Why Abraham Planted a Tree at Beersheba (Genesis 21:22–34)

The king came to Abraham's tents with the commander of his army beside him. Abimelech of Gerar had reason to take this foreigner seriously. Before Isaac was born, God had come to him in a dream and said, "You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken" (Genesis 20:3). He had kept a close eye on Abraham since the night of that dream.

So he opened with what he had seen, "God is with you in all that you do" (Genesis 21:22), and then a king with an army asked a man who lived in tents for a promise: "swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or descendants" (Genesis 21:23). Abraham's answer is two words in Hebrew. "I swear it" (Genesis 21:24).

What happens in Genesis 21:22–34?

Then Abraham raised a complaint of his own. Abimelech's servants had seized a well that Abraham's men had dug (Genesis 21:25). In the dry country of the Negev a well decided whether a flock lived through the summer. Stephen said it plainly centuries later: God "gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground" (Acts 7:5). The whole land was promised to him, and he was arguing over a hole full of water.

Abimelech said this was the first he had heard of it (Genesis 21:26), and the two men made a covenant. Then Abraham did something odd. He set seven ewe lambs apart from his flock, and when the king asked why, he said, "You are to accept the seven ewe lambs from my hand as my witness that I dug this well" (Genesis 21:30).

Why did Abraham give Abimelech seven lambs?

The lambs were evidence. Once the king had taken them in front of his commander, nobody in Gerar could say later that the well belonged to someone else. Then Abraham gave the place a name. "So that place was called Beersheba, because it was there that the two of them swore an oath" (Genesis 21:31).

The name outlived both men. After Abraham died, the Philistines filled his wells with dirt, and Isaac dug them out again "and he gave these wells the same names his father had given them" (Genesis 26:18). A generation on, the record was still there to be found.

Then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, "and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God" (Genesis 21:33). People plant trees where they mean to stay. God had already told Abraham that his descendants would wait four hundred years for this land and that he himself would be buried before then (Genesis 15:13–15). So he called on God by the name the promise needed. A man who would die before it came true leaned on the God who does not die.

Abraham learned that name for God at Beersheba because he kept hold of what God had told him, years after it was said. The keeping showed. A Philistine king with no stake in Abraham's faith had already seen that God was with him in all he did, and at the well Abraham called on that God by name, as a man who knew Him and was known by Him.

How does Genesis 21 connect to Jesus?

The letter to the Hebrews looks back at oaths like this one: "Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and their oath serves as a confirmation to end all argument" (Hebrews 6:16). Then Hebrews turns to God's promise to Abraham: "since He had no one greater to swear by, He swore by Himself" (Hebrews 6:13). Abraham called on the Eternal God beside a well he had to defend. We call on the same God through the Son who "has become the guarantee of a better covenant" (Hebrews 7:22).

If God has told you something that will take years to come true, write it down with today's date, the way Abraham put a name on the well; that is what the Doxa app is for. When the wait runs long, read it back and call on Him as the God who will still be there at the end of it.

What has God said to you that will take longer than this year to come true?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: why the Hebrew for swearing sounds like seven, and the first time Scripture calls God eternal. Read it here.