person
Phicol
פִּיכֹל
Phicol, the commander of the army of Abimelech, the Philistine king of Gerar, who accompanied Abimelech in making treaties with Abraham and Isaac.
- verses
- 3
- first named
- Genesis 21:22
- last named
- Genesis 26:26
- period
- the Patriarchs
- role
- Man
Description
Who was Phicol?
Phicol was the commander of the army of Abimelech, the Philistine king of Gerar. He is mentioned twice in the book of Genesis, both times in the context of treaties made between Abimelech and the patriarchs.
In Gen.21.22-32, Phicol accompanied Abimelech when they approached Abraham to make a treaty, acknowledging that God was with Abraham in all that he did. As part of the treaty, Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs as a witness that he had dug a well, which was named Beersheba.
Later, in Gen.26.26, Phicol again accompanied Abimelech, along with Ahuzzath, Abimelech's advisor, when they came to make a treaty with Isaac. This event took place after Isaac had reopened the wells dug by his father, Abraham, and had settled in Beersheba.
Phicol's presence in these narratives suggests that he was a trusted official in Abimelech's court and played a significant role in diplomatic relations with the patriarchs.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Places
Where this happens
The places the claims about this person reach, drawn where the gazetteer locates them. A point is where a row puts them and never where tradition does; no line joins two points, because the rows state where and not in what order.
The pattern
Where Phicol is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
3 verses across 1 of 66 books; 65 write the name nowhere. Named in Genesis (3).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — 3, across 1 book.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources