Beer Sheva באר שבע
The Land's southern edge, city of wells and covenants, home of Avraham and Yitzchak and Yaakov's last stop before Egypt.
Beer Sheva sits where settled land meets desert, and in Bereshit it is a place of wells and treaties. The name means both "well of the oath" and "well of seven"—the seven ewes Avraham gives Avimelech to establish his right to the water. There Avraham plants an eshel: a tree, or, in another reading, an inn where travellers were told of one God.
From Beer Sheva Avraham sets out for the Akeda. Yitzchak lives here, the one patriarch who never leaves the Land, reopening the wells the Philistines had stopped. From here Yaakov departs for Egypt, stopping to offer sacrifices and receiving the promise "I will go down with you, and I will surely bring you up again".
"From Dan to Beer Sheva" means, throughout the Tanakh, the whole country.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 21:22–34 — the covenant with Avimelech and Avraham’s eshel
- Bereishit 22:19 — Avraham’s return after the Akedah
- Bereishit 26 — the wells of Yitzchak
- Bereishit 46:1–4 — Yaakov’s offerings before the descent to Egypt
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bereishit Rabbah 54 — what the eshel was: an orchard, an inn, a court of law
- Sotah 10a — the eshel as a house of hospitality
Basis: tradition.