Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Chavoux Luyt:
 
1.  You wrote:  “His father's relatives?? As I understood it, these men 
would actually all have been slaves of Abram and in his service as herders 
etc. 
(since we know that he was very rich).”
 
No, they are described at Genesis 14: 14 as being “born into his household”
.  This must be an idiom that means that Abram’s 318 armed men are Abram’s 
father’s relatives, thus having a tribal affiliation of sorts to Abram, 
rather than being anything like foreign mercenaries, or Amorites, or 
Hurrians.  
What people don’t realize is that those 318 men, and their families, were 
not ordinarily in Abram’s camp.  No, on a one-time basis, Abram musters his 
father’s relatives, who are living throughout the Shephelah and the Jordan 
River Valley and possibly elsewhere in Canaan.  This is a one-time payback 
for 
the fact that Abram had managed to make his father’s tribal relatives, who 
no longer had settled villages of their own but were now reduced to living 
in tents, somewhat wealthy by selling the lapis lazuli the tribe had bought 
in Ur for a huge price in Egypt, instead of settling for the modest prices 
that Lebanese middlemen would have paid.  Abram did not want to be the leader 
of his father’s relatives, nor did they want Abram to rule them.  But they 
did appreciate the financial success of Abram’s unbelievably risky gambit of 
taking the lapis lazuli directly to Egypt and Pharaoh’s royal buyers.  As to 
the nasty rumors that Sarah had even been introduced into Pharaoh’s harem, 
pending Abram successfully getting a divine sign that divine notice had been 
taken of Pharaoh’s infertility by his beloved Queen of Egypt, and the fact 
that Pharaoh, though supposedly grateful to Abram, had nevertheless had 
Abram personally escorted by armed guard out of Egypt, making it clear that 
tent-dwellers could never bring lapis lazuli into Egypt again, well, Sarah 
was 
back with Abram now, she still had borne no child, and the whole tribe had 
benefited from the gargantuan sales price paid by Pharaoh for that lapis 
lazuli.  Other than Lot’s wife, who would complain about the odd details that 
had 
led to that one-time, never-to-be-repeated financial success?  
 
2.  You wrote:  “I would agree with you that Abraham would not be 
restricted to a single area of the land. But Gen. 20:1 seems to me fairly 
clear that 
Gerar was in the Negev? Unless you understand the last part as a separate 
sentence talking not of his time between Shur and Kadesh, but of a later 
place 
of sojourn somewhere in the North (cf. Gen.10:19) at another Gerar?”
 
I see H-NGB at Genesis 20: 1 as being the NGB in northern Canaan which is 
at item #57 on the mid-15th century BCE Thutmose III list of places.  This is 
probably the same place as H-NQB at Joshua 19: 33, namely )DMY H-NQB in 
eastern Lower Galilee:  Adami.  As to QD$, there is no place by the name QD$ 
attested south or southwest of Judah, but QD$ is attested out the wazoo in 
eastern Upper Galilee.  As to $WR, the early Hebrew author considered the 
correct spelling of Tyre in northwest Upper Galilee, CWR or CR, to be 
blasphemous, because it means “divine rock”, and hence effectively means 
“God”.  So 
he sanitized that blasphemous name by calling it $WR, which has the neutral 
meaning of “wall”, and sounds enough like CWR so that his contemporary 
audience would know he meant Tyre.  [$WR is a non-blasphemous Patriarchal 
nickname for CWR.]  Finally, GRR is KRR at item #80 on the mid-15th century 
BCE 
Thutmose III list of places in Canaan, being “Galilee”, as is GR [in the form 
of Gari or Garu, with GRR being the Akkadian version of GLL in west Semitic, 
both meaning “rolling”] at Amarna Letter EA 256: 23.  Genesis 20: 1 says:  
>From there [that is, from Bethel, where Abraham had gone to see Sodom’s 
destruction], Abraham [went north along the Jordan River and] passed [through 
eastern Lower Galilee via] H-NGB [referring to Adami, )DMY H-NQB, which is “
south”/NGB of Adamah], and then Abraham lived between QD$ [Qadesh of eastern 
Upper Galilee] and $WR [that is, CWR/Tyre in Upper Galilee], and he 
sojourned in Upper Galilee/GRR.  That’s exactly what Genesis 20: 1 says, word 
for 
word.
 
Per Genesis 13: 17, Abraham is divinely commanded to sojourn throughout the 
length and breadth of Canaan after splitting from Lot at Bethel.  Unless 
Abraham was prepared to directly contravene YHWH’s divine Will [never!], 
Abraham was divinely  r-e-q-u-i-r-e-d  to spend considerable time sojourning 
up 
north in Galilee after splitting from Lot at Bethel.  The great tension in 
the story that everyone has missed is that Abraham cannot perfect his claim 
to 
all of Canaan by sojourning in Galilee, and Abraham cannot sire his proper 
heir by Sarah either, until and unless Lot first forfeits Lot’s entire claim 
to any part of Canaan, and is reduced to living in a cave.  That’s why 
chapters 18 and 19 of Genesis are much more important than people have 
realized. 
 Abraham cannot perfect his claim to all of Canaan or sire Isaac until Lot 
first proves himself unworthy to have any claim at all to the Jordan River 
Valley, the Jezreel Valley, and points north in Canaan, to which Lot 
provisionally was entitled when Abram and Lot split at Bethel.  If we could 
just get 
the underlying geography right, the story practically tells itself.
 
3.  You wrote:  “At least in the later narratives of the wells being dug 
close to Gerar, it would better fit the South where open water would be 
scarce, than the North with fountains and streams.”
 
If we take the text seriously and literally, here is what it says.  After 
leaving Abimelek’s place, each of Abraham and Isaac digs a series of 4 wells, 
located about 5 miles or so apart, and with the last well being “up” at a 
Beersheba.  Genesis 26: 16-23.  [If the wells were closer together, Abimelek’
s men would not have lost interest after the 2nd well.  If the wells were 
farther apart, Abimelek’s men would not have retained interest in the first 2 
wells.]
 
That is an e-x-a-c-t  description of western Upper Galilee and Beersheba of 
Galilee!  Per the Amarna Letters, historical Abimelek lived on an island 
[Tyre] just off the coast of the northwest corner of Upper Galilee.  The best 
place on planet Earth to dig a series of wells is along the base of the 
mountains of western Upper Galilee.  The mountains of Lebanon keep a lot of 
rain 
in Upper Galilee, yet only the east border of Galilee has a river worthy of 
the name.  So huge amounts of water have collected underground in western 
Galilee, and every Israeli knows that the ideal place to dig wells is along 
the base of the mountains of western Upper Galilee, where that water has 
collected.  But by the time one gets close to the 4th well [just under 20 
miles 
south of the northern border of Upper Galilee], a huge forest [MDBR P)RN, 
where Ishmael lives and is an archer in the second half of chapter 21 of 
Genesis, and where Esau as an archer routinely bags savory game for his 
doting 
father Isaac in chapter 27 of Genesis -- Yes,  t-h-a-t  historical forest 
near 
Beersheba of Galilee] impeded the Patriarchs’ progress in the Bronze Age.  
So Abraham and Isaac then turned east and went “up” to Beersheba of Galilee.
 
Meanwhile, the foregoing is impossible south of Canaan.  There are no wells 
between an unattested place between Gaza and Beersheba of the Negev, which 
is the traditional locale of Gerar, and Beersheba of the Negev.  Moreover, 
Beersheba of the Negev is located at the bottom of a drainage basin, and so 
one cannot go “up” to Beersheba of the Negev, as required by Genesis 26: 23. 
 Everything checks out perfectly for western Upper Galilee and Beersheba of 
Galilee [located “up” in the foothills of the mountains of western Galilee 
on the border between Upper and Lower Galilee, fairly near the coast], 
whereas nothing at all checks out for the area near Beersheba of the Negev.  
[Perhaps it goes without saying that there never was a forest, or good 
hunting, 
near the arid, low-lying Beersheba of the Negev.  MDBR P)RN means “a forest 
of trees, that abounds in foliage”.  Such a forest historically adjoined 
Beersheba of Galilee, while needless to say there was never a forest of trees 
anywhere in the general vicinity of Beersheba of the Negev.]
 
4.  You wrote:  “That is, unless you exclude the mention of the Oaks close 
to Hebron in Genesis. In this case, oak trees in an area with few trees 
would be much more memorable than oaks in an area with abundant forests.”
 
Based on Biblical testimony, there were no memorable oak trees in southern 
hill country, since not a single village, city or valley there is named 
after “oak trees”.  By stark contrast, three villages [I Samuel 10: 3;  
Joshua 
19: 43;  I Kings 4: 29] and one valley [I Samuel 17: 2] in the Shephelah are 
named after “oak trees” [excluding the famous city of “Aijalon”, which 
may or may not be a play on “oak tree”].    The Biblical testimony is clear, 
as are non-biblical sources as well.  If you want prominent oak trees that 
give rise to the names of various places that refer to oak trees, per Genesis 
13: 18, 14: 13 and 18: 1, and an ideal locale for a huge flock of sheep and 
goats, which does not require any seasonal changes of location, then the 
Shephelah west of Bethel is the place, not southern hill country.
 
If we pay close attention to what the Patriarchal narratives actually say, 
the only reasonable conclusion is that when in southern Canaan, the 
Patriarchs sojourned in the rural paradise of the eastern Aijalon Valley, not 
in 
rugged, mountainous, southern hill country.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois