Gerar
גְּרָר
Where was biblical Gerar? At Tel Haror, on Nahal Gerar northwest of Beersheba. I mark it probable.
Abraham came to Gerar, and a generation later Isaac came in a year of famine. Both told King Abimelech that their wives were their sisters.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Tel Haror, on Nahal Gerar northwest of Beersheba
- How sure
- Probable The best case we have, with real alternatives.
- Other names
- Tel Haror, Tel Heror, Tell Abu Hureyra, Tell Abu Hureira
- Location
- 31.3816° N, 34.6071° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
Genesis sets Gerar in the western Negev, between Kadesh and Shur, on the way toward Egypt. It has a nahal, a stream valley, where Isaac's servants dug for water. And it lies close to Beersheba. When Isaac finally moved on, he went up from there to Beersheba.
Tel Haror sits on the north bank of the big wadi of this area, the one called Nahal Gerar today. In Arabic it is Wadi esh-Shari'a. Excavators showed what kind of place stood here. In the Middle Bronze Age Tel Haror was one of the largest cities in the region, about 40 acres inside earthen ramparts, with a temple. People kept living here through the Iron Age. That is a town big enough to have a king.
The quarrel over the wells reads like the life of this valley. Isaac re-dug his father's wells and dug new ones in the valley, and the herders of Gerar fought him for them. He named one Esek, quarrel, and the next Sitnah, enmity. The third nobody disputed. He called it Rehoboth, room, because now G-d had made room for them. Long after, King Asa chased a beaten Cushite army as far as Gerar, so the town was still known in the days of the kings.
Probable is the right word. No inscription confirms the name, and the question is not finally settled.
An older view put Gerar at Tell Jemmeh, on Nahal Besor to the west, partly because a Byzantine ruin nearby was called Umm Jerar. Most scholars have dropped it, and Tell Jemmeh is now usually identified with a town called Yursa.
Visiting today
Tel Haror is a large mound on the bank of Nahal Gerar. You can trace the earthworks, but few structures are visible.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Gerar on the interactive map →
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