is living there, a coalition of kings from the vicinity of the Euphrates River sets out on a military campaign to punish treaty violators among peoples to Abram’s east including Sodom, where Lot lives.

Many of the names of the clans the coalition seeks to punish occur only two places in the Bible: here in Genesis 14 and in Deuteronomy 2, where Moses associates them with the powerful, tall Anakites who, in that time, live in Hebron. Deuteronomy appears to group all these peoples under the name Rephaites or Rephaim. As with many of the seed of the serpent figures in the biblical narrative, we do not have a lot of specific detail about them. We are left with the sense though that they are powerful, evil enemies of God’s people. Abram’s and Lot’s descendants drive them out of their lands and settle there.

Interestingly, the path the coalition of kings takes is roughly the same though in the opposite direction of the path the Israelites, Abram’s descendants, will take in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua as they approach the land of Canaan to occupy it as their inheritance promised through Abram. In Numbers 21, the Israelites encounter Og of Bashan, who Joshua 13 tells us was among the last of the Rephaim, in the same area that the five kings fight the Rephaim in Abram’s day. They also fight the Amorites, the people Abram lives with in Hebron. In Deuteronomy, the Rephaim are enemies, yet here in Genesis, Abram is loosely allied with them.

Genesis 14 - At that time Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). These last five kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea)…Kedorlaomer and the kings who were his allies came and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran, which is near the desert. Then they attacked En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh) again, and they conquered all the territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazezon Tamar.

Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out and prepared for battle. In the Valley of Siddim they met Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of nations, Amraphel king of Shinar, and Arioch king of Ellasar. Four kings fought against five. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits. When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them, but some survivors fled to the hills.

Lot’s city Sodom loses the battle, and the coalition of kings takes him captive. We suddenly learn that Abram has a small army of trained men. They chase down the coalition and rescue the captives.

Genesis 14 - …Now Abram was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, the brother of Eshcol and Aner…When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he mobilized his 318 trained men who had been born in his household, and he pursued the invaders as far as Dan. …He chased them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus.

After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer…the king of Sodom went out to meet Abram in the Valley of Shaveh (known as the King’s Valley). Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine.

At the city of Salem, there is a priest-king who serves God, Melchizedek. He comes out to meet Abram, to bless him, and to assure him that God was with him in his rescue of the captives. Abram is now a regional power, recognized by the kings of surrounding cities.

Genesis 15 - the Lord made a covenant with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River— the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.”

The “river of Egypt” makes several appearances in the Bible as a border of Israel. There is a long seasonal stream, today called Wadi al-Arish, in the northeast Sinai peninsula, which may be the best candidate. At times, it is not clear whether this stream or the Nile River is the more accurate interpretation, and it may be that the biblical authors sometimes intentionally leave the issue ambiguous in prophetic language to suggest more than one idea at once. In an earlier post on the geography of Genesis 1-11, we saw that Genesis 2 associates the river that flows through Cush (which could be received as the Nile River) and the Euphrates River with Eden. Here, the river of Egypt and the Euphrates are borders of the land God is promising Abram as an inheritance.

In the image below, the white area in the lower left/southwest that leads from the mountains to the sea is the Wadi al-Arish, thought by some scholars to be the river of Egypt.

Genesis 16 - The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring of water in the wilderness—the spring that is along the road to Shur….the well was called Beer Lahai Roi. (It is located between Kadesh and Bered.)

When Abram’s wife Sarai decided she no longer wanted to wait for God to give them the son he had promised them, she told Abram to try to have one with her servant Hagar, an Egyptian. When Sarai mistreats her, there are cultural and geographical ideas in play. Hagar appears to flee with her son (and Abram’s) to the edge of the territory God is promising Abram’s descendants back toward Egypt where she is from. God sees and talks with her, and she returns for now to Hebron and Abram’s family.

At Hebron, God meets with Abram, gives him the name Abraham, promises him a son with Sarai-now named Sarah, and tells Abraham that he is going down to judge Sodom, one of the cities of the plain we have seen above. Though there are several proposed sites, the location of Sodom is not known, so I have not attempted to show the locations in the destruction of Sodom and Lot’s escape.

After Isaac is born, Sarah orders Abraham to exile Hagar and their son Ishmael. Abraham complies, and she once again travels to the wilderness on the edge of the border of the promise to Abraham and Egypt. Ishmael eventually settles in Paran to the southeast.

Genesis 20 - Abraham journeyed from there to the Negev region and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he lived as a temporary resident in Gerar

…Abimelech said, “Look, my land is before you; live wherever you please.”

Genesis 21 - Hagar…went wandering aimlessly through the wilderness of Beer Sheba.

…Ishmael…lived in the wilderness of Paran. His mother found a wife for him from the land of Egypt.

[Abraham and Abimelech] made a treaty at Beer Sheba; then Abimelech and Phicol, the commander of his army, returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer Sheba…So Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for quite some time.

Abraham deals with the king of Gerar as he had with the pharaoh of Egypt, however Abimelech responds righteously, putting Abraham to shame. He lets Abraham stay in his territory because he sees that God blesses Abraham.

Abraham receives a shocking command from God and travels to Mount Moriah with Isaac to fulfill it. Mount Moriah is apparently in the immediate vicinity of Melchizedek’s Salem, where God blessed Abraham after a successful hostage rescue of Lot and the people of Sodom. Now God asks Abraham to sacrifice his own son there. Abraham complies, apparently understanding that it is a test and that God will provide.

Genesis 22 - …after these things God tested Abraham...“Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah!”

On the third day Abraham caught sight of the place in the distance.

Abraham returned to his servants, and they set out together for Beer Sheba where Abraham

stayed.

After the averted sacrifice episode, we learn that Abraham and his servants return to Beersheba, but Isaac is not mentioned.

Sarah dies, and Abraham negotiates the purchase of a cave and field in the vicinity of Hebron, so he can own the land where he buries her.

When Abraham dies, Ishmael and Isaac also bury him there.