Gerar

Coordinates: 31°22′54″N 34°36′25″E / 31.3817°N 34.6069°E / 31.3817; 34.6069
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Abimelech, King of Gerar, returns Sarah to Abraham; painting by Elias van Nijmegen (1667-1755), Museum Rotterdam

Gerar (

Philistine town and district in what is today south central Israel, mentioned in the Book of Genesis and in the Second Book of Chronicles of the Hebrew Bible
.

Identification

According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, the biblical valley of Gerar (Genesis 26:17) was probably located in the area of a valley known in Arabic as Wady Sheri'a,[1] and in Modern Hebrew as Nahal Gerar.[2] Most commentators see the mound of Tel Haror (Hebrew) or Tell Abu Hureyra (Arabic) as representing the ancient Gerar.[citation needed]

Some older commentaries, such as

Besor Stream in the Negev.[4][5] However, according to recent archaeological research, Haluza only dates to the period of the Nabataean Kingdom
.

Biblical accounts

Biblically, the town features in two of the three

wife-sister narratives in Genesis. These record that Abraham and Isaac each stayed at Gerar, near what became Beersheba, and that each passed his wife off as his sister, leading to complications involving Gerar's Philistine king, Abimelech. (Genesis 20:1, and Genesis 26:1
)

The Haggadah identifies the two references to Abimelech as two separate people, the second being the first Abimelech's son, and that his original name was Benmelech ["son of the King"], but he changed his name to his father's, meaning "my father is king".

In 2 Chronicles 14:12-15, Gerar and its surrounding towns figure in the account of King Asa's defeat of Zerah's vast Cushite forces.

See also

References

  1. ^ Gerar -- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia at biblehub.com
  2. ^ 'Gerar' in the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Zondervan Academic, 2011, p. 520
  3. ^ Smith's Bible Dictionary published 1884
  4. Judeo-Arabic
    : אלי כ̇לוץ, אלכ̇לוץ = al-Khalūṣ) in the Pentateuch (Tafsir), s.v. Genesis 10:19, Genesis 20:2, Genesis 26:17, 20.
  5. ^ On Haluza's proximity to Gerar, see: M. Naor, Gerar — Tell el Far'a, Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society (1955), pp. 99–102 (Hebrew)

31°22′54″N 34°36′25″E / 31.3817°N 34.6069°E / 31.3817; 34.6069

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