Beer Lahai Roi
בְּאֵר לַחַי רֹאִי · “Be'er Lechai Roi” on the map
Where was biblical Beer Lahai Roi? No one knows for sure. The best proposal is Ein Avdat, in the Zin canyon, about 45 km south of Beersheba.
Hagar ran away pregnant into the desert, on the road back toward Egypt, and an angel found her at a spring. She gave G-d a name, El-roi, the G-d who sees me, and the well was named for that meeting.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Unknown. Proposed: Ein Avdat, in the Zin canyon
- How sure
- Unknown No one has found it. The map marks the best proposal.
- Other names
- Beer-lahai-roi, Be'er Lachai Ro'i, Well of the Living One who sees me, Hagar's Well
- Location
- 30.8328° N, 34.7712° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
The name means the well of the Living One who sees me. The Bible gives only general clues to where it is. The spring lies in the wilderness on the road to Shur, between Kadesh and Bered. It is also in the Negev. Isaac was walking back from this well when Rebecca's camels came into view, and he settled near it after Abraham died. Bered appears nowhere else, so it can't help us.
The Targums already tried to pin it down. Onkelos puts the well between Rekem and Hagra. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan says between Rekem and Halutza, in the western Negev. That places it somewhere on the route from the western Negev toward Kadesh.
The map shows one proposal, Ein Avdat. It is a spring that flows all year, in the canyon of Nahal Zin, on the central Negev road toward Kadesh. That fits a well on the way between the Negev and Kadesh. But no inscription and no excavation ties Hagar's well to it, or to any other site. I offer Ein Avdat as a proposal. Where the well really was is impossible to know for sure.
Others point to Be'er Mash'abim, the wells on the central Negev road south of Beersheba, or to 'Ain el-Muweilih in northeastern Sinai, a spring local Bedouin linked with Hagar.
Visiting today
Ein Avdat National Park, below Midreshet Ben-Gurion, has a canyon hike past springs and pools.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Be'er Lechai Roi on the interactive map →
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- Arad 60 km northeast
- Jattir 62 km north