Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Genesis 21: 14 refers to the “Wilderness of Beersheba”, and Genesis 21: 21 
refers to the “Wilderness of Paran”.  In my view, those are two different 
names for the same wilderness.
 
No satisfactory linguistic analysis of P)RN/“Paran” has been done, because 
analysts think that the logical linguistic meaning of P)RN cannot fit what 
chapter 21 of Genesis is talking about.  But it does!  As we will see in 
this post, MDBR P)RN logically means “dense forest”, and that is exactly the 
place where Hagar gets lost and has YHWH point out a well to her, where 
Ishmael grows up to be an archer, and where Esau in the next generation bags 
big 
game for his doting father Isaac.  We will see in this post that 
historically there was indeed a very “dense forest” near Beersheba, if we 
know which 
Beersheba the Biblical text is talking about here.
 
P)RH means “foliage of a tree”, per Ezekiel 17: 6.  Accordingly, one would 
expect P)RN at Genesis 21: 21 to mean “place where there is abundant tree 
foliage”.  Based on linguistics, MDBR P)RN should logically be a “dense 
forest”.  On that linguistic analysis, the “Wilderness of Paran” at Genesis 
21: 
21, where Ishmael grows up after being exiled at age 9½ regular years by 
his father Abraham, should be a heavily forested area where few people lived. 
 
 
Are there indications in the text that we are dealing here with a dense 
forest, rather than with a desert-like area?  It would make sense for Hagar 
to 
get lost in a dense forest.  We are told that Hagar can find no water to 
drink, but that YHWH then points out a nearby well. It makes sense that Hagar 
would fail to see a nearby well in a forest, because such a well could easily 
be hidden behind a tree in a forest, needing to be pointed out to Hagar by 
YHWH.  Genesis 21: 19.  In desert-like terrain, however, it’s hard to see 
how Hagar could fail to see a nearby well.  The presence of a well in a 
forest 
would mean that some humans were living there.  If Hagar and Ishmael were 
helped out by a small number of people living in a dense forest, then it 
would make sense that Ishmael was taught to make a bow and arrows and to 
hunt.  
The text tells us Ishmael became an “archer” at Genesis 21: 20, and the 
best place to hunt for a living would be in a dense forest.  The text seems 
to 
imply that Hagar and Ishmael stayed in that dense forest for some years, 
while Ishmael was a young man, surviving by Ishmael’s ability to hunt big 
game 
for eating.  Only years later, when Ishmael is old enough to marry, does 
Hagar obtain a wife from Egypt for Ishmael [who is probably similar to Hagar 
as 
a young servant coming out of Egypt], and then Ishmael and his descendants 
at that point take up a nomadic life ranging far and wide, with Ishmael 
giving up the forest of his youth.  Though the text does not take the time to 
spell out all of the above details, all of the foregoing can easily be 
implied.  Everything makes sense if and only if the Wilderness of Paran/the 
Wilderness of Beersheba is a very large, dense forest. 
 
Was there in fact a dense forest, with few human inhabitants, near 
Beersheba?  Beersheba is mentioned at Genesis 21: 14, with the other 
description of 
this wilderness being the “Wilderness of Beersheba”.  [Beersheba is also 
mentioned again at Genesis 21: 31.]  It’s hard to believe there would be good 
hunting near the famous Beersheba in the Negev, since the surroundings are 
desert-like.  It’s also hard to see how Hagar could fail to see a nearby well 
in that type of environment.  And of course, P)RN in that case could not 
come from P)RH, meaning “foliage of a tree”.
 
But note how everything makes perfect sense if the Beersheba in chapter 21 
of Genesis is Beersheba of Galilee.  In all of Galilee, there was only one 
place in the Late Bronze Age where there was a huge forest, with almost no 
human population:  the southwest corner of Upper Galilee and the northwest 
corner of Lower Galilee, being just southwest of Beersheba of Galilee.  There 
were no towns there in the Late Bronze Age.  Rather, it was dense forest.  
The  o-n-l-y  place in Galilee in which this section of chapter 21 of Genesis 
would make sense is immediately southwest of Beersheba of Galilee, and 
Beersheba is mentioned so very prominently here.  Genesis 20: 1 tells us that 
Abraham had moved to GRR, and GRR is historically attested as being the Late 
Bronze Age word for “Galilee”.  Abraham is still in GRR/Galilee when he 
exiles Hagar and Ishmael, and then announces that the new well his men have 
dug 
shall be called “Beersheba”.  That’s Beersheba of Galilee, not Beersheba in 
the Negev.  [We later find out in chapter 26 of Genesis that Abraham had in 
fact dug a series of four wells, spaced a day’s journey or so apart, ending 
at Beersheba.  That pattern of a series of wells exactly describes northwest 
Upper Galilee and Beersheba of Galilee.  By contrast, there is no series of 
wells anywhere close to Beersheba of the Negev, which is world-famous 
precisely because it has the only wells in the area.]
 
Esau is likewise said to be a great hunter, a few verses after Beersheba 
has been mentioned.  Genesis 26: 33;  27: 5.  In the Late Bronze Age, the 
very 
best place to hunt for CYD/big game [like deer, wild boars, etc.] in all of 
Canaan was the dense forest in the southwest corner of Upper Galilee, 
immediately southwest of Beersheba of Galilee.  After moving to GRR [Galilee] 
in 
chapter 26 of Genesis, Esau in chapter 27 of Genesis hunted big game in the 
same dense forest as had Ishmael in the previous generation:  in southwest 
Upper Galilee and northwest Lower Galilee, just southwest of Beersheba of 
Galilee.
 
Unlike in the Early Bronze Age and in the Iron Age, in the Late Bronze Age 
most of Upper Galilee was lightly populated [having a much smaller 
population than Lower Galilee at that time].  As such, Upper Galilee was an 
attractive place for the tent-dwelling Patriarchs to sojourn.  And one place, 
though 
only one place, in and near Upper Galilee had virtually no population at all 
in the Late Bronze Age:  the dense forest immediately southwest of 
Beersheba of Galilee.
 
If we focus on the topography of Late Bronze Age Canaan, we can figure out 
what P)RN means regarding Ishmael’s “Wilderness of Paran”.  It means a very 
dense forest [just southwest of Beersheba of Galilee], where one could get 
lost, where one could miss seeing a nearby well, and in particular where the 
hunting for big game was super-terrific.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois